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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: The Religious Persecution in France 1900-1906 - -Author: Jane Milliken Napier Brodhead - -Release Date: March 29, 2013 [EBook #42434] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - THE - RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION - IN FRANCE - - 1900-1906 - - - _Nihil Obstat_: - JOSEPH WILHELM, S. T. D., - CENSOR DEPUTATUS. - - _Imprimi potest_ - + GULIELMUS, - EPISCOPUS ARINDELENSIS, - VICARIUS GENERALIS. - - WESTMONASTERII, - _Die 6 Aprilis, 1907_. - - - - - THE RELIGIOUS - PERSECUTION - IN FRANCE - - 1900-1906 - - BY - - J. NAPIER BRODHEAD - AUTHOR OF "SLAV AND MOSLEM" - - _LONDON_ - KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRBNER & CO., LTD. - 43 GERRARD STREET, SOHO, W. - 1907 - - - - -PREFACE - - -These Considerations, written during the last six years' residence in -France, have already appeared in the Press of the United States. They -were written from year to year without any thought of republication, -which seems justified to-day by the acuity of the conflict between the -Church and the French atheocracy, a conflict which cannot but interest -Christians everywhere. - -J. N. B. - - - - -CONTENTS - - - PAGE - -FIRST IMPRESSIONS 1 - -THE TWO CAMPS 7 - -THE ASSOCIATIONS BILL 13 - -THE ASSOCIATIONS BILL 18 - -ARBITRARY INCONSISTENCY 29 - -A PAGAN RENAISSANCE 33 - -INCONSISTENT JACOBINISM 40 - -UNAUTHORISED CONGREGATIONS 46 - -A COMBES _COUP DE MAIN_ 50 - -LEGALIZED DESPOTISM 57 - -DESPOTISM PLUS GUILE 63 - -UNCHANGING JACOBINISM 71 - -DEATH OF WALDECK ROUSSEAU 78 - -LIBERTY AND STATE SERVITUDE 82 - -THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 91 - -A PAPAL NOTE 105 - -FREEMASONRY 112 - -FREEMASONRY 118 - -PART SECOND 125 - -ALCOHOLISM IN FRANCE 131 - -THE LAW OF SEPARATION 135 - -CATHOLICISM IN GERMANY 144 - -PSEUDO-SEPARATION 147 - -THE PROGRESS OF ANARCHY 160 - -THE ABOLITION OF THE CONCORDAT 170 - -THE INVENTORIES 177 - -DUC IN ALTUM 185 - -THE LATEST PHASE OF SEPARATION 197 - -LIBERTY AND CHRISTIANITY 211 - -CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION 233 - -APPENDIX 249 - - - - -THE RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION IN FRANCE - - - - -FIRST IMPRESSIONS - - -LYON, _March 17th, 1900_. - -There seems to be considerable misapprehension in the United States as -to the status of the Catholic Church in France. "One iniquitous -arrangement in France," writes the _Central Baptist_, "is the support of -the priesthood out of public funds." In receiving stipends from the -State the French clergy, however, are no more its debtors, nor its -functionaries, than holders of French 3 per cents who receive the -interest of their bonds. When that essentially satanic movement, known -as the French Revolution, swept over this fair land, deluging it in -blood, the wealth of the Church, the accumulation of centuries, was all -confiscated by the hordes who pillaged and devastated, and killed in the -name of Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality, until Napoleon restored order -with an iron hand. A born ruler of men, this Corsican understood that -the principal feature of the work of restoration must be the -reorganization of the Catholic Church in France. Accordingly he -concluded with the Pope the convention known as the Concordat. It was -not possible in the dilapidated state of the country to restore the -millions that had been stolen by those "champions of liberty who," -according to Macaulay, "compressed into twelve months more crimes than -the kings of France had committed in twelve centuries." Still less was -it possible to rebuild many noble structures, and recover works of art -sold by sordid harpies or destroyed by impious vandals. It was -accordingly agreed (Arts. 13 and 14, Concordat) that in lieu of this -restitution the State should henceforth pay to the Church, annually, the -stipends of so many archbishops, bishops, curates, etc. - -The Concordat constitutes an organic law of the State. The clergy -receive their stipends, not as a salary, but as the payment of a debt -due to them by the State. It is in vain, therefore, that efforts are -made now to represent the Catholic clergy as salaried functionaries of -the State. The act by which Waldeck Rousseau recently decreed the -suppression of the stipends of certain bishops was wholly arbitrary, -and, moreover, the violation of an organic law. It was the partial -repudiation of a public debt, quite as dishonourable as if the payment -of interest of three per cent bonds were withheld from certain -bondholders. - -The position of Protestant and Jewish ministers in France is entirely -different. They do receive salaries which are purely gratuitous. The -Revolutionists did not trouble them, and they had no part in the -Concordat of 1801. We may say that the French Revolution was appeased, -but it is not over by any means. No nation less well founded and -grounded could have withstood as France has done the shocks and -upheavals of a century. - -To this day France is still profoundly Catholic, in spite of the -millions of public money expended in so-called non-sectarian primary -schools and colleges. Travellers stroll into French churches, in summer, -at High Mass on Sundays at 9.30 or 10.30 generally, and because they -find a very small congregation at this service they report that the -churches are deserted and religion fast dying out. They ignore the fact -that in these churches low masses have been said hourly since 5 a.m., so -that people may comply with their duty, and then go off on their outing. -Lyon has many large beautiful old churches, and many handsome new ones. -Yet not one of them could contain all their parishioners if they wished -to attend the same service. - -For nearly twenty-five years the Government has been running its -educational machine at immense cost, compelling the French to support -schools they will not patronize, as well as those of their own choice. -Nevertheless, State colleges and primary schools are so neglected that -laws are being devised to compel parents to send their children to them. -If all other means fail, the congregations of both sexes occupied in -teaching will be suppressed. This is the Government's programme. There -is nothing so bad as the corruption of that which is best. France is -still profoundly Catholic, and it is only natural that the struggle -between good and evil should be sharp here. The forces of reaction and -action are always proportionate. Hence it is that France has always been -"the centre of Masonic history," and of the Goddess Reason's supreme -efforts against Christianity. Her temperament, too, makes her a choice -field for experiments. - -We can therefore understand M. Waldeck Rousseau's indignation when so -many bishops openly expressed their sympathy with and admiration for the -Assumptionist Fathers who were condemned recently--and condemned for -what crime? For being an unauthorized association of more than twenty -persons, when there are hundreds of other similar associations at the -present moment. - -Briefly stated, the present phase of the Church in France is simply the -nineteenth-century phase of the struggles of Investiture in the Middle -Ages; the secular power seeking to have and to dominate a national -Church, whose ministers are to be nothing but state functionaries, -bound to serve and to support the Government. This was the old pagan -ideal, and every portion of the Church that has renounced allegiance to -Rome has fallen into this condition. In England, in Russia, in the -Byzantine Empire, in Turkey, in Africa--wherever there is a national -Church--it is little better than a department of State. The Gallican -Church narrowly escaped a similar fate in the days of Louis XIV. The -Civil Constitution of the Clergy was another desperate and abortive -attempt to nationalize and secularize the Church in France. Gloriously, -too, her clergy expiated their momentary Gallican insubordination. All -over France they were guillotined, drowned, and exiled, and imprisoned, -_en masse_, rather than submit to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. -There is nothing more admirable in the history of Christianity than the -conduct of the victims massacred in the convent of the Carmelites, -converted into a prison by the Jacobins. Martyrs and confessors were as -numerous as in the first centuries of the Church, and from their ashes -arose a new French Church purified by poverty and suffering. - -Never have institutions of learning and charity under religious -direction been so numerous. No country has a clergy more zealous, more -learned, more united with the Holy See than that of France to-day. No -wonder then that the powers of darkness are devising means to destroy -the new structure, so zealously and so laboriously raised on the ruins -accumulated by the Revolution of 1790. - -"Not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar among the people." -Violent measures would rouse French Catholics from their political -apathy. The Government cannot afford to do this. Religious liberty must -be destroyed by degrees--and herein lies the danger. - - - - -THE TWO CAMPS - - -_May 25th, 1900._ - -To the thoughtful and sympathetic observer, France presents a singular -spectacle of duality--two camps and two standards are confronting each -other, neo-paganism and Christianity. By Christianity I mean, of course, -Catholicism, for though there may be good Protestants, who adhere to -some of the truths of revealed religion, such a thing as a good pervert -French Protestant is a _lusus natur_, practically non-existent. It is a -notorious fact that Protestants in France as elsewhere in Europe are, as -a rule, absolutely indifferent in religious matters since they have -ceased to be persecuted, and in many cases they have become the enemies -of revealed religion. - -All civilization, all redemption from barbarism, is fostered and -developed around a sanctuary. Consecrated hands have, in every instance, -laid the corner stone of the social edifice. The Church, the -school-house, the university, the courts of justice--these are the -normal steps by which societies, cities, and nations have advanced in -the Old World out of barbarism and chaos since the overthrow of the -Roman Empire. Of France this is pre-eminently true. Hundreds of -villages and towns bear the names of holy missionary monks who built -first a cell, and then a monastery around a chapel, which became the -centre of a village, that grew in time to be a city. We see the same -thing all over Europe and in the British Isles. Gibbon says that the -French bishops made the French monarchy as bees construct a honeycomb. -Like every institution that bears a religious imprint, this monarchy was -long-lived. Those who descant so volubly on the flightiness of the -French people, always overturning their government and never satisfied -with the one they have, would do well to reflect that the French -monarchy lasted some fourteen centuries. When this monarchy was -overthrown by the assassination of Louis XVI there was formed a vortex -in which were engulfed millions of human lives. Not that I consider a -monarchical or any special form of government indispensable to France's -prosperity. There is, however, one essential condition. The generating -principle of the French nation was the Catholic Faith. Without it, -France would no longer be herself. She would disintegrate interiorly, -and dismemberment and decadence would follow. France is still profoundly -Catholic, in spite of the prodigious efforts made since the days of -Voltaire and Tom Paine by numerous native and alien religious vandals, -whose prostituted intellects were garnished from the storehouse of -centuries of Christian culture. She will always be this or nothing. For -any one who knows France, historically and psychologically, it is -preposterous to think of a substitute creed, corresponding to any of the -various shreds of Christianity, which do duty for religion under the -name of some one or other of the multitudinous Protestant sects. - -France, I repeat, will always be Catholic or nothing. But the Government -is on the verge of apostasy. For the first time in French history the -usual religious observances on Good Friday were suppressed in all the -naval ports. "What thou doest do quickly," and on this occasion the -order was sent by telegraph on Thursday evening. As I stated in my last -letter, irreligious education is doing its work, and the increase of -juvenile criminals is appalling.[1] - -If the projected law regarding religious associations is voted, it will -be tantamount to the abolition of all religious teaching, as the -existence of these congregations will be rendered impracticable. England -and the United States will be the gainers, as they were when the -Revolution dispersed the priesthood in 1790. - -The French Government is on the verge of apostasy, as I have said. Is -this a cause, a presage, or a symptom of national decadence? All three, -I fear. Nations stand or fall with their governments. They have the -government they merit and they are punished for the evil doings of their -rulers. "I gave them a king in my wrath," it was written. Is there -sufficient vitality left in the French constitution to reject the poison -that is undermining it, and of which alcoholism, unknown in France fifty -years ago, is but the outward and visible sign? The assertion I make -that the greatness of the French people and their very national -existence is bound up with the Christian Faith is unquestioned by every -thinker in France, even by those who, for diverse reasons, do not -practise their religion, though they all bank on the last sacraments and -would be very sorry to see their wives and children neglect their -religious duties. - -The governments which have succeeded each other since 1880 have -flattered themselves that they could govern without the Church and -against the Church. Bismarck tried it and failed. The Catholic party -triumphed. It still holds the balance of power in Germany, and the -nation is growing daily more powerful and prosperous. In France, alas! -it is quite the contrary. In order to crush what they are pleased to -call the "clerical" party, the Government has allied itself with -Socialists of the reddest streak. Indeed, we may say that anarchy and -socialism, or collectivism as it is called, are sitting in high places. - -Any president or minister who dared to stem the tide would fall. They -must temporize, resign, or die. Carnot was assassinated. Casimir-Perier -resigned; Faure, who steadily opposed the revision of the Dreyfus case, -was poisoned, I am told--at any rate, it is said that he died almost -immediately after swallowing a cup of tea at a soire. Though the public -has no means of forming a correct judgment regarding the guilt of the -notorious Dreyfus, the most important evidence having been secret, I -have never doubted that he was justly condemned. At any rate, he -accepted the Presidential pardon, and withdrew his appeal, a strange -thing for an innocent man to do. This alone, it would seem, ought to -estop him from a new trial. But unfortunately the whole thing is to be -gone over again, though it is a perfect nightmare for four-fifths of the -French nation. - -I know France intimately since thirty years, and it is with infinite -sorrow that I diagnose her present condition and its perils. - -According to custom, the Imperial Court of Russia retired to Moscow for -Holy Week, and while the Czar, laying aside court etiquette, was -kneeling humbly on the bare floor among his peasant subjects, holding -his lighted candle like them, his allies, the rulers of France, were -desecrating Easter Vigil by inaugurating the Paris Exhibition with -speeches, which seemed to have been compiled from those made by -Robespierre and his companions on that very Champs de Mars a century -ago, when they inaugurated their theo-philanthropy and the worship of -the Goddess of Reason. - -I presume Holy Saturday was selected because it is a high festival among -the Jews; otherwise Easter Monday would surely have been more -appropriate in a country where there are thirty-five million Catholics. -This was on the 9th April, and the Exposition they were in such a hurry -to inaugurate on that particular day is far from ready even now. - - - - -THE ASSOCIATIONS BILL - - -_May 4th, 1901._ - -A year ago I wrote in these columns as follows: "For twenty years the -Government has been running its educational machine at immense loss, -compelling the French to support their own schools as well as those they -will not patronize. Nevertheless, State schools and colleges are so -neglected that laws are being devised to compel parents to send their -children to them. If all other means fail, the congregations of both -sexes occupied in teaching will be suppressed." - -Now this is the true object of the Associations Bill; all the rest is -merely padding. Liberty of association for Freemasons, Socialists, and -all friends of the Third Republic will be untrammelled as heretofore. -The blow aimed at religious teachers is of peculiar interest at this -hour, when Christians, all over the world, are recognizing the immense -importance of the religious education of the young, if we would preserve -the structure of Western civilization, so laboriously built up during -2000 years, and save its deep foundations from being sapped by the -returning tide of barbarism and paganism. For the revolutionary spirit -of to-day is simply another version of that renaissance of paganism -which culminated in the Protestant revolt. As in the past, it will be -met by a great Catholic revival like that of the sixteenth century, -which Macaulay has so eloquently described in his Essay on Ranke's -_Papacy_. This is the counter-revolution against which the self-styled -government of "Dfense Republicaine" is dressing its batteries. Already -the effects of this revival are felt and, as Macaulay has pointed out, -revivals of the religious spirit, this everlasting factor in the history -of humanity which our pseudo-scientists so unscientifically ignore, -always redound to the benefit of Catholicism. When men like Brunetire, -Bourget, Lematre, Franois Coppe, become standard-bearers of truth, we -are consoled for the vociferations of any number of Vivianis, -Trouillots, etc., in and outside the French Chambers, for whom "the -eternal decalogue" is but an antiquated superstition that must be swept -away. - -The law against the Congregations has been opposed in the Chambers by -many Republicans who have no religious scruples, and one may safely -affirm that there is not a respectable Frenchman, outside the coterie in -power, who does not condemn the Bill. - -A few days before its passage, a mass meeting of many trade unions, -presided over by Leroy Beaulieu, was held in Paris to protest against -the projected suppression of the Congregations. The eminent economist -declared that the proposed legislation was one of "national suicide." -If the law is so repugnant to the French in general, how is it that the -Government always obtains a majority? it may be asked. - -The explanation lies in the fact that while honest Frenchmen have been -attending to their business and leaving politics strictly alone, this -anti-religious campaign has been carefully prepared since many years by -the enemies of Christianity. Like all notable persecutions, it is the -work of secret societies. The Boxers of China are a congeries of these -societies. In the days of Julian the chief instigators and abettors of -persecution were the secret societies of Mithra, whom Renan declared to -have been "veritable Masonic lodges with their initiations, passwords," -etc. - -Since 1875 the "Grand Orient," in which the Jewish element predominates, -has gradually been gathering into its hands all the reins of government; -not a very difficult task, seeing that as a rule respectable, -industrious Frenchmen will not touch politics, while the emissaries of -the lodges go out into the slums of mining and industrial centres, and -organize primaries and Socialist clubs that defeat any respectable -candidate who dares to enter the lists against the candidate of the -Government. Jules Lematre, in the _Echo de Paris_, states that there -are 400 deputies and 10 ministers who are Freemasons. As these latter -number about 25,000 in France, it follows that there is one -representative in Parliament for every 50 Freemason electors, whereas -there is only one representative for every 1800 votes who are not -affiliated to the "Grand Orient." With a house packed in this way, any -legislation is possible. Madame Sorgues, lately sub-editor of Jaurs' -Socialist organ, _La Petite Republique_, has published some interesting -revelations, showing how the Judeo Freemasons have made tools of the -Socialists in order to seize the reins of government. "In combating the -combats of Dreyfus," she writes, "Jaurs and his friends brought about a -singular _rapprochement_ of the two most irreconcilable camps ... the -presents of the kings of capital were accepted. The first service -rendered was to restore the tottering Socialist Press.... All the -advanced [meaning anti-clerical Socialist] dailies have passed into the -hands of the great barons of finance; they are _their_ journals now, not -the journals of the workers.... Then they cast their eyes on Waldeck -Rousseau, the clever rescuer of the Panamists.... The agent of the -Dreyfus politics had the happy thought of introducing into the Cabinet, -Millerand, the Socialist leader, with the consent of his party. -Socialism become ministerial would be _domestiqu_, and rendered -inoffensive against capital," etc. Last fall, the President, Loubet, -when at Lyons, dared to be the guest of the Chamber of Commerce, in -spite of the Socialist mayor, Augagneur, and his gang. Immediately, the -_Aurore_, a Socialist organ of Paris, clamoured for his suppression in -these terms: "As he is not subject to the same accidents as Felix -Faure, we must defend ourselves without waiting for the good offices of -Judith." M. Faure, M. Loubet's predecessor, it will be remembered, is -said to have died suddenly after a cup of tea at a soire given by a -rich Jewess, and the present ministry of the Dreyfus revision, to which -he had been steadfastly opposed, came into power almost before the -country knew what had happened, bringing in their political wallet -another Dreyfus trial and this notorious Associations Bill. - -If I insist, it is because I wish that it may be clearly understood that -the French people are not guilty of the criminal legislation of which -they are the victims, owing to their incurable reluctance to touch the -mire of politics, left, as a rule, to the most unworthy and -unscrupulous. - -M. Waldeck Rousseau is a smart, wily politician; so was Camille -Desmoulins, an obscure, ambitious lawyer, who saw in the Revolution of -1790 a grand opportunity of reaching a proud eminence. This -accomplished, he had no further use for Revolutionists. "The Revolution -is over," he said; but it went on and on, until his own head rolled into -the fatal basket. - -How long will all this last? How long will the mad dogs of Socialist -anarchy be held in leash? - - - - -THE ASSOCIATIONS BILL - - -_3rd April,_ 1901. - -Few persons in the United States have the leisure or the means of -following the debates of the French Chambers, and appreciating the Law -on Associations, of which many garbled and falsified versions appear in -metropolitan and other dailies. - -It is pre-eminently a project of tyranny and religious persecution. The -sympathy of sectarian antagonism with anti-Catholic measures, in any -part of the world, is always a foregone conclusion. It does not concern -itself with the arbitrary tyranny involved, alleging, perhaps, that now -the tables are turned, and thirty-five millions of Catholics are being -treated as were the Huguenots from 1685 to 1790. But when former -governments strove to maintain national unity, founded on "One Lord, one -Faith, one Baptism," their position was that of a man defending his own -house against assailants, while the position of this Government is that -of a small armed band who have taken forcible possession, and mean to -coerce and outlaw the owners by imprescriptible right. But neither -Elizabeth nor Louis XIV ever invoked liberty to palliate their coercive -policy in order to establish, or maintain unity or uniformity. - -As Bodley says in his excellent work on France (1898): "The intolerant -system under the Third Republic differs from all persecutions known to -history in that it is not only practised in the name of liberty, but is -aimed against an established religion"--in possession since fifteen -centuries. - -It is a curious fact that the Huguenots, so clamorous for toleration and -the rights of conscience in the past, have during a century of absolute -liberty and equality, 1793-1900, dwindled from 2,000,000 in a population -of 27,000,000 to 600,000 in a population of 38,000,000. They have -evolved, in the usual process of Protestant disintegration, into the -deistical and atheistical minority who, with the Jews, are now so -determined to restore national unity in national infidelity. For it is a -notorious fact that France is ruled and oppressed by a small coalition -of Freemasons, chiefly Protestants and Jews, who are using the -Socialists as cats' paws. - -Waldeck Rousseau clearly stated the Government's programme in his -political speech at Toulouse, and its scope is unmistakable, no matter -what affectation of tolerance and amity for the secular clergy may -accompany it. He is an astute lawyer, and his unruly band of Socialist -henchmen in the Chambers often try his patience sorely by calling a -spade a spade. - -The suppression of religious orders and the confiscation of their -property is no new thing. St. Paul reminds the Hebrews of their -neophyte fervour, and how they accepted being despoiled with joy. -_Rapinam_ is the word used in the Vulgate; modern euphemism eschews the -unsavoury word robbery, and says "_secularization_," "_liquidation_." -Julian the Apostate, like the Rousseaus and the Trouillots of to-day, -was also of opinion that the "Clericals" must be impoverished and -discredited in order to crush out Christianity. Henry VIII robbed and -suppressed English monasteries simply because he saw no other means of -replenishing the empty treasury he had inherited. Moreover the religious -orders were not likely to sustain him in his new character of supreme -head of the Anglican Church. Suffering, crime, and ignorance reached -unprecedented proportions in the century that followed, as we learn from -Strype's _Chronicles_. Lecky asserts that 75,000 vagrant beggars were -hanged in Henry's reign. - -Suppressions and confiscations have always been a prominent feature in -all revolutions, and they have been numerous in the nineteenth century. -The reason is twofold. Everything that has a religious stamp is -essentially and very properly conservative. It requires infinite pains, -patience, and wisdom to build up or to reconstruct. Any fool or madman -can tear down. _Quieta non movere._ The religious congregations, -therefore, were always the last to abandon the mother country or the -regime under which they had existed for centuries. On the other hand, -revolutionists always have a crying need for money to furnish the -sinews of rebellion, and also, incidentally, to feather the nests of -patriots. What can be more handy, too, than church property, and the -untold wealth of the religious orders! It is true that these gold mines -are sometimes found to be 'salted,' as they are in the fantastical -statistics put forth by the Rousseau ministry.[2] They seldom justify -the brilliant expectations of the populace lured by the perspective of -rich spoils, as they are to-day--pensions for the veterans of toil, etc. - -These spoliations have always been followed by an immense recrudescence -of popular misery. It was so in France, in Italy, in Spain--everywhere. - -The twofold motive that instigated these spoliations does not excuse -them, but it explains and perhaps palliates to some extent. In France, -to-day, there is no extenuating circumstance. The Holy See loyally lent -its support to the Third Republic when the second president, M. Grvy, -humbly solicited it at a precarious moment. Leo XIII distinctly -requested the clergy and the faithful to rally to the Republic in the -interest of peace. With very few exceptions the regular and the secular -clergy have strictly abstained from politics. The inquisition of which -the Assumption Fathers were recently the object only succeeded in -incriminating two or three members of the order. - -Of course the regular and secular clergy cannot urge their flocks and -their pupils to embrace the atheistical and pagan ideals of the -coalition in power. If this be disloyalty they are all disloyal. - -Considering that since 1888 not less than 20,000,000 have been added -every year to the public expenditure, one might suppose that the -Government would think twice before depriving itself of this army of -some 180,000 self-sacrificing men and women who minister to the poor, -the sick, the maimed, the blind, the insane, the orphan, and the -outcast. Recently the Prefect of the Department of Bouches du Rhone was -summoned by the anti-clericals to secularize all the hospitals. He -refused to accede to their request, alleging that the budget of charity -was totally inadequate already, and that many indigent sufferers were -turned away from lack of accommodation. This is only one item; what will -it be when the Government has to pay an army of hirelings to minister to -the poor all over the land? But the Congregations do not concern -themselves with bodily wants only. Many of them are devoted to the -education of all classes. This is the head and front of their offending, -and the true reason of their taking off. Every one knows that the -godless scholastic institutions devised by Paul Bert, Ferry, and Jules -Simon are repugnant to the nation, and have been a complete failure. In -spite of the millions of public money lavished upon them, they have -never been able to hold their own against the religious schools of the -Congregations, which are supported entirely by private initiative, and -at the cost of great pecuniary sacrifices on the part of Catholic -parents, who support two sets of schools--those they patronize and those -for which they have no use. Not content with imposing these sacrifices, -as in the United States, the Third Republic now proposes to crush out -all competition by suppressing the teaching congregations, and indeed -all congregations, with the proviso of retaining for the present such as -shall be deemed of public utility--meaning, of course, those who bring -surcease to the straining budget by rendering gratuitous service to -thousands, who would be a burden to the State, in a country already -taxed to its utmost capacity. The tyrannical and arbitrary character of -a measure which declares all conventual institutions "against public -order" on account of their vows, which are likened to "personal -servitude," and yet utilizing some of them, does not trouble these -modern Dracos. Still less are they concerned with the iniquity of -depriving thousands of citizens of the right to dispose of their lives -as they see fit, and of preventing millions of parents from educating -their children as they choose. - -About the middle of the last century, representative men like -Montalembert, Lacordaire, Berryer, Dupanloup, entered the political -arena to fight the battle of free education against the tyranny of the -State University. They won the day, and freedom in educational matters -seemed henceforth the inalienable appanage of France and of all -communities boasting of Western civilization. - -The aim of the projected Law of Associations is to crush out this -liberty. It is no question of Church and State, but of Christianity and -liberty against atheism and tyranny. All the rest is mere padding. It is -a reversion to Lacedmonian state tyranny and an odious anachronism. No -wonder, then, that the present Dreyfus-Rousseau ministry should seek to -throw dust in the eyes of the public, even subsidizing press syndicates -to mislead public opinion abroad. - -In a nutshell, the Trouillot Bill amounts to just this: No association -can exist without government authorization, which will never be given to -any religious congregation formed for educational purposes. None need -apply but those who work with the Government. "We will give our money -only to those who please us," said the Socialist mayor of Lyons -recently. "Our money," forsooth--considering that the taxpaying portion -of the community of Lyons is strongly Catholic and Conservative. Yet -this municipal autocrat declared that destitute children, who went to -any but state schools, should not be assisted by civic funds. - -It is the true Jacobin spirit that permeates this Republican organism. -The stamping out of religious education is itself but a means to an end. -That arch-traitor Renan declared "that religion would die hard; primary -education and the substitution of scientific for literary studies were -the only means of killing it." - -The final purpose of this Republic is to establish national unity in -national atheism, with perhaps a creedless church administered by -servile state functionaries--a modified form of the worship of the -Goddess of Reason. In saying this I do not calumniate the Republic, as -Waldeck Rousseau himself clearly stated the governmental programme at -Toulouse. A small coalition of Jews, Protestants, and other Freemasons -have gained control of the country by capturing the Socialist vote. The -latter do not yet see that they are being used as cats' paws. For what -fellowship can there be between Jew capitalists and collectivists? All -honest, industrious Frenchmen despise politics as a rule. The great -mining and industrial centres and the slums of large cities furnish -practically all the voters, and this proletariat is lured on by -brilliant prospects of the collectivist Utopia that is coming, when the -Congregations and the Church have been abolished. Respectable Frenchmen, -who do try to serve their country by taking a hand in politics, usually -withdraw in disgust, and thus the scum comes to the top and is utilized -by unscrupulous ambition. If any one wants to enjoy a clever, graphic -pen-picture of French politics, let him read _Les morts qui parlent_, by -M. de Vogu. - -The purpose of those in power is, I repeat, to break away completely and -for ever from the Catholic religion, with which the French nation is so -bound up that its fibres can only be torn out with the last palpitating -remnants of national life. "Few greater calamities can befall a nation," -wrote Lecky, "than to cut herself off as France has done from her own -past in her great Revolution." To consummate this calamity is the avowed -purpose of this Government. A hue and cry is raised by its Socialist -henchmen at papal _ingrence_ in French affairs, though the Concordat -surely gives the Pope a right to protest against the ostracism and -proposed suppression of the Congregations, as being a violation of -Article I of the Concordat, which guarantees the "free exercise of the -Catholic religion in France." - -Meanwhile "_The Jewish Alliance_" and the "_Internationale_" operate -freely and openly, causing strikes in every direction, and disorganizing -the industrial conditions here for the benefit of other countries. -During the last few months immense sums are being taken out of the -country, not by the Congregations only by any means. The boom in the New -York Stock Market, which redounds to the credit of the McKinley -administration, may be connected with this migration of personal -property from France. - -It has been France's glory and misfortune to be a great purveyor of -ideas, ideals, and fashions. She is essentially missionary, and was in -the vanguard of Christianity from the beginning. In the early centuries -of the Church, her monastic missionaries peopled the islands that lie -around this beautiful Riviera. St. Vincent de Lerins, St. Tropez, St. -Aygulf, St. Maxim, have left indelible footprints in these regions. In -her terrible Revolution France was an object-lesson to the nations, -whose intervention saved her from self-extermination. Foreign war was a -boon and a safety-valve. The Commune of 1870 was another warning to the -nations. Again to-day she is being made a spectacle to men and -angels--to men who are, with secret rejoicing, applauding the Waldeck -Rousseau ministry, and all for which it stands. They known full well -that decadence and doom are near. There will be another Sedan, another -Commune. The colonies, Indo-China in particular, will be the first to -fall away in the general dismemberment. - -I know France intimately since more than thirty years, and it is with -infinite sorrow that I diagnose her condition. Her recuperative powers -are very great. I fear, however, that they will prove inadequate after -the next great shock. - -But France's admirable gift of apostleship, her lofty idealism, which no -number of Voltaires could abase or abate, will not perish with her -territorial integrity, nor even with her national life. Like the -deathless masterpieces of Greece and Rome, her immortal genius will -inform and inspire countless unborn generations, long after France -herself shall have become a mere geographical reminiscence. "I will move -thy candlestick," it is written--not extinguish. - - - - -ARBITRARY INCONSISTENCY - - -_16th February, 1901._ - -The attitude of the Jacobin government in France towards the religion -professed by nine-tenths of the inhabitants is truly instructive. After -prating about liberty, fraternity, and equality, and the rights of man -for a hundred years, the successors of the revolutionary _Constituante_ -are preparing to deal a deathblow at the most sacred rights of the -individual, to overstep the most arbitrary acts of any regime, nay of -the Inquisition itself. These, at least, only concerned themselves with -outward manifestations of personal idiosyncrasies tending to disturb the -social order. But the successors of the Jacobins of the _Constituante_, -so proud of their blood-stained origin, direct their attacks, to-day, -against that most intangible thing the Vow, which has no existence -except in the inner conscience of the individual, seeing that monastic -vows which involved "civil death" were abolished by law in 1790, and all -religious are, to-day, free to exercise the rights of citizens--to buy, -sell, contract, or vote. The vow cannot even be considered a convention -or a contract binding together the members of a religious association. - -The ground on which it is proposed to declare religious congregations -illegal without interfering with Masonic and other associations is, said -Waldeck Rousseau, that "our public right [_droit public_] and that of -other States proscribes all that constitutes an abdication of the rights -of the individual, right to marry, to possess, all, in fact, that -resembles personal servitude." - -Thus in the name of liberty and the famous rights of man, I am denied -the right to exercise my freewill by electing to remain single, because -not to marry would be an abdication of one of the rights of the -individual, and resemble "personal servitude." Anything more grotesquely -inconsistent cannot well be imagined, and this project of law has been -in process of elaboration in the lodges since twenty years! In 1880, -when the decree against the Jesuits and all congregations of men was -promulgated, it was declared illicit and unconstitutional by 1500 -jurists, and 400 of the higher magistrates, who refused their -connivence, were removed from office. One of my best friends was among -these victims. The decree was enforced _manu militari_, but the current -of public opinion was so strong that, ere long, these establishments -were reopened and continued their good works unmolested. - -It was next proposed to crush out the Congregations by fiscal measures. -This also has proved inadequate, and the present project of law is the -supreme effort of a most paternal and absolute Republic to secure the -liberty of thousands of unappreciative subjects, by preventing them from -exercising it in the choice of a mode of life. Truly a strange -aberration of liberty, equality, and fraternity! - -Of course it is an open secret that what is aimed at is the destruction -of the Catholic Church in France, and the establishment, if possible, of -a national church with a "civil constitution of the clergy" as was -attempted in 1792. - -Before attacking the citadel it is proposed to demolish the two great -ramparts of the Church, Christian education and Christian charity, by -disbanding the noble men and women who man these ramparts. - -It is a notorious fact, well established by Taine, that the French -Revolution, with all its saturnalia of carnage and nameless tyranny, was -the work of a handful, some ten thousand in all, and even many of these -were foreigners. They carried all before them, and I fear that history -will repeat itself. - -The moral unity of France was destroyed for ever by the Huguenots in the -seventeenth century. Louis XIV sought in vain to restore it by the -Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The Revolution also tried to -enforce moral unity by the unlimited practice of the "_Sois mon frre ou -je te tue_." It is in the name of this lost moral unity that the -coalition in power now propose to crush out all educational and -religious liberty. French Protestantism can hardly be said to exist any -longer. In 1799, when their religious and civil liberties were restored, -Rabaut de St. Etienne, then president of the _Constituante_, stated -their number to be 2,000,000 in a population of 26,000,000. After a -century of complete liberty and equality, the _Agenda Protestant_ of -Lyons states their number to be 650,000 in a population of 37,000,000. -In the usual process of Protestant disintegration, the Huguenots, -erstwhile so zealous for Calvinistic purity of doctrine, have evolved -into the freethinking materialists, who form an important contingent in -the anti-religious Masonic coalition I referred to some months ago. - -The situation in France painfully recalls that of Constantinople some -forty years before the fall of the Eastern Empire. A house divided -against itself cannot stand. - - - - -A PAGAN RENAISSANCE - - -_10th August, 1901._ - -In a previous article I asserted that the revolutionary spirit so -rampant to-day is a new version of that renaissance of Paganism in the -fourteenth century which culminated in the Protestant revolt. I find the -same view expressed in Goldwin Smith's recently published work on the -United Kingdom. In a chapter on the Renaissance he writes as follows: -"Our generation may look upon this period with interest, since it is -itself threatened with an interregnum between Christian morality and the -morality of science." - -"Much learning maketh thee mad" might be said to our generation, that -seems to be science mad and blissfully unconscious of the paradoxes of -its programme. We are promised a scientific religion or a religion of -science, meaning probably a religion worthy of men of science, unmindful -of the fact that men of the highest attainments have been nurtured in -the Church in every century, and that the supernatural must always be an -indispensable element of religion. - -Now Mr. Goldwin Smith raises our expectations to a future era in which -"the morality of science" is to succeed to the hiatus or interregnum -with which we are threatened to-day, as in the fifteenth century, when -the Church was "drugged," he says. - -In his excellent work on _Social Evolution_, Kidd accentuates the fact -that our Western civilization, the highest yet attained, has been wholly -religious and not scientific; that in intellectual capacity and -attainments we are, even now, far below the average Greek mind of -centuries ago. This civilization of ours, marvellous in spite of all its -shortcomings and blots, is founded on abnegation and self-sacrifice -which are wholly irrational, scientifically speaking. It is indeed -scientifically impossible for science to have any other morality than -the law of brute force and the survival of the strongest, whether it be -on the battlefield, the mart, or on 'change. The law of supply and -demand is a corollary of this law. - -Complacency for the weak and the lowly, that characterized Christianity -from the beginning, and found expression in the legend of the Holy -Grail, is all folly, the sublime folly of the Cross. The equality and -brotherhood of man is also part of this "foolishness," so repulsive to -the cultured Greek mind. Nay, all our much-vaunted "free institutions" -have grown out of this mustard seed, to which our Lord compared His -kingdom on earth. "When the tree falls the shadow will depart," as -Tennyson wrote in another connexion. Nothing will be left to our poor -science-ridden humanity but the cruel glare of human egoisms, passions, -and ambitions. - -In one of those sonorous paradoxes which his soul loved, J. J. Rousseau -assures us that "all men are born free, and everywhere they are in -chains." That all men are born free is as false as that all men are born -upright and virtuous. History and experience give the lie to both -assertions. It is an incontrovertible fact that before Christ slavery -was the normal status of the masses in every age and clime, and Lucanus -only expressed an universally accepted axiom when he cynically declared -that the human race only existed for a few: _Humanum paucis vivit -genus_. - -The doom of slavery was sealed when Peter began his memorable discourse, -saying "Men and brethren" to circumcised and uncircumcised alike. On -that day the Church began her mission of liberation by subjugation to -the Christian law. - -But so ancient and deeply-rooted an institution as slavery could not -wisely nor safely be felled suddenly. It was not till 1167 that Pope -Alexander III published the charter of Christian liberty. "This law -alone," writes Voltaire (_Essai sur les moeurs_, chap. LXXXIII), -"should render his memory precious to all people, as his efforts on -behalf of liberty for Italy should endear him to Italians." - -Wherever Christianity permeates, even in an emaciated form, slavery must -disappear, and wherever Christianity has not penetrated slavery is and -always will be a standing institution, with its concomitant degradation -of women. - -Another proposition, a corollary of the first, is equally true. If, and -when, and where Christianity disappears, liberty, which is bound up with -and inseparable from the Christian law, will also diminish and -disappear, _tantum quantum_. - -The world, in my opinion, has never adequately laid to heart the -terrible lessons taught by the French Revolution. They are not laid bare -in their naked hideousness. The glamour of those much-violated -principles of 1789, and the catchwords of liberty, equality, and -fraternity are used to cover up the dire significance of that event. In -a moment of wild delirium, the most illustrious of nations allowed its -government to pass into the hands of a band of atheists prepared by -Voltaire and his ilk. Christianity was solemnly abjured in the name of -the whole nation, and the worship of Reason inaugurated with all the -paraphernalia of ritual and the pomp of worship. What was the immediate -result? In the twinkling of an eye all liberty vanished. Terror reigned -supreme. The most sacred rights of the individual were proscribed. Men -could no longer call their lives their own under the law of _Suspects_. -From my window at Lyons, I could see the monument to the victims of -1793. This city had at first submitted to the Revolutionary government, -but the Lyonnais revolted when they found themselves deprived of civil -and municipal liberties they had enjoyed under the most despotic kings. -Lyons was besieged by those singular champions of liberty who, according -to Macaulay, "crowded into a few months more crimes than had been -committed by the French kings in as many centuries." - -Lyons succumbed after a gallant resistance of ten months. This quarter, -where stands the monument to the victims, was then swampy ground, and it -was literally soaked that year, not with the overflow of the Rhne, but -with human gore. On the beautiful Place Bellecour two guillotines -functioned day and night, but they were inadequate to the bloody task, -and the citizens were mown down in batches on the Place des Jacobins. -The successors of these Freemason Jacobins control the destinies of -France to-day, by means of a Socialist parliamentary majority, obtained -by the means I described in a previous article. They lost no time in -ostracising tens of thousands of France's noblest sons and daughters, -who may not live as they see fit, nor exercise a profession which is -open to all by law. The law Falloux of 1852 confers on all citizens duly -qualified the right to teach or open schools, and it is still -unrepealed. Millions of parents are deprived of the right to educate -their children as they see fit in their native land. Exile is the price -of liberty. This is the beginning of that diminution of liberty which -must always accompany the elimination of the Christian principle on -which our civilization reposes. - -With stupendous cynicism Waldeck Rousseau calls the Associations Bill a -"law of liberty and of appeasement." One or two passages will exemplify -the character of this infamous Act. - - ART. I - - All associations can be formed freely and without authorization. - - ART. XIII - - No religious association can be formed without authorization given - by a law which will determine how it is to function. - -One of M. Waldeck Rousseau's henchmen stated the truth squarely, a few -days ago, when he said "the enemy is God," improving on Gambetta's -maxim, "Le clericalisme voil l'ennemi." - -Already there are symptoms that the Premier is being carried away by his -Socialist advance guard. When they now demand the suppression of the -Concordat he no longer protests as earnestly as he did, affirming his -devotion to the secular clergy, whose interests, he used to declare, -were the main object of the Trouillot or Associations Bill. - -The trial of Comte Lur Saluce by a so-called "High Court," composed of -senators, was a most peculiar episode. Accused of plotting to restore -the monarchy, his defence was one long, incisive, itemized arraignment -of the Third Republic and all its works and ways. His judges listened -with much interest, fascinated, no doubt, by the truth of his -statements, after which they found him guilty with extenuating -circumstances--a tacit admission apparently that his enmity to the Third -Republic was justified. Meanwhile, poor France is threatened with all -the horrors of another revolution, if the same elements compose the next -parliament, as they most certainly will, if opposition candidates are -not even allowed to hold meetings unmolested, as at Toulouse and Lyons -recently. - -Religious liberty has however found a new home in a most unexpected -quarter, none other than the realm of the Grand Llama of Tibet, who is -sending a special embassy to the Czar. The latter may follow the good -example and proclaim religious liberty in all the Russias, at the same -time as the Calendar reforms which are being prepared. The two questions -are not as irrelevant to each other as one might suppose at first -sight. - - - - -INCONSISTENT JACOBINISM - - -_11th November, 1901._ - -In 1894, 1895, and 1896 I contributed several papers on the Eastern -Question to the _Progress_. At that time public opinion was much excited -and indignant over the massacres in Armenia, but none of the Powers who -signed the Berlin Treaty thought fit to interfere. Massacres on a small -scale were renewed from time to time, and a few months ago they reached -considerable proportions; but nothing was done to punish the culprits, -or to protect the victims of Turkish barbarity. - -This week a mild surprise has been caused by the sending of the French -fleet to Turkish waters. The callous lethargy, which a sense of duty, a -chivalrous sympathy with the weak and the oppressed, could not dispel, -has yielded to a financial exigency. Two naturalized citizens are -creditors of the Sultan for a large sum. It is true they have been -receiving most usurious interest these last fifteen years, but now -Lorando and Turbini wish to recover their capital; and lo! the might of -France is put forth on their behalf! It is said that M. Waldeck -Rousseau, the Premier, is professionally interested in the matter, and -will receive a fee even bigger than the one he earned when he saved his -clients in the Panama scandal, who are now in the seats of the mighty. -The long-suffering French taxpayer will grudgingly pay the expenses of -this naval demonstration, and the Porte will promptly pay up in order to -be rid of his unwelcome visitors. But France does not mean to be a -simple collector for MM. Lorando and Turbini. - -The elections of 1902 are at hand, and the semi-Jacobins in power are -anxious to obtain the suffrages of the better element, and not be -entirely carried away captive by their Socialist and ultra-Jacobin -supporters, through whom they have seized the reins of government. - -The Crimean war, as I have shown in _Slav and Moslem_, was partly -brought about by a similar preoccupation on the part of Napoleon III, -who had just made himself emperor by an infamous _coup d'tat_. -Voltairean France had allowed her protectorate over the Eastern -Christians to fall into desuetude, and Russia supplanted her. But when -the latter exercised her treaty-acquired rights, France and England -combined against her. - -To-day with impudent inconsistency the Third Republic, which has done -its utmost, these thirty years, to dechristianize France, sees fit to -exact from the Porte that French religious schools be allowed to -multiply freely, and that its protectorate over Eastern Christians be -distinctly recognized. - -What is more, the Republic demands that the Catholic University of -Beyruth deliver diplomas entitling the recipients to practise medicine -in all parts of the Turkish empire. Now, considering that the Third -Republic has just made a most iniquitous law against religious -congregations, depriving French parents of the means of educating their -children in accordance with their faith, it is a grotesque incongruity -that the Turks should be compelled to harbour these congregations and -their schools, which are being closed in France with a latent view to -establishing a Government monopoly of education. - -This university of Beirut, and practically all the French schools and -hospitals in Turkey, are under the direction of Jesuits, Dominicans, -Assumptionists, etc., and they are of great importance to French -influence, as they implant this language and the love of a nation that -has such admirable sons and daughters. - -I have no doubt that railroad concessions will also be demanded, and -that all details were discussed during the Czar's recent visit to Paris. -Russia is using France to checkmate Germany in her Bagdad railway -scheme, and to undermine her influence with the Sultan. - -The deaths of Abdul Hamid and the Emperor of Austria may at any moment -precipitate the European crisis which all expect and fear. - -Meanwhile, neither China nor the Moslems have said their last word. In -the heart of China, Tung-fu-Siang and Prince Tuan may, even now, be -engaged in founding a new Mohammedan power. A China galvanized by that -dangerous vitality of Islam would mean the extinction of Europe in -China. And if any great Moslem chief should succeed in combining the -interests of the faithful in Africa and Turkey, the European nations may -all look to their laurels. - -The self-conceit and self-complacency of the white races are simply -immense. This self-complacency is unparalleled, except perhaps by that -which distinguished the Jewish people. Because Providence had chosen -them for the accomplishment of certain designs which were to embrace the -whole human race in their ultimate scope, the Hebrews flattered -themselves that the Gentiles only existed for their benefit, as the -yellows, browns, and blacks do for us to-day. When the chosen people had -filled their cup of iniquity, heedless of that last pathetic appeal, -"Jerusalem, Jerusalem," etc., there came that terrible siege (A.D. 70) -which made them henceforth a people without an altar, without a country. - -Another proud empire arose, intoxicated with material and military -greatness, and we all know how the barbarians, our forefathers, -overthrew the mighty empire of the Csars. - -We, their descendants, flatter ourselves that because we wield the -sceptre of civilization and science, we do so in virtue of some inherent -race-qualities, and that our candlestick can never be moved, whatever -may have happened to the rushlights of antiquity. But if we have been -in the vanguard of civilization and science since many centuries, it is -merely because we were Christendom. To-day Protestantism has devoured, -one by one, all the vital truths of Christianity, till it is strictly -true to say of many so-called Christian peoples and individuals, "Thou -hast a name"--for Christian beliefs with their practical sides have been -almost eliminated. - -When the apostasy of the governments of Christian peoples shall have -been consummated, when unlimited divorce, which is successive polygamy, -shall be generalized; when monogamy shall vanish from our codes, which -forms, with freedom from slavery, the line of demarcation between -Western and Eastern civilization--then indeed shall we be ready for the -burning. - -The modern barbarians are at our gates, nay, in our midst. Godless -education and the peculiar political methods of unscrupulous, educated -proletariat are rapidly preparing what may be termed government by -anarchy. - -Yesterday I spent a few hours at Nice, and was waiting for a tramway to -return home, when a youth of about fifteen, with a candid, ingenuous -countenance, waved his newspapers just out with the cry: "Voil la lutte -sociale. Buy _La lutte sociale_." I took the extended copy, asking the -youth if he believed in the _lutte sociale_. - -"Oh yes, of course I do," he replied with a most convinced air. - -"What is this _lutte sociale_?" I inquired. This he "did not know." - -Glancing through the leading article, I read a virulent denunciation of -the clergy, and a most contemptuous diatribe against the masses, _ la -Voltaire_. "They [the masses] are formed of vicious, ignorant, covetous -individuals.... What writers call 'the soul' of the multitude is in -general nothing but an immense horrible cry of wild beasts, an -accumulation of the lowest instincts of the human brute ... they do not -reason, they howl and they strike." - -It is these masses that unscrupulous politicians and secret societies -are preparing to hurl against organized society as in 1789, after having -destroyed in them from infancy all reverence for God or man: _Ni Dieu ni -matre_--neither God nor master. - -In self-defence, society will be compelled to restore Christianity, or -slavery--or perish. - - - - -UNAUTHORIZED CONGREGATIONS - - -_25th April, 1902._ - -I hesitate to write anything more on religious conditions at the present -time, because I shall have to repeat what I have written in these -columns since two years. My worst previsions have been realized. The -Budget of Cults which I had hoped would be thrown as another sop to -Cerberus, has been voted by a compact Ministerial majority. - -If the clergy of France, with the Holy See, do not themselves reject all -connexion with a distinctly pagan government, and hold their own as the -Church did in the first three centuries, I fear this fair land may -revive the experiences of the Byzantine or Bas Empire, as it is aptly -called, for there is a distinct determination to enslave or to destroy -the Church. - -The French are an optimistic people. From year to year they keep -repeating that matters will soon improve, that the next elections will -make everything right and restore liberty. - -France's great misfortune is, I repeat, that respectable people will -not, as a rule, touch politics, or soon give them up in disgust, while -denaturalized Frenchmen and naturalized foreigners do nothing else for a -living. - -In 418 the Emperor Honorius wished to establish a representative -government in Southern Gaul. "But," writes Guizot, "no one would send -representatives, no one would go to Arles." This same state of mind is -working the ruin of France to-day. - -On March 17th, 1900, I wrote: "Thus the bad element captures the votes -of the labouring masses by the circulation of vile newspapers and -brilliant promises of the Social Utopia that is coming. Consequently -both Houses are packed with this element, whose war cry is _Vive la -Sociale_, and whose emblem is the red flag of anarchy which was waved -under the very nose of President Loubet at a recent Republican fte. -With a parliament and a ministry like this any legislation is possible. -If other means fail, all the Congregations engaged in teaching will be -suppressed.... But Waldeck Rousseau is no fool," I added. "He and his -Freemason employers know that there are some thirty odd millions of -French Catholics.... The Government cannot afford to rouse them from -their political lethargy by violent measures.... Religious liberty must -be destroyed by degrees." - -Two years have elapsed since the notorious Associations or Trouillot -Bill has been passed; and the law Falloux (1850), which guarantees -liberty of teaching, may already be considered as abrogated in favour of -a state monopoly of education. - -Never since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), strongly -reproved by Pope Innocent, has so great a blow been dealt at liberty of -conscience and the rights of free citizens. The pendulum of progress has -been set back at least two hundred years; nay, we witness an odious -reversion to Lacedmonian state tyranny. And this crime against liberty, -this liberticide, is committed in the twentieth century, amid the -plaudits of all sectarian haters of the Catholic Church, and in a -country which unceasingly flaunts its catchwords of "Liberty, Equality, -Fraternity." - -The general elections of May, 1902, will not, I fear, modify the -situation. I doubt, indeed, if any efforts, however earnest and -well-concerted, could now retrieve the political situation. - -Waldeck Rousseau, whose wily effrontery is something more than human, -knows this, and begins to throw off his mask of Liberalism. - -His recent political speech in the mining centres near Lyons was bold -enough, judging by a stenographic report, for the _Officiel_ and _Havas_ -toned it down somewhat. - -He gave it to be understood that only those congregations who relieved -the State in caring for the maimed, the halt, the blind, and the insane -were to be tolerated. In other words, the souls of her children are to -become the prey of a pagan State, but their diseased bodies are to be -left to the care of the Church! - -Eight Jesuits are being prosecuted for preaching Advent sermons, though -they have closed their establishments and dispersed. The proper course, -apparently, would be to arraign the bishops and curs who had invited -these Jesuits to occupy their pulpits. Waldeck Rousseau is too wily for -that. His policy is to make a fine distinction between the secular and -regular clergy--to divide and conquer. - -Three other Jesuits, who profess theology at the Institut Catholique, -obtained from Rome dispensation of their vows, in order to be able to -retain their chairs at the Institut. They, too, are being prosecuted for -alleged violation of the Associations Bill. - -I think the situation is clear, and that if any Catholics here or -elsewhere still misapprehend the true purport and scope of this law of -1901, their purblindness is no longer admissible. - - - - -A COMBES COUP _DE MAIN_ - - -_23rd August, 1902._ - -The elections of May, 1902, have not improved the situation in France. -No efforts, as I said, however earnest, could now retrieve the political -situation. For twenty-five years the "Grand Orient" has been gathering -into its hands all the threads of power; ministers, presidents, cabinets -are made, unmade, remade, as it suits the well-conceived plans of this -band of sectarian Jacobins, who differ from other Freemasons in that -with them God is both non-existent and _l'ennemi_ to be vanquished, -while at the same time they are strictly a political organization, whose -object is to control the country and conform it to their own image. - -The Associations Bill, or to speak more accurately, the law against all -Christian education, was decreed by the lodges in 1877. An abortive -attempt was made to carry it through in 1880. That attempt was -premature, because the "Grand Orient" had not yet gained complete -control over the judiciary. To-day very nearly every part of the -administration is in their power. - -People wondered why Waldeck Rousseau resigned immediately after the -elections, which seemed a tribute to the success of his administration. -The reason of this shuffling of the cards is evident. It had been -resolved, as soon as the elections were assured, to make a _coup de -main_, and close, summarily, 3000 primary schools, frequented by -hundreds of thousands of children of the poorer classes, and this a few -weeks before the holidays, without the slightest regard to the fact that -state lay schools were already inadequate, while in many places there -were none but congregational schools. - -Now Waldeck Rousseau, speaking for the Government, had most formally -declared that these schools were in no wise affected by the law of 1901 -(Associations Bill), and continued to be regulated by the law of 1885 on -primary education. It was by making this solemn declaration that Waldeck -Rousseau obtained votes enough to carry Art. XIII of the Associations -Bill, which is now being flagrantly violated by the closing of these -3000 primary schools. - -Many of these schools were conducted by a few Sisters in buildings owned -by private individuals, and the sealing up of these premises was a -distinct violation of property rights. In one instance, the proprietor -resorted to the use of a ladder to go in and out of his house; in -another the local tribunal removed the seals and restored the house to -the owner; but the Government had the premises sealed again. I cannot -say who had the last word, but it is certain that there is open -conflict between the judiciary and the executive. The tribunals have not -yet been sufficiently _purs_, nor the magistrates sufficiently -_domestiqus_. It is consoling to think that there are still a few -magistrates in France who have not "bowed the kneel to Baal, nor kissed -his image." - -But a complete _puration_ of the army and of the judiciary is going on. -All the "suspects" are being displaced, from the humblest _garde -champtre_ to the highest prefect and magistrate. It will then be smooth -sailing for the coalition in power. - -The _coup de main_ against the primary schools having been resolved -upon, it is easy to understand how desirable it was that Waldeck -Rousseau should not be on the Ministerial bench to undergo -interpellations and eat his own words. A quondam Seminarist was put in -his place, and bore the brunt of the interpellations. He contented -himself with saying that "M. Waldeck Rousseau had made a -mistake"--_voil tout!_ The Left meanwhile came to his assistance by -banging their desks and vociferating against the deputies of the Right -and Centre. A free fight was taking place in the hemicycle, when M. -Combes produced the decree, closing the session, and so ended this -disgraceful scene at two o'clock in the morning. - -Of course it is pretended by Ministerialists that all these primary -schools of the poor were closed in virtue of Art. XIII of the law of -1901. This is absolutely false. Jules Laroche, a Liberal who cannot -even be suspected of "clericalism," in his public letter, announcing to -M. Combes an interpellation, expressed himself as follows, quoting M. -Waldeck Rousseau's own words, consigned in the _Officiel_ of March 19th, -1901:-- - -"As to the right to open private schools, the Chamber knows that this is -regulated by a special law; a simple declaration is enough, the school -is then under the State Inspector. Art. XIII [Associations Bill] has -absolutely nothing to do with the legislation on education, and the new -law does not touch it at all." - -"Thus spoke Waldeck Rousseau," continues M. Laroche. "It was on this -formal, categoric, and solemn declaration that we voted Art. XIII. You, -M. le President [Combes], are not applying Art. XIII. You are violating -it, you are transforming the law of 1901 into a trap, and the loyal and -categorical declaration of M. Waldeck Rousseau into the act of a -traitor" (_en oeuvre de trahison_). - -This is enough for any one who cares to know the truth. It is thus that -the French people are fooled and led on, step by step, to their -destruction. - -Nevertheless, many admirers of these sectarian persecutors prefer to -believe that all these primary schools and infant asylums were closed -because they refused to comply with the Associations Bill! Many of these -teachers belonged to amply authorized Congregations. Those of Savoy and -the county of Nice had letters patent from the King of Savoy and -Piedmont, and the treaty of annexation to France, 1860, distinctly -stipulated that the religious congregations and ecclesiastical -properties should never be molested; it was one of the conditions on -which the inhabitants consented to be annexed. Of all this the Third -Republic makes litter. - -The amusing part of M. Combes' _coup de main_ is that his minions even -went around expelling small groups of three to five sisters employed by -the Government in the infirmaries of State Lyceums! In these instances, -however, they neglected to seal up the premises, as they did in the case -of private owners--a fine Jacobin distinction between _mine_ and -_thine_. - -The Socialist Mayor of Reims recently took upon himself to laicize the -civil hospital, which, strange to say, had been served uninterruptedly -for two hundred years by a congregation called "Soeurs de l'hpital," -whom even the Revolutionists of 1793 had spared. - -Ministerial organs like the _Matin_ are now busy assuring the public -that the sick, the blind, the insane, are not all to be cast into the -streets like the children of the poor, until the Government finds time -and money to build schools for them. - -If the Congregations devoted to the sick, the maimed, and the blind -could make common cause with the teaching Congregations, if all refused -to demand authorization, which is merely a trap and a noose, the -Government, I think, would be checkmated. But, of course, Christian -charity will not allow them all to go on strike and throw their poor and -sick and halt upon the hands of the Government. It will be their turn -soon, and meanwhile they are holding the clothes of those who stone -Stephen. No concessions, no pliancy on the part of the persecuted, will -disarm or arrest the Government--the "Grand Orient," I mean. - -The final purpose of these Freemasons is to crush out Christianity by -means of anti-religious education of all classes, and have, if possible, -a national, Republican institution, to be known as the Church of France. -It is said that M. Combes is preparing a formula of the oath to be taken -by the clergy of this institution; it is a revival of the Civil -Constitution of the Clergy of 1793, and we may also look for a renewal -of the persecution of the _non-asserments_ or non-jurors of that epoch. - -Decidedly these modern Jacobins have no imagination; all their -proceedings have a twang of ancient history. Read in Taine's _Ancien -Rgime_, "_La conqute Jacobine_," and it will seem like current -history. You will read how prefects and maires and gens d'armes often -knocked in the dead of night at the doors of peaceful sisters and -ordered them to disperse. At Avignon, recently, the police had to -barricade the streets to prevent thousands of indignant men and women -from manifesting before the Prefecture. Lyons is preparing to resist. -The speech pronounced by the Socialist mayor, M. Augagneur, at the -political banquet on 14th July, would certainly warrant retaliation. - -After the usual stereotyped glorification of that disgraceful -performance known as _La Prise de la Bastille_, M. Augagneur said: "The -new Bastille we must take to-day is that power, far more dangerous, of -the spirit of the past incarnated in the Church, acting by its priests, -its preachers, its monks, its professors, by all its lay accomplices. It -is this Bastille we must destroy, if we do not wish to see wasted the -immense efforts of 113 years ... thus, gentlemen, I invite you to drink -to the success of the campaign being waged by the Government." This is -clear speaking. "No greater misfortune can befall a nation," wrote -Lecky, "than to cut itself away from its own past as France has done." -It is this misfortune that these blinded sectarians are seeking to -consummate in hatred of the Catholic Faith, which is so bound up with -the fibres of the nation that they can only be torn out with the last -palpitating remnants of national life. - - - - -LEGALIZED DESPOTISM - - -_15th February, 1903._ - -A curious feature in the case of the doomed Congregations in France is -that more than nine hundred awards were made to them for educational -work during the Paris Exhibition of 1900. Leroy Beaulieu, who presided -over this international jury, has written several articles, and a most -scathing letter to M. Combes, on the subject of his malicious official -calumnies. He, Brunetire, Paul Bourget, and many other distinguished -Frenchmen have countersigned a Defence, presented by the Salesian -Fathers, in which not less than thirty-four misstatements made by M. -Combes are rectified. In general, it may said that all these official -statements are as unreliable as those made by the Commissioners of Henry -VIII. The Chambers were supposed by the law of 1901 to decide what -Congregations were to be granted authorization. They really were allowed -no voice in the matter. M. Combes presented only the names of four or -five, Les frres de St. Jean de Dieu and some others, who are to be -spared for the present. The remaining sixty-four were condemned without -a hearing. - -Parents of the richer classes will soon be compelled, like the poor, to -send their children to government schools, keep them at home, or send -them to foreign lands to be educated. - -The true character of the Jacobin policy is becoming every day more -apparent. - -The social body, like our own, has its periods of adolescence and -senility, its maladies and critical periods, while the axiom that -nations have the government they deserve is attested by the fact that -governments correspond to the national pathology. - -The individuals too who dominate in turbulent times are like straws on -an impetuous stream. They merely serve to show the direction of the -current and its force. - -Danton and Robespierre did not make the Revolution. It made them. A -popular fallacy exists that the Revolution ended with the fall of -Robespierre, or at any rate when Napoleon planted his artillery before -the doors of the National Assembly. It is not over yet, and the men in -power to-day are but straws on the surface. - -The French Revolution was an avatar of the revolution of the sixteenth -century, or rather one of the periodical renaissances or revolts of -Paganism against Christianity. No doubt many economical causes were at -work in 1789 and there was an urgent need for readjustment. - -The _corvable_, or what we call to-day the taxpayer, then as now, -groaned and repined against the excessive burdens laid upon him. -Proportion guarded, it is even true to say to-day that all tradesmen, -agriculturists, and shopkeepers, all _except_ the _vendors of alcohol_, -are as much crushed by taxes now as the _corvables_ were in 1789. - -The moving spirit, the genius and soul of the Revolution were the -Jacobin Clubs. There were organized the Civil Constitution of the -Clergy, theo-philanthropy, the worship of the prostitute as Goddess of -Reason, the _noyades_ and the _fusillades_ which made France a vast -charnel-house. - -To-day the Jacobin Clubs have changed their signboards, they are now -Lodges of the Grand Orient. But the spirit is unchanged. The ideal is -always the same--the destruction of all revealed religion, and with it -the noblest fruit of Christianity, Liberty. - -The Jacobin mind, served by organs of political administration, is to -constitute the Omnipotent and Infallible State, the golden image before -which all must bow down and worship and sacrifice--for is not sacrifice -the soul of worship? They must sacrifice all preconceived, congenital, -and inherited notions of honour, morality, and religion, and acquiesce -humbly in those edicted by the Omnipotent Infallible State; for _de -facto_ infallibility is always a concomitant of supremacy. A necessary -corollary of moral unity, established by an omnipotent State, is an -evening up of social and financial conditions. No man may possess more -learning, more wealth, or more prestige than his neighbour. Thus after -having preluded by the assault on personal liberty, depriving thousands -of men and women of the right to live in communities, the Jacobin -Omnipotent State is itself to constitute one vast Congregation in which -all, _nolens volens_, must live and practise _Poverty_ by submitting to -fiscal confiscations for the laudable purpose of equalizing fortunes, -_Chastity_ or unchastity according to new Government formul regarding -divorce and free love, etc., with a view to procreation under -governmental supervision, and above all _Obedience perinde ut -cadaver_--Obedience to the Omnipotent Infallible State, henceforth the -only regulator of their own and their children's morality. - -Since twenty-five years every law, every constitutional and electoral -manipulation, has been elaborated at the lodges. To-day sixteen -Commissions composed of their most trusted members are masticating the -execution of the Associations Bill, or rather the wholesale executions -of this _guillotine sche_ which are imminent. No congregation of men -engaged in preaching or teaching is to be tolerated, or its members -allowed to exercise these functions even individually. The same rule -will be applied to the congregations of women. Those engaged in primary -schools have nearly all been dispersed by decree, and in violation of -the law, as I have shown. The suppression of those who teach the -children of the rich is only a question of a short lapse of time. - -The rulings of these Commissions will be presented to the Chambers, and -the "bloc" will vote as one man. It is an admirable means of eliminating -all useless discussion on the part of the opposition minority, which -every day grows lesser, and still more less, and will soon reach the -vanishing point. Thus after being governed by decrees and ministerial -circulars, France will be governed by Commissions as under the -Constituante, and the ideal of the Omnipotent State, universal teacher, -preacher, and general purveyor, may be realized ere long. Surely a -strange outcome of a century of Liberalism! - -From whatever point of view we consider the suppression of all religious -Congregations and of educational liberty, we must admit that a grave -violation of personal and civil liberty has been committed and will soon -be consummated. - -The Moslems for a long time levied on the Spaniards and the Venetians a -tax of so many boys and girls a year, but no Government of a free people -has yet called on all parents to stand and deliver, not their purse, but -the souls of their children, that it may sow therein the tares of a -hideous state materialism. The right free citizens have to follow their -inclination and conscience by living in community and practising the -counsels of evangelical perfection to which they feel called is a most -sacred part of personal liberty. - -"Liberalism," writes Taine, "is the respect of others. If the State -exists, it is to prevent all intrusion into the private life, the -beliefs, the conscience, the property of the individual. When the State -does this, it is the greatest of benefactors. When it commits these -intrusions itself, it is the greatest of malefactors." - -Curiously similar was the judgment of an old Spanish peasant with whom -Montalembert conversed during his travels in Spain after one of its -nineteenth-century anti-clerical revolutions and the usual -accompaniment, the suppression of religious Congregations. Pointing with -her bare and scraggy arm to some deserted monastery buildings, she -pronounced these two eloquent words, "_Suma tyrania_," acme of tyranny! - - - - -DESPOTISM PLUS GUILE - - -_6th June, 1903._ - -The true character and scope of the Associations Bill can no longer be -dissimulated. It should have been labelled "An Act for the suppression -of religious congregations and Christian education preparatory to the -suppression of Catholicism in France." - -Nor is this all. It looks as if this Trouillot or Associations Bill, -with its numerous articles, was merely a vulgar trap set by the -Government to extract from the doomed unauthorized Congregations -accurate information regarding their property and members, in order to -seize the former and see to it that the latter are for ever debarred -from teaching. These inventories were a necessary part of all demands -for authorization, without which no Congregation could henceforth exist. -I say "seize," for every one knows that "liquidation" means purely and -simply spoliation and confiscation. - -I have in previous articles dwelt on the bad faith of the Combes -ministry in closing by simple decree some three thousand free parochial -schools, in spite of the solemn assurance given by M. Waldeck Rousseau, -on behalf of the State, that these schools were in no wise affected by -the new law of 1901 (Associations Bill). At the last session of the -Chambers a more monstrous illegality was committed. - -"Both the letter and the spirit of the law of 1901 were violated." These -are the words pronounced at Bordeaux recently by M. Decrais, an -ex-minister, who was thereupon elected senator by an imposing majority. - -The law distinctly provided that the demand for authorization of each -religious order be submitted to the vote of the Chambers, but M. Combes -just bunched them all into three categories--preaching, teaching, -contemplative--and they were sent to execution by cartloads, like the -victims of 1793. - -In vain the Right protested against the illegality of this proceeding. -"What do we care for legality? We have the majority," were some of the -cynical utterances of the Left, who banged their desks, stamped their -feet, and vociferated to drown the voices of speakers of the Right. -Worst of all, M. Combes produced, and used with much effect, a document -purporting to bear the signature of many Superiors of Congregations, -urging all to sell out their government bonds. - -In vain the Right demanded that the authenticity of this document be -proven before taking the final vote. This act of M. Combes speaks for -itself. - -The wholesale suppression of all preaching and teaching orders is, -moreover, a distinct violation of Art. I of the Concordat, which is an -organic law of the French State. This article provides, "that the -Catholic religion shall be freely exercised in France." - -The allegation that this Concordat does not mention religious -Congregations is a mere quibble. - -"No church," declares Guizot, "is free that may not develop according to -its genius and history," and every one knows that preaching and teaching -Congregations have always formed an integral part of the Catholic -Church, her most important organs of expansion in fact. - -This wholesale suppression of preaching and teaching Congregations is a -violation not only of the law of 1901 and of the Concordat, but also of -the law Falloux, 1850, which entitles all persons duly qualified to -teach and open schools. It was then that the great preacher and teacher, -the Dominican Lacordaire, speaking in the Chambers as deputy, pointed to -his white robe, exclaiming, "I am a liberty." - -The Charter of 1830 (under the _Monarchie de Juillet_, as the reign of -Louis Philippe of Orleans was called) conferred this liberty, in theory; -but it remained ineffective until the law Falloux finally abolished the -state monopoly of education, which Napoleon had centred in the -University of Paris. - -But the Third Republic brushes aside Art. I of the Concordat, the loi -Falloux, 1850, the scholar laws of 1885, and its own new-fledged law of -1901, all with the utmost unconcern. - -"What do we care for liberty," as the Left cynically exclaimed. Quite as -little as they care for the wishes of the whole country, expressed by -innumerable petitions, and the votes of 1500 Municipal Councils of -Communes, whom the Government condescended to consult. One thousand and -seventy-five of these voted for the Congregations; about four hundred -voted against them; the others abstained. The attitude of the people in -every place where Congregations were dispersed, with the aid of the -regular army and the police, leaves not the slightest doubt that if a -referendum had been taken as in Switzerland, more than two-thirds of the -nation would have voted for Liberty and the Congregations. - -With the astute hypocrisy that characterizes him, Waldeck Rousseau -professed intense devotion to the secular clergy and declared that the -law of 1901 (Associations Bill) was devised to protect them from the -encroachments of the regular clergy or monks. He thought to divide and -conquer. Now that seventy-two bishops have sent a combined petition to -Parliament on behalf of the Congregations, and the whole secular clergy -have openly identified their cause with that of the Congregations, this -ministerial fiction can no longer be upheld. - -The Left or "bloc" are clamouring already for the suppression of the -secular or parochial clergy, who they say "are all in connivance with -the Congrganists." - -M. Combes has sent a circular to the bishops requiring that all churches -and chapels _non concordataires_ be closed, and threatening to close -even the parish churches which existed already in 1808, if any member of -a dispersed Congregation preached in it. - -Only four bishops, I am happy to say, "had the courage to submit," to -use the words of a ministerial organ. - -The language in which the French prelates have expressed their _non -possumus_ is worthy of the best traditions of the Church, and when these -sectarian persecutors shall have completely thrown off the mask, another -glorious page will be added to her history, I trust. - -Jealous, no doubt, of M. Trouillot's laurels, M. de Pressens, son of a -Protestant pastor, and some others have attached their names to projects -of law for what is mendaciously and hypocritically called "the -Separation of Church and State," meaning a law for the complete -shackling of the Church in France in view to its suppression. - -I think it is very desirable that the lodges should do their worst here -and now. But it is just possible that Waldeck Rousseau may return and a -halt be called. - -M. Combes and _his employers_ the "Grand Orient" must see that they -have gone a little too far. Civil war on a small scale has been raging -on many points of France for two or three weeks; and they would be -running blood if French Catholics carried concealed weapons as people do -in South Carolina and Kentucky. As it is, there have only been -innumerable broken limbs and heads and no end of arrests. M. de Dion, a -deputy wearing his insignia of office, which offered him no immunity, -appeared handcuffed before the police court, and was there and then -condemned to three days' imprisonment for "manifesting." A young lady of -twenty was condemned to eight days' imprisonment for having cried -"Capon" to a justice of the peace, who beat a hasty retreat when he -found himself confronted by a few hundred men in the hall of a convent -into which he had forced an entrance with the aid of state locksmiths, -or _crocheteurs_. Here on my boulevard, Cimiez Nice, two squadrons of -cavalry and numerous infantry were called out to aid the police at 4 -a.m. in beating back the crowds who were "manifesting" against the -expulsion of the Franciscans. At Marseilles, Avignon, etc., the main -streets had to be barricaded, and cavalry charged the crowds, wounding -great numbers. Of course all these grand manifestations of popular -indignation are carefully belittled or suppressed by foreign -correspondents of English and American papers. In the _Evening Post_, -August 25th, M. Othon Guerlac, with lofty affectation of impartiality, -echoes all the commonplaces of ministerial calumnies against the -Congregations, but he has not one word to say about the monstrous -illegalities committed by the Government from first to last. - -The indignant protestations of the foreign colony have suspended for a -time the closing of churches and convents on this Riviera. - -The Ministerials have not even the courage to do evil logically and -consistently, with equal injustice to all. - -Two years ago Waldeck Rousseau, in his famous political speech at -Toulouse, declared religious vows to be contrary to public law; and in -the same breath he introduced the law of 1901, inviting all -Congregations to apply for authorization. His colleague, M. Brisson, at -the session in which fifty-four Congregations of men were executed _in -globo_, loftily declared "that the Republic would never put its -signature to an act alienating human liberty." And at that very moment, -three or four of these Congregations were nestling, securely, under the -protecting wing of M. Combes. That of St. Jean de Dieu has a first-rate -establishment for men in need of surgical treatment, similar to the one -conducted by Augustine nuns, at which Madame Waldeck Rousseau was -operated on recently. None of these will be interfered with, no matter -how heinous their vows may be. - -It would be foolish, I repeat, for Catholics to rejoice at the possible -return of Waldeck Rousseau, or at any _machine en arrire_ policy. - -M. Combes has been hired to do an odious job, when it is done he, too, -will retire or fall. But the well-matured plans of the Grand Orient will -be carried out with long-drawn, unrelenting, satanic astuteness. This is -the peril I noted in my first article from France, March 17th, 1900. - - - - -UNCHANGING JACOBINISM - - -_6th May, 1903._ - -Last August I described the true spirit and scope of the Associations -Bill, as it is called, and which many supposed was a mere matter of -domestic economy. It should have been called an act for the suppression -of all religious associations preparatory to the elimination of -Christianity in France. _L'ennemi c'est Dieu._ It is evident to-day that -the law of 1901 was a mere trap set by the Government to obtain from the -Congregations accurate information regarding their pecuniary resources, -in order to seize their property (for the term "liquidation" is only an -euphemism); and regarding their members, so that they may be marked men -and women, for ever debarred from preaching or teaching. The law -required that demands for authorization of each religious order or -association be submitted to the Chambers. M. Combes just bunched them -all into three categories: preaching, teaching, and contemplative. At -the request of the Government, the majority or "bloc" then sent them to -execution by cartloads, as in 1793. Then the categories were labelled -royalists, _emigrs_, and Catholic priests. - -It is much to the credit of these fifty-four Congregations of men that -their lives were so free from reproach that _three_ times the Government -had recourse to the same incident of a certain Superior, said to have -been condemned to hard labour in the year 1868! As another instance, the -case of the Frre Duvain was alleged. Like the Frre Flamidien, the -former had been recently arrested and imprisoned on false charges. For -since then, only a week or so ago, Frre Duvain too was acquitted as -wholly innocent! - -These wholesale executions have been committed not only illegally, but -in spite of the fact that out of 1600 municipal councils consulted on -the subject, 1200 voted for the maintenance of the Congregations. About -100 abstained, and the others voted against. The prefects, being mere -satraps of the Government, were nearly all opposed to the Congregations. - -The Government has been profuse in its protestations that its object in -suppressing the religious Congregations was to protect the secular -clergy against their encroachments. But since seventy-two bishops signed -a petition to the Chambers on behalf of the Congregations, and are daily -raising their voices to denounce the tyranny which has ostracized them, -this mask also falls. The right to preach and to teach are corollaries -of the right of free speech and free thinking. All liberties, indeed, -are inseparably connected, and must stand or fall together. - -Meanwhile the loi Falloux, 1850, is still extant; nevertheless -thousands of citizens are placed _hors la loi_, because they live and -dress in a certain way. - -The Concordat, a solemn pact and contract between the Holy See and the -French Government in 1801, is still supposed to be in vigour, and one of -its most important clauses provides for the "free exercise of the -Catholic religion in France," and Guizot affirms that no Church is free -that may not develop and function according to its genius and -traditions. Teaching and preaching religious associations have, from the -beginning, formed an integral part of the Catholic Church. The -suppression of her schools was one of the first means resorted to by -Julian the Apostate when he undertook to restore paganism. The Third -Republic invents nothing. Its next step will be to attack the secular -clergy and establish a department of State known as the National Church, -ministered to by servile state functionaries, recruited among apostate -excommunicated priests, of whom there are always a few lying around. It -is erroneously supposed that the Catholic Church in France is an -established or state Church; that the clergy receive a salary and are -functionaries. This is absolutely false. Two decisions of the Court of -Cassation have decided that they are not functionaries. - -To understand their position we must recall that the Convention -confiscated all Church property and lands, the pious donations of kings -and people which had accumulated during fifteen centuries of national -progress and prosperity. Not satisfied with this act of spoliation, they -threw these lands on the market with the precipitation and greed that -characterize all revolutionary iconoclasts, fondly believing that the -whole nation had sloughed off Christian superstitions regarding _ipso -facto_ excommunications of all, who seized or even acquired Church -lands. They were mistaken. These holdings became a drug on the market. -From common prudence and honesty, if not from higher motives, few could -be found willing to traffic in the pious gifts and foundations of their -ancestors. Ten years of massacres, of civil and foreign wars, and -anarchy, did not improve matters. Two classes of landed proprietors, two -standards of valuation were created, and civil and religious discord was -perpetuated in this material form. When Napoleon undertook the work of -reconstruction, his first care was to restore normal conditions in the -real estate market by obtaining a clear title to the confiscated lands -of the Church. There was but one person who could give this clear title. -To him Napoleon appealed, and the Concordat was signed. - -Pius VII could not, however, relinquish all claims to the confiscated -lands without compensation. Hence the engagement entered into by the -French Government to pay in perpetuity adequate subsidies for the -maintenance of an adequate number of bishops and parochial clergy. This -was the consideration [the _do ut des_] for which the Pope, as supreme -chief of the Catholic Church, gave a clear title to the confiscated -lands. The payment of these subsidies became henceforth a charge on the -public treasury, a portion of the national debt, just like the payment -of interest on state bonds. - -The suppression, at the present moment, of these subsidies in the case -of the Bishop of Nice and many other bishops and hundreds of parish -priests is a partial repudiation of this part of the public debt. And -there is nothing to prevent the repudiation of the whole. "What do we -care for legality?" "We have the majority," were utterances which passed -unrebuked in the Chambers recently. They can imprison and kill the Roman -Catholic clergy. The First Republic did both most freely. So did Nero -and Bismarck. It also tried the experiment of a national schismatic -Church and failed. The Third Republic openly proclaims its intention of -renewing the experiment in which Abb Gregoire, with _carte blanche_ -from the Republic, so signally failed a hundred years ago. - -To understand the abnormal conditions prevailing in France, we must -remember that France is in revolution since a century or more. The -Revolution of 1793 was essentially a religious movement, born of the -monstrous alliance of the French ruling classes with the spirit of -libertinage and infidelity. It destroyed the monarchy and all the -institutions of the ancient regime, merely because they were associated -with the Catholic Church, whose destruction was their main object--a -means to an end. The final purpose was the destruction of Christianity -and its noblest fruit, liberty. The ideal, then as now, is the -omnipotent State, sole purveyor, teacher, and preacher. This may seem -exaggerated, but it is strictly the spirit and the tendency of the -Revolution since 1789. Napoleon was the offspring and the incarnation of -the Revolution. After Austerlitz, he threw off the mask, and clearly -showed his intention of establishing state despotism on the ruins of all -civil and religious liberty. There was but one will in Europe that -resisted him. Alone of all the sovereigns of Europe, the aged, -defenceless Sovereign Pontiff refused to enter into his continental -_blocus_ against England, declaring that all Christians were his -children, and we know the story of his long martyrdom at Fontainebleau. -Capefigue, in the third of his ten volumes on the Consulate and the -Empire, comments on the singular fact that the First Republic always -bitterly antagonized the United States, and he explains this "singular -phenomenon" by the reason that the former was a government of tyranny -and anarchy, whereas the Republic of Washington was one of law and -liberty. - -What was true then is equally so to-day. The United States owe their -independence to his most Christian Majesty, the murdered Louis XVI, and -not to any pagan French Republic. Louisiana was ceded by the Emperor -Napoleon, and not by any French Republic, first, second, or third. There -can be no sympathy between the two republics other than that of -sectarian sympathy with persecutors of the Catholic Church. I speak of -the Government, not of the French people, whose genius and high -qualities we must always admire. - -Methods have greatly altered in all departments, but the generating -principle, the inner mind of Jacobinism, is unchanged. We hear no more -about the worship of the Goddess of Reason and theo-philanthropy. -Jacobin clubs have changed their signboards; they are now called Lodges -of the "Grand Orient," but they rule France with an iron hand by means -of the Socialist vote. When the day of reckoning comes with the -Socialist masses, who are now being used as cats' paws, the Revolution -will again enter into one of its acute phases. Millerand and Jaurs are -merely politicians who fall into line with the Government quite -gracefully. But, as Lincoln said, you cannot fool all the people all the -time. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church will reap the benefits of -persecution. The Congregations will carry on their work elsewhere, and -she will more than recuperate her losses on this little point of earth -called France. Unhappy country that is committing "national suicide," to -use the expression of Leroy Beaulieu. - - - - -DEATH OF WALDECK ROUSSEAU - - -_August, 1904._ - -I refer my readers to what I wrote on May 4th, 1901, regarding the -advent of the Waldeck Rousseau Cabinet, and its policy after the sudden -and suspicious death of M. Felix Faure, rapidly replaced by M. Loubet. I -then related how Socialist revolutionists were skilfully used to obtain -a majority with which both Houses were packed to carry through the -odious legislation of the last few years. - -The laws of 1901 (Associations Bill), and of July 7th, 1904, suppressing -all teaching religious orders, are measures which represent the closing -of some twenty-seven thousand Christian schools! - -Two days after the law was voted some 3000 _authorized_ institutions -were ordered to close their doors, and almost immediately was -inaugurated the long series of _liquidations_, a genteel euphemism for -wholesale spoliation of the victims, deprived of their homes, and of -their only means of earning a living, as they may no longer teach. - -There is nothing more tragically pathetic than the last appearance in -the Senate of M. Wallon. This veteran republican, called the "Father of -the Constitution," and now a hoary octogenarian, raised his quavering -voice in one last eloquent denunciation of the laws of 1901, 1902, and -1904. Condemning the shameless violation of property rights, he boldly -applied to the Government the Article of the Code which debars the -assassin of the testator from inheriting his property. "Messieurs," he -cried, "on n'hrite pas de ceux qu'on a assassins." "Gentlemen, it is -not permitted to inherit from those we have destroyed." - -Equally tragical was the last appearance in the Senate of M. Waldeck -Rousseau, so near his last hour. - -He had risen from his bed of sickness to unburden his conscience by -protesting against the anti-clerical fury of his ci-devant supporters -and instruments. In vain he denounced the violations of his law of 1901, -travestied by that of 1904 suppressing even authorized Congregations. -The verve of the great tribune had abandoned him. His speech was but a -hollow echo of its former eloquence. Twice he reeled and was forced to -steady himself by clinging to the railing. When he rose for the second -time, to reply to the sarcasms of M. Combes, he suddenly lost the thread -of his discourse, and before he had ended, many benches were vacated; -the forum, where his words had so often been greeted with wild applause, -was almost empty. - -"He threw down the thirty pieces of silver, saying, I have sinned. And -they said, What is that to us? See thou to it. And he went forth." - -It is needless to inquire whether the story of attempted suicide be true -or not; to-day he is no more. The last two years of his life were a long -agony, of which the last two hours were passed on the operating table. -While he was dying under the surgeon's knife the minions of his -successor, M. Combes, were invading a convent of Notre Dame Sisters. -They even insisted on going into the infirmary to inventory beds and -blankets. A sick nun was so shaken by the emotion caused by this -unwonted intrusion, that she had a seizure and died before the minions -of the law had left the convent. - -And thus persecutor and persecuted met on the threshold of eternity. - -This sister is only one of the many hundreds of infirm and aged who have -been literally killed by this infamous legislation of 1901 and 1904, and -only one of the thousands who are dying of hardships and privations. -Many of them are living on four sous a day. - -The Government wanted to give M. Waldeck Rousseau a national funeral, -strictly pagan and masonic of course; but he had left instructions to -the contrary, and is to be buried from his parish church, Ste. -Clothilde. Whether he received the last Sacraments of the Church or not -is still a matter of conjecture. The death of Waldeck Rousseau will not -in any way affect the trend of politics. The recent municipal elections -are proclaimed a victory for the Government. As usual not one-third of -those inscribed voted. _A quoi bon?_ Before the law of 1901 was voted, -the immense majority of the municipalities consulted pronounced in -favour of the Congregations. This made no difference. - -Before the law of 1904 suppressing authorized Congregations was voted, -the Right demanded that the municipal councils be consulted again. The -Government peremptorily refused. As I have said before, nothing can -restrain Jacobin tyranny but a national cataclysm which would bring -about a violent reaction. "We have the majority, what do we care for -legality?" as the Left proclaimed recently at the Palais Bourbon. - -They have no other rule of conduct but the "fist right," now known as -"the majority." - - - - -LIBERTY AND STATE SERVITUDE - - -_July, 1904._ - -Modern democracy, which flatters itself that it has shaken off all the -shackles of authority, is itself but an evolution of what it so loftily -contemns. If we are free to-day, it is because our fathers have borne -the yoke of Christ. - -In one of his sonorous paradoxes, Rousseau declared that "men are born -free and everywhere they are in chains." - -That all men are born free is as false a statement as that all men are -born upright and virtuous. History and experience give the lie to both -assertions. Men are not born free. Our rights and liberties are secured -by laws which are a circumscription of the sphere of individual -independence for the benefit of the community, and this in virtue of a -divine "thou shalt not," written on the tablets of the heart, or on -tables of stone. Human laws have no sanction except in divine law, and -no man has a right to command his fellow-men, except within the limits -of natural and of divine law. - -The sum of liberty in every community is the sum of its amenity to law, -both divine and natural. Hence Plato's remark that "republics cannot -exist without virtue in the people," and Montesquieu's assertion that -"the vital principle of democratic government is virtue." All human laws -deriving their sanction from divine and natural laws, it follows that -liberty must diminish when these laws are violated with impunity. - -Plutarch, referring to the Golden Age, which, according to all writers, -even Voltaire, came first, writes that "in the days of Saturn all men -were free." Our data regarding this period are not numerous, -unfortunately; but we learn from the traditions of all peoples, as well -as by revelation, that something momentous happened, which abolished the -Golden Age. Prometheus stole fire from heaven and was chained to a rock. -Sisyphus was compelled to roll a stone uphill all his days. Adam was -condemned to labour in the sweat of his brow, etc. The myths are -various, but the central idea is always the same--a crime punished by a -penalty involving the loss of liberty. - -What the nature of the act of disobedience committed by Adam when he ate -the forbidden fruit we do not know. Probably we should not understand -even if we were told; for the magnitude of a crime is always -commensurate with the intellect of the criminal, and knowledge has -considerably diminished among the sons of men. To name anything as Adam, -or whoever is thereby designated, named all the creatures in the Garden -implies that his knowledge of them was adequate, while the great trouble -with all our up-to-date science is, that back of every phenomenon, of -every fact, stands an inexorable X, an unknown quantity that baffles -research. - -If we could wrest her secret from the Sphinx in any one instance, it is -probable that the whole book of nature would stand revealed. But the -angel with the flaming sword guards the portal. - -With the passing away of the Golden Age, or "the days of Saturn, in -which all men were free," there came a diminution of light, and above -all of liberty. What justice does in individual cases, when malefactors -are incarcerated, seems to have been accomplished on a large scale, when -the masses of a race, nay of the whole species, were reduced to slavery. -For though our data regarding the "days of Saturn when all men were -free" are scant, we do know, beyond a peradventure, that before Christ -slavery was the normal condition of the masses in every age, in every -clime; not alone among barbarous and predatory tribes, who reduced their -captives to this condition, but also among the most stable and cultured -communities--in Assyria, in Babylon, Egypt, Idumea, Rome, Greece, -everywhere. Nor was there found one sage, one legislator, to raise his -voice against an inveterate institution, which one and all deemed a -_sine qu non_ of any society, of any government. Lucanus only expressed -an universally accepted axiom when he wrote that "the human race only -existed for a few"--_Humanum paucis vivit genus._ Towards the end of the -Republic, when Rome numbered a million and a half inhabitants, there -were only some 20,000 proprietors; all the rest were slaves. - -Sages and legislators of antiquity who considered slavery a _sine qu -non_ of government were not wrong. Vast numbers of human wills cannot be -left in freedom without a restraint of some kind. "Christianity alone," -writes the Rationalist Lecky, "could affect the profound change of -character which rendered the abolition of slavery possible" (_History of -Rationalism_, II, 258). - -When Peter the Fisherman proclaimed the brotherhood of man, saying "Men, -brethren" to all alike, the Church began her perennial mission of -liberty by sanctification. Individually, men must be delivered from the -yoke of evil passions by Christianity, so that the masses might be -delivered from servitude. - -The powers of darkness, that are now waging fierce warfare on the -Christian Church, understand perfectly what the legislators of antiquity -understood and practised. Being resolved to uproot Christianity and its -moral teaching, which alone have rendered freedom and government -compatible, they are casting about for some new kind of slavery, which -apparently is to take the form of State Socialism. A coterie is to -concentrate in its hands all the power, all the wealth, all the natural -resources of the country. This coterie will be named the State; the -others, the cringing, crouching millions yclept the Sovereign People, -will have nothing left but to obey the edicts of the Omnipotent -Infallible State, only teacher, preacher, and general purveyor. _Humanum -paucis vivit genus._ - -This reversion to the pagan regime from which Christianity delivered us -will be the just penalty of apostasy from Christianity. - -If, and when, and where Christianity is crushed out, liberty both civil -and personal, which are bound up with and inseparable from it, will -disappear in exact proportion _tantum quantum_. - -We need only turn a few pages of contemporary history and read the -lessons taught by the French Revolution. The most illustrious of -nations, in the zenith of its civilization, allowed the government to -pass into the hands of a band of neo-pagans prepared by Voltaire and his -ilk. Christianity was solemnly abjured; its temples were desecrated; at -Notre Dame a prostitute, posing as the Goddess of Reason, was -worshipped; on the Champ de Mars the new religion of theo-philanthropy -was inaugurated. - -What was the immediate consequence? In the twinkling of an eye all -liberty vanished. The most sacred rights of the individual were -proscribed. Men could no longer call their lives their own under the Law -of Suspects, a time to which Camille Pelletan, _ministre de la marine_, -actually referred, yesterday, as "an hour when under the influence -necessary, but somewhat enervating, of Thermidor, the Republic was in -danger." - -Without going so far back as 1793, we have but to read the records of -the Commune in 1870, which was a phase of the Revolution that is still -marching on. One of the moving spirits of this time was Raul Ripault. M. -Clemenceau was only Mayor of Montmartre, and M. Barrre, now ambassador -at Rome, was an active member. - -To Monseigneur Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, one of the hostages taken -and shot by the Commune, Raul Ripault said, "Ta libert n'est pas ma -libert, aussi je te fait fusiller" ("Thy liberty is not my liberty, so -I have you shot"). - -Liberty, I repeat, is bound up with and inseparable from Christianity. -To-day, as in 1793, a coterie of atheists or neo-pagans have captured -all the avenues of power by means of godless schools and the Socialist -vote, and even by hobnobbing with the red flag of anarchy, which waved -unrebuked around M. Loubet at that famous fte called Triomphe de la -Rpublique. - -They have worked, steadily and intelligently, to this end since -twenty-five years, while two-thirds of the country have been absolutely -indifferent to politics. Some even affect to ignore the name of the -President. Laborious, honest Frenchmen as a rule despise politics, and -cannot be induced to take part in them or be candidates for office. One -has but to consult the electoral returns to see how many hundreds of -thousands abstain from voting. Thus the Government has passed into the -hands of the Judeo-Masonic coterie.[3] - -As in 1793, the first result is the diminution of liberty. It was long -sought to represent the Associations Bill (1901) as a mere measure of -domestic economy. It was the entering wedge of tyranny. The object to be -attained is the suppression of all Christian education, by the -suppression of all religious teachers, preparatory to a state monopoly -of education. - -The indignant protestations and the tumultuous manifestations of men and -women who fill the streets with cries of "Vive la libert!" "Vivent les -soeurs!" are wholesome signs; but I think it is just as well that the -Jacobins should go on and do their worst. Overvaulting tyranny, like -ambition, doth overleap itself. At the Gare St. Lazare, recently, some -ten thousand people accompanied the expulsed sisters of St. Vincent to -the train with cries of "Liberty! Liberty!" The police were powerless. - -In another place the population unharnessed the horses of the omnibus -that was taking some other sisters to the station. They dragged the -conveyance back and broke down the doors of the convent which had been -sealed by the Government. - -In Paris at least 50,000 children of the poor have been thrown into the -streets; for the state schools were already inadequate, and 30,000 or -more children were waiting for a chance to comply with the law of -compulsory education.[4] In a mining town, a _crche_, or infant asylum, -where 150 babies from six months to four years of age were cared for -while their mothers worked, was closed suddenly. - -When we think of all the suffering and inconvenience caused by these -executions, we are amazed that more blood has not flowed. - -The right parents have to educate their children as they see fit, and -the right all citizens have to live as they see fit, and teach when duly -qualified, are primordial, inalienable rights that cannot be violated -without crime, and a crime which must find its repercussion in all -civilized countries. In general it may be said that every Government has -a right to administer its own affairs as it sees fit. This is precisely -what the Turks assumed when they were massacring the Bulgarians and the -Armenians. But Europe thought differently in 1877. The Jacobins of 1793, -who had conquered France then, as to-day, by cleverly combined -manoeuvres in which fear played a large part, also thought it was -nobody's business, if they saw fit to drown, proscribe, and guillotine -by tens of thousands, in order to enforce their peculiar views of -liberty. But every act of tyranny, every crime against liberty, offends -all Christendom. It cannot be circumscribed by national frontiers. Soon -all Europe was weltering in blood. The First Consul marched rough-shod -over Europe, imposing French liberty on unappreciative nations. And we -all know how the allied armies occupied Paris in 1815 and curbed the -Revolution for a season. History repeats itself. - - - - -THE FRENCH REVOLUTION - - -_27th June, 1904._ - -The Associations Bill, pre-eminently an act of oppression and religious -persecution, has been rendered doubly odious by the many illegalities by -which it has been surrounded, some of which I enumerated in my letter in -the _Evening Post_ of May 6th. Not long since, M. Decrais, ex-Minister -of the Waldeck-Rousseau Cabinet, was elected by a large majority at -Bordeaux, after he had branded the wholesale execution of the religious -orders as "a violation of the spirit and the letter of the law of 1901," -and assured his electors that he had not voted with the Government on -that occasion. Indeed, these Jacobins seem to revel in illegality for -its own sake, and cannot even respect their own enactments. - -Civil war on a small scale has been raging since nearly two months in -various parts of France. It became quite monotonous to read the recital -of all these expulsions _manu militari_ which filled the columns of the -daily Press. The programme was almost the same in every case. The crowds -varied from three hundred to many thousands, according to the locality, -and were more or less violent in their denunciations of the Government; -the police and the regular army, employed to surround the convents and -disperse the crowds of manifestants, were also more or less numerous, -and acted more or less brutally. The troops as a rule left their -barracks at night, arrived on the scene at 2 or 3 a.m., and awaited -daybreak before surrounding the house. Then, the Commissaires ringing in -vain, the doors are battered down, police and soldiers enter the breach -and find a few old monks in the chapel, for as a rule the communities -had dispersed. The delinquents are marched off between two rows of -soldiers, the crowds break out in seditious cries of "Vive la libert, -bas les tyrans," numerous arrests of both sexes are made, and the -country is informed that, fanaticized by the monks, men and women have -assailed the representatives of the law. - -It was on one of these occasions that Mlle. de Lambert cried "Capon" to -a justice of the peace because he had beaten a hasty retreat when he -found, in a cloister, two or three hundred angry men instead of a few -old monks. She was condemned to be imprisoned for eight days. On the -expiration of her term some five thousand persons went to the prison to -give her an ovation, but found that she had been removed. - -At Nice there was a small community of Franciscans on the Boulevard -Carabacel. Their chapel was very popular with the humbler classes of -Niois, as well as with visitors, and manifestations like those that -occurred at the church of La Croix de Marbre, much frequented by -American sailors, were expected. Several companies of infantry and -cavalry were sent to surround the building at 3 a.m.; but hundreds of -persons had spent all night on the premises, and the usual -manifestations and arrests occurred. Even after the premises had been -sealed up, police agents were detailed to guard them night and day. This -was very amusing, considering that policemen are so scarce in Nice that -people are robbed in broad daylight in the most-frequented quarters. - -All these grotesque executions _manu militari_ represent one of the most -recent violations of the law, wholly gratuitous in this instance, seeing -that the Government had itself traced the method of procedure. On -November 28th, 1902, M. Valle, Minister of Justice, said:-- - - "We have to examine if, after refusal of authorization and a decree - closing an establishment, we should continue to have recourse to - armed force, or whether it is not preferable to have recourse to - the tribunals. M. Chamaillard himself recognizes that it is better - to substitute judicial sanction to the sanction of force, always - brutal. It is this substitution we ask you to vote" (_Officiel_, - November 29th). - -Again, December 2nd, the Minister said:-- - - "The Government abandons the right to have recourse to force, and - asks you to substitute judicial for administrative sanction. This - is the object of the proposed law" (_Officiel_, December 3rd, p. - 1221, col. 2). - -On December 4th this law was passed. Therefore all these executions -_manu militari_, before the tribunals had pronounced, were another -flagrant violation of law. But, as I said, these Jacobins seem to revel -in illegality for its own sake. Meanwhile the tribunals, civil and -military, have been kept busy condemning officers who refused to take -part in these degrading, unsoldierlike expeditions, as well as men and -women guilty of manifesting in favour of liberty. - -The fate of the Congregations of women engaged in teaching is a foregone -conclusion. Nay, M. Combes is closing many of these establishments even -before the demands for authorization have been submitted to the Chambers -to be refused _in globo_. I was in Lyons recently when two -establishments of the Society of the Sacred Heart were dispersed in the -middle of the school year, without the slightest regard to the -convenience of the pupils or their teachers. More than three thousand -persons invaded the railway station at 7 a.m. for the departure of the -first group of exiles. An enthusiastic ovation was given them, in which -all the passengers took part, and the bouquets were so numerous that -they had to be piled into a vacant car. In the afternoon there was a -second departure for Turin. This time the police took timely -precautions. The avenues leading to the vast square were barricaded -against all but travellers. These ladies have educated several -generations of Lyonnaises, and were greatly esteemed. - -It would be too long to relate the exploits of the Government's -henchmen, who have distinguished themselves at Paris and elsewhere. It -is simply astounding that such things should happen in any civilized -country and in a century so proud of its progress, liberty, and -enlightenment. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was an offence -against liberty and justice, but it occurred two hundred and fifty years -ago--almost in the Dark Ages. Some time ago, Mr. Bodley, in his -excellent work on France, commented on the extraordinary phenomenon of a -republic persecuting, in the name of liberty, a religion professed by -more than two-thirds of the nation and officially represented in the -State as the dominant religion of the country. To understand this -phenomenon we must bear in mind that French republicanism is not a form -of government, but merely the _modus operandi_ of a secret society. The -Grand Orient has openly proclaimed that there would be no republic but -for them. And all the laws have been elaborated at their convents since -two decades. - -Above all we must remember that France is in revolution since a hundred -years and more. There have been intervals of calm which resembled -convalescence, but these have been followed by new paroxysms, as in -1830, 1848, 1870, and to-day. Madame de Stal's clever saying that -Napoleon was "Robespierre cheval" is by no means as flippant as might -appear. The genius of the Jacobin Revolution was embodied in the -Convention and the Comits de Salut Public, and the representative of -this dictatorial tyranny was Robespierre. When Napoleon substituted -himself for the Convention and the Directory he abated none of the -pretensions of the Revolution. On the contrary, he consolidated them and -enlarged immensely their field of operation by riding rough-shod, not -over France alone, but over all Europe; hence the happy expression of -Madame de Stal, "Robespierre cheval." - -Unlike the upheaval known as the Reformation, the French Revolution was -essentially a religious movement, a vast renaissance of paganism -prepared by the atheistic philosophy of the eighteenth century, with -which the ruling classes became so largely imbued. It is a great mistake -to suppose that these philosophers were seeking the welfare of the -masses or the reign of the people, whom no one so thoroughly despised as -did Voltaire. The true object of the Revolution, prepared by the -encyclopedists, was the destruction of Christianity and its noblest -fruit, freedom, in order to establish on the ruins of both the reign of -the Omnipotent Infallible State, the statue of gold before which all -must fall down and worship or perish. "Sois mon frre, ou je te tue." -For it has always been a peculiarity of French free-thinkers that they -could never tolerate any free-thinking but their own. If the -revolutionists of 1793 inflamed the passions of the masses against the -clergy and the nobles, it was merely to use the arms of this Briareus to -batter down the monarchy and all the institutions of the ancient regime, -just as the Jacobin Republicans of to-day are using the Socialists to -accomplish the work begun by their predecessors a century ago. The final -purpose of all is the destruction of Christianity. - -We have but to turn the pages of any reputable French history (Taine, -Capefigue, Guizot) to see that liberty was the last preoccupation of the -Jacobin conquerors. One of the worst Roman emperors is said to have -wished that the people had but one head that he might cut it off. This -also seems to have been the idea of the Revolution, for by abolishing -all social hierarchy, all intermediate classes, all guilds and -associations, provincial parliaments, and local institutions, nothing -was left standing but a defenceless people and the omnipotent State, -which was a coterie composed sometimes of five hundred, sometimes of -four, and finally of one, the first Consul and Emperor. - -Never had the tyranny of the omnipotent State been more completely -realized than by the Jacobins, and their heir-at-law, Napoleon. In the -heyday of his power this great despot found but one opponent. There was -but one force that measured itself with him and vanquished. When -Holland, Prussia, Denmark, all Europe in fact, became tributary to -Napoleon and entered into his continental scheme, in the blockade of all -European seaports, Pius VII alone refused to close Ancona, Ostia, and -Civita Vecchia against British commerce, and to prevent any Englishman -from entering the Papal States. When cabinets and rulers all succumbed -to "Robespierre on horseback," and the inhabitants of every land became -the prey of the victor, the Spanish people alone found, in their -religious faith, the nobility and the energy of a free people, that rose -in their weakness to shake off the octopus that was fastening itself on -their vitals. Napoleon had seized, by guile and treachery, the persons -of the Royal Family of Spain, and had nominated a new tributary king, -his brother Joseph, to the throne of Spain, when the monks, the clergy, -and the peasantry organized that wonderful guerilla war, which is so -little known, and is, nevertheless, one of the most glorious episodes in -the history of liberty. Two signal defeats of the French army destroyed -the prestige of Napoleon and his motley armies, composed of conscripts -from many vassal nations, who now began to ask themselves why they could -not do what Spanish peasants had done in spite of Manuel Godin, the -Prime Minister, who had sold them to the enemy. - -After the restoration of the Bourbons in 1815 it seemed as if the -Revolution were over, but in 1830 it broke out anew. Charles X barely -escaped with his life. The "Monarchy of July," as the reign of Philippe -d'Orlans is called, was merely a phase of the Revolution. In 1848 the -revolutionary fever again seized the nation in an acute form and was not -limited to France. - -It was at this time, strange to say, that a group of resolute Catholics -entered the political arena and fought the battle of liberty in -educational matters against the monopoly of the University. -Montalembert, Dupanloup, Berryer, Lacordaire conquered, inch by inch, a -liberty inscribed in the Charter of 1830, but ineffective so far. La loi -Falloux was not passed till 1850 but long before, Guizot, with unerring -statesmanship, had proclaimed "liberty in teaching to be the only wise -solution," and declared that "the State must accept the free competition -of its rivals, both lay and religious, individuals and corporations" -(_Memoirs_, t. III, 102). St. Marc Girardin, reporter of the Educational -Commission (1847), expressed himself thus:-- - - "Even before the Charter, experience and the interest of studies - required and obtained liberty in teaching. Here certainly we may - say that liberty was ancient and arbitrary despotism new. I do not - need to defend the principle of this liberty, for it is in the - Charter. I only wish to show that it has always existed in some - form. Emulation is good for studies. Formerly the emulation was - between the University and the Congregations, and studies were - benefited. In 1763 Voltaire himself deplored the dispersion of the - Jesuits because of the beneficial rivalry that existed between them - and the University.... A monopoly of education given to priests - would be an anachronism in our day. But to exclude them would be a - not less deplorable anachronism." - -Thus spoke a representative Liberal fifty years ago. Napoleon had -established a state monopoly of education in the hands of the University -of Paris. Villemain and Cousin were educational Jacobins. There was a -state rhetoric, a state history, and a state philosophy, which was, of -course, Cousin's eclecticism. Any professor with leanings to Kant or -Comte was sent to Coventry. This state monopoly was abolished by the loi -Falloux (1850), and its reestablishment is the true purpose of the law -of 1901. During the last fifty years congregational schools multiplied -in proportion to the great demand, i.e. to such an extent that -government schools could not compete with them successfully. Hence the -Trouillot Bill (Associations). - -In 1870 the Revolution again triumphed. This time it was not -"Robespierre on horseback," but Robespierre draped in toga and ermine; -the reign of despotism in the name of law and liberty; prtors and -qustors dilapidating public funds, and giving and promising largesses. -At one time it seemed as if the Republic would be overthrown. It was -then that M. Grvy appealed to Rome, and Leo XIII, while reproving -certain laws, advised the clergy and the Catholics to rally to the -Republic in the interest of peace. They did so. But no sooner did the -Republic feel secure than it began to enact a series of laws offensive -to Catholics. I refer to the divorce and scholar laws, and unjust fiscal -laws against Congregations. - -Foreigners wonder why thirty million French Catholics allow themselves -to be thus tyrannized over by a handful of Freemasons. I fear it is a -hopeless case of atavism, which will prove the undoing of France, under -the representative system. In 418 the Emperor Honorius wished to -establish this system of government in Southern Gaul, but, writes -Guizot, "the provinces and towns refused the benefit; no one would -nominate representatives, no one would go to Arles" (_History of -Civilization_). This same tendency is operating the ruin of France -to-day. Honest, laborious Frenchmen have an invincible repugnance to -politics and this periodical electioneering scramble. Moreover, it would -mean ruin and famine for hundreds of thousands of functionaries if they -dared to vote against the Government. - -Meanwhile the anti-clericals or lodges of the Grand Orient, largely -composed of Jews, Protestants, and naturalized foreigners, have been -hard at work these twenty years preparing the election of their -candidates and abusing the minds of the working classes by immoral, -irreligious printed stuff, and above all by the multiplication of -drinking-places where adulterated strong drinks are sold for the merest -trifle. The number of these licensed places is simply appalling. Nearly -every grocery, every little vegetable store, and even many tobacco -stores where stamps are sold, have a drinking stand. It is needless to -say that neither Chartreuse nor any decent liqueur is ever sold at such -places. These drink stands supplement the innumerable cabarets and -cafs, in town and country, where elections are engineered. - -Leroy Beaulieu recently related the following incident of his encounter -with one of the habitus of these political institutions. - -In Easter week I was coming out of the chapel of the Barnabites one -morning when I met a workman somewhat the worse for liquor, shaking his -fist against the grated convent window. "Ah! you haven't skedaddled yet, -you dirty skunks." - -And when I asked him why he was so anxious to see them expelled, he drew -himself up proudly and replied: "Because they are not up to the level of -our century!" ("Ils ne sont pas la hauteur de notre sicle!") - -Meanwhile a crime has been committed against liberty, humanity, and -justice, and it seems to move the world no more than the passing of a -summer cloud, because no blood has been shed. The right which men and -women have to dress and dispose of their lives as they choose is a most -sacred part of personal freedom. - -"Liberalism," says Taine, "is the respect of others. If the State exists -it is to prevent all intrusions into private life, the beliefs, the -conscience, the property.... When the State does this it is the greatest -of benefactors. When it commits these intrusions itself it is the -greatest of malefactors." The young and the strong can begin life anew -elsewhere, in the cloister or out of it, but what shall we say of those -tens of thousands aged and infirm, who, after having passed thirty to -fifty years in teaching or in other good works, find themselves suddenly -thrown into the streets, homeless and penniless? The Associations Bill -entitles them "to apply" for indemnity. But this is merely illusory. -Years will elapse before "the liquidation" is accomplished, and there -will be no assets except for the Government and its friends. Public -subscriptions are being opened all over France for these victims of -Jacobin tyranny. - -Moreover, the right which parents have to give their children teachers -of their own choice is also an inalienable right. The Lacedmonian State -imposed physical training on all its sons. The Turks for centuries -levied a tax of so many boys and girls a year on the Spaniards and the -Venetians, but no Government has yet called on every parent to "stand -and deliver," not the purse, but the souls of their children, that it -may sow therein, from tenderest infancy, the tares of a hideous state -materialism. With cynical hypocrisy this Government protests that -liberty of teaching is intact, while parents see all the teachers of -their own choice proscribed. The rich can send their sons to be educated -across the border, but the law of _stage scolaire_ is intended to meet -this alternative. Those who have not frequented state schools are to be -made pariahs, ineligible for the army, the navy, or any civil -function--truly a singular application of the words "Compel them to come -in," which should be inscribed on all the scholar institutions of France -to-day. - - - - -A PAPAL NOTE - - -_13th June, 1904._ - -The storm of words aroused the world over by a Papal diplomatic Note is -another proof that the Papacy has lost none of its power and prestige, -and is still, on this threshold of the twentieth century, the -incarnation of moral power opposed to mere brute force, the right of the -strongest. In reading the many silly comments on this Note in different -parts of the globe, we are reminded of the brick thrown into the -frog-pond and the emotion it caused. - -Long before M. Loubet went to Rome it was well known that he would not -be received by the Vatican, and the Papal Note is practically the same -as the one drawn up by Leo XIII on a previous occasion, when it was -sought to obtain a deviation from the policy of the Vatican in favour of -a predecessor of M. Loubet. The protest itself contained nothing new, -and was merely a reiteration of Papal claims to sovereignty in Rome, and -a notice to rulers of other Catholic countries that there was no change -in the policy of the Vatican, that declined to receive the visit of any -such ruler who came to Rome as the guest of Victor Emmanuel. - -The long session devoted to the discussion of the incident was merely a -little anti-clerical diversion to kill time; otherwise the Papal Note -would have remained pigeon-holed in M. Delcass's desk, where it had -lain unheeded for weeks, when suddenly, at the psychical moment, M. -Jaurs' new Ministerial organ, _l'Humanit_ (_commandite_ by the Jews), -published the copy of the Note which had been addressed, it is said, to -the King of Portugal. Then the little comedy was enacted at the Palais -Bourbon, and the whole Socialist Ministerial Press clamoured, -hysterically, for condign punishment of the Vatican and the vindication -of the national honour. But nothing was done. M. Delcass declined to -state clearly if the ambassador to the Vatican, M. Nisard, had really -been recalled, while M. Combes loftily sneered at "the superannuated -claims of a sovereignty dispossessed since thirty-five years." Yet he -must have learned at the Seminary that the Papacy was exiled from Rome -for eighty years once upon a time.[5] But all these ferocious Radicals -declined to take advantage of this opportunity to denounce the -Concordat, and M. Combes' best friend, _The Lantern_, is now denouncing -him as a traitor and a fraud. History is repeating itself: _La -Montagne_ (the Extreme Left of 1793) is getting ready to execute the -_Girondins_ called Radicals to-day. No efforts of opportunism will save -them from the _guillotine sche_ which awaits them. - -The silly talk of some of the great dailies who represent the Pope as -"greatly worried" and confronted with the necessity of making an -apology, can only be excused on the ground of ignorance of the whole -situation. Personally I desire to see the Concordat denounced. The -letter and the spirit of its first and most important article, which -provided for liberty and the free exercise of the Catholic religion, -have been flagrantly violated by the laws of 1901 and 1904, and by the -illegalities committed by the executors of these laws. - -All that remains of the Concordat is the indemnity paid yearly to the -Catholic Church, as a very slight compensation for the millions stolen -by the revolutionary government of 1792, known as the First Republic. -Though it must be said to the credit of those Jacobins that when they -instituted the budget of cults they recognized that they had taken the -property of the Church, and that the payment of these yearly subsidies -was part of the National Debt. - -The Jacobins of to-day, less scrupulous than their forefathers of 1790, -are craving for the repudiation of this portion of the National Debt. - -The untold wealth of the Congregations, the billions held out as a -glittering lure by Waldeck Rousseau in 1900 as a nest-egg for _retrates -ouvrires_, having melted into thin air "the bloc" or Ministerial -majority must be held together by the prospect of some new quarry. -Those, who for years past made a fine distinction between the secular -clergy and the regular or _congrganist_ clergy are now convinced that -there is no distinction to be made between them. When New York dailies -kindly advise the French clergy and Catholics to give up what their -editors are pleased to call "their salaries" and adopt the American -system, they merely proclaim their ignorance of the situation. - -The French would gladly sacrifice everything, even to the noble church -edifices built and endowed by their ancestors during long centuries, if -thereby they could secure liberty and separation from the State, as they -are understood in the United States. But all the alleged projects of -"Separation" are merely projects of strangulation. The articles of all -these projects of law are as unacceptable as were those of the Trouillot -Associations Bill, even if it had not been superseded by the _table -rase_ of the law of 1904 suppressing all teaching orders whatsoever. - -The carrying into execution of any of these projects of "Separation," -even the least Jacobin, would render the normal existence of the -Catholic Church in France impossible. This has been the aim and purpose -of the Third Republic ever since its advent. For, once again, I repeat -that Republicanism in France is not a form of government; it is the -_modus operandi_ of a secret society, of the same secret society which -established a monarchy in Italy, in order to have a pretext for seizing -Rome and destroying, if possible, the prestige of the Papacy. In both -cases the object was the same, the weakening and the destruction of the -Church. - -The Freemasons in France openly proclaim that they founded the Republic. -The scholar and anti-clerical laws since twenty-five years, all the -laws, in fact, have been prepared in the lodges. Of this, too, they make -no secret. To suppose that the Chambers in any way represent the French -nation is an egregious mistake. The lodges prepare the elections; their -candidates people both Houses. In my first letter to the _Review_ in -1900 I showed how the abstention of honest laborious Frenchmen from -politics had thrown the power into the hands of the Freemasons, who are -chiefly Jews, Protestants, and infidels. To-day this coterie of about -twenty-five thousand reigns supreme. - -A few resolute, capable, bigoted Freemasons are the master minds of the -coterie; the others, "the bloc," just follow suit. If a current of -reaction set in to-morrow they would glide with it most gracefully. - -It is simply impossible to retrieve the situation in France to-day by -any ordinary legal means. To suppose that the people are in sympathy -with the Government because they do not overthrow it implies total -ignorance of the situation. The voting machinery of the country is -falsified, and can no more be relied on than a clock out of gear, which -rings out the hours haphazard. Even if every Frenchman inscribed as a -voter did his duty and went to the polls, which they do not, it would -make no difference to-day. - -If death had not cut short Waldeck Rousseau's career we might witness a -_machine en arrire_ policy. It is even possible, now, that a moderate -Rouvier-Ribot ministry may succeed the Combes despotism. - -But I have no confidence in any palliatives. The evil is too -deep-seated. Only by blood and anguish can France be redeemed, and the -sooner the crisis comes the better; a few years later it may be too -late. This is why I desire the denunciation of the Concordat, for with -Gambetta, and all his anti-clerical successors, I think it may be the -ruin of the Third Republic. - -Excommunications and interdicts are no longer published as in former -days, but they operate nevertheless. And, as in the past, there is -always some ruler ready to execute the mandate; though this, too, is not -done in the same way. There is not, necessarily, any invasion of -territory. - -Germany and Italy (yes, and England too) are keenly awaiting the moment -when they may seize France's birthright. Both are assiduous in their -marks of deference to the Holy See. Victor Emmanuel would gladly -evacuate Rome to-morrow if he dared. Thirty-five years are the mere -twinkling of an eye in the lives of nations. Yet there are simple-minded -people who look upon the Piedmontese occupation of Rome as an immutable -fact. - - - - -FREEMASONRY - - -_December, 1904._ - -We cannot adequately appreciate the religious and politico-social -conditions of countries like Italy, France, Spain, Austria, Belgium, -unless we take into account the action of Freemasonry in all its -ramifications--Carbonari, Grand Orient, Mafia, etc. - -There is eternal enmity between them and Christianity. It was said in -the beginning: "I will put enmity between thy seed and the seed of the -Woman," etc. The Catholic Church being the largest, strongest, most -accredited and influential Christian Society, it is against her, -naturally, that all attacks are directed. In Protestant countries people -shrug their shoulders and sneer at the idea of Freemasons militating -against Christianity, or any political order. This is not surprising. A -distinguished atheist of the eighteenth century used to say that -"England was the country where Christianity did the least harm because -it was divided into so many rivulets." Here we have the explanation of -the different attitude of Freemasons in Protestant countries, split up -into innumerable sects, and in Catholic countries, where "One holy -Catholic Church" still holds sway over the whole nation practically. - -The great purpose of the French Revolution in 1792 was to break up the -Church in France. For this purpose the throne and all the institutions -of the ancient regime, some of them very excellent, were all overthrown. - -The revolutions of Italy in the nineteenth century had no other purpose. -The destruction of the Papacy was considered a means of disrupting the -Catholic Church, not in Italy only. Mazzini, Garibaldi, Crispi, Cavour, -etc., were all fierce republican anarchists; the last thing they wanted -was an Italian monarchy. But they were Freemasons, and the "Order" -imposed its will. An Italian monarchy demanded Rome as its capital, -whereas a republican system would, no doubt, have left the Papacy in its -ancient city. "A schism," wrote Renan in 1870, "seems to me more than -probable, or rather it already exists; from latent it will become -effective.... It seems to me inevitable that there will soon be two -Popes, and even three.... The schism being made in the papal person, the -decomposition of Catholicism will follow; a quantity of reforms will -then be possible." - -Napoleon III, a dignitary of the order, entered into the plot, and -received Savoy and the county of Nice. Rome was seized 20 September, and -the Franco-Prussian war brought swift and condign punishment on Napoleon -for his complicity. - -Simultaneously with the establishment of a monarchy in Italy, the Grand -Orient established a republic in France, always with the same purpose, -the disruption of the Church. During the last four years of residence in -Europe I have repeated in the Press of the United States that -Republicanism is not a form of government here, but the _modus operandi_ -of a secret society. The manifesto issued by the Grand Orient (3 -November, 1904) is an irrefutable proof of my allegation. It is the most -astounding document ever made public. They evidently consider that -France is a conquered country which can never shake off their -domination. "Without the Freemasons," says the document, "the Republic -would not exist." The elaborate spy system they had established at the -Ministry of War is defended on the ground that "the head partner, or -_commanditaire_, of a great industrial enterprise in which he has placed -his capital has the right to denounce to the manager the peculations of -his employees." - -Thus France is an industrial company; the ministers are managers -appointed by the head partner, the Grand Orient! But the most revolting -part of this manifesto is the manner in which the deputies of the "bloc" -are whipped into line like a pack of disorderly hounds under the lash of -their keeper. "We denounce to our lodges and to all masons present and -future the votes of fear, defaillance, cowardice, of a certain -number.... We shall have our eyes on them ... and they will find -themselves treated as they would have treated those to whom they were -bound by interest if not by loyalty." - -The revolutions which have convulsed Spain during the last century, down -to the recent Republican riots in Madrid and Brussels, are all traceable -to the "Order" which issued this manifesto. Among the rioters killed -were Frenchmen. The visit of M. Chaumi, Minister of Public Instruction, -to Italy, and the famous Congrs de Libre Pense, are all manifestations -of the Grand Orient, which will never rest until it has destroyed the -stability and peace of other Catholic countries, as it has done in -France. When I arrived at Innsbruck in July last, I saw many students -with bandaged heads and arms. An Italian student had knocked the book -out of the German professor's hand with his cane. This was the origin of -that last riot. What has occurred recently at Innsbruck is far more -serious, and was undoubtedly prepared at Rome in September.[6] A band of -Italian anarchist students were sent to the University of Innsbruck to -cause trouble. One hundred and thirty-eight of them were arrested, -yesterday, with revolvers and other weapons on their persons. - -Two years ago I was in Venice when there was a monster international -gathering of students. The Marseillaise and the Hymn of Garibaldi were -vociferated by these thousands on the Place of St. Mark. Why the -national anthems of other nations were not given is clear. The whole was -a Freemason demonstration of the Grand Orient like the Congrs de Libre -Pense at Rome, presided over by M. Brisson, the President of the French -Chambers. - -The revolutionary strikes at Milan, Genoa, Venice, etc., which were made -to coincide with the birth of the heir of the House of Savoy, are -symptomatic. The Grand Orient undoubtedly find that they have been -marking time long enough in Italy. They have not been able to carry -their divorce law there yet. - -There is a Socialist party in Italy which is not anarchist and Freemason -as in France, but sincerely desires the good of Italy. One of its -leaders declared, recently, that they would lend their aid even to the -Papacy for the common weal. Between this party and the secret societies -and their henchmen, the position of Victor Emmanuel is not enviable. Ere -long, therefore, we may see the aid of the Pope and of the Catholic -vote, now in abeyance to a great extent, solicited both by the monarchy -and the reforming Socialists. - -There is really no insuperable difficulty in reconciling the -independence of the Papacy and the integrity of the Italian kingdom. The -Principality of Monaco has surely never been considered an obstacle to -the integrity of France, nor the Republic of San Marino to that of -Italy. Why should not the Pope be left in peaceful possession of the -Trastevere and the port of Ostia, for instance? There is no difficulty -except with the Grand Orient, this _imperium in imperio_. - -All through the centuries, "the Papacy has had to negotiate, -simultaneously, with each of the republican cities of Italy, with -Naples, Germany, France, England, and Spain. They all had contests -(_dmls_) with the Popes, and these latter always had the advantage" -(Voltaire, _Essai sur les moeurs_, II, 87). - -In the same work, page 81, Voltaire relates the Congress held at Venice, -where Barbarossa made his submission. "The Holy Father," he says, -"exclaimed: 'God has willed that an aged man and priest triumph without -fighting over a terrible and powerful emperor.'" The triumph over the -machinations of the Grand Orient will be no less striking. - - - - -FREEMASONRY - - -_21st January, 1905._ - -In these columns (_The Progress_, December 10th, 1904), I referred to -the recently published Manifesto of the Grand Orient of France (November -4th, 1904), defending its attitude with regard to the elaborate spy -system, a veritable _rgime des suspects_ which they had established, -not in the War Office only, but in every Department of State. The Press, -both in England and in the United Sates, has been singularly reticent -regarding this most remarkable document, whose authenticity cannot be -gainsaid. - -It is, however, the key to the whole politico-religious situation in -France, and more or less in other Catholic countries. - -Republicanism in Catholic countries will always be the _modus operandi_ -of this secret society in some one or other of its ramifications. The -Carbonari, who engineered all the Italian revolutions in the nineteenth -century, sent their emissary, Orsini, to remind Napoleon III of his -obligations and duties. The gentle reminder was a bomb, and Orsini paid -the death penalty, but not without leaving a letter with certain behests -which were soon complied with. The Italian campaign against Austria was -undertaken ere long. - -In the _Evening Post_, November 8th, 1904, I find in a review of Count -Hubner's _Memoirs_ the following extract: "The Emperor of the French, -placed at the summit of greatness, had forgotten the pledges made in his -youth to those who dispose of the unknown dark powers. Orsini's bomb -came to remind him. A ray of light suddenly struck his mind. He must -have understood that his former associates never forgot or forgave, and -that their implacable hatred would be appeased only when the renegade -returned to the bosom of the sect." - -An example of the power wielded by these secret societies is the case of -the ex-Minister of Public Instruction in Italy. Prosecuted for -misdemeanour and extensive peculations while in office, the Freemasons -compassed his escape to Geneva. He was condemned by default, when, lo -and behold, he quietly returns to Italy in triumph and is elected -deputy.[7] - -Since eight weeks the French papers (non-Ministerial of course) are -daily printing _fiches_ or spy documents stolen from the Grand Orient. -No end of duels and prosecutions for slander have been the result. Nor -were army officers the only victims. Even Monsieur and Madame Loubet -have come in for their share! In some cases the spies of the Grand -Orient have denied the authenticity of these documents. Thereupon M. de -Villeneuve has printed photographed copies of the letters in question. - -Brother Bedderide, an advocate of the bar at Marseilles, an active spy -on magistrates and other civil functionaries, has been expelled from the -Order of Advocates. The Grand Orient will no doubt amply compensate him, -for they are as generous to their friends as they are implacable to -their foes. - -Read this passage from the Manifesto of the Grand Orient, 4th November, -1904: "All our workshops know the campaign waged against us by the -reaction, nationalist, monarchical, and clerical. They seek to travesty -acts in which we justly glory and thanks to which, we have saved the -Republic. A traitor, a felon, bribed by the Congregations [poor -congregations recently shorn of all] lived in our midst since ten -years.... As sub-secretary he gained the confidence of our very dear -brother Vadecard [Secretary of G. O.] and became the confidant of all -our secrets. He projected to steal from our archives documents confided -to us ... new Judas, he sold them to the irreconcilable enemies of our -brethren. Brother Bidegain is in flight like a malefactor. We signal him -to Masons all over the world. In waiting the just punishment of his -crime, the Council of the Order summons him before masonic justice, and -until the final sentence is rendered, we suspend all his titles and -prerogatives.... And now we declare to the whole Freemason body that in -furnishing these documents [spy denunciations] the Grand Orient has -accomplished only a strict duty. We have dearly conquered the Republic -and claim the honour of having procured its triumph.... Without the -Freemasons the Republic would not be in existence.... Pius X would be -reigning in France." - -Then follows the menace quoted in my last to the tricky, cowardly -deputies who voted against the Government, which was saved by two votes -more than once. The memorable slap administered by M. Syveton to General -Andr compelled M. Combes to throw the Minister of War overboard, though -the latter protested to the last, "They want my skin, but they shall not -have it." The Minister of Public Instruction also nearly succumbed. He -declared that if a certain _ordre de jour_ were not voted he would throw -down his portfolio there and then. The votes were not forthcoming but he -clung to his portfolio and contented himself with another _ordre de -jour_. - -All the performances at the Palais Bourbon are indeed a most amazing -comedy. - -Meanwhile M. Syveton, who negotiated the purchase of the purloined -documents from the Grand Orient, and slapped General Andr on the -ministers' bench, got his quietus in a very mysterious way on the very -day on which he was to have retaken his seat in the Chambers (after his -thirty days' punitive exclusion), and on the eve of his appearance -before the Cours d'Assise for that famous slap. His defence, carefully -prepared by himself, was published in the papers next day. It is a long -incisive arraignment of the Government in imitation of Cicero's -_Catalina_. All the witnesses, who were to have appeared in his defence, -were also witnesses against the Government. In fact the trial was to -have been a great political manifestation, and the Government had every -interest in its not taking place. Since two weeks public opinion is on -tenter-hooks regarding the death of M. Syveton. It was declared at first -to be a vulgar accident by the Ministerial organs. While M. Jaurs, -strange to say, published in _Humanity_ a most remarkable brief, -establishing clearly the guilt of Madame Syveton, and, still more -strange, the latter did not prosecute him for it. Then the suicide -theory was adopted, and the most odious, baseless, and unproven -calumnies were launched against the memory of the dead man. His widow -even accused him of having stolen funds of the Nationalist party. All -this in order to explain his suicide on the eve of what was expected to -be a great political triumph of the Nationalists, and for which M. -Syveton was preparing with the ardour of a fighter by temperament, just -forty years old. - -The autopsy, made before the twenty-four legal hours had elapsed, -revealed seventeen per cent of oxide of carbon in the blood. The lungs, -brain, and viscera, strange to say, were not examined at all, but -placed under seals for eleven days! They are now to be examined. -Meanwhile the last person who must have seen M. Syveton alive, must have -been the emissary of the Government, who, according to custom, served -the writ on the dead man, commanding his presence in court in -twenty-four hours. Who was he, and why was he never heard of again? - -No one believes seriously that M. Syveton committed suicide. His father -and brother-in-law have begun a prosecution for murder against X, in -which the Mutual Life is also interested. - -As to Brother Bidegain, the traitor, he was at Salonica when last heard -of. His sudden death there was announced; but I think the rumour is -false. It would be very imprudent, coming so soon after the other. But -he will have to make his peace with the G. O. or beware. He cannot be -prosecuted for stealing these documents, as they represent no monetary -value, and, moreover, the Grand Orient has no legal existence or civil -personality. They are said to have millions of _main morte_, but they -simply ignore the Associations Bill. - -In conclusion, I hope it will be understood that I do not accuse many -honest Freemasons of England and the United States of being _particeps -criminis_ in all or any of the doings of the Grand Orient, Carbonari, -Mafia, Cimorra, Senuisi, or the secret societies of Islam or in China. - -Freemasonry assumes different aspects in different circumstances, but it -is the eternal enemy of militant organized Christianity. It does not -trouble itself with Christianity "divided into many rivulets," and -consequently harmless, according to the saying of Lord Shaftesbury, who -was of opinion that "England was the country in which Christianity did -the least harm because it was divided into so many rivulets." - -The Catholic Church alone is an enemy worthy of its steel, and wherever -these two foes meet there must be war--latent or overt. - -This war is on in France, and must be fought to the finish. - - - - -PART SECOND - - -_October, 1904._ - -M. Combes, who proclaimed at the Chambers two years ago that he had -taken office only to wage war on Clericalism, enumerated his deeds of -prowess recently in a political speech at Auxerre. Fifteen thousand -scholar establishments, strongholds of the ghostly enemy, had been -demolished! "Gentlemen, you will grant that this is a great deal for a -ministry obliged to fight at every instant for its own existence," he -exclaimed. - -We are now coming to the second part of the Jacobin programme. As I -wrote last year in the _Evening Post_ (June 27th), the true object of -the Revolution in 1790, as to-day, is the destruction of Christianity -and its offspring, Liberty, in order to establish on the ruins of both, -the reign of the Omnipotent Infallible State, before which all must fall -down and worship or disappear. To-day the State is M. Combes and his -"bloc," a very poor avatar of the Titanic Corsican who measured himself -with all Europe. There was but one force that resisted him, and against -this obstacle M. Combes stumbled when he demanded, peremptorily, that -the Vatican withdraw letters addressed to two bishops needing to be -disciplined. The Holy See was acting in the plenitude of its spiritual -jurisdiction. M. Combes curtly demanded that Pius X send in his -resignation, as "the political system of the Republic consists in the -subordination of all institutions, whatever they may be, to the -supremacy of the State." - -This is the latest phase of a very old struggle which began in the days -of the Apostles. In the history of all the nations of antiquity, the -problem of Church and State and their correlations existed, and was -solved, easily and summarily, by the system proclaimed by M. Combes. The -ruler of each nation was the Pontifex Maximus of his realm. This system, -with its necessary concomitant of national religions, reached its -culminating point in the worship of the "divine Csars," the acme of -human servitude. - -Now Christianity was a profound and radical innovation. Never had the -supremacy of the ruler or the State been questioned before the Apostles -proclaimed the Creed in "One Holy Catholic Church," destined to -transcend all natural and political boundaries, without distinction of -class or colour. Not less radical was the second innovation, a necessary -corollary of the first, viz. the ecclesiastical autonomy and -independence of the new spiritual society or Church, one, Catholic. -"Never," writes J. B. Martineau, "until the Church arose did faith -undertake the conquest alone, and triumph over diversities of speech and -antipathies of race." - -But Paganism, with its system of state absolutism in spiritual as well -as in temporal matters, has never accepted its defeat by the Catholic -Church, a spiritual, autonomous society, distinct from the State. The -tale of Byzantine heresies, from the fourth to the eighth century, were -all efforts of each successive Emperor of Constantinople to shake off -the spiritual supremacy of Rome, and be again the Pontifex Maximus of -his dominions. The long struggle of the Investitures, the Constitutions -of Clarendon, statutes of Prmunire, State Gallicanism, the Civil -Constitution of the Clergy, 1792, Josephism in Austria, the Kultur-Kampf -laws in Germany and Switzerland, 1870-76 were all episodes of this -struggle, between the new dispensation and the ancient system of -national religions under state supremacy. In the sixteenth century there -was a vast renaissance of this latter system in a new dress called -Erastianism. Lord Clarendon declared that this spiritual supremacy of -rulers was "the better moiety of their sovereignty." The old pagan, or -Erastian system, triumphed in the eastern empire with the Schism of -Photius, in Russia under Peter the Great, in England under Elizabeth, in -all the Protestant States of northern Europe. - -The well-defined purpose of the Revolution and of Napoleon, its -heir-at-law, was to establish this system in France. After long and -arduous negotiations the Concordat of 1801 was concluded with Pius VII. -It was a bilateral contract between two sovereignties, the French -Republic, as party of the first part, and the Holy See as party of the -second part. It contains seventeen articles. To these, Napoleon, without -the knowledge of the Pope, added seventy-six articles, and published -both documents, in conjunction, as the law of Germinal l'an X. Great was -the indignation, and loud were the protestations of the party of the -second part, as we may well suppose. Nor is this surprising when we -consider that one of these "organic articles" (24th) requires that all -professors in ecclesiastical seminaries shall "submit to teach the -doctrine of the Declaration of 1682, and the bishops shall send act of -this submission to the Council of State." In other words, the Catholic -Church in France was to turn Protestant. Even Louis XIV, who had had -this famous Declaration drawn up to spite Pope Innocent, who alone in -Europe had dared to oppose him, never exacted that it should be taught, -and had practically suppressed it before he died. Since the Council of -the Vatican the subscribing to and teaching the Declaration of 1682 -would be an act of formal heresy and apostasy. The fifty-sixth of the -organic articles renders obligatory the use of the Republican calendar -to the exclusion of the Gregorian. There are other articles equally -absurd, which have never been observed. - -Now M. Combes declares that "in deliberately separating the diplomatic -convention (Concordat) from the organic articles, Pius VII and his -successors have destroyed its efficacy." Napoleon himself understood -this and, for seven years, he held Pius VII a close prisoner, hoping to -break his spirit and wring from him another Concordat which would be an -abdication. Fortunately, the tide of war turned against Napoleon, and -the new Concordat was never ratified. M. Combes recognizes that no -Government since a century has been able to enforce the "organic -articles," and that the only course left is "divorce," and by this -unstatesmanlike term he means the repudiation of thirty or forty million -francs of the national debt. The payment in perpetuity of suitable -subsidies to the Catholic clergy is stipulated for by Article 14 of the -Concordat. It is a _quid pro quo_ of Article 13, by which the Holy See -consented to give a clear title to all the Church property confiscated -by the Revolution. The payment of these subsidies was inscribed on the -national debt by the spoliators themselves, the Conventionals of 1792, -and it was solemnly recognized as part of this debt in 1816, 1828, 1830, -and 1848. The salaries paid to Jewish and Protestant clergymen are -purely gratuitous. Their property was not stolen by the Revolution in -1792. They had no part in the Concordat. - -But the projected spoliation of the Catholic clergy is a mere detail, -and would be an insignificant ransom, if at this price the French -Catholics could have liberty such as we enjoy in England and the United -States. "Separation" means strangulation in Jacobin parlance. They would -infinitely prefer Erastianism. But the defection of the Bishops of Dijon -and Laval, on whom they counted, and the spontaneous and unanimous -adhesion of the episcopate to the Holy See, which provoked the thunders -of M. Combes against the Vatican in July, have shown the impossibility -of a schism. It was tried for four years a century ago and failed. The -"Separation" plan was also tried in 1795 for two or three years, and was -an epoch of virulent persecution. History will repeat itself, though not -exactly in the same words. - - - - -ALCOHOLISM IN FRANCE - - -_July 10th, 1905._ - -The Chambers continue the discussion of the Bill of alleged separation -in a perfunctory, apathetic way, and it is curious that M. Rouvier, the -successor of M. Combes, has never once condescended to speak or even to -be present at these sessions. - -The utter lack of interest in these debates is misinterpreted to mean -indifference on the part of the French public. This is not correct. It -is, as I have often repeated, the great misfortune of France that people -will not concern themselves with politics, and they only begin to -interest themselves in a law when it is applied. - -Even I, who have followed the phases of the religious persecution with -keen interest since four or five years, can hardly wade through these -tedious, irksome columns, in which ambiguity reigns supreme. Even M. -Briand, the reporter of the law and spokesman of the Government, being -questioned closely as to the sense of certain passages, replied "It is" -and "It is not" in the same breath. He is evidently of the opinion that -language is a convenient means of disguising thought. - -This Bill is, I repeat, a law of guile, spoliation, and tyranny from -first to last. There is a general impression that it will never be -executed entirely. They will content themselves with spoliation, for the -present at least. It is hard to persuade a people who have had religious -worship gratis for fifteen centuries, that they must now pay for the -privilege of attending Mass, while their Government subsidizes opera -dancers and singers, of whose services not one in a million ever avails -himself. - -While the Socialist majority, or _bloc_, are revelling over perspective -spoliation and sacrilegious confiscations, the handwriting on the wall -is dimly perceived. The enemy is at the gates--nay, within the -walls--while legislators are discussing "with what sauce they will eat -the curs," though they have not yet digested their copious repast of -congregations. - -Yesterday the reports of the Chambers on Separation were unusually -tedious, and the _rendu compte_ ended with this phrase: "To-morrow -amnesty for the _bouilleurs de cru_ and wine frauders." This heartless -Government, that flings aged and infirm _congrganists_ out of their -homes without mercy for age or sex, has, at least, one tender spot in -its make-up. It is for the liquor traffic in all its forms. -Falsification of wine is carried on to such an extent that it is -impossible for grape growers to make a living. I dilated recently in -these columns on the anti-clerical propaganda by means of an immoral, -irreligious Press, and the multiplication of these drink-stands to an -extent which is simply appalling.[8] - -New York, with three millions, has 10,000 liquor saloons. Paris, with -two-and-a-half millions, has 30,000 _debits de boissons_. - -The _Gaulois_ recently published some figures which I think are -accurate. - -Fifty years ago 735 hectolitres of absinthe were consumed in France; -to-day 133,000 are consumed. - -Fifty years ago 600,000 hectolitres of alcohol were consumed; to-day -2,000,000 hectolitres are consumed. - -The intermediate figures show that the increase has been in almost -geometric progression in recent years. - -In 1880 the consumption had increased from 735 hectolitres of absinthe -to 13,000. In 1885 it was still only 112,000. - -In 1905 it was 133,000. - -Sixty years ago there were only 10,000 demented in France. To-day there -are more than 80,000. - -Belgium has just made a law prohibiting not only the manufacture, but -all traffic in absinthe, which cannot even be transported through the -country. In this admirably governed commonwealth there is, it is said, -but one saloon _brasserie_ to every two thousand inhabitants. Formerly -the number of drinking-places was limited and restricted in France; -to-day the highest of high licence prevails. - -Recently I counted not less than fourteen places where alcoholic drinks -were sold in a charming little seaside village of four or five hundred -inhabitants. - - - - -THE LAW OF SEPARATION - - -_June 3rd, 1905._ - -There is still a persistent tendency in the Press to believe or -make-believe that the Bill of alleged Separation, still pending in the -French Chambers, means Separation as it is understood in England and the -United States, and that the whole question is only one of dollars and -cents, or of the suppression of the Budget of Cults. It is true that -there is to be a partial repudiation of the National Debt by the -suppression of the few paltry millions paid yearly to the French clergy -as a slight indemnity for the vast amount of property confiscated by the -Jacobins of 1792, but this is a mere detail, and would be considered but -a small ransom, if, thereby, the Church could enjoy the same liberty as -in the United States. - -The Associations Bill was proclaimed to be a "law of liberty," and we -know to-day that it was only a vulgar trap set by the Government to -betray the Congregations into furnishing exact inventories of all their -property so that it might be more easily confiscated. - -The Separation Bill is also a law of perfidious tyranny aimed at the -very existence of the Church in France. M. Briand caused great hilarity -in the Chambers when, by a slip of the tongue, he declared that in every -part of it "could be seen the hand of our spirit of Liberalism."[9] What -is evident throughout is the hand of the secret society which has -governed France since twenty-five years, and in whose lodges and -convents all the anti-religious laws have been elaborated. - -The Chambers are merely its _bureaux d'enregistrement_, and not even -that. Under the _ancien rgime_ the Parliament could and often did -refuse to enregister royal acts and decrees. - -It was two years before the Parliament of Paris consented to enregister -the Concordat of 1516. But the Chambers to-day are merely the executive -of the Grand Orient. This is the plain unvarnished truth, which is -corroborated by all who have any knowledge of French politics. - -I have repeated many times in the Press of the United States that -Republicanism in France is not a form of government, but the _modus -operandi_ of a secret society. Before me are _verbatim_ reports of their -assemblies and the speeches made at their political banquets in 1902. At -that time only unauthorized Congregations had been suppressed. This, it -was declared, "was not enough.... The Congregations must be operated on -with a vigorous scalpel, and all this suppuration must be thrown out of -the country; only thus will the social body, still very sick with acute -clericalism, be cured." In July, 1904, all the authorized Congregations, -too, were suppressed, as we know. Even this was not enough. - -At the general "convent" of the Grand Orient, January, 1904, it was -said: "We have yet a great effort to make.... The separation of Church -and State will be in the order of the day in the Chambers in January, -1905.... The Cabinet and the Republican Parliament will end the conflict -between the two contracting parties of the Concordat. The destruction of -the Church will open a new era of justice and goodness." - -M. Combes, then in power, was notified of the wishes of the Grand -Orient, and he telegraphed back that he would conform thereto. - -The sensation caused by the publication of the spy documents, or -_fiches_, stolen from the Grand Orient by M. Syveton and de Villeneuve -nearly overthrew the Republic last November. The assassination of M. -Syveton saved the Government and struck terror into the Nationalist -camp. The publication of the spy documents ceased, and the lodges -continued their work with a new figure-head, M. Rouvier instead of M. -Combes. - -On 4th November, 1904, the Grand Orient published a political manifesto -which is a most important document from an historical and sociological -standpoint. - -It is simply amazing that the government of a once great nation should -have passed into the hands of a secret society which, though it has no -legal standing, treats France as if it were a great business concern of -which the Freemasons are the _commanditaires_, the ministers "the -managers," and the deputies and functionaries the employees. - -Already in 1902, at the closing banquet of the "convent," Brother -Blatin, a "venerable," had declared: - -"The Government must not forget that Masonry is its most solid -support.... - -"But for our Order neither the Combes Cabinet nor the Republic itself -would exist. M. and Mme. Loubet would still be simple little bourgeois -in the little town of Montlimar.... But the Government must remember -that we are only at the opening of hostilities. Until we have destroyed -every congregation, denounced the Concordat, and broken with Rome, -nothing is done." In conclusion, these remarkable words were pronounced, -of which the manifesto of 4th November, 1904, is only an echo: "In -drinking to French Freemasonry I really drink to the Republic, because -the Republic is Freemasonry operating outside its temples; and -Freemasonry is the Republic under cover of our traditions and symbols." -Is this clear enough? - -The Revolution of 1790 was undoubtedly due to Freemasonry, which about -that time began to appear openly for the first time, and almost -simultaneously, in France, Great Britain and America, etc. The Palladian -Rite, established in France in 1769, found a congenial field of -operation in the corrupt society of the _Rgence_ and Louis XV. - -Its aim then, as to-day, is the same--the destruction of Christianity. -The Jacobin Clubs of 1792 were simply Masonic lodges. M. Waite, an -eloquent apologist of the fraternity, makes the following statement in -_Devil Worship in France_, page 322: "There is no doubt that it -[Masonry] exercised an immense influence upon France during the century -of quakings which gave birth to the great Revolution. Without being a -political society, it was an instrument eminently adaptable to the -subsurface determination of political movements.... At a later period it -contributed to the formation of Germany, as it did to the creation of -Italy. But the point and centre of masonic history is France in the -eighteenth century." - -This explains the outbreak of _Kulturkampf_ in Germany and Switzerland -soon after 1870, and the wave of anti-religious furor which swept over -Italy at the same period. To-day Catholicism has repulsed Freemasonry in -Germany, and the victory is not far distant in Italy. The Liberal -Socialist party is waning, and it is always with these elements of -socialistic anarchy that Freemasonry operates under a guise of liberty. - -The efforts being made to break up the Austro-Hungarian and the Russian -Empire are undoubtedly traceable to these Judeo-Masonic secret -societies. But France remains the great battlefield. Christianity and -Freemasonry are about to fight a decisive duel. One or the other must -perish. "Si nous ne tuons pas l'Eglise, elle nous tuera," said a -prominent Mason recently. The suppression of the Congregations and their -27,000 schools was, as they said, "only the opening of hostilities." The -battle must be fought to the finish. I have repeatedly affirmed that -France was held firmly in the coils of the Grand Orient, which has -packed both Houses with its creatures, thanks to the political apathy of -respectable Frenchmen. - -The Separation Bill is merely a blind, a slip-knot which can be drawn at -any moment to strangle the victim around whose neck it is cast. When his -Socialist accomplices of the Left reproached M. Briand with being too -liberal, he replied, "If necessary we can always amend the law or make -another." Only two short years ago M. Combes openly pronounced against -any project of separation. M. Rouvier was of the same opinion, but the -masters of France have spoken! - -In vain it was pleaded that the country be consulted before taking so -important a step. The perfidious feature of the Bill is just this--that -nothing will be changed until two years (1907) hence, when the "bloc" -will probably have gained a new lease of life by this manoeuvre; for -in May, 1906 they will be able to say to their electors, "You see the -law is voted, and nothing is changed." - -Article I sounds sweetly liberal: "The Republic assures liberty of -conscience and guarantees the free exercise of worship under the -following restrictions" (contained in some forty more articles). In my -opinion these numerous little "_restrictions_" will render the normal -existence of the Church in France impracticable. Of course she will -continue to exist, as she existed during the Terror, and under the -_Directoire_ and Diocletian. - -Another article, not yet voted, provides for the final disposition of -church buildings twelve years hence. That, apparently, is the allotted -span of life meted out to us by Masonic Jacobins. - -Article II with sweet inconsistency declares that "the Republic neither -recognizes nor subsidizes any cult," and immediately after it inscribes -on the Public Budget the service of _aumniers_ of state lyceums and -colleges. - -Peasants and poor struggling tradesmen and artisans must pay for the -luxury of religious worship or go without, but the sons of the rich, who -frequent these state schools, are to be provided for, gratis, by this -liberal Republic, which neither "recognizes nor subsidizes any -worship," except, of course, Islamism in Algeria, which is now, _ipso -facto_, the religion of the State. - -It is very pitiful to see so momentous a question treated with such -flippancy and indecent haste. - -All their utterances in the Chambers and in their Press show that the -Freemasons are convinced that they would be defeated if the next -elections were made on this issue. Therefore they must "do quickly." - -Alone of all the nations of Christendom, France totally disregarded Good -Friday this year. The Stock Exchange remained open and the Chambers met -as usual. The apostasy of the State will soon be complete. - -In Spain, where I spent Holy Week, the young king has taken a decided -stand against the Revolution. He has caused vehement enthusiasm by -reviving Christian customs fallen into desuetude during a century of -revolutions. On Holy Thursday he washed and kissed the feet of twelve -poor men whom he afterwards served at table, aided by the grandees of -Spain. On Friday he returned from church alone and on foot, and was -wildly acclaimed. We are so accustomed to see the menus of the banquets -of the rich, that it was refreshing to read, for once in the daily -papers, the menu of a banquet of some poor old men served by a king. - -This is the counter-revolution, and M. Salmeron and his Republican -Socialist Freemasons, French and Spanish, who recently caused riots in -many cities, might as well suspend operations. Only the assassination of -Alphonse XIII can prevent Spain from recuperating steadily. In Italy, -too, the counter-revolution is setting in. The Socialists, _alias_ -Freemasons, are succumbing to the Conservative or clerical party. The -Quirinal is steering for Canossa. France must bear the brunt till she, -too, can have her counter-revolution. - - - - -CATHOLICISM IN GERMANY - - -GERMANY, _August, 1905_. - -While Freemasonry in France seems on the point of triumphing over -Christianity by the destruction of all religious education and a law of -alleged Separation of Church and State, it is interesting to recall that -only thirty-five years ago Catholicism in Germany was as much menaced as -it is in France to-day. Churches were closed, prisons were full of -priests, bishops, and archbishops, and Bismarck, like M. Briand of -France, swore he would never, never go to Canossa. - -In 1871 there were only fifty-eight Catholics in the Reichstag, -representing 720,000 electors; in 1903 there were more than a hundred, -representing 1,800,000 electors; and to-day this Catholic Centre forms -the ruling majority in the country. The Emperor understands this -perfectly, and hence his amenities towards the Church and the Holy See. - -I have no doubt that the great Catholic Congress was held recently at -Strasburg with his knowledge and approval, not to say at his suggestion. -The event is significant coming so soon after his own investiture, at -Metz, with the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, conferred upon him by the -papal legate in the presence of the German cardinals and archbishops, -and the highest military dignitaries of the empire. - -At this Catholic Congress of Strasburg, forty thousand delegates of the -federated societies of Germany paraded the streets with banners and -music. The whole city was decorated, papal colours being most -conspicuous. These popular federated societies count half a million -members, grouped in nine hundred associations, that have 350 press -organs of their own. - -What makes the strength of these Catholic organizations in Germany is -that they represent all classes of society--princes, peasants, artisans, -nobles, and bourgeois--whereas Socialism finds its recruits almost -exclusively, amongst the proletariat, cultured and uncultured, chiefly -the latter. - -At the Congress, Prince d'Arenberg renewed the usual protestations -against the Piedmontese occupation of Rome, and the Bishop of Strasburg -rejoiced that, "in spite of the devastations of the French Revolution, -the ancient faith was still flourishing in Alsace, whence he hoped it -_might soon extend its salutary influence_." - -These events are significant following the diplomatic humiliation -inflicted on France when M. Delcass, Minister of Foreign Affairs, was -peremptorily dismissed at the behest of Germany. - -Not long since the Socialist Bebel saucily told M. Jaurs the French -would never have a pension for old age until the Germans gave it to -them. Nothing, too, would please William more than to play the rle of a -paladin of religious liberty to the oppressed French Catholics. - -Nor is there anything to prevent the resuscitation of the Germanic -Confederation as it existed in the Middle Ages. The Habsburgs and the -Austrian Empire might never have arisen, and the Hohenstauffens might -still be reigning, if they had had sense enough to keep their hands off -the Papacy. Napoleon, too, might have founded a dynasty as long-lived as -that of the Bourbons, had he not also fallen into the same evil ways, -and sought to dominate the whole Church by enslaving the Sovereign -Pontiff. His nephew, the third Napoleon, in his youth, unfortunately -became the bondsman of secret societies, whom he aided and abetted in -the spoliations of 1870 which preluded his fall. - -The Third Republic, too, will be shattered on the same rock, though not -before having caused irretrievable wrong to France, I fear. - - - - -PSEUDO-SEPARATION - - -_19th August, 1905._ - -In the past, marauding kings and robber barons bound to themselves their -fighting lieges by investing them with vast tracts of stolen lands which -they, in turn, distributed among their leal followers. - -The Third Republic has found a better way. To say nothing of the -extensive network of electoral strongholds that they have established -all over the country by unlimited and most abusive high licence, the -masters of France have enlisted the enthusiastic support of myriads of -pettifogging lawyers and all the nondescript red-tapers of law by the -unlimited supply of lucrative jobs, pickings, and perquisites, furnished -by the notorious laws of 1901 and of 1904, and their bandit operations -called "liquidation." - -They do not all pocket a few hundred thousands, like the millionaire -Socialist, M. Millerand, appointed by M. Waldeck Rousseau, but all have -a share in the carving up of the quarry. Not content with devoting to -this novel kind of graft all the holdings of the hapless Congregations, -who fell into its trap and asked for authorization, the Government has -kindly put up more than four millions and a half of public money, thus -far, to cover the cost of innumerable lawsuits, expropriations, etc., -going on all over the country since four years. The mobilizing of the -regular army for the expropriations was in itself an important item. All -this reckless, thriftless expenditure, joined to the continuous drain of -millions from the _Caisses d'Epargne_ and the exodus of capital, will -lead up to national bankruptcy as in 1795. - -To throw dust in the eyes of the public, domestic and foreign, a most -elaborate document has been published regarding pensions and retreats -for aged _congrganists_ ruthlessly thrown into the streets. - -This document is a huge farce, seeing that these pensions are only -conditional to there being funds enough, and there will be no assets -left. The Chartreux of Grenoble had some hundreds of their aged workmen -on their pension list. These were, in common justice, creditors of the -order, and should have received compensation from the _liquidateur_. But -the latter repudiated their claims absolutely.[10] - -What a fall was there from the billions of the Congregations, held out -as a glittering lure by Waldeck Rousseau in 1900, to bait his Socialist -majority with promises of pensions for workmen, etc. - -The Bill of alleged Separation, eminently calculated to bring Church and -State into constant contact and collision, holds out another golden -perspective. To use an expressive slang term, there is in it unlimited -_poil gratter_, fur to scratch, for years to come--nay, as long as the -Republic lasts. - -A few days after it was voted, 200 "venerables" of the Grand Orient -offered a banquet to M. Briand, the reporter of the Law of Separation, -while at a Socialist Congress presided over by M. Combes, the President -of the Commission of Separation, referring to this law, declared "that -the war against the Church must be carried on without intermission." - -Commenting thereon, the _Temps_ sarcastically wrote: "If the clerical -spectre is still to haunt us, was it worth while to be turning like -squirrels in a cage for the past five years?" - -The gist of the law is in the articles that regard "_Associations -cultuelles_," which are aimed at the destruction of Catholic hierarchy -and unity. M. Ribot sought, in vain, to obtain that religious edifices -and property should be attributed only to associations approved by the -bishop in each diocese. The words _bishop_ and _diocese_ are most -carefully eschewed throughout the law. The attribution of property is to -be made to "associations formed in conformity with the rules of general -organization of the cult whose exercise they are to assure" (Art. 4). -The formula is most perfidious, and intentionally so, whereas the -amendment of M. Ribot and the one little word bishop might have rendered -the law supportable. - -What are "the rules of general organization"? The seventy-six Organic -Articles, perfidiously added by Napoleon to the Concordat, purported to -be "rules of general organization of Catholic worship." Some of these -are rankly heretical, and have of course never been observed. These -Organic Articles are abrogated together with the Concordat by the new -law (Art. 37), but what is to prevent the Conseil d'Etat, composed -exclusively of Freemasons, from deciding that these articles are still a -criterion, being the _statu quo ante_? - -By similar means all their church property was taken from the Catholics -of Geneva (1872-5) and turned over to apostate French priests, Loyson, -Carrre, etc. - -A like contingency is foreseen by Art 8. It is anticipated that rival -associations may claim the same church property, and that scissions may -arise in associations, regularly formed and invested. - -Now in these cases the decision does not lie with the bishop, nor even -with the ordinary civil courts. Decrees of Conseil d'Etat are suspended -everywhere like swords of Damocles, or rather like the blades of the -_guillotine sche_, which has replaced the bloody guillotine of "the -grand ancestors of 1793," whom these up-to-date Jacobins invoke so -complacently. We must not forget, too, that Conseil d'Etat means Conseil -du Grand Orient. It is said that the Masons are secretly organizing -_Associations cultuelles_, so-called Catholic. Human nature has not -changed since 1790, and it would be strange, if they could not pick up -another Abb Gregoire or two, and a Talleyrand to boot. They can always -import some of that ilk from Geneva if necessary. - -Moreover, these _Associations cultuelles_ can be dissolved for so many -reasons (five), at a moment's notice, by a decree of Conseil d'Etat, -that it does not seem worth while to form them. - -The paltry reserve fund the _Associations cultuelles_ are allowed to -have must, like the rest of their funds, be deposited in the -Government's strong-box, and can only be used "for building, repairing, -embellishing church edifices." - -Evidently, it is not intended that there shall be any further -ecclesiastical recruitment. Seminaries are eliminated, _ipso facto_, as -they cannot exist on thin air. - -I do not enter into the details regarding pensions of aged priests, as -it is all too contemptible, the sums accorded being just enough to -starve on. But we may note a few violations of liberty and justice. - -1. All church property, movable or immovable, to which are attached -_fondations_ not directly regarding public worship, which are, in other -words, charitable or educational, are to be turned over to civic -institutions. Thus testators who left money for Christian parochial -schools and charities see it applied to the paganizing of the rising -generation and the poor. - -2. All churches and chapels arbitrarily closed by M. Combes are to -remain disaffected, i.e. confiscated. - -3. Ecclesiastical archives and libraries of episcopal sees and grand -seminaries that are claimed by the State are to be immediately -transferred to the State. This reveals the whole Jacobin mind. The -Church is to be deprived of all social action, by education and charity, -which she has exercised since two thousand years, and she must be -mummified like the Photian and Coptic and Nestorian Churches. - -The confiscation of these archives and libraries by a pagan state is, to -my mind, the most serious loss. Money can always be found again, but -when impious vandals have destroyed or dispersed these libraries and -archives, they can never be replaced. All English students deplore the -irreparable loss, caused by the cynical and base uses made of invaluable -manuscripts by reforming vandals in the sixteenth century. - -4. The Law of Separation deprives communes of the right to give any -subventions for religious worship--though the State inscribes on its own -budget the stipends to chaplains of lyceums frequented by children of -the rich, notwithstanding Art. II. - -5. A whole class of citizens are placed _hors la loi_, in that they are -deprived of the right of trial by jury for offences amenable to this -procedure. They (priests) are placed on the same footing as convicted -anarchists. - -6. Divine service is assimilated to any public meeting. A band of -Socialists may fill the church and render prayer impossible by their -irreverent attitude but they cannot be expelled unless they resort to -violence. - -7. The same class of individuals can invade any cathedral at any hour -and insist on inspecting, gratis, all its treasures (_objets mobiliers -classs_). In other words, these venerable edifices, the church of Brou, -Notre Dame, etc., are treated already like public museums, less well in -fact. And all this, we are told seriously, is "Separation." - -Meanwhile the two parties most nearly concerned in this question, the -Holy See and the French people, thirty-five million Catholics, have -never been consulted. - -M. Briand with remarkable impudence asserted that, since thirty-five -years, the country had sighed after "Separation," though he well knows -that no one thought about it but the Grand Orient. He himself admitted, -in the same session, that the question did not exist (_n'tait pas -pose_) at the beginning of this legislature (1902), and was only raised -by the Pope's violations of the Concordat. This lie, which tends to -become historic, was amply exploded, when M. Combes was convicted in the -Chambers of having suppressed a document, which amply justified Pius X's -action in the case of the Bishops of Dijon and Laval, which the lodges -used as a _casus belli_. Moreover, we must remember that the current -Jacobin thesis is that the Seventeen Articles of the Concordat, which -alone were signed by Pius VII, and the Seventy-six Organic Articles, -added _ex parte_ by Napoleon, in violation of every code of honour and -equity, form an intangible whole. Nevertheless, the Seventeen Articles -of the Convention which were alone signed by Pius VII and Napoleon, in -Messidor l'an IX, took effect as soon as the ratifications were -exchanged. The churches, seminaries, etc., were immediately "placed at -the disposal of the Bishops," and the stipulated indemnities were -forthcoming. - -It was not till Germinal l'an X that the Seventy-six Organic Articles -were promulgated, together with the Convention. - -Now no one surely can be accused of violating articles regarding which -he has never been consulted. Yet this is precisely the ground taken by -the Jacobins. - -A senator of the Right alleged, in defence of the Concordat, Art. 1134 -of the Code Civil: "Conventions legally formed are a law to those who -make them. They can only be revoked, by mutual consent, by those who -make them, and for causes which the law recognizes." - -Thereupon the reporter replied: "There was a Convention between Pius VII -and Napoleon; this Convention formed a whole (_un ensemble_) with the -Seventy-six Organic Articles." And as no Government has ever been able -to enforce these articles, some of which are rankly heretical, the -reporter alleged Art. 1184 of the Code against Art. 1134 to defend the -Government's _ex-parte_ denunciation of the Concordat. This Art. 1184 -declares that "a Convention is rescinded when one of the parties does -not keep his engagements." - -In other words, they say Pius VII and his successors have always -protested against the Seventy-six Organic Articles which the former did -not sign, therefore we are justified in denouncing, _ex parte_, the -Convention or Concordat of Seventeen Articles signed by Pius VII and -Napoleon. - -It is by this sophism that the Third Republic justifies the repudiation -of a portion of the National Debt; for the payment of annual indemnities -to the Catholic clergy was undoubtedly placed on the "Grand Livre" of -France by the Constituante, and recognized as part of the National Debt -by succeeding legislatures, before and since 1801. - -Recently, when it was proposed to suppress, without indemnity, the -_Majorats_ of the _ancien rgime_, M. Rouvier, Prsident de Conseil, -indignantly rejected the motion, saying, "Il ne faut jamais que la -signature de la France soit proteste." But when it is a question of -mere Catholics, the sense of national honour becomes blunted. They are -_hors la loi_. This form of jurisprudence has been familiar to -highwaymen from time immemorial--for them, the unarmed are always _hors -la loi_. - -M. Raiberti, a deputy from Nice, eloquently protested against the vote -of urgency, declaring that the country had never been consulted. "No -law," he said, "can be just and stable which does not express the wishes -of the people." All in vain. The Socialist voting machine worked -automatically at every turn towards the end. - -It is an incontestable fact that Separation has never appeared on any -programme these thirty-four years, except on that of 181 deputies at the -elections of 1902. Nevertheless, 341 (against 249) have just voted for -this law of Separation that is the negation of fifteen centuries of -national history.[11] - -The _Gazette de France_ calculates the number of electors represented by -these 341 deputies who carried the Separation Bill in the Chambers in -July:-- - - "On a total of 11,219,992 French electors only 2,997,063 pronounced - yesterday by their deputies in favour of the denunciation of the - Concordat and the spoliation of the Church, voted by a so-called - majority. - - "We must bear in mind that at the elections of 1902 the majority - only vanquished by 200,000 votes out of 8,000,000 voters inscribed, - and there are 400,000 functionaries. Thus spoke a senator (de - Cuverville), and he further quoted the declarations of M. Deschanel - in a public speech, July, 1905. - - "A minority, he declared, governs the country, and a law voted by a - certain majority represents 25 to 30 per cent. One deputy is - elected by 22,000, another by 1000. The Department du Nord has - 500,000 more inhabitants than six departments of the south-east, - yet it has five deputies less. Roubaix, with 125,000 inhabitants, - has one deputy, while the Department of Basses Alpes, with 115,000 - inhabitants, has five deputies." - -It is easy to see how a little judicious electoral geometry and -arithmetic will always give the Government a majority. Each -_arrondissement_ having a deputy, it is only necessary to cut up a given -district, notably anti-clerical, into a great many _arrondissements_, in -order to secure an increased number of deputies, _blocards_; and vice -versa the process need only be reversed in districts suspected of -"clericalism." We must also remember that at least one-third of the -electors never vote, and so the Government can always have a majority. - -This Separation Law is, as M. Briand said, only "transitory." It is, I -repeat, eminently perfidious. There is no form of tyranny, vexation, and -spoliation which cannot be legalized by its equivocal articles. It -contains all that is necessary to eliminate Catholicism from France as -far as public worship is concerned. - -On June 3rd I wrote, "What these Jacobins want is to have the law voted -before the elections of May, 1906, and then say to the people, 'You see -the law is voted, and nothing is changed.'" At the final session after -the vote, M. Briand, in a speech now pasted up all over the country, -said, "Our work is done. What have you to say? You tried to trouble the -conscience of the French Catholics, but can you find anything in the -Bill to warrant your grievances? Dare now to tell the people the -churches are to be closed, the priests proscribed." Yet all this, alas! -arrived almost immediately after the first Separation Law made in 1795. - -"No one," echoed M. Deschanel, a smooth-tongued, dainty politician like -M. Rousseau, "can maintain that this law is the work of hatred and -persecution, unless it is travestied by some profoundly dishonest -Government." - -"Like that of M. Combes, who travestied Waldeck Rousseau's Associations -Bill," rejoined a deputy of the Right. - -This Law of Separation bears the same imprint as that of 1901; both -emanated from the same quarter. It is, I repeat, a masterpiece of guile -and arbitrary tyranny. Any sense can be given to the ambiguous language -in which the most important articles are couched, and their -interpretation is not to be left to ordinary civil tribunals. The _jus -et norma_ in all doubtful questions is to be the Conseil d'Etat. In -other words, the Grand Conseil of the Grand Orient is to be the supreme -court of first and last appeal. - -The Church in France might just as well descend into the catacombs here -and now. It will come to this, unless some cataclysm rouse the French to -a violent uprising, in which the Third Republic and all its works and -ways will be swept away. - -The Senatorial Commission is composed of fourteen Jacobin Freemasons. -Their rulings are a foregone conclusion. The Separation Bill may be -considered already voted in the Senate. - -Great crimes against liberty, justice, and humanity cannot be -circumscribed by national frontiers. They offend all Christendom, and -though nations may, supinely, say "Am I my brother's keeper?" they pay -the penalty sooner or later. France in acute revolution will mean Europe -in flames, as in 1792. - - - - -THE PROGRESS OF ANARCHY - - -_12th October, 1905._ - -The stories that are going the rounds of the whole European Press leave -little doubt as to the fact, that a once great, free nation had her -Foreign Minister, M. Delcass, kept in office by the King of England -while he was in Paris this spring, and that two months later, he was -dismissed at the behest of Germany, who tore up the Anglo-French -Convention regarding Morocco and inaugurated the Congress of Algeciras. -No nation can act as France has done with impunity.[12] - -This is curious too when we consider that France is so sensitive about -the _ingrence_ of even a spiritual sovereign, that the denunciation of -a Concordat and the rupture with the Holy See were ascribed to the fact -that Pius X had taken the liberty of suspending two French bishops! - -It is also interesting to recall that the Bill of alleged Separation -was first voted at the Congress of Free-Thought held at Rome, in -September, 1904. The motion was made by Professor Haeckel, of the -University of Jena, Prussia, that: "We congratulate M. Combes in his -struggle for free-thought against theocratical oppression, and for the -radical separation of Church and State." Allemane, a French Socialist -deputy, exclaimed: "This is not enough. We want the abolition of the -Church." Robin, another French deputy, rejoined: "We are equally opposed -to both. We demand the abolition of Church and State." - -I have already stated how the annual convent of the Grand Orient of -France notified M. Combes (September, 1904) of their wishes regarding -the passage without delay of the Separation Bill. This Bill was voted, -or rather enregistered, by the Chamber of Deputies in July, as it will -be done shortly by the Senate.[13] - -Yesterday in Paris, the bureau of the "Federation of International -Free-Thought" actually intimated to the French Senate its behest that -the Law of Separation of Church and State be voted, without discussion -or amendment, before December 31st. When we consider that this bureau is -composed of one French Socialist Freemason deputy, the others being -German, Belgian, and Italian, it seems preposterous! It would be so, -even if all were Frenchmen, seeing that the Senate is supposed to be a -free deliberative body, having the responsibility of accepting or -rejecting what is done in the lower House. - -The London _Saturday Review_ is almost the only organ in the English -language which seems adequately to appreciate the enormity of the -religious persecution in France. - -"The extraordinary conspiracy of silence on this momentous matter, in -the English Press," writes the _Saturday Review_, London (July 8th, -1905), "is doubtless due to the fact that English Christians and -gentlemen are usually considered unfit to represent English newspapers -on the Continent. The Paris correspondents of our leading journals, -being nearly all men of oriental extraction, cannot, however honourable -and enlightened, be expected to entertain any interest in the fate of -the Christian religion. We are invariably led by these gentlemen to -believe that all is for the best in the best of republics. When, a -fortnight ago, France suddenly realized that she was within sight of a -war with her ancient foe on the other side of the Rhine, a thrill of -terror passed over the land at the mere thought that while engrossed in -the work of dechristianizing France, and hustling monks and nuns up and -down the country, the politicians in power had demoralized the army, -neglected the navy, and left the frontiers almost entirely unprotected. -Things have quieted down since then, but none the less there is a -feeling of unrest which makes people dread the passage of a law that -may lead to internal divisions and disorders even more serious than -those which agitate France at the present time." - -Referring to the Bill of alleged Separation, the _Saturday Review_ -continues: "_La Lanterne_ (the organ of the 'bloc') intimates that 'it -only accepts the Bill as it stands as a preliminary; we must silence the -priests and prevent them from infusing any more of the virus of religion -into the minds of the people.' ... To a thinking foreigner, the -spectacle presented by contemporary France is an amazing one. Here is a -great nation, which for sixteen centuries has proclaimed herself 'eldest -daughter of the Church,' renouncing her great position as protector of -the Catholics in the east and breaking off her connexion with the -Vatican, at a time when Germany is menacing her and proclaiming at Metz, -of all places in the world, her imperial wish to become more friendly -with the Church." - -This is an allusion to the Emperor William's having himself invested by -the papal legate with the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, surrounded by -German cardinals and prelates, as well as the highest military -dignitaries of Alsace-Lorraine. For me, the dismissal of M. Delcass and -the whole Moroccan incident are the handwriting on the wall which the -French are slow to read. On the Feast of St. Michael, September 29th, -the Minister of Public Worship held high revelry at a banquet of five -hundred Freemasons in the church of the recently expropriated convent of -the Ursuline nuns at Ave-ranche, just opposite that wonderful pile known -as the Mount St. Michel, a medival monastery and church. It is not -stated whether--like Balthazar--he sent for the vessels of the temple. - -The crimes against justice, liberty, and humanity committed in France, -since four years, are without a parallel in Europe since the Revolution -of 1790, if we except, of course, the atrocities in the Turkish Empire. -But most dire racial and religious antagonism may be alleged on behalf -of the Turk. In Spain, too, similar violations of liberty, justice, and -humanity have been committed during the nineteenth century, but this was -done in the heat and turmoil of revolutionary and anarchist upheavals. -In France they were committed in cold blood, under cover of law. Nearly -27,000 Catholic schools, freely patronized by Catholic parents, have -been suppressed, thousands of aged men and women have been dragged out -of their homes and cast into the street, _vi et armis_, the regular army -being employed in a great many cases. Their homes, built up by years of -patient labour, have been confiscated and sold for a trifle. Yet many of -them were authorized and had contracts with the Government. Recently, -convent and school buildings, estimated at 200,000 francs, were sold for -2200 francs. - -Two days ago, forty-three nuns of the Benedictine Order were expelled -from their homes; eleven of them were over seventy, and quite infirm. -The Congregations who were wary enough not to ask for authorization, and -realized what they could before going into exile, are not to be pitied -so much. Unfortunately, the majority fell into the Government's trap and -asked for authorization, which obliged them to declare all their assets, -that have been confiscated, and of which they will never see one cent. -Not only have all the assets been consumed in the process called -"liquidation," but the Government has been obliged to put up over -4,000,000 of the public money to cover the expenses of the -"liquidators." So ends the myth of the "billions of the Congregations," -held out as a glittering lure by Waldeck Rousseau in 1900 to his -Socialist henchmen. - -The terrible inroads, made by anti-patriotism and anarchical Socialism -by means of public-school teachers, are seriously alarming the creators -of this modern Frankenstein. Domiciliary perquisitions are being made -just now, in many cities, to seize the leaders of a conspiracy to -debauch the young conscripts who begin their two years' military service -now. A brochure, called _Crosse en l'air_ (meaning military revolt), has -reached, it is said, the million mark of circulation, in spite of the -Government. - -The conclusion of the Russo-Japanese war is an illustration of what I -wrote in _Slav and Moslem_ ten years ago, page 170: "Henceforth -commerce, not ideas, will rule in the council chambers of the world. -Politics will be forged in counting-houses and warehouses, 'where only -the ledger lives,' in whose dusty atmosphere none but merchantable ideas -are current. Wars will be declared, peace be made, alliances formed or -repudiated, according to their probable effect on the pulse of the -market." - -Without wishing to derogate from the merit of Mr. Roosevelt's good -offices, I am convinced he could not have succeeded if the financial -consideration had not rendered the belligerents docile. Japan was -absolutely at the end of her financial resources; the Russian coffers -were not far from empty. By the intermediary of the President, both -parties were given to understand that not a yen or kopeck more could -they borrow if peace were not concluded there and then. Any prolongation -of that war would have meant financial panic in many countries, chiefly -in France. Israel, by its bankers, has its hand on the throttle in -Christendom, and can make for peace and war more than all the peace -congresses. When we reflect on the three cruel, uncalled-for wars which -followed the Hague Conference in 1898, we can only tremble for the -future, if there is to be a new peace congress. In spite of conferences -and Jew bankers, guns will continue to "go off by themselves." These -Delcass revelations are not calculated to render the Germans more -friendly to France or England, and the knowledge they have acquired of -France's inability and unwillingness to fight must be a strong -temptation to a nation whose population is increasing at a formidable -rate, in spite of emigration, while that of France is stationary, not to -say steadily decreasing. - -Belgium, that great country in a very small compass, has doubled hers -since 1830. With 7,000,000 inhabitants, the figure of her business -operations is now the same as that of France with 38,000,000. This last -statement was made by M. Leygnes, ex-minister, in a recent political -speech, regarding the steady decadence of France under Jacobin rule -since twenty years. - -No country wants war, but all fear it. The causes of unrest are manifold -and legion. - -In an important political speech made by Lord Beaconsfield (Disraeli) at -Aylesbury, September 20th, 1873, he expressed himself as follows: "I can -assure you, gentlemen, that those who govern must count with new -elements. We have to deal not with emperors and cabinets only. We must -take into consideration secret societies, who can disconcert all -measures at the last moment, who have agents everywhere determined men -encouraging assassinations, and capable of bringing about a massacre at -any given moment." - -The passage is quoted in an article in the _Nineteenth Century_ (1876), -"A History of the 'Internationale.'" The "Internationale," by the way, -is fast superseding the "Marseillaise." The verse of blasphemy against -Christ and His mother is followed by one which ends with these words: -"Our balls are for our generals." A short time ago there were prolonged -riotous strikes on the eastern frontier. A striker was killed -accidentally. Thereupon M. Berteaux, the Minister of War, retired a -general and imprisoned a captain and a lieutenant for the crime of -having allowed the lancer regiments to carry lances when they were sent -out against the strikers! - -To propitiate these rioters the Minister of War went to Longwy, and the -strikers marched past singing the "Internationale," and the Minister of -War actually saluted the red flag! He afterwards protested in the -newspapers that he did not salute the red flag, but the men and women -who were escorting it! This Minister of War began life as dry-goods -commercial traveller. He is to-day a millionaire _agent de change_ at -the Paris Bourse, and is said to ambition the presidential chair. - -Shakespeare wrote: "Motley is the only wear." In France, everything -seems to be running to red. I have witnessed here two "free-thought" -funerals, one last April and another yesterday, in which pall and -banners were red, and even the coffin was draped in flaming red. Red "is -the only wear," though it is not easy to understand why "free-thought" -should necessarily blush--for itself. At the "Free-Thought" convention -held, recently, at Paris, under government patronage, anarchy dominated, -just as it did at Rome last September. Red was the keynote. - - - - -THE ABOLITION OF THE CONCORDAT - - -_February 3rd, 1906._ - -On August 19th, 1905, I described some of the odious features of the -alleged Separation Bill voted by the House of Deputies on July 7th, at -"midnight, the hour of crime." It may truly be ranked in that category -to which Cicero referred when he said, "There are laws which are merely -conventions among thieves." "The vote of the Senate is a foregone -conclusion," I wrote. The order had been given; every amendment (there -were about a hundred) was rejected automatically, and the law was voted, -December 6th, 1905, by a majority of 180 to 101. "The French -Government," I wrote (June 30th, 1900), "is on the verse of apostasy. Is -this a cause, a presage, or a symptom of national decadence? All three I -fear. Nations stand or fall with their governments. They have the -government they deserve, and are punished for the evil doings of their -rulers! 'I gave them a king in my wrath,' was once written of the Jews. -Is there sufficient vitality left in the French national constitution to -reject the poison which is undermining it, and of which alcoholism, -unknown in France fifty years ago, is but the outward and visible sign?" -To-day this apostasy, not of the nation, but of the French State, is -complete. It is the latest, though by no means the last act of a series -of anti-religious laws, elaborated by the Grand Orient and voted by -majorities and cabinets formed by them. I dealt with this subject on -March 17th, 1900, and said, then, that "with a Parliament and Ministry -like this any legislation is possible." - -The pseudo-Separation Bill is the most important legislation -accomplished in France since a century at least, and it has been done in -a manner which would not be tolerated in any free, civilized country. An -Act, which is the repudiation of fifteen centuries of national life, and -is fraught with the gravest consequences both political and religious, -interior and exterior, has been rushed through both Houses with most -unseemly, "scandalous haste." "You are treating it," said a senator, "as -if it were a question of a fourth-rate railroad." There was only one -deliberation in the Chamber of Deputies, and not one in the Senate we -may say. Senators of the Right were allowed to soliloquize eloquently. -Their speeches were admirable from every point of view and might well -have given pause to the Left. But these were dumb, by order. With few -exceptions, the reporter and President of the Separation Commission and -the Minister of Worship alone spoke, to curtly and peremptorily repulse -the proposed amendments. M. Rouvier, Prime Minister and Minister of -Foreign Affairs, who did not speak at all in the House of Deputies, -made but one appearance, on November 9th, at the first session of the -Senate, to declare that "the question was essentially a political one," -and that there was "a primordial and dominant interest for the -Government that this reform should be completed before the Senate went -before the electoral body." He further declared "that the Senate had -given its adhesion in advance ... if it were otherwise the Government -would resign." Surely a singular speech to make to a deliberative -assembly, on a matter that transcends in importance anything that has -been transacted in the French Parliament since 1793. - -If the law were not what Cicero calls "a convention among thieves," how -did M. Rouvier know "that the Senate had given its adhesion in advance"? -Indignant at the systematic refusal of the Left to enter into any -discussion, a senator exclaimed: "You are a deliberative assembly; try -at least to keep up appearances." MM. Monis and Clemenceau spoke on the -Left, not to refute the arguments of the Right, but to travesty history, -to malign and misrepresent, and to discuss subjects wholly irrelevant. -M. Monis entered into a long digression on the Franco-Prussian war in -order to incriminate a French cardinal and Pius IX. He was ably refuted -by M. de Lamarzalle. - -Whence this unseemly haste to vote a measure so important on the ragged -edge of a legislature? Next month one-third of the Senate is to be -renewed, the presidential term expires, and in May general elections are -to take place. In vain the Right, in learned and eloquent speeches, -adjured the Senate to postpone the final vote: (1) till one-third of the -Senators had been replaced; (2) till the Municipal Councils had been -consulted; (3) till the country had been consulted; (4) until after the -general elections of May, 1906. All in vain. "_Motions prjudicielles_" -and a hundred odd amendments all had the same fate. - -The explanation of this "scandalous haste" is very simple. The reporter -of the Commission said: "If you do not vote this liberal law now, you -can say good-bye to it, for you will never see it again." - -The country has never been consulted, and the Government wishes to -confront the people with the _accomplished_ fact, and above all to be -able to say, as I pointed out in my last: "You see the law is voted and -nothing is changed." If this law had been passed two years ago, it would -have gone into operation a year before the general elections and the -people might have been roused. On the other hand, if it hung fire now, -it would certainly have to be placed in all the electoral programmes. -Everything has been planned and foreseen by the lodges since twenty -years.[14] - -Several senators of the Right convincingly established that there was no -adequate reason for this unseemly haste--that no organic law had ever -been passed without a second reading; and they adjured the Senate not to -abdicate. M. de Chamaillard even offered to withdraw all the proposed -amendments (about a hundred) if the Senate would not vote the "urgency" -and give the law a second reading. All in vain. - -No one ignores or denies that the true purpose of the law is to -dechristianize France; even the spokesmen of the Government could not -dissimulate the truth. The coterie of Freemason Jacobins who have ruled -France for the past twenty years have not renounced their scheme of -national schismatic churches; only, instead of having one, which was -seen to be impossible, they propose to establish dozens of them by means -of associations of worship. Articles 4, 6, 8, 19 dealing with these -associations contain the whole venom of the law. In vain the -obscurities, the anomalies, the legal antinomies were pointed out, and -explanations demanded. _Rglements d'organization and Conseil d'Etat_, -it was said, would settle everything later on! In this _Review_, August -19th, I commented on the text of the law--and not one word, not one -comma, has been changed by the Senate! - -To-day, Islamism is, _ipso facto_, the only religion recognized by the -French Government; its ministers and mosques and schools are provided -for, and its ceremonies are often honoured by the presence of state -officials. This, in spite of Article 2, "the Republic recognizes and -subventions no worship." - -Another point worth noticing is that while discussing Article 1, "The -Republic assures liberty of conscience," the Minister of Public Worship, -speaking for the Government, clearly indicated that state functionaries -would never be permitted to send their children to any but government -schools. - -There are three points on which I insist in conclusion: (1) That the -country has not been consulted. At the general elections, 1902, not one -senator, and only 130 deputies out of 580 had "Separation" in their -programmes, and the Budget of Worship was voted in 1902, 1903, 1904 by a -compact majority who would then have been indignant had it been said -that they were acting against the wishes of the country. On January -27th, 1903, M. Combes himself repelled a suggestion of denunciation of -the Concordat thus: "If you do this by an improvised vote ... you will -throw the country into the greatest difficulties, trouble consciences, -and cause a veritable peril to the Republic." Now the country has not -been heard from since 1902. Yet the law was rushed through, on the eve -of a new election, for reasons I have indicated. - -(2) We must remember that when continual violations of the Concordat are -alleged as an excuse for the rupture, the Jacobins constantly confound -the seventy-five Organic Articles with the seventeen articles of the -Convention called Concordat, 1801, which alone was signed by Pius VII. - -(3) The suppression of the indemnity _Concordataire_ is, as far as the -Catholic clergy are concerned, a partial repudiation of the National -Debt. It was recognized as such by laws of 1789, 1790, 1791, 1793, 1801, -etc. - -This law of pseudo-Separation is not only a law of spoliation, but also -of supreme tyranny, in that in the name of Separation, it pretends to -regulate minutely the mode of existence of its victims, in future, by -special codes, and deprives them of the right to have more than the -strictest necessary for a hand-to-mouth existence. - -I am convinced that to acquiesce in regard to these "associations of -worship" will be to fall into the Government's trap as the Congregations -did when they applied for authorization in 1902. It will only mean -retreating before the enemy, and postponing the hour of violent -persecution and combat, which must come before the Jacobin-Freemason -yoke can be broken. - - - - -THE INVENTORIES - - -_12th February, 1906._ - -Year by year, I have foreshadowed and characterized the programme of -persecution, spoliation, and arbitrary tyranny which is that of the -Judeo-Masonic coterie which governs France, by means of the Socialist -vote. We have now reached the second part of this programme. - -In 1901 the Associations Bill was, according to Waldeck Rousseau, -intended to give legal standing and liberty to the unauthorized as well -as to the authorized Congregations. We all know, to-day, how -twenty-seven thousand of their schools have been closed, and how the -Congregations, simple enough to fall into the Government's trap by -asking for authorization and furnishing inventories of their property, -have been robbed of everything and turned adrift. - -The inventories now being made in the churches, amid scenes of violence -and bloodshed, with the cooperation of the regular army, represent the -first step on the road to wholesale spoliation and strangulation. If -only the victims would be docile and resigned there would be no trouble -whatever. Resistance will compel the operators to be drastic, when they -would rather go slowly and surely. The French voters should be -consistent. After giving themselves such law-makers, they ought at least -not to wince when the laws made by them are put into execution. But this -is an incurable idiosyncrasy of the French; they are clear-sighted, -energetic, and practical in the administration of their private affairs, -but when it comes to politics and government, they are absolutely -apathetic and purblind. Any pothouse politician can wheedle them out of -their votes, who would find it difficult to coax a sou out of their -pockets. All they ask is to be left in peace to attend to their business -and pleasures. It is only when the unpleasant practical sides of laws -like those of 1902, 1904, and 1905 are brought home to them that the -peasant seizes his pitchfork, and the bourgeois his cane, and bloody -manifestations occur all over France, as in 1902, 1904, and to-day -(1906). - -Generally speaking, inventories are made only when property is about to -change hands, as in cases of death and bankruptcy. Now the adherents of -the Catholic Church in France are numerous and very much alive, and they -cannot see why their ecclesiastical furniture and property should be -inventoried, quite forgetting that they gave carte blanche to the "bloc" -of Briands, Brissons, Combes, etc., who made the law they are now -resisting. - -If _Associations cultuelles_ are formed, a consummation most devoutly to -be deprecated by every friend of Catholic France, evidently they will -be composed by bishops, curs, and their present _conseils de fabrique_, -and there will not be any transmission of property. - -If there were no _animus furtandi_, no malevolent projects of -strangulation in the background, the Government would have contented -itself with denouncing the Concordat, and repudiating that portion of -the National Debt represented by the _Budget of cults_, instituted by -the Jacobins themselves, in 1790, when they appropriated Church property -and assumed the charge of maintaining Catholic worship in France. -Neither Protestant nor Jewish worship was included, originally, in the -_Budget de Cults_, seeing that their Church property had not been -touched, and they had no part in the Concordat. - -When the Anglican Church was disestablished or separated from the State -in Ireland, it surely never occurred to Mr. Gladstone and his Government -to order inventories to be made in the churches. - -To understand this revolt of the French people just now, we must recall -their past experience with inventories. In 1790 a decree obliged all -cathedral chapters and titulars of benefices to furnish complete -inventories of all their holdings, and in March, 1791, about four -hundred millions of Church property was seized and sold by the State. In -1901 the Congregations were invited to furnish ample inventories with -their demands for authorization; no authorizations were given, but the -inventories were very useful for the wholesale spoliations which -followed, spoliations which still masquerade under the pseudonym of -"liquidations." - -Moreover, the State makes these inventories to-day as proprietor, though -by no sleight of language can its ownership be proven, even as regards -churches existing before the Revolution, while many costly structures -have been erected and endowed since then by private initiative.[15] - -Fierce riots occurred over one of these churches built on private -grounds. The proprietor produced his title deeds, proving that the -commune had not contributed one cent and that he was absolute owner, but -this made no difference. - -The law Mirabeau of 1789 distinctly recognized that all ecclesiastical -property then existing had been "irrevocably given to the Roman Catholic -Church for public worship and charity." The Jacobins of to-day -apparently base their claims (Art. 12 de Separation) on this loi -Mirabeau, which declares, forthwith, that all this Church property is -"placed at the disposal of the nation," ("_mise la disposition de la -nation_"). But Art. 12 of the Concordat uses exactly the same words in -speaking of what was left, in 1801, of Church property, edifices, -etc.--"_sont mises la disposition des vques_"--all was "placed at -the disposal of the bishops"; and the faithful, moreover, were invited -to reconstitute the stolen patrimony by gifts and legacies, which are -now to be confiscated. - -Church edifices and everything pertaining thereto, as well as pious -legacies (_fondations_), are to confiscated, if _Associations -cultuelles_ are not formed before 6th December, 1906, or if said -associations are dissolved for any of the five cases foreseen by the law -ironically called of "Separation." Lineal descendants may claim -_fondations_ made by ancestors, but this liberal provision is illusory, -as all important bequests are made by people who are childless. Thus the -dead are despoiled as well as the living. - -The recitals which fill the daily papers of churches besieged and -assaulted by _gens d'armes_ and the regular army are very sickening, -coming so soon after a similar campaign against convents. There are -places where no workmen will break down doors or pick locks for the -fiscal agents, and they are obliged to carry operators, or official -_crocheteurs_, around with them. - -Recently two thousand soldiers were mobilized against a village church. -In many places the regular army have occupied the churches, -unexpectedly, before daylight, and thus the people were outwitted and -the inventories were made quietly. Though, if we may believe a -functionary interviewed by a reporter of the _Journal de Gnve_, not -one inventory has been made thoroughly, as the Government is very -anxious to have it over. The probability is that the odious work will -soon be suspended entirely, so that all may be forgotten before the -elections of May.[16] - -Yesterday two superior officers of the Engineering Corps at Cherbourg -had their swords broken by the Government, because they manifested their -disgust too openly. Many others are under arrest, because they refused -to lead the assault on Church edifices, and their careers may be -considered at an end.[17] - -The first article of this Law of alleged Separation declares that "the -Republic assures liberty of conscience." Yet surely it is a violation of -liberty of conscience to command a Catholic officer to batter down the -doors of his parish church. Moreover, when this article of the law was -being discussed in the Senate, the Minister of Cults (M. Briand), -speaking for the Government (as M. Rouvier was never present!), gave it -to be clearly understood that functionaries would never be allowed to -send their children to any but government schools! Yet surely it must be -a matter of conscience with any Catholic to send his children to -schools, which are frankly and aggressively materialistic and atheist. - -Article II declares that "the Republic recognizes, salaries, and -subventions no religion." This too must not be taken literally. For, as -I anticipated last year (May 29th), this law, made against thirty-five -million French Catholics, is not applicable to six million Mohammedans -of Algeria. Their mosques, their ulemas, their schools and congregations -will continue to be supported by the Republic which neither recognizes -nor supports any religion. This is just, seeing that the Third Republic -took all their ecclesiastical property, promising annual subsidies -instead, just as the Jacobins of 1790 did with regard to the Catholics, -only in the latter case the capital appropriated is retained, while the -charge is repudiated. - -Meanwhile Islamism is the state religion of France, _ipso facto_; the -only one whose ceremonies and mosques are honoured by government -officials on solemn occasions. Shades of Godfrey de Bouillon and St. -Louis! - -Spoliation and poverty would be endurable if only the Church were truly -separated from the State. But the latter presumes to dictate to the -Church a new organization of its parishes (_Associations cultuelles_), -to limit its financial resources, and decide how these are to be -obtained, how they must be invested, and what use may be made of them. - - - - -DUC IN ALTUM - - -_20th August, 1906._ - -"And the Lord said to Peter, Launch out into the deep," _Duc in altum_. -To-day again the successor of Peter has heard the word of command, _Duc -in altum_. He has exercised that _potentiorem principalitatem_ or -eminent leadership ascribed to the Roman See by St. Irenus in the -second century, and the whole leash of anti-clericals are transported -with rage and surprise at this grand act of Pius X, the one contingency -for which they were not prepared. The previous encyclical (_Vehementer_) -had left them indifferent. They treated it as a mere rhetorical -manoeuvre destined to cover a retreat, and as a covert acquiescence in -their law of tyranny and spoliation. - -The whole venom of this law is, as I wrote a year ago (August 19th, -1905), contained in the numerous articles that regard _Associations -cultuelles_--which are aimed at the very life of the Church, by the -destruction of her hierarchy, which is the basis of her constitution. In -the English and American Press it is sought, disingenuously, to -make-believe that these associations were merely "boards of trustees" -to administer Church property, and that similar associations exist in -the United States, England, Germany, etc., with the approbation of the -Holy See. This is not so; French parishes already have _fabriques_ and -_conseils de fabriques_, that correspond to boards of trustees. They are -abolished by the Law of Separation, and for them are substituted these -_Associations cultuelles_, in which the bishops have no standing and no -authority whatever. Any seven, twelve, or twenty-five persons, calling -themselves Catholics, because they happen to be baptized, can form one -of these associations, claim a church and all its revenues, and run the -parish to suit themselves. - -Even after one association has been legally formed "according to the -general rules of worship" (Art. 4), a most ambiguous expression, which -the lawmakers deliberately refused to make explicit, it is anticipated -that scissions may occur, and that rival associations may claim the same -Church property. In all these contentions the bishop has no voice except -incidentally. The Conseil d'Etat, an administrative tribunal composed -exclusively of Freemasons, is the supreme judge of the orthodoxy of -these associations. The phrase "formed according to the general rules of -worship" was supposed to offer ample guarantee to Catholics. Yet -recently the _Journal Officiel_ has officially registered four or five -schismatic associations, formed by already interdicted priests. They are -in insignificant hamlets, it is true, one of them being a parish of -only 175 members, but they are test cases, and show how foolish it would -have been to trust to the illusory guarantee offered by Article 4, -"according to the general rules of organization of worship." - -The discussion raised by M. Combes with the Vatican, regarding the words -_nobis nominavit_ in the canonical investiture of French bishops -presented by the Government as candidates, and then the affair of the -deposition of the Bishops of Dijon and Laval, 1894, convinced them that -a national schismatic church was impossible, so they fell back on this -alternative scheme of _Associations cultuelles_, destined to set in -motion a process of slow disintegration and gradual decomposition. A -noted Freemason said recently, "Twenty years of secular schools have -made us the masters of France; with twenty years of _Associations -cultuelles_ every trace of the Catholic religion in France will be -effaced." - -In the Senate M. Berger, a Protestant Freemason, made the following -interesting statement (_Journal Officiel_, p. 1380): "The law," he said, -"had been slumbering in the Republican programme for the past fifty -years ... but how can a law be perfect that has had only one -deliberation?... Instead of this a voice cries to us, 'Vote, vote.' Here -are articles in disagreement with each other--Vote. They are in -contradiction with the spirit of the law--Vote. They violate existing -rights--Vote, vote. Do your duty as a Republican.... Well, yes, I will -vote this law from a sense of duty."[18] - -This same senator described the true character of the _Associations -cultuelles_ when he said, "They are free associations destined to take -the place of the ancient Church." - -Not less clear was the statement of M. Briand, Minister of Public -Worship: "Dissensions may arise, not in matters of dogma only, but in -questions of administration. We must allow those, who do not wish to -submit, to form independent autonomous associations if they wish to use -the same church." - -If Christians anywhere wonder at the severity of the papal encyclical -rejecting these associations, it is because they have not even scanned -the text of the law, and accept, unchallenged, the misrepresentations of -a Press which seems to derive all its information from organs like _La -Lanterne_, _L'Action_, _Le Sicle_, _Le Temps_, etc. This Law of alleged -Separation presumes to dictate to the Catholic Church, an organization -in which episcopal authority, the basis of her divinely given -constitution, is completely set at naught. The Roman Pontiff, her -supreme head, was not once consulted, and in order to make it impossible -to do so, they began by severing all connexion with the Vatican in 1904. -It is very much as if, after suppressing all their schools and -colleges, the English Government were to pass a law declaring that -Quakers and Presbyterians are to be deprived of all their ecclesiastical -property unless they consent to adopt episcopacy and the Book of Common -Prayer. Would any one under these circumstances hesitate to say that -Quakers and Presbyterians were persecuted? I trow not. - -When Henry VIII had resolved to reduce the Church of England to the -condition of a department of State, his first step was to undermine her -constitution by removing the keystone of the arch. To do this it was -necessary to detach the clergy from Rome, the See of Peter on whom the -Church is founded. In 1530 he compelled them "to acknowledge the king to -be the singular protector and only supreme lord, and, so far as the law -of Christ will allow, supreme head of the English Church and clergy." In -1532 Convocation further abdicated by the elimination of the saving -clause, "as far as the law of Christ will allow." They also consented to -have their canon law revised by a Royal Commission, "with a view to the -elimination of all canons contrary to the laws of God and of the realm." -Their abdication and submission were recorded in an Act of Parliament, -and "henceforth," writes Wakeman, the Anglican author of a history of -the English Church, "the Church of England will be at the mercy of -Parliament." We all know how the schism and apostasy of this great -province of the Church were consummated by Elizabeth. The fate of -Moscow, and that of Constantinople five centuries before, was the same. -Detached from Rome, they fell beneath the tyranny of the State. - -It is this condition that the Judeo-Masonic coterie would fain have -brought about in France. The seventy-six Organic Articles added -surreptitiously to the Concordat of 1801 had no other object in view. -But, as M. Combes admitted in the Chambers, the Papacy never accepted -them, and no government had ever succeeded in enforcing them. The -question of _nobis nominavit_ and that of the Bishops of Dijon and Laval -were the last abortive efforts to bring about a schism. Failing this, -they resolved to reduce the Church in France to the condition of a -Polish Diet, in which the Conseil d'Etat, i.e. the Grand Orient, would -have enjoyed an unlimited _liberum veto_. - -Even legally speaking, these _Associations cultuelles_ could not -function normally, because their situation was anomalous. They were -neither owners, _usufruitiers_, nor simple tenants of the Church -property of which they had the charge and the responsibility. The law -is, as I said before, full of antinomies and obscurities. Senators of -the Right pointed them out one by one. All in vain. Decrees of Conseil -d'Etat will settle every question as it arises was always the -Government's reply. - -The trap was smartly constructed, and neatly baited with the greater -portion of the present patrimony of the Church, some two million -pounds, it is said, and all Church edifices, etc. Everything is to be -confiscated if _Associations cultuelles_ are not formed by December -11th, 1906. - -Considering the disastrous consequences of not forming associations, it -is not surprising that some Catholics, and even some priests, were -disposed, once more, to retreat before the enemy by forming some kind of -Janus-faced association, canonical on one side, and in conformity with -the law on the other. But it is absolutely false that a majority, or -even a minority, of the bishops at the Assembly were in favour of the -acceptation of the Law, _telle quelle_. - -The clergy and the Catholics of France have been retreating before the -enemy for twenty years and more, quite forgetting the "Resist the devil -and he will flee from you." - -Leo XIII, in his profound attachment to France, loyally lent his aid to -the Third Republic when implored by M. Grevy. He begged the clergy and -the Catholics to rally to the new regime in the interest of peace. - -He even discountenanced the formation of a Catholic party in France at -that time, because Catholics being divided, politically, into three -camps--Royalists, Republicans, and Imperialists or Bonapartists--he -feared strife, and did not wish the Catholic religion to be identified -with any form of government. - -At the time of Leo's death the _Journal de Genve_ (Protestant) declared -that "this Pontiff had at least one miracle to his credit, in that to -the end he had maintained kindly relations with an ungrateful Republic -that repaid his condescendence and friendly aid by reiterated -provocations." This is quite true. The scholar laws of 1886, when this -campaign against religion was begun by irreligious instruction, given -under a mask of _neutralit_, now completely laid aside; unjust fiscal -laws against the Congregations; and finally the laws of 1901, 1902 and -1904 which embittered Leo's last hours, were so many acts of hostility, -leading up to the final assault, all foreseen and prepared in the -Judeo-Masonic lodges since a century we may say. "Il faut srier les -questions," said Gambetta, whose maxim was _Le clericalism c'est -l'ennemi_; and "clericalism," it seems now, means simply _God_. To-day, -they openly proclaim that God is the enemy. - -After destroying the outposts and the ramparts by the destruction of all -her religious orders engaged in teaching, preaching, and ministering to -the poor and the halt, it was resolved to storm the citadel, the Church -of France herself, and the Law of alleged Separation was sprung upon the -nation. - -If any confirmation were needed as to the great hopes the Masonic -coterie had founded on the _Associations cultuelles_, we find it in the -unanimous outburst of surprise and fury which some of their more -moderate Press organs sought in vain to dissimulate. Billingsgate cannot -furnish the _Lanterne_ with terms adequate to the occasion; all the more -so, that from the beginning it has affirmed, in most scurrilous -language, that never, never would the Church refuse the "liberalities" -of the law, by which is meant the permission to keep some of her -property. Three editorials of _La Lanterne_--November 25th, 1905, "Ils -capitulent!"; August 16th, 1906, "C'est la guerre"; and "La folie -suprme," of August 20th--are most interesting revelations of the -contemporary Jacobin mind.[19] Even the millions represented by the -confiscation of the _menses episcopales_, etc., which the law had -assigned to the _Associations cultuelles_, cannot console these -sectarian Jacobins, whose budget shows a deficit of hundreds of -millions. They loudly proclaim that the law must be enforced -_integrally_, forgetting that the numerous articles regarding -_Associations cultuelles_ are already null and void, and that they -themselves propose to annul those regarding pensions to aged priests. If -they had the courage to enforce Article 35 of the law (_police des -cultes_) every French bishop would be in prison for reading the -encyclical of August 15th in the churches. Other articles of the _police -des cultes_ also fall to the ground, as they were aimed at -_Associations cultuelles_, who were to be held responsible if a preacher -used seditious language in the pulpit. - -No _Associations cultuelles_ will be formed except by Freemasons -masquerading as Catholics; but at least there will be no confusion, no -disorganization of the Church, which was the main purpose of the law. -Thus has Pius X unmasked their batteries and spiked their guns. They -will have to resort to other arms, those of undisguised persecution, the -very thing they wished, above all, to avoid. - -Little is left standing of the Law of Separation but the articles of -spoliation and confiscation. If these Jacobins have the courage to -enforce them "integrally," as they say, even to the confiscation of -Church edifices, it will mean, for the present, the most threadbare -poverty. Whether they will dare to do so remains to be seen. - -M. Clemenceau stopped the inventories, because, he said, "it was not -worth while to have riots and bloodshed for the pleasure of counting a -few candelabras." He and his employers may find that it is not worth -while to risk the Republic for the sake of some Church edifices, for -which they have no use. - -They may content themselves for the present with seizing all the -available cash, which will go the way of the "billions" of the -Congregations, and the exchequer will grow poorer and poorer, till the -vanishing point of national bankruptcy is reached as in 1793.[20] - -Referring to the critical condition in which the Church was placed under -the feudal system owing to the abusive practice of investiture by laymen -of ecclesiastical dignitaries, Guizot writes: "There was but one force -adequate to save the Church from anarchy and dissolution, this was the -Papacy" (_History of Civilization_). - -To-day also, the Papacy, alone, could rally the clergy and the faithful -in complete unity, to offer a solid and compact resistance to these -associations of a law of anarchy and dissolution. "That they all may be -one that the world may believe" (John XVI). - -By a stroke of his pen Pius X, whom these anti-clericals affect to -despise as an ignorant peasant, has broken up their cunningly contrived -trap. To reject the associations seemed fraught with dire consequences -and a perilous launching into deep waters. Happily the French episcopate -are worthy and equal to the emergency. My "First Impressions" regarding -them (p. 5) were correct. - -Their addresses to Pius X and to their flocks, form, with the -encyclicals "Vehementer" and "Gravissimo" (15th August), one of the -grandest pages of the annals of the Church. "Satan hath desired to sift -you as wheat"; to sift you in sore persecutions; to sift you by poverty -and by riches; to sift you in the flux and reflux of barbarian -invasions; to sift you in the ruins of crumbling empires, that you, like -them, might become as "dust which the wind scattereth," the dust of -sects and schisms and national churches. "But I have prayed for thee, -Peter, and thou, confirm thy brethren." _Duc in altum._ - - - - -SEPARATION - - -_24th November, 1906._ - -Disguise the fact as they may, there is religious persecution in France. -Never since the days of Julian the Apostate has any war been waged -against Christianity more malign, more insidious. The ancient Faith was -crushed out, by sheer force, in England and in many parts of the -Continent, in the sixteenth century. In France, too, it seemed, in the -eighteenth century, as though Christianity had received its quietus by -the same brutal means. But methods have greatly altered. Masonic -Jacobins, to-day, shudder at the mere suggestion of blood. A senator of -the Right warned the Government that the Separation might lead to -bloodshed. Thereupon the minister Briand made a gesture of deprecation. -"Pray do not speak of blood," he cried. One man was killed during the -inventories; and immediately they were stopped, and the Rouvier Ministry -fell. Yesterday again in the Chambers M. Briand exclaimed, "Du sang, -quelle parole atroce!" ("Blood, what an atrocious word!"). - -They have pondered the words of the Divine Master, "Fear not them that -kill the body"; and they are determined that there shall be no more -martyrs in the usual sense, no more guillotines, no more _noyades_ as in -1790. But they mean to choke out every germ of Christianity by casting -the minds of the rising generation in a mould of atheism, and to quench -every divine spark in the adult by degrading him in his own eyes to the -level of a mere animal, that must seize every fleeting advantage, by -fair means or foul, because there is no hereafter. - -"We have combated the religious chimera, and by a magnificent gesture we -have put out all the lights in heaven, which will never more be -rekindled.... But what then shall we say to the man whose religious -beliefs we have destroyed?" Thus spoke on November 8th, 1906, M. -Viviani, Socialist Minister of Labour. At the same tribune, the very -next day, M. Briand declared that his Government was not anti-religious, -but only irreligious, or neutral. Meanwhile both this Minister of Public -Instruction and M. Clemenceau, in public speeches all over the country, -have been reviling and calumniating the religion of the nation, and -congratulating public instructors on their zeal in emancipating the -minds of their pupils from all religious superstition, thus training up -"true men whose brains are not obstructed by mystery and dogma," whose -"consciences and reason are emancipated." - -In December 1905, this same M. Briand declared that the Government would -never suffer that its hundreds of thousands of public functionaries -send their children to any but state schools, and to make assurance -doubly sure, a law is deposed, and will soon be passed, establishing a -state monopoly of instruction. Disconcerted by the attitude of the -Papacy and the splendid unity of the clergy and their flocks, the one -contingency for which they were not prepared, the French atheocracy has -decided to content itself with spoliation for the present. A receiver is -to be appointed for all the holdings of the Church, _menses -episcopales_, pious and charitable foundations, libraries, etc. The Left -clamoured for the immediate attribution of the property to the communes, -as the law requires. But M. Briand declared that it would be for them "a -nest of vipers" and "poison their budgets"! - -M. Lassies summed up M. Briand's discourse by these unparliamentary -words: "Vous avez du toupet, vous----" ("You have brass enough, -you----"). - -Not daring to close the churches at present, they have resorted to a -subterfuge (_cousu de blanc_) in order to avoid doing so. The Republic -having promised religious liberty, they say the faithful and their -priests may come together "accidentally" and "individually" in the -churches. Now the text of the law is formal. Art. I says: "The Republic -guarantees the free exercise of public worship, under _the following -restrictions_." Then follow the restrictions, i.e. articles regarding -the associations; in other words, the constitution of the new -_by-law-established_ churches, which were to inherit all the patrimony -of the ancient Church and take its place. - -M. Briand himself, before the encyclical, had openly proclaimed that -there could be no public worship without these associations. The efforts -made by M. des Houx of the _Matin_ (alias "Mirambeau"), M. Decker David -(a deputy mayor), and other agents of the lodges or of the Republic, to -form these associations have been ludicrously pathetic. Failing these, -the Government has decided to leave the churches open for another year, -nevertheless. To storm them, and hold them after they had been stormed, -would be too perilous an enterprise, judging by the troubles caused by -the inventories. Therefore they have resolved to reduce the clergy by -famine, by military conscription, the suppression of seminaries, and -other vexatory measures. Moreover, the closing of the churches is the -one measure that would convince the masses that something had happened, -and that their religion was really persecuted. To the extreme Left, -clamouring for the immediate confiscation of Church edifices and -property, M. Briand said, "You want to strangle the Catholics right -away; we do not wish to do so" (November 9th, 1906). Precisely. What -they do wish is to empty the churches by every means, then close them, -one by one. - -On December 11th, 1906, state receivers are to be appointed for all -Church property, movable and immovable. The very sacred vessels and -ornaments, chasubles, etc., are all appropriated, and merely lent to the -Catholics, temporarily, at the Government's good pleasure. There has -been of late years a dearth of treasures of ancient religious art in the -Salles Drouots of Paris, Frankfort, Munich, etc. But soon Jew -_brocanteurs_ will be in clover. All that escaped the revolutionists of -1790 will be scattered to the four winds ere long. This is one of the -by-products, duly discounted, of this "law of liberty" called -"Separation." - -But they still have a latent hope that the inextricable difficulties -will force Catholics to capitulate and form associations. M. Briand's -circular, 31st August, 1906, ordered his prefects to report to him any -_subreptice_ associations not in conformity with the law of 1905. -Cardinal Lecot's society for the support of aged priests (their old age -pension fund being taken like everything else) is certainly of this -category. It conforms to none of the requirements of the law of 1905, -nevertheless M. Briand gives it a clean bill of health (November 9th). -His speech in the Chambers is a complete repudiation of his circular of -August 31st, and is a tissue of misrepresentation and tergiversation. He -harps upon Article 4 ("the associations must be formed according to the -general rules of worship"), which he declares "places all the -associations under the control of the bishops and of the Holy See." -Article 8 of the law provides, it is true, for endless schisms, all -subject to the decisions of the Conseil d'Etat, alone competent to judge -if an association is or is not orthodox, i.e. "formed according to the -general rules of worship." In this Article 8, also, he finds a guarantee -which should satisfy all reasonable Catholics! - -Now this same M. Briand, as Minister and reporter of the law, combated -(April 6th, 1905) in the Chambers a proposed amendment tending to -safeguard ecclesiastical authority in this matter. "You wish to turn -over to the Pope, by means of the bishops (_la haute discipline_), the -government of these associations. We cannot subject the faithful to this -discipline." - -In the Senate, too, this same minister declared "that even after one -association had been legally formed, dissensions might arise, not only -in matters of dogma, but also of administration; we must allow those, -who do not wish to submit, to form another independent association if -they wish to use the same church."[21] - -If the intentions of the Government were so benevolent as M. Briand -pretends, why did they not accept the insertion of the word "bishop" in -Article 4? It would have rendered the associations tolerable; but this -they strenuously opposed, and the keystone of their law was demolished -by the _non possumus_ of Pius X, August 15th. In the Chambers (November -9th) M. Briand admitted that "the law had been made in view of the -organization of _Associations cultuelles_." This I have affirmed since -nearly two years, and it is in vain that, elsewhere, M. Briand seeks to -make-believe that the law has accomplished its purpose, which, in -reality, it has just missed. - -Even to-day, if the intentions of the Government are as candid and -benignant as M. Briand pretends, why do they not insert one little -amendment in the text of the law which would make it possible for the -Church to form these associations? No, not so. They wish the Holy See to -accept the word of some irresponsible minister, or some declaration of -the Conseil d'Etat, equally valueless. - -In 1901 Waldeck Rousseau solemnly declared in the Chambers that Article -13 of the Associations Bill in no wise affected the parochial schools, -and two days after the law was voted three thousand of these schools -were summarily closed. He had also assured the Vatican that authorized -Congregations had nothing to fear. Even M. Delcass and the Ambassador -at Rome had given similar assurances to the Vatican before the law of -1901 was deposed in the Chambers. With these and similar precedents it -would be idle indeed to attach any faith to M. Briand's dulcet, fair, -feline, fallacious utterances in the Chambers (November 9th). They are -merely "words, words," and _verba volant_. Moreover, how long will M. -Briand and the Clemenceau Cabinet be able to resist the Socialist impact -of the advance guard? - -More than a year ago, I wrote that any interpretation could be given to -some of the ambiguous terms in which the law was couched, and that this -ambiguity was deliberate and intentional. - -By his own authority. M. Briand (Chambers, November 12th, 1906) has -offered the Catholics one year more in which to form associations under -the Separation Bill. Thereupon M. Puech, a deputy of the Left, flung -these biting words at the Government: "The law without the associations -is void ... it has fallen to pieces.... And you have no associations. In -1907 you will not have them any more than in 1906.... Void, nothingness, -chaos, behold your law." "In 1790," said the same deputy, "as to-day, -the struggle was engaged between two principles, between dogma and -science.... The Constituante was not firm. Camille Desmoulins spoke like -M. le Ministre Briand.... Three succeeding assemblies were forced -logically to extreme measures--death and transportation." - -The astute guile that characterizes M. Briand's declarations in the -Chambers can only be compared to that of Julian the Apostate, who began -his reign by a grand edict of toleration. Or rather it recalls those -deliberations of that council in Pandemonium (Book II, _Paradise Lost_): -"Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood, the fiercest spirit, now -fiercer by despair, spoke thus: My sentence is for open war of wiles I -boast not." But he was overruled by Beelzebub, who "pleaded devilish -counsel first devised by Satan," and which consisted in "seducing the -puny habitants of Paradise to our party" by guile and fraud. - -These associations of the law of 1905, which ignorant or malevolent -writers continue to represent as being the same as those of Prussia and -other half-Protestant countries, were a most ingenious device for -inducing the Church to commit suicide by the repudiation of her divinely -given constitution. - -The point, that essentially differentiates associations for public -worship in Prussia and elsewhere from those of the law of 1905, is that, -in the former, the Catholic hierarchy was respected. In them the curate -is by right president, episcopal authority is paramount, and the State -cannot intervene if dissensions arise. Now Articles 8, 9, etc., of the -French law are the very antipodes of all this.[22] - -The fact is that there can be no real accord between the Church and the -French atheocracy, whose openly avowed object is the radical destruction -of the religious idea, even of natural religion. - -Never perhaps, in the history of humanity, has there been such a -monstrosity as a distinctly atheistic state. Pagan antiquity, even the -Grecian Republics, had a cult of some kind. The First Republic, under -Robespierre, having decreed the abolition of Christianity, immediately -substituted theo-philanthropy. But the Third Republic proclaims itself -atheist, and insists that the nation shall be made atheist by means of -public schools. - -Hitherto the words lay, layman, meant in French as in English, simply, -not of the clergy; to-day, _laque_ in France means atheist. _L'cole -laque_ means, not a school taught by laymen, but a school of -infidelity. Catholic lay or secular schools are still holding their own -against the state schools, which are nearly empty in some communes. - -Not satisfied with having suppressed twenty-seven thousand religious or -congregational schools, the annual September convent of the Grand Orient -has decided that all these Christian lay schools, primary and secondary, -must disappear. It also finds that the State _lyces de filles_ "are not -sufficiently laicized," meaning of course not sufficiently atheized and -depraved. Yet the work seems to be well under way, if we are to judge by -the following extracts from the discourse pronounced on the grave of a -child of twelve by one of her companions of an _cole laque_ near -Allevard, in presence of the whole school. "For thee infinite -nothingness has begun, as it will begin for all of us. Thy death, or -rather the supposed Being who caused it, must be very wicked or very -stupid.... He made thee the victim of a society refractory to society -solidarity.... We really cannot excuse this celestial iniquity." I -transcribe from the anti-clerical _Dpche Dauphinoise_. The spectacle -of this free-thought funeral, and of a little schoolgirl blaspheming -over the grave of a playmate, is simply hideous. Poor hapless victims of -a pagan state, that nevertheless enlists the sympathies of Christians -who spend millions on missions to the heathen Chinese! - -This Masonic convent has also decided "that the means of production and -exchange must be restituted to the collectivity." Therefore we know in -advance what the new Chambers will accomplish: State monopoly of -instruction, and State Socialism prepared and accomplished as rapidly -as possible. - -Under these circumstances it really does not matter very much if the -churches remain open or not, for the present. As an English ecclesiastic -recently observed, "We can do without our churches, but we cannot do -without our schools." - -It is by means of Christian schools that Europe was redeemed from -barbarism, and preserved from relapsing into its first estate. Each -generation, in turn, must be redeemed from barbarism, as were our -forefathers, by the Christian upbringing of the young, otherwise -retrogression must inevitably ensue. Every gardener understands this. It -is natural law in the spiritual world. To descend and retrograde is so -much easier than to ascend. - -To-day, the eternal enemy of God and man seeks to wrest from the Church -the great fulcrum by which Christendom was upraised from barbarism, and -to use her own arms against the Church, by converting schools into -nurseries of infidelity and immorality. - -In vain secularists would tell us that history, geography, and grammar -are neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Mohammedan. The venom of -infidelity and vice can be conveyed by the conjugation of a verb. -Physical geography may be used as a catapult against the very notion of -right and wrong. As to the misuse of history, its possibilities are -unlimited. Moreover, the Church, that has received the divine -commission to "teach all nations," needs the aid of all the arts and -sciences to accomplish this mission. The Catholic Church, that is -essentially, and _jure divino_, _Ecclesia docens_, will never forego her -right to teach them all, as she has been doing for two thousand years. -In the sixteenth century China seemed hopelessly closed against -Christian missionaries. But where apostles failed to penetrate, a man of -science, who was also a saint, succeeded. Mathew Ricci, the Jesuit -savant, was welcomed by mandarin _literati_, and founded the first -Christian mission in China in 1581. - -All the old universities of Europe were founded by the Church. The arts -and sciences grouped themselves around the Chair of Theology, as -hand-maidens around their mistress. Religion is, indeed, the aromat -which alone preserves them from becoming corrupt and corrupting. -Already, society is beginning to discover the evil effects of separating -religion from learning. The knowledge and uses of fire form one of the -main lines of demarcation that separate us from animals. Monkeys -appreciate the kindly blaze, but the smartest of them has never -attempted to light a fire. - -When men, with this distinctive and dangerous knowledge of fire, shall -have degraded their mentality to that of the simian by atheism or -secularism, and its concomitant materialism, the social order will no -longer be possible. A few rudely constructed, diminutive bombs can lay -the proudest city in ruins. - -To-day, as in 1790, France is the field on which another great battle is -to be fought between Christianity and paganism, and its results will be -far-reaching. The French atheocracy has "said unto God, Depart from us; -for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways" (Job XXI. 14). Churches, -here and there, have already been profaned by Masonic revelry, the cross -has been demolished on every highway, and removed from every school and -hospital. The State, disposing of all the power and all the riches of -the nation, is at the command of a secret society that is the sworn and -avowed enemy of religion. If the Church again come forth victorious from -the struggle, stronger and purer through poverty and persecution, "if -the Christian Hercules uplift Antus, son of the earth, into the air and -stifle him there, then--_patuit Deus_." - - - - -LIBERTY AND CHRISTIANITY - - -Liberty is, pre-eminently and indisputably, a product of Christianity -and must diminish with every diminution of the faith. "Other -influences," writes Lecky, "could produce the manumission of many -slaves, but Christianity alone could effect that profound change of -character that rendered the abolition of slavery possible, and there -are," he says, "few subjects more interesting than the history of that -great transition" (_History of Rationalism_, II, 258). - -There is, indeed, no grander spectacle than that of the Catholic Church -proclaiming, in ages of barbarism, a divine "Thou shalt not" to masters, -whose power over their slaves was unlimited by any law, and even -assuming jurisdiction over them in virtue of a moral law, above all -human laws. - -Ecclesiastical jurisprudence enacted penalties against "masters who took -from their theows (Saxon slaves) the money they had earned; against -those who slew their theows without just cause; against mistresses who -beat their theows so that they died within three days.... Above all, the -whole machinery of ecclesiastical discipline was set in motion to -shelter the otherwise unprotected chastity of the female slaves" -(Wright's _Political Condition of the English Peasantry in the Middle -Ages_). "That Church which seemed so haughty and so overbearing in its -dealings with kings and nobles," writes Lecky, "never failed to listen -to the poor and the oppressed, and for many centuries their protection -was the foremost of all the objects of its policy" (_History of -Rationalism_, II, 260). Simultaneously with the gradual abolition of -slavery, we find the elevation of woman, and her redemption from -polygamy, a natural concomitant of slavery. "No ideal," writes Lecky, -"has exercised a more salutary influence than the medival conception of -the Virgin [he means devotion to]. For the first time, woman was -elevated to her rightful position and the sanctity of weakness was -recognized. No longer the slave, the toy of man, no longer associated -only with ideas of degradation and sensuality, woman rose, in the person -of the Virgin Mother, into a new sphere, and became the object of a -reverential homage of which antiquity had no conception. Love was -idealized. The moral character and beauty of female excellence was for -the first time felt ... a new kind of admiration was fostered. Into a -harsh, and ignorant, and benighted age this ideal type infused a -conception of gentleness and purity, unknown to the proudest -civilizations of the past.... In the millions who have sought with no -barren desire to mould their characters into her image ... in the new -sense of honour, in the softening of manners in all walks of society, in -this, and in many ways, we detect its influence. All that was best in -Europe clustered around it [the devotion to Mary], and it is the origin -of many of the purest elements of our civilization" (_History of -Rationalism_, I, 231). - -These are striking words from the pen of a rationalist, and would that -all women understood that the laws of divorce, the first-fruits of the -weakening of the Christian principle, and the pagan renaissance in -Europe, mark also the first steps of their retrogression to the -condition, from which they were uplifted by Christianity. - -After centuries of judicious preparation, the emancipation of all -Christians was proclaimed by Pope Alexander III. "This law alone," -writes Voltaire, "should render his memory precious to all, as his -efforts on behalf of Italian liberty should endear him to Italians" -(_Essai sur les moeurs_). - -Mr. Hallam has satirically remarked in his _History of the Middle Ages_, -page 221, that "though several popes and the clergy enforced manumission -as a duty on laymen, the villeins on church lands were the last to be -emancipated." But he well knows, for he has told us himself on page 217 -of the same work, that "the mildness of ecclesiastical rule and the -desire to obtain the prayers of the monks induced many to attach -themselves as serfs to monasteries." An old German proverb, too, says: -"It is good to live under the crozier." When the monasteries were -suppressed by Henry VIII, we know by Strype's _Chronicles_, that misery -and vagrancy reached terrible proportions. - -But while freely admitting that "in the transition from slavery to -serfdom, and from serfdom to liberty, the Catholic Church was the most -zealous and the most efficient agent" (II, 234), Lecky is loath to admit -that her action in the sphere of political liberty was equally -efficacious, and that this second emancipation could have been -accomplished slowly, and judiciously, as was the first, without the -upheavals, the violence, and the excesses of the sixteenth and the -eighteenth centuries. Yet on page 158, vol. II, he reminds us that "St. -Thomas Aquinas, the ablest theologian of the Middle Ages, distinctly -asserts the right of subjects to withhold obedience from rulers who were -usurpers or unjust." "To the scholastics of those days also," he says, -"we chiefly owe the doctrine of the mediate rights of kings, which is -very remarkable as the embryo of the principles of Locke and Rousseau." -Authority considered in the abstract is of divine origin; but still the -direct and immediate source of regal power is the nation, according to -Suarez. Apparently, the noisy standard-bearers of civil liberties and -political rights, in the eighteenth century, were not exactly pioneers, -but mere plagiarists. - -"As long," continues Lecky, "as the object was not so much to produce -freedom, as to mitigate servitude, the Church was still the champion of -the people.... The balance of power created by the numerous corporations -she created or sanctioned, the reverence for tradition, which created a -network of unwritten customs with the force of public law, the -dependence of the civil on the ecclesiastical power, and the right of -excommunication and deposition, had all contributed to lighten the -pressure of despotism" (II, 235). - -We must array Mr. Lecky against himself, and conclude that the Church -did more than "mitigate servitude"; she also produced freedom by the -institution of these numerous guilds and unwritten laws, many of which -still existed until they were swept away by the Revolution of 1790, -which left nothing standing but an omnipotent tyrant, called the State, -and a defenceless people, _corvable_, _taillable_, and guillotinable, -at mercy. These "unwritten customs with the force of public law" made -Spain the freest country in Europe, until the seventeenth century. To -suppress these _fueros_ of the commons, or unwritten constitutional -liberties, was one of the chief objects of the Spanish Inquisition, -established by royal authority, and aimed chiefly at the bishops, as -champions of popular rights. One of its first victims was the saintly -Archbishop of Toledo. The Basque provinces retain their _fueros_ intact -to this day. - -In France too liberty succumbed with the Public Law of Europe (1648). - -In 1314 Philippe le Bel, in order to obtain subsidies, convoked the -States General (Les Trois Etats). From that time to 1359, they were -convoked seven times. In the first half of the fifteenth century there -were fourteen convocations. From 1506 to 1558 there was an interruption -of fifty-two years. From Henry II to the minority of Louis XIII, the -States met six times. In 1614 was held the last convocation of the Trois -Etats, until 1789. - -Under the despotic Louis XI (1401-83), Philippe de Commines still dared -to write with impunity: "Il n'y a roi ni seigneur qui ait pouvoir, outre -son domaine, de mettre un denier sur ses sujets sans octroi et -consentement, sinon par tyrannie et violence." ("It would be tyranny and -violence for any king or lord to raise a penny of taxation on his -subjects, without their leave and consent.")[23] - -"Nevertheless," writes de Tocqueville, "the elections were not abolished -till 1692 ... the cities still preserved the right to govern themselves. -Until the end of the seventeenth century we find some which were small -republics, in which the magistrates were freely elected by the citizens -and answerable to them, and in which public spirit was active and proud -of its independence" (_Ancien Rgime_, p. 83). - -Mr. Lecky is pleased to attribute to the papal power "some of the worst -calamities--the Crusades, religious persecutions, the worst features of -the semi-religious struggle that convulsed Italy.... It is not -necessary," he continues, "to follow in detail the history of [what he -is pleased to call] the encroachments of the spiritual on the civil -power" (II, 155), though it would be more correct to say the -encroachments of the civil on the religious power. - -But it is very necessary to do so, because though the main object of -these struggles of the spiritual power with despotic kings was the -independence of the Church, it cannot be gainsaid that personal and -civil liberty were thereby enhanced, as Lecky himself admits (p. 235). - -It would be too long to discuss here the Crusades, which merely saved us -from the fate now enjoyed by Islamic countries, or the alleged -persecution of the Manichans, who, under the name of Albigenses, -menaced to disrupt the incipient civilization of Europe by their -subversive tenets of anarchy and collectivism, equally opposed as they -were to ecclesiastical and to civil government. - -The "semi-religious wars," or the so-called "wars of investiture," which -both he and Montesquieu disingenuously confound with the wars of Italian -independence, eminently contributed to the cause of civil liberty in -England, not less than in Italy, and elsewhere. Anselm, Becket, and -Stephen Langton were worthy coadjutors of the policy of St. Gregory VII -and the pioneers of political liberty. No one understands this better -than Mr. Wakeman, the Anglican author of a recent History of the English -Church. - -"It is true," he says, "that Anselm could not have maintained the -struggle [against clerical investiture by laymen] at all if he had not -had the power of Rome at his back. Englishmen quickly saw that the -question between Anselm and Henry was part of a far wider question. They -felt that bound up with the resistance of the archbishop was the sacred -cause of their own liberty. The Church was the one power in England not -yet reduced under the iron heel of the Norman kings. The clergy was the -one body which still dared to dispute their will. To them belonged the -task of handing on the torch of liberty amid the gloom of a tyrannical -age. The despotism of the crown was the special danger to England in the -eleventh and twelfth centuries. It was the Church that, in that time of -crisis, rescued England from slavery. Had there been no Becket, Stephen -Langton, Archbishop of York, would have failed to inspire the barons to -wrest the Charter from John" (p. 105). And on page 108 he continues: -"From the Conquest to the time of Simon de Montfort two great dangers -threatened England, the uncontrolled will of unjust, wicked kings and -the grinding administrative despotism of the government. From both she -was saved by the Church. In her own canon law she opposed to the king's -laws a system which claimed a higher sanction, was based on principles -not less scientific, and was already invested with the halo of -tradition." - -It is this same canon law that the Church in France is, to-day, opposing -to the tyranny of an omnipotent State or parliamentary majority, _alias_ -Grand Orient, which has, since four years, crushed out two of the most -sacred liberties--the right to live in community and the right to -educate one's children in the Christian faith, the faith of our fathers, -"once delivered to the saints." - -The long struggle, between the Popes and the German rulers, who sought -to establish their despotic rule in Italy and enslave the whole Church -by making the bishops of Rome their domestic chaplains, resulted in the -glorious Congress of Venice, 1177, confirmed by the Peace of Constance, -which is the first instance in history of peoples wresting political -liberties from regal tyrants. The Magna Charta is the second in point of -time. - -After a long and seemingly hopeless struggle with Frederick Barbarossa, -Alexander III, to whom this Hohenstaufen had opposed a series of servile -anti-popes, triumphed, and with him triumphed the League of the Italian -Cities, of which he was the unarmed chief. Milan, Brescia, Pavia, and -other cities, which had been razed to the ground by the tyrant, thanked -the Pope for having rendered them their liberty. Alexandria, an -important city of the Piedmont, bears the name of this peaceful -liberator. Voltaire refers to these events in the following terms: -"Barbarossa finished the quarrel by recognizing Pope Alexandria III, -kissing his feet, and holding his stirrup." (Le matre du monde se fit -le palefrenier du fils d'un gueux qui avait vcu d'aumnes.) "God has -permitted," exclaimed the Pope, "that an old man and a priest should -triumph, without fighting, over a terrible and powerful emperor" (_Essai -sur les moeurs_, II, 82).[24] - -In the Eastern or Byzantine Empire, the clergy, at an early date, and -long before the schism of 1054, began to succumb to Csaro-papism, a -revival of the ancient pagan system, in which the temporal ruler was -also the high-priest of his realm, and we well know that neither -personal nor civil liberty ever found foothold in this _Bas Empire_. - -"While the ecclesiastical monarchy of the West," writes a Protestant -historian, "could lead onward the mental development of the nations to -the age of majority, could permit and even promote freedom and variety -within certain limits, the brute force of the Byzantine despotism -stifled and checked every free movement" (Neander, _History of the -Church_, VIII, 244). - -The French kings, even more than the English before Henry VIII, strove -hard to establish the same system, and above all to exempt themselves -from the Christian law of monogamy, which, with personal freedom, -constitutes the great line of demarcation between Eastern, and Western -or Latin civilization. Montesquieu assures us that a neighbour's wife, -unlawfully taken, or their own unjustly repudiated, caused all, or -nearly all, the troubles between the Papacy and the French kings. - -On the whole, however, civil liberty in Europe had reached an advanced -stage in the fifteenth century. Cities and provinces really had more -self-government then, than during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and -eighteenth centuries, more than they have now in some countries, notably -in France. - -The neo-paganism of the Renaissance was one of those periodical revolts -of what St. Paul calls the "carnal mind, which is enmity with God." -"Sapientia carnis inimica est Deo" (Rom. VIII). It was a conjuration -against Christianity and culminated in the Protestant revolt, which for -ever destroyed the unity of Christendom, and set in motion a progressive -scepticism or rationalism, which is Protestantism in its last analysis. - -For more than three centuries English writers have repeated that the -Protestant revolt was a struggle for liberty of conscience, -notwithstanding the incontrovertible fact that all its foremost leaders -were bitterly opposed to religious toleration, and that the sects -relentlessly persecuted each other, as well as the adherents of the -ancient faith. - -Protestantism being, intrinsically, the nursery of rationalism, was -necessarily a diminution of Christianity, and produced a corresponding -diminution of liberty, both personal and civil. At the Congress of -Westphalia, 1648, where, as Macaulay states, "Protestantism reached its -highest point, a point it soon lost and never regained" (_Essay on -Ranke_), was formulated the monstrous axiom _Cujus regio ejus religio_, -which became the common law of Europe in lieu of the hitherto prevailing -rule of One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism. Henceforth, as in pagan days, -each ruler assumed the right to dictate the religious beliefs of his -subjects in the new system of national churches. The "territorial -system" it was called, and represented the net result of a century of -Protestantism. - -There were, indeed, no fiercer despots over men's consciences than the -so-called "reformers." If any doubt let him read their lives. Let him -read of the bloody strife that rent the Netherlands after they had -shaken off the Spanish yoke; how the great Barneveldt fell a victim to -miserable oppression of Gomarists by followers of Arminius, and vice -versa; how Remonstrants persecuted contra-Remonstrants, all on account -of some metaphysico-religico distinctions neither understood clearly. - -Then let us consider the embarkation of the Pilgrim Fathers from -Holland, where they had sought asylum from the rigid conformity enforced -by reformed England. Finding themselves no better off in the republic, -which had emancipated itself, simultaneously, from Spain and Rome, the -Pilgrim Fathers shook the dust of the old world from their feet and -sought a new hemisphere. Surely in the primeval forests men might hope -to interpret Scripture and serve God each according to his own lights. -Not so. No sooner were the camp fires lighted, and the barest -necessities of life provided for, than we find a theocracy of the most -hard and fast type established by the Argonauts of the Golden Fleece of -religious toleration. A veritable office of the Holy Inquisition was -instituted "to search out and deliver to the law" all who "dared to set -up any other exercises than what authority hath set up." While it was -gravely affirmed that "these cases were not a matter of conscience, but -of a civil nature," Sir John Saltonstall wrote from England to the first -Puritan Grand Inquisitors, Wilson and Cotton, remonstrating "at the -things reported daily of your tyranny, as that you fine, whip, and -imprison men for their consciences." - -The acts of the Inquisition dwindle into insignificance if we place in -the other balance the excesses committed, and the penal laws enacted -from 1530 to 1829 against Dissenters and against English Roman Catholics -in England. The Toleration Act of William and Mary, 1701, relieved -Protestant "Recusants," but the penal laws against Catholics were -maintained till 1829, though many had fallen into desuetude. The -principal were: For hearing Mass a fine of 66 pounds and one year's -imprisonment; they were debarred from inheriting or purchasing lands; -they could hold no office nor bring any action in law; they could not -teach under pain of perpetual imprisonment; they could not travel five -miles without a licence, nor appear within ten miles of London under -penalty of 100 pounds; while the universities were closed against them -by test acts. Catholics having been thus deprived of all means of -obtaining a liberal education and raising their voice on behalf of the -truth, Protestant writers, since three hundred years, have been able to -travesty and misrepresent, unchallenged, all the facts connected with -the Reformation. - -In France Louis XIV persecuted the Huguenots in virtue of the _Cujus -regio ejus religio_ (Whose the kingdom his the religion), and in spite -of the protests of Innocent XI, who instructed his legate d'Adda to beg -James II to intercede for them, declaring that "men must be led, not -dragged to the altar." - -The German, Swiss, and Scandinavian rulers made, modified, and changed -the religion of their subjects at will. Of the intolerance of the -Calvanistic Republic of Geneva less said the better. Oppenheim, often -pawned by its needy electors, is said to have changed its form of -Protestantism fifteen times in twenty-one years. In Denmark, where -Lutheranism was paramount and unadulterated, we find, writes Dollinger, -"that the nobility made use of the Reformation to appropriate not only -the Church lands, but that owned by the peasants." "A dog-like servitude -weighs down the Danish peasants, and the citizens, deprived of all -representative power, groan under oppressive burdens" (_Geshicte von -Rugen_, p. 294, quoted by Dollinger). - -"The dwellers on the great estates of the Church were now obliged to -exchange the mild rule of the clergy for the oppressive rule of the -nobility," writes Allen, page 313. "By these laws and enforced compacts -the spoliation and the degradation of once free peasants were -accomplished." In 1702 Frederick IX abolished slavery, but glebe -serfdom, as in Russia, continued till 1804. Until 1766 the education of -the people stood at the lowest grade, and it was not till 1804 that -freedom was conferred on 20,000 families who had been in a state of -serfdom since the Reformation. - -In Sweden we find the great Protestant hero, Gustavus Vasa, -appropriating all the commonage lands of the villages, and even the -weirs, the mines, and all uncultivated lands. Gustavus was, of course, -obliged to share the spoils with his henchmen, whose rule was even more -oppressive, and the peasants became wholly impoverished and degraded. - -In Germany we find the same record of spoliation and oppression of the -peasantry, whose rights there was none to defend since bishops no longer -sat in the Diet. In 1663, 1646, 1654, the personal liberty of the -peasants was progressively annihilated. "Then was forged that slave -chain," writes Boll, "which our peasantry have had to drag within a few -decades of the present day" (_Mecklenburg Geschichte_). In 1820 this -glebe serfdom was abolished by the Grand Duke. - -In Pomerania, united with Brandenburg since the Reformation, -Protestantism was paramount already in 1534, and the fate of the -peasantry was the same. The oppression was so intolerable that even -those whose farms had not been appropriated or turned into grazing -grounds, as in Ireland, fled the country. In the peasant ordinance of -1616 they were declared "serfs without any civil rights," and preachers -were compelled to denounce fugitives from the pulpit. - -The Elector of Brandenburg, it will be recalled, was the first to abjure -Catholicism, and founded what became in 1701 the Prussian monarchy. - -There was no general Diet since 1656. The Estates no longer met, and the -rulers imposed taxes at their will. Peasants fled to Poland, or became -mendicant vagrants or brigands. - -The Lutheran clergy were mere puppets in the hands of their tyrannical -rulers, who even dictated or revised their sermons at times. Prussian -despotism reached high-water mark under Frederick the Great, but he -being a frank and consistent rationalist, who believed "in letting every -man be blessed in his own way," religious persecution ceased. - -In Brunswick and Hanover the spoils of the Church appeased for a time -the greed of reformation princes, but habits of luxury were engendered -by their ill-gotten wealth, and they soon resorted to "money clipping." -The towns lost all their inherited independence. For the decisions of -municipal councils were substituted governmental decrees and circulars, -as in France to-day, and ere long all trace of the ancient freedom of -the Estates was lost. "The clergy," writes Havemann, "had long since -sunk into dependence.... The cities were languishing from lack of public -spirit.... The power of modern states was unfolding itself over the sad -remains of the ancient life and liberty of the Estates." - -In Saxony there was a nip-and-tuck struggle between Lutheranism and -Calvinism in which the rack and the scaffold were freely used by -Lutheran princes, who enforced their form of Protestantism according to -the axiom _Cujus regio ejus religio_. - -On the Church lands in England had lived a dense population of tenant -farmers. When these lands were confiscated by Henry VIII, thousands of -these peasantry became helpless paupers under the new regime. Vagrancy -and mendicancy reached alarming proportions. It was enacted that vagrant -beggars should be enslaved. If they tried to escape they were to be -killed. - -It appeared to Burnet (_History of Reformation_) that the intention of -the nobility was to restore slavery. According to Lecky there were -72,000 executions in the reign of Henry VIII; vagrant beggars furnishing -a large contingent. - -Under Elizabeth charity by taxation or poor rates was resorted to for -the first time in the history of Christendom. - -I think we must admit that liberty, both civil and religious, made -shipwreck at the Reformation, and that the champions of the Protestant -revolt were not exactly actuated by a desire for the well-being and -freedom of conscience of their fellow-men. - -In England all was laboriously reconquered till 1829, when Catholics -were _emancipated_ on their native soil.[25] - -Some Catholic countries, Spain and Italy, were saved from the horrors of -religious wars, but all felt the effects of the new rationalistic -spirit, which, being a diminution of Christianity, was also a diminution -of liberty. They lost many civil liberties, and despotism strengthened -its bands, till the great upheaval of 1790 destroyed the whole fabric of -Europe and inaugurated a system of constitutional representative -government. - -Representative government, our modern fetish, was not unjustly rated by -J. J. Rousseau, when he said "that a people with a representative -government were slaves except during the period of elections, when they -were sovereigns." France to-day is a striking illustration.[26] - -An amusing incident is related by Leroy Beaulieu of a Neapolitan who -hired donkeys to tourists. He was an eager advocate of representative -government in 1869. Questioned as to his reasons, he said that since -twenty-one years he had been hiring donkeys to English, French, and -American tourists, who enjoyed representative governments and were all -rich. Some years later the eminent economist met him again, and -congratulated him on Italy's having acquired a representative -constitution. The disabused peasant bitterly denounced the new regime in -that the burden of taxation had trebled, and that the very donkey he -hired out was taxed. - -If the laws, or at least all important ones, were submitted to -untrammelled public vote, then only might we say that the government was -truly representative. - -In many cases universal suffrage means the tyranny of ignorant, -unprincipled majorities, while nowhere can it oppose an effective -barrier against the accumulation of immense wealth in a few hands, and -the creation of all-powerful oligarchies. When the majorities and the -oligarchies come into collision, liberty will succumb. There will be -more than one Bridge of Sighs. - -It is in vain that false philosophers would persuade us that altruism, -some vague "moral element of Christianism," will combine with -rationalism and perpetuate our Christian civilization in some -transcendent form. - -Christian civilization and morality are intimately and indissolubly -connected with Christian dogma. The Fatherhood of God, Jupiter Optimus, -was not unknown to the ancients, but the brotherhood of man, involving -personal liberty and also civil liberty by extension, is essentially a -Christian predicate, and is based on the dogma of the Incarnation. - -The lofty contempt our modern rationalists express for the fierce -controversy waged over two Greek vowels by the partisans of _Homoousion_ -and _Homoiousion_ merely betrays their ignorance of its vital -importance. On that dogma, so nobly maintained by the See of Peter and -Athanasius, rests our whole fabric of Christian civilization, the -brotherhood of man, and its logical sequence, freedom from slavery. - -It is as absurd to suppose that the "moral element of Christianity" will -continue to exist after the erosion of Christian dogma, as to expect -that a tree we have hewn down will continue to bear fruit. It may indeed -for a time remain verdant, and even put forth new shoots, just as we -often see the loveliest flowers and fruits of Christianity in the lives -and characters of individuals with whom the Christian faith has almost -ceased to exist. But let us not be deceived. The lingering sap will -cease to flow, and the last semblance of life will fade away. "The -elements of dissolution have been multiplying all around us," writes -Lecky. And when rationalism or secularism, or neo-paganism in other -words, which has already corroded Christendom to so great an extent, -shall have accomplished its work of disintegration with the aid of -godless schools and gross literature, society will, I repeat, be -compelled to restore Christianity, or slavery, or perish. - - - - -CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION - - -"At the end of the fourth century," writes Guizot, "the Church saved -Christianity ... resisted the internal dissolution of the Empire and the -barbarians, and became the bond, the medium, and the principle of -civilization.... Had the Church not existed the whole world must have -been abandoned to purely material force" (_History of Civilization_, I, -38).... "When all was chaos, when every great social combination was -vanishing, the Church proclaimed the unity of her doctrine and the -universality of her right; this is a great and powerful fact which has -rendered immense service to humanity" (_ibid._, II, 19). - -This unity was indeed the great factor in European civilization. On it -the new civil societies, like wild olive branches, were grafted, so to -speak. It became the bond of political unity, a kind of centripetal -force, we may say, and the redemption from that inordinate love of -independence which characterized the barbarians. - -Consequently the new civil societies made the maintenance of religious -unity the foremost object of their policy. It became the public law of -all Europe and the common law of each state. To impugn this unity was -considered a most heinous offence not against God only, but against the -nation and against all Christendom. - -"Thus," writes another great Protestant, "Christianity became -crystallized into a single bond embracing all nations, and giving to all -life, civilization, and all the riches of the mind" (Hurter, _Life of -Innocent III_, I, 38). - -A corollary of this system of an universal Christian society was the -recognition of a supreme tribunal. "One of the most elevated principles -of the age," writes the same eminent German, "was that, in the struggles -between the peoples and their rulers, there should be a superior -authority charged to recall laws not made by men, though their -interpreter were himself a man." Referring to the fiercely contested -election of Othon, he continues: "Othon was the first to have recourse -to Rome, the tribunal with whom rested the decision in these matters, -when the parties did not wish to resort to the arbitrament of war." - -In France we find the great Suger, Abbot of St. Denis, remonstrating -with the Bishop of the free chartered city of Beauvais, brother of the -King, with whom he was often at odds. - -"I beseech you not to raise a guilty hand against the King ... for you -must see the consequences of armed insurrection against the King, -especially if it be without consulting the Sovereign Pontiff.... If the -King, drawn aside by evil counsellors, has not acted rightly, it was -proper to have informed him by the bishops and notables, or rather by -our Holy Father the Pope, who is at the head of the whole Church, and -could easily have reconciled all differences." - -In England we have many instances of both laymen and clergy appealing to -the arbitrament of the Papacy. - -"The recognition of some principle of right, powerful enough to form a -bond of lasting concord, has always been the dream of statesmen and -philosophers," writes Lecky. "Hildebrand sought it in the supremacy of -the spiritual power, and in the consequent ascendency of moral law" -(_History of Rationalism_, 245). - -Voltaire pays homage to this public policy of the Middle Ages. "The -interests of the human race required a controlling power to restrain -sovereigns and protect the lives of peoples. This controlling power of -religion could well be placed in the hands of the Papacy. The Sovereign -Pontiffs warning princes and people of their duties, appeasing quarrels, -rebuking crimes, might always have been regarded as the images of God on -earth. But men, alas, are reduced to the protection of laws without -force" (_Essai sur les moeurs_, II). - -He describes what really did exist for centuries, though, of course, -papal arbitration was not always efficacious. Every great institution -needs time to develop and mature. It would not be great were it -otherwise. Moreover there were, unfortunately, many troublous times -between the sixth and the fifteenth century, in which the Papacy itself -was captive, buffeted, demeaned, and exiled by the struggles and -ambitions of turbulent political factions in Rome itself. The very day -on which Gregory VII excommunicated the German Emperor, he was seized -and imprisoned by a noble Roman bandit, until his people were able to -deliver him by main force. - -"Another corollary of this universal Christian Society was that right -found a protector in the common Father of the faithful; in the grand -idea of a supreme chief who without employing material force judged in -last resort.... What great misfortunes would France and all Europe have -been spared if, in the reign of Louis XVI, an Innocent III had been -Pope. His rle would have been to save the lives of the people" -(Hurter's _Innocent III_, II, 200-23). To German Protestant writers like -Hurter, Voigt, Neander, etc., is due the honour of vindicating the true -rle of the Papacy in the Middle Ages. - -The rights of suzerainty exercised by the Papacy also formed part of the -public law of Europe. In those wild, lawless days, when robber barons -enjoyed the privilege of being highwaymen on their own estates, and -often extended their depredations to those of their neighbours, property -rights had no sanction, and the weaker succumbed to the stronger in -virtue of the "fist right," which we now translate variously by "the -right of the strongest," political "majorities," and the "survival of -the fittest." - -The practice then arose among weak owners of dedicating their lands to -the Church, in order to obtain spiritual or moral protection against the -brute force of stronger neighbours. What private owners did in a small -way was done by princes on a larger scale. - -Referring to the peculiar incidents when roving Norman pirates, in -possession of Sicily and Naples, seized the person of the Pope and -insisted on becoming his vassal, Voltaire writes as follows:--"Robert -Guiscard, wishing to be independent of the German Emperor, resorted to a -precaution which private owners took in those days of trouble and -rapine. The latter gave their property to the Church under the name of -Oblata, and, paying a slight tax, continued to enjoy the use of it. The -Normans resorted to this custom, placing under the protection of the -Church in the hands of Nicholas II (1059) not only what they held, but -also their future conquests (on the Saracens). This homage was an act of -political piety like Peter's Pence; the two pence of gold paid by the -Kings of Portugal; like the voluntary submission of so many kingdoms" -(_Essai sur les moeurs_, II, 44). - -It was thus that England became a fief of the Holy See, a most -unfortunate circumstance, as the temporal pecuniary obligations arising -therefrom were exploited to estrange the English from the See of Peter, -in the following centuries. - -"In 1329," continues Voltaire, "the King of Sweden, who wished to -conquer Denmark, addressed the Pope as follows: 'Your Holiness knows -that Denmark depends on the Roman See and not on the German Emperor.' -... I only wish to show," Voltaire adds, "how every prince who wished to -recover or usurp a domain appealed to the Pope.... In this case the Pope -defended Denmark, and said he could only decide on the justice of the -case when the parties had appeared before his tribunal, according to the -ancient usage." - -Nor did Christians alone appeal to this spiritual tribunal. The bull of -Innocent III, cited by Hurter, is an excellent exponent of the mind of -the Church in all times. "As they (the Jews) claim our succour against -their persecutors, we take them under our special protection, following -in this the example of our predecessors, Calixtus, Eugenius, Alexander, -Clement, and Celestin. We forbid every one to force a Jew to be -baptized, for he who is compelled cannot be said to have the faith. No -Christian must dare commit any violence against them, nor seize their -property, without a legal judgment. Let no one trouble them on their -feast days by striking or throwing stones at them," etc. - -It will be objected that the fulcrum of Western civilization was a -spiritual despotism. But these terms exclude each other. Can we call an -authority despotic which had no material force, and rested only on a -divine commission and the common sense of prince and people, recognizing -its credentials--on public opinion in fact? - -It was a fundamental law of every state that any one, no matter what his -rank, who impugned the Unity of the Faith, or committed offences so -heinous as to justify the supposition that he was no longer a Christian, -fell under the ban of the Church and became outlawed, if at the end of a -year he had not been absolved. In his _Historia Imperatorum_ Schafnaburg -explains the wintry flight of Henry IV across the Alps to Canossa by his -eagerness to be absolved before the year had revolved, because otherwise -he would have forfeited his crown. _Ut ante hanc diem non absolveretur, -deinceps juxta Palatinas leges indignus regio honore habeatur._ - -Three causes were generally admitted as sufficient for the -excommunication of a sovereign. First, if he fell from the faith. -Second, if he ravaged or seized ecclesiastical lands or desecrated -churches. Third, if he repudiated his own wife or appropriated his -neighbour's. This latter point, as Voltaire and Montesquieu have pointed -out, was the cause of nearly all the quarrels between the French kings -and the Papacy, a fact which our Jacobins, in the Chambers and -elsewhere, deliberately ignore, when they mendaciously misrepresent the -Church as having constantly encroached on the civil power. The case of -Philippe Augustus and the hapless Ingleburge of Denmark was a test case, -so to speak. - -"It was not," writes Hurter, "a question of contested claims of the -Papacy, but of this great question, Is the sovereign subject to the laws -of Christianity? It had to be decided whether the royal will should -triumph or not over the force regarded as constituting the unity of -Christendom" (_Life of Innocent III_). Montesquieu's testimony is -unimpeachable when he testifies that this Public Law of Europe was -universally recognized. "All the sovereigns," he writes, "with -inconceivable blindness, themselves accredited and sanctioned, in public -opinion, which had no force except by it." - -If the laws against heretics, who were to our forefathers what the -anarchists are to us, were oppressive, some of the blame should surely -be apportioned to the laymen who sat in the mixed assemblies in which -they were made. "Almost all Europe, for many centuries, was deluged in -bloodshed at the direct instigation or with the full approval of the -ecclesiastical authorities." It is in this disingenuous way that Lecky -refers to the operations of the Public Law of Europe against the -Albigenses or Manichans of Provence, and probably to the wars of -Italian independence and the Thirty Years War. Until the thirteenth -century he assures us that practically no persecutions (prosecutions) -against heretics occurred. It was then that the Public Law of Europe -began to be trampled on by sectarians who adopted and propagated -Gnostic, Paulician, Manichan, and other subversive theories, imported -from the East by Semitic-Islamic settlers in the fair lands of Provence. -Spain and Italy, the countries in which the Public Law of Europe was -maintained, were the only ones who were spared the horrors of civil -religious wars. They were saved by inquisitions, it will be retorted. - -Without seeking to defend the system, we may be permitted to inquire -whether it were not preferable, at that time, to execute some -ringleaders of religious revolt (30,000 in three centuries is a fair -estimate), than to deluge whole countries in blood for many decades, -about controversies which not one in a million could possibly grasp? -Lecky the rationalist assures us that "the overwhelming majority of the -human race, necessarily, accept their opinions from authority. Avowedly -like Catholics, or unconsciously like Protestants. They have neither -time nor opportunity (nor capacity) to examine for themselves" (_History -of Rationalism_, I, 101). - -Does any one seriously believe that the Camisards were fighting for -predestination and infant damnation, which have been shelved recently by -Presbyterians in the United States? - -In England, France, Germany, everywhere, greed and political ambition -were the incentives; the passions of ignorant masses were merely used as -a means. Back of both, and behind all, we descry secret societies, the -true pandemoniums, where these revolts are organized, and whence Mammon, -"the least-erected spirit that fell," Moloch, "horrid king besmeared -with blood," Belial, and all that crew, described by Milton, are sent -forth to execute the behests of the eternal enmity between "the -serpent's seed and the seed of the woman." - -In this unholy struggle "all the bonds of cohesion on which political -organization depended were weakened or destroyed," writes Lecky. "The -spirit of private judgment had descended to those totally incapable of -self-government, and lashed their passions into the wildest fury" -(_History of Rationalism_, p. 239). Voltaire is even less complimentary. -He describes the Hussites as "wild beasts whom the severity of the -emperor had roused to furor." - -In Germany, apostate ecclesiastical and secular electors were seeking -their own aggrandizement. Bishoprics with their manses were converted -into hereditary principalities. As to their Swedish ally, Gustavus -Adolphus, I refer my readers to the judgment of a Protestant admirer of -this doughty champion of the Reformation. On page 329 of _Thirty Years -War_ Schiller writes as follows:-- - -"The last, the greatest service, Gustavus Adolphus could render to -religious and civil liberty was to die (1632, at battle of Lutzen).... -It was no longer possible to doubt that he was seeking to establish -himself in Germany, not as a protector, but as a conqueror. Already -Augsburg boasted that it had been chosen as the capital of the new -monarchy. The Protestant princes, his allies, made claims which could -only be satisfied by despoiling the Catholics. It is then permitted to -conclude that like the barbarian hordes of yore, he intended to divide -the conquered provinces of Germany among the Swedish chiefs of his army. -His conduct towards the unfortunate Elector Palatine, Frederick V, is -unworthy of a hero. The Palatinate was in his hands, justice and honour -required that he return it to the legitimate sovereign. But to avoid -doing so he had recourse to subtleties which make us blush for him." - -It is only fair to add that Gustavus did finally restore the Palatinate -to Frederick, but as a fief of the Swedish crown. - -What, I ask, has been gained by the overthrow of the Public Law of -Europe? For this was waged the Thirty Years War, one of the most cruel -the world has known. Atrocities were committed on both sides, and the -_tu quoque_ argument is very foolish. But if it be admitted that -defensive war is always just and righteous, we must allow that the -Catholics were justified in fighting for their public law. They were in -possession since more than twelve centuries, and were resisting -assailants who showed no quarter, and who robbed them of their churches -and persecuted them, relentlessly, whenever they gained the upper hand, -just as the Puritans did in Maryland. And what was the net result of the -Thirty Years War? The loss of liberty both civil and religious. The -German electors, ecclesiastical as well as secular, had been but -administrators of free citizens, who now became subjects with little or -no voice in the government. As to religious liberty, the new axiom -_Cujus regio ejus religio_ was substituted for One Lord One Faith. The -ruler of each realm became the infallible Pontiff of his subjects. "If -any gratitude from this scandalous and accursed world were to be gained, -and I, Martin Luther, had taught and done nothing else than this, that I -have enlightened and adorned the temporal authority, for this alone -should it be thankful to me, since even my worst enemies know that a -like understanding as to the temporal authority was completely concealed -under the Papacy" (Walch's _Augs._, XIV, p. 520). - -In this same connexion Schiller makes the following statement. "No -country changed religion oftener than the Palatinate. Unhappy -weathercock of the political and religious versatility of its -sovereigns, it had twice been forced to embrace the doctrines of Luther -and then to abandon them for those of Calvin. Frederick III deserted the -Confession of Augsburg, but his son re-established it by most violent -and unjust measures. After closing all the Calvinist temples and exiling -the ministers and school teachers, he ordered by his will that his son -should be brought up by Lutherans; his brother, however, annulled this -will and became regent under the young Frederick IV, who was confided to -Calvinists with strict orders to destroy in his mind the "heretical -doctrines of Luther by all means, by beating and whipping even." It is -easy to guess how subjects were treated when the heir to the throne was -thus tyrannized over" (_Thirty Years War_, p. 40). - -What, I ask, has Europe gained by the overthrow of its public law? -Strife, anarchy, nihilism in religion as in philosophy. After centuries -of dabbling, floundering, and blundering, we are again seeking to devise -some principle of unity, some Amphictyonic Council to supplement the -illusory balance of power; to set up a Court of Arbitration to replace -the one that really did exist in the Middle Ages and functioned as well -as could be expected in those days of liquescence. - -All in vain. The grand Peace Congress from which the Papacy was excluded -was followed, almost immediately, by two most cruel wars which were -pre-eminently subjects for arbitration. Men will submit to this court -questions about which they do not care enough to fight about them, but -these subjects only will they submit to arbitration. Unless the Lord -build the house, in vain they labour who build. - -There is only one tribunal that can ever arbitrate efficaciously, and -this is the one which presided at the Genesis of Christendom.[27] - -Socialists and anarchists, without having pondered the passage from -Guizot I quoted in beginning this chapter, understand perfectly that our -Western or Christian civilization is grounded on the unity of one Holy -Catholic Church, and the destruction of the social structure being the -object of their ambition, they very logically direct all their efforts -to destroying this foundation. - -The work of disintegration was begun in the sixteenth century. -"Socinius, the most iconoclastic of Protestants, predicted that the -seditious doctrines by which Protestants supported their cause would -lead to the disintegration of society" (_History of Rationalism_, II, -239). - -This work of disintegration has made rapid progress since the eighteenth -century in virtue of the law of accelerated movement. The French -Revolution, like the Protestant revolt, was essentially a work of -disintegration. The successors of the Masonic Jacobins of 1790 openly -proclaim their set purpose of completing the work begun by the _grands -anctres_ of bloody memory. - -"The Revolution," wrote Renan (in the preface to _Questions -contemporaines_), "has disintegrated everything, broken up all -organizations, excepting only the Catholic Church. The clergy alone -have remained organized outside the State. As the cities, in the days of -the ruin of the Roman Empire, chose bishops for their representatives, -so in our provinces the bishops will soon be the only leaders left in a -dismantled society." - -The object of the Separation Law was to accomplish the disintegration of -the Church, the only organized body, outside the State, which the -Revolution failed to disintegrate, because Pius VI rejected, _in toto_, -the civil constitution of the clergy. These noble French priests were -drowned, guillotined, proscribed, and imprisoned by tens of thousands, -but the Church in France maintained the principle of life strong within -her, and on the third day she rose again. - -What violence failed to accomplish a century ago, the Third Republic -hoped to compass by guile and fraud, labelled liberty and legality. - -The true purpose of the Law of Separation was to break up the Church -into an ever-increasing number of viviparous _Associations cultuelles_, -independent of all ecclesiastical control. - -The successor of Pius VI, Ithuriel-like, has pierced the thin disguise -of the toad lurking in the purlieus of Eden.[28] Instead of a divided -demoralized clergy, the Masonic Jacobins are confronted by the serried -ranks of an invincible phalanx. - -"At the end of the fourth century," writes Guizot, "it was the Church -with its magistrates, its institutions, and its power that vigorously -resisted the internal dissolution of the empire and of the barbarians, -and became the bond, the medium, and the principle of civilization -between the Roman and the barbarian worlds" (_History of Civilization_). - -Now, as in the fourth century, we are menaced with social dissolution. -The barbarians are at our gates, nay, in our midst, and not in France -alone, by any means. A ferocious, self-seeking atheistic materialism is -disrupting Christendom. And let us not be deceived. Societies are never -saved and regenerated except by their generating principle; and the -generating principle of Western civilization is Christianity. - -Therefore, I repeat, that society will be compelled, in self-defence, to -restore Christianity or slavery, in some form; State Socialism -perhaps--or perish. - -_21st November, 1906._ - - - - -APPENDIX - - - PAGE 29 - - SANCE DU 28 DECEMBRE, 1906. - - Au _Snat Journal Officiel_, page 1236. - -M. DELAHAYE: "M. Briand's law is older than himself. We find traces of -it in all the Masonic convents.... Gentlemen, why are we going to vote -this additional law, as we did the first Separation Law, without -changing an iota?... Because the lodges have so decided. - -"The Convent, the public should be told, is the general assembly of the -lodges.... The Convent, called during the Revolution _La Convention_, is -the source of all our evils. On 12 November, 1904, brother Lafferre (a -senator), thirty-third degree, read the following _ordre du jour_: 'The -general assembly of the Grand Orient addresses to M. Combes warm -assurances of sympathy and confidence, and begs him to persevere -courageously in the struggle to defend the Republic against clericalism, -and accomplish social, military, and fiscal reforms. The Assembly -demands that at the session of January, 1905, Separation and the -_retraites ouvrires_ be discussed simultaneously.'" - -M. Lafferre and the reporter of the new Separation Law here applauded -ironically. - -M. Delahaye continued: "Let us pass to the Convent of 1905, sance 23 -September, 1905. - -"Le Frre Roret, reporter (of the Masonic Commission): ... A wish more -important, and which will be adopted without discussion, emanates from -the Congress of the region of Paris. It regards the Separation and has -been slightly modified by the (Masonic) Commission (of political and -social studies). The Congress demands that the Separation Law voted in -the Chambers be amended by the Senate. Your Commission judges that it is -most important that this law be voted immediately and promulgated before -the legislative elections (May, 1906), so that the country may see that -it is a liberal law and not at all vexatious.... Your Commission -proposes the following vote: 'The Convent emits the wish that the law, -imperfect but perfectible, be adopted by the Senate as rapidly as -possible and promulgated before the elections, but that it be amended -later by the Republican Parliament and rendered more distinctly -_laque_.'" - -M. Delahaye continued: "It is well to notice that laic has two meanings. -For us it means not ecclesiastic; for Freemasons it means atheistic, -anti-Catholic.... I have proved, incontestably, that M. Briand is here -as the mouthpiece of Freemasonry, to which he says he does not -belong.... There is a privileged Congregation in France which holds -property as a _socit immobilire_ of the Grand Orient by 'interposed -persons.' This Congregation is about to sell its real estate of the Rue -Cadet (Paris). It received an offer of 1,250,000 francs. The State -offers to buy it for 1,300,000 francs, to be used as a telephone -office.... I wish to know why the State does not simply expropriate this -Congregation, seeing that it is illegal, because this _socit -immobilire_ is simply a _personne interpose_?... Gentlemen, the book -just published by one of your former friends, M. Flourens (ex-minister), -_La France Conquise Edward VII and Clemenceau_, is going to enlighten -rulers deaf to the voice of the Pope (who had condemned Masonry since -1728). The Bourbons and the French nobility, whom Freemasonry had doomed -to death, were dancing on the first floor of the lodges, while overhead -sentence was being passed on them.... In spite of many changes of -government since a century, we are descending steadily, because your -principles, destructive of family, country, and private property, have -entered into our legislation.... We have a fine army, but at your touch -it becomes no more than a national guard. We have many vessels, but no -navy.... Ere long kings and emperors, who now utilize Freemasonry, will -end by saying, 'This instrument is very dangerous.'" - -There were cries of "_Clture, clture_." The discussion was closed. No -one replied to M. Delahaye. - - - PAGES 113-125 - -Commenting on the annual Convent of the Grand Orient, September, 1906, -the _Journal de Gnve_, the leading Swiss Protestant daily, made the -following statements:-- - - - "LE RLE DE LA MAONNERIE - - "_Septembre, 1906._ - - "Il ne faut pas se dissimuler que la franc-maonnerie tient entre - ses mains les destines du pays (la France). Quoiqu'elle ne compte - que vingt-six mille adhrents, elle dirige sa guise la politique - franaise. Toutes les lois dont le catholicisme se plaint si - amrement ont t d'abord labores dans ses convents. Elle les a - imposes au gouvernement et aux Chambres. Elle dictera toutes les - mesures qui seront destines en assurer l'application. Nul n'en - doute, et personne, non pas mme les plus indpendants, n'oserait - heurter de front sa volont souveraine. Il serait aussitt bris, - celui qui se permettrait seulement de la mconnatre. - - "Jamais, depuis l'poque o Rome commandait aux rois et aux - princes, on ne vit pareille puissance. Et cette puissance est - d'autant plus forte, cette heure, qu'elle vient de subir - victorieusement une crise redoutable. Aprs l'affaire des fiches, - on croyait la maonnerie morte, tout au moins bien malade; mais, - force d'audace, elle a triomph de ses ennemis, qui dj sonnaient - joyeusement l'hallali. Les deux tiers des membres de la Chambre - actuelle sont francs-maons. - - "La volont de la franc maonnerie, nul ne l'ignore plus, c'est de - dtruire le catholicisme en France. Elle se dresse comme une Eglise - contre l'Eglise de Rome. Elle n'aura ni cesse ni rpit, qu'elle ne - l'ait jete bas, qu'elle n'en ait sem les poussires au vent. Tous - ses ressorts sont uniquement tendus vers ce but. Les autres - religions, si mme elle ne les ignore momentanment, elle parat - les mnager. Elle se dit sans doute que, le catholicisme ayant - rendu l'me sous son treinte, l'anantissement des autres - confessions ne serait pour elle que jeu d'enfant. - - "Mais l'adversaire n'est pas encore terrass, auquel elle s'tait - attaque. Il est comme Ante, qui, toutes les fois qu'il touchait - le sol, retrouvait de nouvelles forces. Elle s'en rend bien compte. - C'est pourquoi, crainte que d'un tour de reins dsespr il ne se - dresse dans toute sa vigueur, elle n'a point pouss jusqu'ici la - lutte fond. Parfois mme elle semble accorder une trve; elle - rentre dans ses quartiers. Mais, ds que la vigilance des - catholiques lui parat suffisamment endormie, elle se jette de - nouveau sur sa proie. Elle continuera cette tactique jusqu'au - triomphe dfinitif. - - "Ce triomphe est-il prochain ou lointain? Pour le moment, la - dfiance de Rome est bien veille, et Pie X n'est peut-tre pas de - ces hommes qui se laissent prendre aux feints dsarmements. - - "Quelques-uns se demanderont comment il peut se faire qu'une - minorit si faible gouverne ainsi tout un pays. C'est pourtant trs - simple. D'abord les maons sont troitement unis; et l'union fit - toujours la force. Ensuite, appartenant tous aux classes moyennes, - ils exercent par leur situation personnelle, par leurs - fonctions--tous les gros bonnets de l'administration sont affilis - la franc-maonnerie--une influence trs grande. L'on peut dire - qu'ils disposent de toutes les faveurs gouvernementales; et ces - faveurs, ils ne les distribuent qu' bon escient. Non seulement - donc ils tiennent leur discrtion tous ceux qui occupent un poste - quelconque de l'Etat, mais encore tous ceux qui aspirent en - occuper un, et ils sont lgion. a leur fait une arme formidable, - discipline par l'intrt. - - "On comprend que, dans ces conditions, la franc-maonnerie n'ait - qu' faire un signe aux pouvoirs publics pour qu'elle soit - immdiatement obie. Quoi qu'elle dcide, ce sera excut sur - l'heure. - - "La franc-maonnerie, dit-il, sait mieux que le gouvernement - lui-mme, quelle somme de rsistance, en ce moment, le catholicisme - peut opposer un assault dcisif. Elle n'ignore pas que, quoiqu'il - soit trs branl, il serait trs hasardeux de le vouloir abattre - d'un dernier coup. Elle craint surtout que, si elle ne parvenait - pas lui faire exhaler le soupir suprme, il ne retrouvt une - nouvelle vie, la volont et l'nergie de vaincre son tour. - - "La franc-maonnerie se gardera de compromettre, dans une lutte - chanceuse, les fruits de longs efforts. Elle a emprunt sa devise - Rome: 'Patiens quia terna,' et elle attendra qu'elle puisse - frapper coup sr. Les probabilits sont donc pour que, tout en - s'opposant ce que des relations soient renoues avec le - Saint-Sige, elle ne chassera pas les catholiques de leurs derniers - retranchements, c'est--dire de leurs glises; elle les y laissera - tranquilles, jusqu'au jour o, par un nouveau coup d'audace, elle - s'en emparera. - - "Un de ses orateurs a prophtis qu'avant peu on entendrait des - 'batteries d'allgresse' sous les votes de Notre-Dame; et les - prophties maonniques ne se sontelles pas souvent ralises?" - - - PAGE 204 - - On November 9th, 1906, M. Briand described the Status of the Church - in France as follows (_Officiel_, 2459): "The churches are affected - to public worship and must remain so indefinitely.... It is our - duty to leave them open.... Reunions are possible, you may have - them. The priest may live in direct communication with the people, - he may receive manual gifts. Perhaps the Catholic hierarchy about - which you are so much concerned will suffer. Perhaps this faculty - left to the faithful to live with their priest haphazard (_au - hasard de la rencontre_) will soon dry up the revenues of the - priests; it will certainly dry up those of the bishops." - - It is well also to recall here the words pronounced by M. Briand, - October 17th, 1905 (_Journal Officiel_, 1223), regarding the - _Associations cultuelles_: "They will be hardly born on the 11th - December, 1906. They will not have had time to obtain funds. If we - deprive them of the patrimony of the _fabriques_ and _menses - episcopales_ it will be impossible for them to maintain public - worship, and the faithful will be unable to practise their - religion." - - Yet the Government impudently declares to-day that the Catholics - are hard to please! - - On December 1st, 1906, M. Briand sent forth an ukase commanding - every priest to consider public worship assimilated to public - meetings, and to make a declaration to the mayor according to the - law of 1881. - - Now the law of 1905 says that public worship cannot be regulated by - the law of 1881. Moreover, this law requires the constitution of a - bureau, and that a declaration be made before each meeting - twenty-four hours in advance. M. Briand took upon himself to modify - the law (_l'assouplir_) and to say no bureau was necessary, and - that one declaration would do for a year! The clergy made no - declarations. A few were made by Anarchists and Freemasons. - - From the 12th to the 20th December the police were kept busy making - thousands of _procs verbaux_ all over France. This idea of making - 65,000 prosecutions every day was soon found to be grotesque and - impracticable. Moreover, under the law of 1881 it is the owner of - the public hall or the caf or cabaret who is prosecuted for not - making the required declaration. The State and the communes being - now the alleged owners of the churches since December 11th, 1906, - _they_ should have been prosecuted and not the priests. This same - M. Briand, who thus modified the law of 1881, had declared in the - Chambers: "Common right no longer exists if you interpret it - otherwise than the law" (November 9th, _Journal Officiel_, p. - 2438). - - Since December 11th, 1906, the Church in France is very much in the - condition of the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. - - On December 29th, 1906, a new Law of Separation was passed. It - confers on 36,000 mayors the right to invest 36,000 priests with a - precarious use of Church edifices, _sauf dsaffection_. The - time-limit is to be decided, _ l'amiable_, between the mayors and - their nominees. Truly this is the _reductio ad absurdum_ of - separation. - - M. Briand assures us "that the mayor will accord the church to the - _cur_ most capable of keeping it in good condition" (_Journal - Officiel_, p. 3398, December 21st, 1906). This is lay orthodoxy. - "As to the period of enjoyment, it is impossible to fix it by law," - says M. Briand, "to one, two, or three years" (_Officiel_, p. - 3407), "'ce sont des questions d'espce qui seront tranches selon - les communes'; it will vary in each commune." - - To this M. Ribot replied: "'C'est l'anarchie dans 36,000 communes.' - At every election this question will be raised, Shall we leave the - church to the _cur_ or not? You are making of this question, - eminently a governmental one, a municipal question, given over to - dissensions, competitions, and coteries" (_Officiel_, p. 3407). - - The new Law of Separation (December 29th) abolishes the - sequestration ordered on December 11th of all Church revenues, - etc., till December, 1907. It turns over immediately to the - communes and to lay institutions all the property of the Church. - Yet on November 9th (_Journal Officiel_, p. 2461) M. Briand stoutly - resisted the Left, clamouring for this very thing. "We must not - raise illusory hopes," he said. - - "No," cried a deputy, "it will be like the milliard of the - Congregations." - - "There are fourteen millions of revenue," continued M. Briand," -...but are they 'liquid,' free of charges? The communes are - stretching out their hands to receive. You will give them what? - Nests of lawsuits. Yes, nests of vipers that will poison the - communes with their venom." - - To explain this change of policy M. Briand said: "We have acquired - the certitude that the situation is without issue. It was - impossible to expect that during the next year regular associations - (of 1905) will be constituted to claim this property of the - _fabriques_. We cannot remain another whole year in this - uncertainty" (_Journal Officiel_, p. 3396, December 21st). A French - proverb says: "Souvent femme varie bien fou qui s'y fie." - - And in the same session M. Briand, to explain why it was not - possible to lend the churches to _curs_ under the new law for any - definite time, said: "In fixing no term the Government is logical. - Having a law to execute (that of 1905), and having the conviction - that the Church will end by accepting it, we could not give to - uncontrolled associations under the law of 1901, which are a - concession to the Church, the same advantages as to _Associations - cultuelles_" (1905) (_Journal Officiel_, p. 3407, December 21st, - 1906). - - The new law of December 28th, 1906, says the use of the churches - can be obtained by the declaration of the _cur_ individually, or - of an association formed according to the law of 1901, or rather - according to _certain_ articles of this law _only_. The Church may - not avail herself of the articles which permit the formation of - associations called "of public utility"--like the S.P.A., for - instance. - - This is what these Jacobins understand by combating the Church. A - _coup de libert_ by dint of liberty! They speak of giving _droit - commun_, common right. But they never do so. The Church is excluded - from the right of forming _Associations d'utilit publique_ - conferred by the law of 1901, though placed under this law since - December 28th, 1906. The new law is only a makeshift. M. Briand - said (21st December, p. 3398, _Journal Officiel_): "Evidently this - legislation is not definitive. Turn the pages of history up to the - Revolution; you will see that the Convention had the same - difficulties as we to-day. See the number of laws voted in the year - 1795 alone" (there were eleven Laws of Separation). Just so. France - stands where she did in 1795. - - PAGE 228 - - RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN CATHOLIC MARYLAND - - Confirmed by the Lord - Proprietary by an instrument - under his hand & seale. - - PHILLIP CALVERT. - 26th August 1650. - - Enacted & made at a - Geall Session held 1 & - 20 day of Aprill Anno D[~m] - 1649 as followeth viz. - - An act concerning Religion. - - fforasmuch as in a well - governed & Xpian Co[~m]un Wealth matters concerning Religion and - the honor of God ought in the first place to bee taken into serious - consideracon & endeavoured to bee settled. Be it therefore ordered - and enacted by the Right Hoble Cecilius Lord Baron of Baltemore - absolute Lord Proprietary of this Province with the advice & - consent of this Generall Assembly. That whatsoever 'pson or 'psons - within this province & the Islands thereunto belonging shall from - henceforth blaspheme God that is curse him or deny our Saviour - Jesus Christ to be the sonne of God, or shall deny the holy Trinity - or the unity of the Godhead, or shall use or utter any reproachfull - speeches concerning the said Holy Trinity shal be punished with - death & confiscation to the lord Proprietary and his heirs.... - - And bee it also further enacted by the same authority advise and - assent that whatsoever 'pson or 'psons shall from henceforth uppon - any occasion of offense or otherwise in a reproachful manner or way - declare call or denominate any 'pson or 'psons whatsoever, - inhabiting residing or traffiqueing or commerceing within this - Province or within any of the Ports Harbors Creeks or Havens to the - same belonging, an heritik, Scismatick Idolater, puritan, - Independent, Calvenist, Anabaptist Brownist Antimmoniam, Barrowist - Roundhead, Sepatist Presbiterian, popish prest, Jesuite, Jesuited - papist or any other name or terme in a reproachful manner relating - to matter of Religion shall for every such offense, forfeit and - loose the some of tenne shillings one half thereof to be paid unto - the person of whom such reproachfull words are or shall be spoken - and the other half thereof to the Lord Proprietary.... And whereas - the inforceing of the Conscience in matters of religion hath - frequently fallen out to be of dangerous Consequence in these - Commonwealths where it hath been practised. And for the more quiet - and peacable govt of this Province & the better to pserve - mutuall Love & Amity amongst the inhabitants thereof. Be it - therefore also by the L[-o] Proprietary with the advice and consent - of this Assembly Ordeynd & enacted that noe persons whatsoever - within this province or the Islands Ports Harbors Creeks thereunto - belonging professing to believe in Jesus Christ shall from - henceforth bee any waies troubled Molested or discountenanced for - or in respect of his or her religion nor in the free exercise - thereof within this province ... nor any way compelled to the - beliefe or exercise of any other Religion against his or her - consent soe as they be not unfaithfull to the Lord Proprietary or - molest or conspire against the Civill Govt established.... And - that all & every person that shall presume contrary to this act - directly or indirectly either in person or Estate wilfully to wrong - disturb or molest any person ... in respect to his or her Religion - shall be compelled to pay trebble damages to the party soe wronged - or molested & for every such offence shall also forfeit 20s - sterling ... or if the ptie soe offending as aforesaid shall refuse - or be unable to recompense the party soe wronged ... then such - offender shall be severely punished by publick whipping & - imprisonmt without baile or maineprise.... - -The ffreemen have assented. - - - - -BY THE SAME AUTHOR - - -_SLAV AND MOSLEM_ - -SOME OPINIONS - -"_Slav and Moslem_ does you the greatest honour, for I quite understand -how difficult it is for foreigners to comprehend so correctly as you do -the origin, the value, and the destinies of our institutions. - -PRINCE CANTACUZENE. - -"_Russian Imperial Legation, Washington._" - -"The perusal of your valuable and interesting book on the historical -relations of Slav and Moslem has afforded the keenest pleasure. - -A. ISWOLZY. - -"_Lgation Impriale de Russe prs le Saint Sige._" - -"We are separated from the Western world by difference of race, culture, -and history, and the Western mind is very hard in understanding us. -Therefore the testimony of a just and unprejudiced mind is always -gratefully appreciated in Russia. - -C. POBEDONOSTZEFF, - -"_Petersburg._ _Prsident du Saint Synod_." - -"I was not only pleased with _Slav and Moslem_, but acknowledge a large -accretion to my knowledge of the subject. - -Your friend, -LEW WALLACE, -_Author of 'Ben Hur,' and formerly Ambassador -of U.S. to Constantinople_." - -"I consider _Slav and Moslem_ the clearest exposition on the Eastern -Question I have ever met with. - -J. HUGHES, -_Author of the "Dictionary of Islam_." - -"I regard _Slav and Moslem_ as a very valuable contribution to the -history of Russia. You are entitled to great credit for your -comprehensive view of the Russian Government and people. - -JOHN SHERMAN, - -"_Washington._ _Senator and Diplomat, U.S._" - -"Your development of the historical relations of Russia and Turkey is -admirable and full of interest. In vigorous and picturesque language you -have presented the other side. - -JOHN A. KASSON, - -"_Washington._ _Senator and Diplomat_." - -"I find no words to express the historic breadth of your political -summary, and the deep and genuine philosophy and truth of your treatment -of this great drama. - -CASSIUS MARCELLUS CLAY, -_Ten years Minister of the U.S. at St. Petersburg_." - -"I have read _Slav and Moslem_ with much interest, as it contains many -suggestions to fruitful thought regarding this great empire. - -ANDREW D. WHITE. - -_Legation of the U.S., St. Petersburg._" - -"_Slav and Moslem_ is written with justice, clairvoyance, and talent. - -JULIETTE ADAM." - -"I have read many books on Russia, but none met with my approval to such -an extent as _Slav and Moslem_.... The statements and descriptions of -the Russians are so correct.... During the years of my official stay I -studied the people, their history and language, and know what I am -talking about. - -JOHN KAREL, -_U.S. Consul at St. Petersburg_." - -"For the chapter on the Crimea alone your book deserves the thanks of -all who would study the present century. - -GEO. J. LEMMON, -_Lecturer and Publicist_." - -SOME PRESS NOTICES - -"Vivid historical sketches.... Eminently worthy of careful -perusal."--_The Press_ (Philadelphia). - -"The author shows an intelligent mastery of his subject." - -_Herald_ (Boston). - -"Its every sentence is clear-cut and positive.... The subjects are all -treated with a vigour and boldness that rivet the attention from first -to last." - -_The American_ (Baltimore). - -"The author has a surprisingly firm grasp on his subject.... Vivid, -thorough, original." - -_The Tribune_ (Salt Lake City, Utah). - -"Intensely readable.... It is one of the notable books of the -day."--_Commercial Gazette_ (Cincinnati). - -"From first to last the book is one of unusual interest." - -_The Chronicle_ (Augusta, Ga.). - -"A sober and trenchant defence of Russia." - -_Times Star_ (Cincinnati) - -"Mr. Brodhead writes lucidly and discriminatingly.... Interesting and -suggestive throughout." - -_The Churchman_ (New York). - -"J. Brodhead's work on the Eastern is creating a more and more favorable -impression throughout the country." - -_The Press_ (New York). - -PLYMOUTH -WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS - - * * * * * - - -FOOTNOTES: - -[1] I transcribe the following from _Le Lyon Republicain_ (ministerial -anti-clerical), 1905:--"The criminality of youths from sixteen to -twenty-five is increasing in shameful and overwhelming proportions. This -collection of beardless scoundrels, cynically vicious, murderers, -thieves, _souteneurs_, is the curse of our large cities.... It is only -since fifteen or eighteen years at most that criminalists notice this -remarkable depravation of youths almost children.... May we not ask if -the State that has done the most for instruction has not done the least -for education? Truly this frightful development of youthful criminality, -of alcoholism, and anti-socialism must make us reflect." - -"_Fifteen years or eighteen at most._" The scholar anti-Christian laws -of Jules Ferry, Goblet, Paul Bert, date from 1882 to 1895, and by their -fruits they are judged. - -[2] In January, 1906, M. Poincar, minister of finance, in reply to M. -Grousseau, admitted that up to February, 1905, the State had advanced -the sum of 4,551,319 frs. to the liquidators of the Congregations. - -[3] "Vel Judam non videtis, quomodo non dormit, sed festinat tradere me -Judis?" (Feria V in Coena Domini--"See ye not Judas, how he sleeps not, -but makes haste to betray me into the hands of the Jews?") - -[4] According to a recent article in the _Figaro_, 8th October, 1906, -among the conscripts sent this month to the army by Paris, ninety could -neither read nor write; seventy-nine could read only. - -[5] It was only at the annual September Convent of the Grand Orient, -1904, that it was decided to rush the assault on the Church itself by -the law of alleged separation. "Il nous reste un rude coup de collier -donner ... la separation figurera en Janvier prochain a l'ordre du jour -de la chambre." - -[6] At the Free-Thought Congress. - -[7] His native city recently hoisted the French flag and proclaimed its -annexation to the Third Republic, 1906. Of course it was only a platonic -demonstration on the part of Sicilian Freemasons. - -[8] M. Rouvier had obtained a law obliging every one without exception -who distilled anything to pay the usual tax on alcohol. This law was -made and repealed by the same Parliament, so that now every one who has -a peach or a plum tree can manufacture any kind of alcohol of poor -quality, and retail it in the _buvettes_ or drink-stands which are found -at every step almost; in every little vegetable and grocery shop, even -in Government tobacco stores where stamps are sold. These _buvettes_ are -the curse of France to-day. They have caused far greater ravages than -the Franco-Prussian war. - -[9] "We do not wish to see the secular arm placed at the service of -free-thought," said a deputy of the "bloc" not long since. "Meanwhile -the secular arm in the service of free-thought has closed all our -schools and colleges," retorted a deputy of the Right. - -[10] On November 17th, 1906, the Bishop of Nancy wrote as follows to M. -Briand, Minister of Cults, regarding the sad plight of the Sisters du -Saint Coeur de Marie at Nancy: "In 1902, 56 of them were huddled together -in a small house situated at the extremity of their grounds.... Their -spacious chapel was razed to the ground and in its place three private -houses have been built. The property was sold for 527,000 francs. The -liquidator promised that in conformity with the law the sisters should -receive pensions. Out of the 56 there remain to-day but 44. Of these 10 -are over seventy, and 22 of them are over sixty.... In these last four -years they have received out of the 527,000 francs only 12,000 in three -instalments.... They owe 17,800 to their baker, butcher, etc., and are -threatened with starvation if further credit be denied them.... Are -these aged women, who have devoted their lives to the instruction of the -poor, to die of cold and hunger, M. le Ministre?" And these things -happen in the twentieth century under a Government that proclaims the -rights of man and of the poor! - -[11] There is no such thing as proportional representation in France, -and the whole electoral machinery is manipulated to give the Government -a majority. - -[12] Recently in the Chambers (November 13th, 1906), M. Lassies -criticized that part of M. Clemenceau's declaration in which he referred -to the Holy See "as a foreigner subject to foreign influences." "Foreign -influences," said M. Lassies, turning pointedly to M. Delcass, "we find -them here in the person of the ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs, who fell -from power without our knowing why. Whence came the gust which caused -his fall? From which frontier?" - -[13] The Bill was adopted by the French Senate early in December. - -[14] Everything except the _encyclique_ of August 15th, 1906. - -[15] M. Lefas, deputy of the Right, maintained in the Chambers (Nov. -9th, 1906, _Journal Officiel_, p. 2448) that "the churches could not -form part of the Communal domain when Communes did not exist in France. -Communal domain only began with the existence of the Communes; that is -to say, a hundred years ago." Therefore these Church edifices cannot be -said to belong to the Communes to-day. Formerly France was divided into -parishes, and each parish had its parish church. - -As to the cathedrals, if kings and nobles, like other Catholics, -contributed to their embellishment or construction, they did so as -Catholics. All the guilds and corporations, too, contributed, not only -money, but personal labour. Would this entitle the syndicates of masons, -goldsmiths, etc., of to-day to claim these cathedrals? But the chief -factor in the construction of these noble edifices were the freely given -toil and humble labours of the multitudes of Catholics who raised these -monuments of faith. It is well known that a Catholic church cannot be -dedicated as long as any one has a lien on it, that is, not until the -Church's proprietorship of the building is undisputed. Therefore the -assumption that these edifices belong to the State and the Communes can -only be justified on the theory of the men who, seeing a trunk lying in -the hall of a hotel, said, "This trunk belongs to no one; let us say it -belongs to us." - -The recent judgment of the highest court of England in the case of the -"wees and the frees" of the Scotch Presbyterian Kirk is eminently -applicable in this question of Jacobin appropriations and spoliations. - -[16] These inventories, left incomplete after the fall of the Rouvier -Ministry (February), are being completed now (November, 1906). - -[17] When the daily Press is constantly recording the exploits of -_cambrioleurs_ picking locks and bursting open _coffres forts_ with -dynamite, it is very piquant to see the Government doing the same thing, -flanked by _gens d'armes_ and the regular army. Yesterday at Nantes 1500 -soldiers, with two generals and one colonel, surrounded the cathedral at -5 a.m. Forty locks were picked before noon! In _cambrioleur_ slang this -would be called a "record haul." Thanks to the injunctions of Pius X, -there was no bloodshed, and M. Clemenceau and his friends proclaim that -these inventories are made _sans incident_. - -[18] This Protestant senator seems to have been inspired by an eloquent -passage in Bossuet, "Une voix nous crie, _Marche, Marche_." - -[19] The founder and owner of _La Lanterne_ is said to be a Frankfort -Jew, and it is an open secret that all the advanced Socialist and -anti-clerical dailies are owned or controlled by the princes of Israel. -And it is from these that English and American papers seem to derive all -their information regarding the Church in France. - -[20] LES CAISSES D'PARGNE. - -Voici le relev des oprations des Caisses d'pargne ordinaires avec la -Caisse des dpts et consignations du 1er au 10 octobre, 1906:-- - -Dpts de fonds 2.830.949 fr. 72. Retraits de fonds 6.576.856 fr. 30. -Excdent des retraits 3.745.906 fr. 58. - -Excdent des retraits du 1er janvier au 10 octobre, 1906, 26.784.318 -fr. 60. - -[21] Thus Notre Dame might witness a Catholic Mass in the morning, a -theosophical reunion at noon, and a positivist conference in the -evening. The Swiss Catholics, 1872-6, had some such experiences: a -venerable priest died recently at Berne who had refused to give up the -keys of his church for other uses, and was imprisoned for many years; -while the last prisoner of Chillon was the Catholic Bishop of Fribourg, -another victim of the Swiss Kulturkampf. - -[22] When public men and editors in France and elsewhere descant on -German _Associations cultuelles_ accepted by the Holy See that rejects -them in France, they stand accused of ignorance or malevolence. M. -Briand basely insinuated (Chambers, 9th November) that the Church in -Germany was being ransomed by France: "Notre situation nous est-elle -la ranon de la situation d'un pays voisin? Je me borne poser la -question." The fact is there is no such thing as _German Associations -cultuelles_, each State of the Confederation has its own regulations. -Bavaria has a concordat and a papal nuncio at Munich. The Governments of -Wrtemberg and the Grand Duchy of Baden made special conventions with -the Holy See, 1857 and 1859. Alsace-Lorraine is still under the French -Concordat of 1801 between Pius VII and the First Republic. Prussia and -Hesse in 1873 and 1875 made special conventions with the Vatican. -Prussia has a Legation to the Holy See at Rome. Moreover, in none of the -German states is there separation of Church and State. They all -recognize and subsidize the Catholic Church and one form of -Protestantism. In Prussia several bishops are appointed senators by the -King. In Alsace-Lorraine the Bishop of Strasburg is member of the -Council of State. In Bavaria, Baden, Wrtemberg, the prelates are -members of the Upper House. - -[23] What would Philippe de Commines have said had he heard of the -little _coup de main_ (November 20th, 1906), by which deputies and -senators in _quasi huis clos_ voted themselves an increase of 6000 -francs without any "_octroi or consentement_" of the sovereign people, -delivered from tyranny and servitude by the Revolution? - -[24] There is in the Palace of the Doges at Venice an immense picture -commemorating this Congress, where the Peace of Constance was prepared. - -[25] In refreshing contrast with this record of persecution is the -proclamation of religious liberty in Maryland, 1650. "The Catholics took -quiet possession [of Maryland], and religious liberty obtained a home, -its only home in the wide world ... every other country had persecuting -laws.... Protestants were sheltered against Protestant intolerance. The -disfranchized friends of Prelacy in Massachusetts and the Puritans from -Virginia were welcomed to equal liberty of conscience and political -rights as Roman Catholics in the province of Maryland.... In 1649 the -General Assembly of Maryland passed an Act to this effect, yet five -years later, when the Puritans obtained the ascendency there, they -rewarded their benefactors by passing an Act forbidding that liberty of -conscience be extended to 'popery,' 'prelacy,' and 'licentiousness of -opinion'" (Bancroft's _History of the United States_, I, VII.). - -Lecky corroborates this statement: "Hpital and Lord Baltimore were the -two first legislators who uniformly maintained liberty of conscience, -and Maryland continues the one solitary home for the oppressed of every -sect till Puritans succeeded in subverting Catholic rule, when they -basely enacted the whole penal code against those who had so nobly and -so generously received them" (_History of Rationalism_, II, 58). - -An abridged copy of the Act of 1650, the first Act of religious -toleration, will be found in the Appendix. The original from which I -copied is in the archives of the Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore. - -[26] On November 9th, 1906, the Socialist minister Viviani, after -"putting out the lights in heaven," exclaimed, "What shall we say to -these sovereigns who are slaves economically speaking, to these men who -enjoy universal suffrage yet suffer in servitude? How shall we appease -them?" - -[27] Hall Caine, explaining the title of his book, _The Eternal City_, -expressed himself as follows: "In the new methods of settling -international disputes, the old mother of the Pagan and the Christian -worlds will have her rightful rank.... Her religious and historical -interest, her artistic charm, above all the mystery of eternal life seem -to point to Rome as the seat of the great court of appeal which the -future will see established." - -[28] _Paradise Lost_, Book IV. - - * * * * * - -Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: - -their precedessors=> their predecessors {pg 97} - -evacute Rome=> evacuate Rome {pg 111} - -public shools=> public schools {pg 206} - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Religious Persecution in France -1900-1906, by Jane Milliken Napier Brodhead - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION *** - -***** This file should be named 42434-8.txt or 42434-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/4/3/42434/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: The Religious Persecution in France 1900-1906 - -Author: Jane Milliken Napier Brodhead - -Release Date: March 29, 2013 [EBook #42434] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - THE - RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION - IN FRANCE - - 1900-1906 - - - _Nihil Obstat_: - JOSEPH WILHELM, S. T. D., - CENSOR DEPUTATUS. - - _Imprimi potest_ - + GULIELMUS, - EPISCOPUS ARINDELENSIS, - VICARIUS GENERALIS. - - WESTMONASTERII, - _Die 6 Aprilis, 1907_. - - - - - THE RELIGIOUS - PERSECUTION - IN FRANCE - - 1900-1906 - - BY - - J. NAPIER BRODHEAD - AUTHOR OF "SLAV AND MOSLEM" - - _LONDON_ - KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUeBNER & CO., LTD. - 43 GERRARD STREET, SOHO, W. - 1907 - - - - -PREFACE - - -These Considerations, written during the last six years' residence in -France, have already appeared in the Press of the United States. They -were written from year to year without any thought of republication, -which seems justified to-day by the acuity of the conflict between the -Church and the French atheocracy, a conflict which cannot but interest -Christians everywhere. - -J. N. B. - - - - -CONTENTS - - - PAGE - -FIRST IMPRESSIONS 1 - -THE TWO CAMPS 7 - -THE ASSOCIATIONS BILL 13 - -THE ASSOCIATIONS BILL 18 - -ARBITRARY INCONSISTENCY 29 - -A PAGAN RENAISSANCE 33 - -INCONSISTENT JACOBINISM 40 - -UNAUTHORISED CONGREGATIONS 46 - -A COMBES _COUP DE MAIN_ 50 - -LEGALIZED DESPOTISM 57 - -DESPOTISM PLUS GUILE 63 - -UNCHANGING JACOBINISM 71 - -DEATH OF WALDECK ROUSSEAU 78 - -LIBERTY AND STATE SERVITUDE 82 - -THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 91 - -A PAPAL NOTE 105 - -FREEMASONRY 112 - -FREEMASONRY 118 - -PART SECOND 125 - -ALCOHOLISM IN FRANCE 131 - -THE LAW OF SEPARATION 135 - -CATHOLICISM IN GERMANY 144 - -PSEUDO-SEPARATION 147 - -THE PROGRESS OF ANARCHY 160 - -THE ABOLITION OF THE CONCORDAT 170 - -THE INVENTORIES 177 - -DUC IN ALTUM 185 - -THE LATEST PHASE OF SEPARATION 197 - -LIBERTY AND CHRISTIANITY 211 - -CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION 233 - -APPENDIX 249 - - - - -THE RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION IN FRANCE - - - - -FIRST IMPRESSIONS - - -LYON, _March 17th, 1900_. - -There seems to be considerable misapprehension in the United States as -to the status of the Catholic Church in France. "One iniquitous -arrangement in France," writes the _Central Baptist_, "is the support of -the priesthood out of public funds." In receiving stipends from the -State the French clergy, however, are no more its debtors, nor its -functionaries, than holders of French 3 per cents who receive the -interest of their bonds. When that essentially satanic movement, known -as the French Revolution, swept over this fair land, deluging it in -blood, the wealth of the Church, the accumulation of centuries, was all -confiscated by the hordes who pillaged and devastated, and killed in the -name of Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality, until Napoleon restored order -with an iron hand. A born ruler of men, this Corsican understood that -the principal feature of the work of restoration must be the -reorganization of the Catholic Church in France. Accordingly he -concluded with the Pope the convention known as the Concordat. It was -not possible in the dilapidated state of the country to restore the -millions that had been stolen by those "champions of liberty who," -according to Macaulay, "compressed into twelve months more crimes than -the kings of France had committed in twelve centuries." Still less was -it possible to rebuild many noble structures, and recover works of art -sold by sordid harpies or destroyed by impious vandals. It was -accordingly agreed (Arts. 13 and 14, Concordat) that in lieu of this -restitution the State should henceforth pay to the Church, annually, the -stipends of so many archbishops, bishops, curates, etc. - -The Concordat constitutes an organic law of the State. The clergy -receive their stipends, not as a salary, but as the payment of a debt -due to them by the State. It is in vain, therefore, that efforts are -made now to represent the Catholic clergy as salaried functionaries of -the State. The act by which Waldeck Rousseau recently decreed the -suppression of the stipends of certain bishops was wholly arbitrary, -and, moreover, the violation of an organic law. It was the partial -repudiation of a public debt, quite as dishonourable as if the payment -of interest of three per cent bonds were withheld from certain -bondholders. - -The position of Protestant and Jewish ministers in France is entirely -different. They do receive salaries which are purely gratuitous. The -Revolutionists did not trouble them, and they had no part in the -Concordat of 1801. We may say that the French Revolution was appeased, -but it is not over by any means. No nation less well founded and -grounded could have withstood as France has done the shocks and -upheavals of a century. - -To this day France is still profoundly Catholic, in spite of the -millions of public money expended in so-called non-sectarian primary -schools and colleges. Travellers stroll into French churches, in summer, -at High Mass on Sundays at 9.30 or 10.30 generally, and because they -find a very small congregation at this service they report that the -churches are deserted and religion fast dying out. They ignore the fact -that in these churches low masses have been said hourly since 5 a.m., so -that people may comply with their duty, and then go off on their outing. -Lyon has many large beautiful old churches, and many handsome new ones. -Yet not one of them could contain all their parishioners if they wished -to attend the same service. - -For nearly twenty-five years the Government has been running its -educational machine at immense cost, compelling the French to support -schools they will not patronize, as well as those of their own choice. -Nevertheless, State colleges and primary schools are so neglected that -laws are being devised to compel parents to send their children to them. -If all other means fail, the congregations of both sexes occupied in -teaching will be suppressed. This is the Government's programme. There -is nothing so bad as the corruption of that which is best. France is -still profoundly Catholic, and it is only natural that the struggle -between good and evil should be sharp here. The forces of reaction and -action are always proportionate. Hence it is that France has always been -"the centre of Masonic history," and of the Goddess Reason's supreme -efforts against Christianity. Her temperament, too, makes her a choice -field for experiments. - -We can therefore understand M. Waldeck Rousseau's indignation when so -many bishops openly expressed their sympathy with and admiration for the -Assumptionist Fathers who were condemned recently--and condemned for -what crime? For being an unauthorized association of more than twenty -persons, when there are hundreds of other similar associations at the -present moment. - -Briefly stated, the present phase of the Church in France is simply the -nineteenth-century phase of the struggles of Investiture in the Middle -Ages; the secular power seeking to have and to dominate a national -Church, whose ministers are to be nothing but state functionaries, -bound to serve and to support the Government. This was the old pagan -ideal, and every portion of the Church that has renounced allegiance to -Rome has fallen into this condition. In England, in Russia, in the -Byzantine Empire, in Turkey, in Africa--wherever there is a national -Church--it is little better than a department of State. The Gallican -Church narrowly escaped a similar fate in the days of Louis XIV. The -Civil Constitution of the Clergy was another desperate and abortive -attempt to nationalize and secularize the Church in France. Gloriously, -too, her clergy expiated their momentary Gallican insubordination. All -over France they were guillotined, drowned, and exiled, and imprisoned, -_en masse_, rather than submit to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. -There is nothing more admirable in the history of Christianity than the -conduct of the victims massacred in the convent of the Carmelites, -converted into a prison by the Jacobins. Martyrs and confessors were as -numerous as in the first centuries of the Church, and from their ashes -arose a new French Church purified by poverty and suffering. - -Never have institutions of learning and charity under religious -direction been so numerous. No country has a clergy more zealous, more -learned, more united with the Holy See than that of France to-day. No -wonder then that the powers of darkness are devising means to destroy -the new structure, so zealously and so laboriously raised on the ruins -accumulated by the Revolution of 1790. - -"Not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar among the people." -Violent measures would rouse French Catholics from their political -apathy. The Government cannot afford to do this. Religious liberty must -be destroyed by degrees--and herein lies the danger. - - - - -THE TWO CAMPS - - -_May 25th, 1900._ - -To the thoughtful and sympathetic observer, France presents a singular -spectacle of duality--two camps and two standards are confronting each -other, neo-paganism and Christianity. By Christianity I mean, of course, -Catholicism, for though there may be good Protestants, who adhere to -some of the truths of revealed religion, such a thing as a good pervert -French Protestant is a _lusus naturae_, practically non-existent. It is a -notorious fact that Protestants in France as elsewhere in Europe are, as -a rule, absolutely indifferent in religious matters since they have -ceased to be persecuted, and in many cases they have become the enemies -of revealed religion. - -All civilization, all redemption from barbarism, is fostered and -developed around a sanctuary. Consecrated hands have, in every instance, -laid the corner stone of the social edifice. The Church, the -school-house, the university, the courts of justice--these are the -normal steps by which societies, cities, and nations have advanced in -the Old World out of barbarism and chaos since the overthrow of the -Roman Empire. Of France this is pre-eminently true. Hundreds of -villages and towns bear the names of holy missionary monks who built -first a cell, and then a monastery around a chapel, which became the -centre of a village, that grew in time to be a city. We see the same -thing all over Europe and in the British Isles. Gibbon says that the -French bishops made the French monarchy as bees construct a honeycomb. -Like every institution that bears a religious imprint, this monarchy was -long-lived. Those who descant so volubly on the flightiness of the -French people, always overturning their government and never satisfied -with the one they have, would do well to reflect that the French -monarchy lasted some fourteen centuries. When this monarchy was -overthrown by the assassination of Louis XVI there was formed a vortex -in which were engulfed millions of human lives. Not that I consider a -monarchical or any special form of government indispensable to France's -prosperity. There is, however, one essential condition. The generating -principle of the French nation was the Catholic Faith. Without it, -France would no longer be herself. She would disintegrate interiorly, -and dismemberment and decadence would follow. France is still profoundly -Catholic, in spite of the prodigious efforts made since the days of -Voltaire and Tom Paine by numerous native and alien religious vandals, -whose prostituted intellects were garnished from the storehouse of -centuries of Christian culture. She will always be this or nothing. For -any one who knows France, historically and psychologically, it is -preposterous to think of a substitute creed, corresponding to any of the -various shreds of Christianity, which do duty for religion under the -name of some one or other of the multitudinous Protestant sects. - -France, I repeat, will always be Catholic or nothing. But the Government -is on the verge of apostasy. For the first time in French history the -usual religious observances on Good Friday were suppressed in all the -naval ports. "What thou doest do quickly," and on this occasion the -order was sent by telegraph on Thursday evening. As I stated in my last -letter, irreligious education is doing its work, and the increase of -juvenile criminals is appalling.[1] - -If the projected law regarding religious associations is voted, it will -be tantamount to the abolition of all religious teaching, as the -existence of these congregations will be rendered impracticable. England -and the United States will be the gainers, as they were when the -Revolution dispersed the priesthood in 1790. - -The French Government is on the verge of apostasy, as I have said. Is -this a cause, a presage, or a symptom of national decadence? All three, -I fear. Nations stand or fall with their governments. They have the -government they merit and they are punished for the evil doings of their -rulers. "I gave them a king in my wrath," it was written. Is there -sufficient vitality left in the French constitution to reject the poison -that is undermining it, and of which alcoholism, unknown in France fifty -years ago, is but the outward and visible sign? The assertion I make -that the greatness of the French people and their very national -existence is bound up with the Christian Faith is unquestioned by every -thinker in France, even by those who, for diverse reasons, do not -practise their religion, though they all bank on the last sacraments and -would be very sorry to see their wives and children neglect their -religious duties. - -The governments which have succeeded each other since 1880 have -flattered themselves that they could govern without the Church and -against the Church. Bismarck tried it and failed. The Catholic party -triumphed. It still holds the balance of power in Germany, and the -nation is growing daily more powerful and prosperous. In France, alas! -it is quite the contrary. In order to crush what they are pleased to -call the "clerical" party, the Government has allied itself with -Socialists of the reddest streak. Indeed, we may say that anarchy and -socialism, or collectivism as it is called, are sitting in high places. - -Any president or minister who dared to stem the tide would fall. They -must temporize, resign, or die. Carnot was assassinated. Casimir-Perier -resigned; Faure, who steadily opposed the revision of the Dreyfus case, -was poisoned, I am told--at any rate, it is said that he died almost -immediately after swallowing a cup of tea at a soiree. Though the public -has no means of forming a correct judgment regarding the guilt of the -notorious Dreyfus, the most important evidence having been secret, I -have never doubted that he was justly condemned. At any rate, he -accepted the Presidential pardon, and withdrew his appeal, a strange -thing for an innocent man to do. This alone, it would seem, ought to -estop him from a new trial. But unfortunately the whole thing is to be -gone over again, though it is a perfect nightmare for four-fifths of the -French nation. - -I know France intimately since thirty years, and it is with infinite -sorrow that I diagnose her present condition and its perils. - -According to custom, the Imperial Court of Russia retired to Moscow for -Holy Week, and while the Czar, laying aside court etiquette, was -kneeling humbly on the bare floor among his peasant subjects, holding -his lighted candle like them, his allies, the rulers of France, were -desecrating Easter Vigil by inaugurating the Paris Exhibition with -speeches, which seemed to have been compiled from those made by -Robespierre and his companions on that very Champs de Mars a century -ago, when they inaugurated their theo-philanthropy and the worship of -the Goddess of Reason. - -I presume Holy Saturday was selected because it is a high festival among -the Jews; otherwise Easter Monday would surely have been more -appropriate in a country where there are thirty-five million Catholics. -This was on the 9th April, and the Exposition they were in such a hurry -to inaugurate on that particular day is far from ready even now. - - - - -THE ASSOCIATIONS BILL - - -_May 4th, 1901._ - -A year ago I wrote in these columns as follows: "For twenty years the -Government has been running its educational machine at immense loss, -compelling the French to support their own schools as well as those they -will not patronize. Nevertheless, State schools and colleges are so -neglected that laws are being devised to compel parents to send their -children to them. If all other means fail, the congregations of both -sexes occupied in teaching will be suppressed." - -Now this is the true object of the Associations Bill; all the rest is -merely padding. Liberty of association for Freemasons, Socialists, and -all friends of the Third Republic will be untrammelled as heretofore. -The blow aimed at religious teachers is of peculiar interest at this -hour, when Christians, all over the world, are recognizing the immense -importance of the religious education of the young, if we would preserve -the structure of Western civilization, so laboriously built up during -2000 years, and save its deep foundations from being sapped by the -returning tide of barbarism and paganism. For the revolutionary spirit -of to-day is simply another version of that renaissance of paganism -which culminated in the Protestant revolt. As in the past, it will be -met by a great Catholic revival like that of the sixteenth century, -which Macaulay has so eloquently described in his Essay on Ranke's -_Papacy_. This is the counter-revolution against which the self-styled -government of "Defense Republicaine" is dressing its batteries. Already -the effects of this revival are felt and, as Macaulay has pointed out, -revivals of the religious spirit, this everlasting factor in the history -of humanity which our pseudo-scientists so unscientifically ignore, -always redound to the benefit of Catholicism. When men like Brunetiere, -Bourget, Lemaitre, Francois Coppee, become standard-bearers of truth, we -are consoled for the vociferations of any number of Vivianis, -Trouillots, etc., in and outside the French Chambers, for whom "the -eternal decalogue" is but an antiquated superstition that must be swept -away. - -The law against the Congregations has been opposed in the Chambers by -many Republicans who have no religious scruples, and one may safely -affirm that there is not a respectable Frenchman, outside the coterie in -power, who does not condemn the Bill. - -A few days before its passage, a mass meeting of many trade unions, -presided over by Leroy Beaulieu, was held in Paris to protest against -the projected suppression of the Congregations. The eminent economist -declared that the proposed legislation was one of "national suicide." -If the law is so repugnant to the French in general, how is it that the -Government always obtains a majority? it may be asked. - -The explanation lies in the fact that while honest Frenchmen have been -attending to their business and leaving politics strictly alone, this -anti-religious campaign has been carefully prepared since many years by -the enemies of Christianity. Like all notable persecutions, it is the -work of secret societies. The Boxers of China are a congeries of these -societies. In the days of Julian the chief instigators and abettors of -persecution were the secret societies of Mithra, whom Renan declared to -have been "veritable Masonic lodges with their initiations, passwords," -etc. - -Since 1875 the "Grand Orient," in which the Jewish element predominates, -has gradually been gathering into its hands all the reins of government; -not a very difficult task, seeing that as a rule respectable, -industrious Frenchmen will not touch politics, while the emissaries of -the lodges go out into the slums of mining and industrial centres, and -organize primaries and Socialist clubs that defeat any respectable -candidate who dares to enter the lists against the candidate of the -Government. Jules Lemaitre, in the _Echo de Paris_, states that there -are 400 deputies and 10 ministers who are Freemasons. As these latter -number about 25,000 in France, it follows that there is one -representative in Parliament for every 50 Freemason electors, whereas -there is only one representative for every 1800 votes who are not -affiliated to the "Grand Orient." With a house packed in this way, any -legislation is possible. Madame Sorgues, lately sub-editor of Jaures' -Socialist organ, _La Petite Republique_, has published some interesting -revelations, showing how the Judeo Freemasons have made tools of the -Socialists in order to seize the reins of government. "In combating the -combats of Dreyfus," she writes, "Jaures and his friends brought about a -singular _rapprochement_ of the two most irreconcilable camps ... the -presents of the kings of capital were accepted. The first service -rendered was to restore the tottering Socialist Press.... All the -advanced [meaning anti-clerical Socialist] dailies have passed into the -hands of the great barons of finance; they are _their_ journals now, not -the journals of the workers.... Then they cast their eyes on Waldeck -Rousseau, the clever rescuer of the Panamists.... The agent of the -Dreyfus politics had the happy thought of introducing into the Cabinet, -Millerand, the Socialist leader, with the consent of his party. -Socialism become ministerial would be _domestique_, and rendered -inoffensive against capital," etc. Last fall, the President, Loubet, -when at Lyons, dared to be the guest of the Chamber of Commerce, in -spite of the Socialist mayor, Augagneur, and his gang. Immediately, the -_Aurore_, a Socialist organ of Paris, clamoured for his suppression in -these terms: "As he is not subject to the same accidents as Felix -Faure, we must defend ourselves without waiting for the good offices of -Judith." M. Faure, M. Loubet's predecessor, it will be remembered, is -said to have died suddenly after a cup of tea at a soiree given by a -rich Jewess, and the present ministry of the Dreyfus revision, to which -he had been steadfastly opposed, came into power almost before the -country knew what had happened, bringing in their political wallet -another Dreyfus trial and this notorious Associations Bill. - -If I insist, it is because I wish that it may be clearly understood that -the French people are not guilty of the criminal legislation of which -they are the victims, owing to their incurable reluctance to touch the -mire of politics, left, as a rule, to the most unworthy and -unscrupulous. - -M. Waldeck Rousseau is a smart, wily politician; so was Camille -Desmoulins, an obscure, ambitious lawyer, who saw in the Revolution of -1790 a grand opportunity of reaching a proud eminence. This -accomplished, he had no further use for Revolutionists. "The Revolution -is over," he said; but it went on and on, until his own head rolled into -the fatal basket. - -How long will all this last? How long will the mad dogs of Socialist -anarchy be held in leash? - - - - -THE ASSOCIATIONS BILL - - -_3rd April,_ 1901. - -Few persons in the United States have the leisure or the means of -following the debates of the French Chambers, and appreciating the Law -on Associations, of which many garbled and falsified versions appear in -metropolitan and other dailies. - -It is pre-eminently a project of tyranny and religious persecution. The -sympathy of sectarian antagonism with anti-Catholic measures, in any -part of the world, is always a foregone conclusion. It does not concern -itself with the arbitrary tyranny involved, alleging, perhaps, that now -the tables are turned, and thirty-five millions of Catholics are being -treated as were the Huguenots from 1685 to 1790. But when former -governments strove to maintain national unity, founded on "One Lord, one -Faith, one Baptism," their position was that of a man defending his own -house against assailants, while the position of this Government is that -of a small armed band who have taken forcible possession, and mean to -coerce and outlaw the owners by imprescriptible right. But neither -Elizabeth nor Louis XIV ever invoked liberty to palliate their coercive -policy in order to establish, or maintain unity or uniformity. - -As Bodley says in his excellent work on France (1898): "The intolerant -system under the Third Republic differs from all persecutions known to -history in that it is not only practised in the name of liberty, but is -aimed against an established religion"--in possession since fifteen -centuries. - -It is a curious fact that the Huguenots, so clamorous for toleration and -the rights of conscience in the past, have during a century of absolute -liberty and equality, 1793-1900, dwindled from 2,000,000 in a population -of 27,000,000 to 600,000 in a population of 38,000,000. They have -evolved, in the usual process of Protestant disintegration, into the -deistical and atheistical minority who, with the Jews, are now so -determined to restore national unity in national infidelity. For it is a -notorious fact that France is ruled and oppressed by a small coalition -of Freemasons, chiefly Protestants and Jews, who are using the -Socialists as cats' paws. - -Waldeck Rousseau clearly stated the Government's programme in his -political speech at Toulouse, and its scope is unmistakable, no matter -what affectation of tolerance and amity for the secular clergy may -accompany it. He is an astute lawyer, and his unruly band of Socialist -henchmen in the Chambers often try his patience sorely by calling a -spade a spade. - -The suppression of religious orders and the confiscation of their -property is no new thing. St. Paul reminds the Hebrews of their -neophyte fervour, and how they accepted being despoiled with joy. -_Rapinam_ is the word used in the Vulgate; modern euphemism eschews the -unsavoury word robbery, and says "_secularization_," "_liquidation_." -Julian the Apostate, like the Rousseaus and the Trouillots of to-day, -was also of opinion that the "Clericals" must be impoverished and -discredited in order to crush out Christianity. Henry VIII robbed and -suppressed English monasteries simply because he saw no other means of -replenishing the empty treasury he had inherited. Moreover the religious -orders were not likely to sustain him in his new character of supreme -head of the Anglican Church. Suffering, crime, and ignorance reached -unprecedented proportions in the century that followed, as we learn from -Strype's _Chronicles_. Lecky asserts that 75,000 vagrant beggars were -hanged in Henry's reign. - -Suppressions and confiscations have always been a prominent feature in -all revolutions, and they have been numerous in the nineteenth century. -The reason is twofold. Everything that has a religious stamp is -essentially and very properly conservative. It requires infinite pains, -patience, and wisdom to build up or to reconstruct. Any fool or madman -can tear down. _Quieta non movere._ The religious congregations, -therefore, were always the last to abandon the mother country or the -regime under which they had existed for centuries. On the other hand, -revolutionists always have a crying need for money to furnish the -sinews of rebellion, and also, incidentally, to feather the nests of -patriots. What can be more handy, too, than church property, and the -untold wealth of the religious orders! It is true that these gold mines -are sometimes found to be 'salted,' as they are in the fantastical -statistics put forth by the Rousseau ministry.[2] They seldom justify -the brilliant expectations of the populace lured by the perspective of -rich spoils, as they are to-day--pensions for the veterans of toil, etc. - -These spoliations have always been followed by an immense recrudescence -of popular misery. It was so in France, in Italy, in Spain--everywhere. - -The twofold motive that instigated these spoliations does not excuse -them, but it explains and perhaps palliates to some extent. In France, -to-day, there is no extenuating circumstance. The Holy See loyally lent -its support to the Third Republic when the second president, M. Grevy, -humbly solicited it at a precarious moment. Leo XIII distinctly -requested the clergy and the faithful to rally to the Republic in the -interest of peace. With very few exceptions the regular and the secular -clergy have strictly abstained from politics. The inquisition of which -the Assumption Fathers were recently the object only succeeded in -incriminating two or three members of the order. - -Of course the regular and secular clergy cannot urge their flocks and -their pupils to embrace the atheistical and pagan ideals of the -coalition in power. If this be disloyalty they are all disloyal. - -Considering that since 1888 not less than 20,000,000 have been added -every year to the public expenditure, one might suppose that the -Government would think twice before depriving itself of this army of -some 180,000 self-sacrificing men and women who minister to the poor, -the sick, the maimed, the blind, the insane, the orphan, and the -outcast. Recently the Prefect of the Department of Bouches du Rhone was -summoned by the anti-clericals to secularize all the hospitals. He -refused to accede to their request, alleging that the budget of charity -was totally inadequate already, and that many indigent sufferers were -turned away from lack of accommodation. This is only one item; what will -it be when the Government has to pay an army of hirelings to minister to -the poor all over the land? But the Congregations do not concern -themselves with bodily wants only. Many of them are devoted to the -education of all classes. This is the head and front of their offending, -and the true reason of their taking off. Every one knows that the -godless scholastic institutions devised by Paul Bert, Ferry, and Jules -Simon are repugnant to the nation, and have been a complete failure. In -spite of the millions of public money lavished upon them, they have -never been able to hold their own against the religious schools of the -Congregations, which are supported entirely by private initiative, and -at the cost of great pecuniary sacrifices on the part of Catholic -parents, who support two sets of schools--those they patronize and those -for which they have no use. Not content with imposing these sacrifices, -as in the United States, the Third Republic now proposes to crush out -all competition by suppressing the teaching congregations, and indeed -all congregations, with the proviso of retaining for the present such as -shall be deemed of public utility--meaning, of course, those who bring -surcease to the straining budget by rendering gratuitous service to -thousands, who would be a burden to the State, in a country already -taxed to its utmost capacity. The tyrannical and arbitrary character of -a measure which declares all conventual institutions "against public -order" on account of their vows, which are likened to "personal -servitude," and yet utilizing some of them, does not trouble these -modern Dracos. Still less are they concerned with the iniquity of -depriving thousands of citizens of the right to dispose of their lives -as they see fit, and of preventing millions of parents from educating -their children as they choose. - -About the middle of the last century, representative men like -Montalembert, Lacordaire, Berryer, Dupanloup, entered the political -arena to fight the battle of free education against the tyranny of the -State University. They won the day, and freedom in educational matters -seemed henceforth the inalienable appanage of France and of all -communities boasting of Western civilization. - -The aim of the projected Law of Associations is to crush out this -liberty. It is no question of Church and State, but of Christianity and -liberty against atheism and tyranny. All the rest is mere padding. It is -a reversion to Lacedaemonian state tyranny and an odious anachronism. No -wonder, then, that the present Dreyfus-Rousseau ministry should seek to -throw dust in the eyes of the public, even subsidizing press syndicates -to mislead public opinion abroad. - -In a nutshell, the Trouillot Bill amounts to just this: No association -can exist without government authorization, which will never be given to -any religious congregation formed for educational purposes. None need -apply but those who work with the Government. "We will give our money -only to those who please us," said the Socialist mayor of Lyons -recently. "Our money," forsooth--considering that the taxpaying portion -of the community of Lyons is strongly Catholic and Conservative. Yet -this municipal autocrat declared that destitute children, who went to -any but state schools, should not be assisted by civic funds. - -It is the true Jacobin spirit that permeates this Republican organism. -The stamping out of religious education is itself but a means to an end. -That arch-traitor Renan declared "that religion would die hard; primary -education and the substitution of scientific for literary studies were -the only means of killing it." - -The final purpose of this Republic is to establish national unity in -national atheism, with perhaps a creedless church administered by -servile state functionaries--a modified form of the worship of the -Goddess of Reason. In saying this I do not calumniate the Republic, as -Waldeck Rousseau himself clearly stated the governmental programme at -Toulouse. A small coalition of Jews, Protestants, and other Freemasons -have gained control of the country by capturing the Socialist vote. The -latter do not yet see that they are being used as cats' paws. For what -fellowship can there be between Jew capitalists and collectivists? All -honest, industrious Frenchmen despise politics as a rule. The great -mining and industrial centres and the slums of large cities furnish -practically all the voters, and this proletariat is lured on by -brilliant prospects of the collectivist Utopia that is coming, when the -Congregations and the Church have been abolished. Respectable Frenchmen, -who do try to serve their country by taking a hand in politics, usually -withdraw in disgust, and thus the scum comes to the top and is utilized -by unscrupulous ambition. If any one wants to enjoy a clever, graphic -pen-picture of French politics, let him read _Les morts qui parlent_, by -M. de Vogue. - -The purpose of those in power is, I repeat, to break away completely and -for ever from the Catholic religion, with which the French nation is so -bound up that its fibres can only be torn out with the last palpitating -remnants of national life. "Few greater calamities can befall a nation," -wrote Lecky, "than to cut herself off as France has done from her own -past in her great Revolution." To consummate this calamity is the avowed -purpose of this Government. A hue and cry is raised by its Socialist -henchmen at papal _ingerence_ in French affairs, though the Concordat -surely gives the Pope a right to protest against the ostracism and -proposed suppression of the Congregations, as being a violation of -Article I of the Concordat, which guarantees the "free exercise of the -Catholic religion in France." - -Meanwhile "_The Jewish Alliance_" and the "_Internationale_" operate -freely and openly, causing strikes in every direction, and disorganizing -the industrial conditions here for the benefit of other countries. -During the last few months immense sums are being taken out of the -country, not by the Congregations only by any means. The boom in the New -York Stock Market, which redounds to the credit of the McKinley -administration, may be connected with this migration of personal -property from France. - -It has been France's glory and misfortune to be a great purveyor of -ideas, ideals, and fashions. She is essentially missionary, and was in -the vanguard of Christianity from the beginning. In the early centuries -of the Church, her monastic missionaries peopled the islands that lie -around this beautiful Riviera. St. Vincent de Lerins, St. Tropez, St. -Aygulf, St. Maxim, have left indelible footprints in these regions. In -her terrible Revolution France was an object-lesson to the nations, -whose intervention saved her from self-extermination. Foreign war was a -boon and a safety-valve. The Commune of 1870 was another warning to the -nations. Again to-day she is being made a spectacle to men and -angels--to men who are, with secret rejoicing, applauding the Waldeck -Rousseau ministry, and all for which it stands. They known full well -that decadence and doom are near. There will be another Sedan, another -Commune. The colonies, Indo-China in particular, will be the first to -fall away in the general dismemberment. - -I know France intimately since more than thirty years, and it is with -infinite sorrow that I diagnose her condition. Her recuperative powers -are very great. I fear, however, that they will prove inadequate after -the next great shock. - -But France's admirable gift of apostleship, her lofty idealism, which no -number of Voltaires could abase or abate, will not perish with her -territorial integrity, nor even with her national life. Like the -deathless masterpieces of Greece and Rome, her immortal genius will -inform and inspire countless unborn generations, long after France -herself shall have become a mere geographical reminiscence. "I will move -thy candlestick," it is written--not extinguish. - - - - -ARBITRARY INCONSISTENCY - - -_16th February, 1901._ - -The attitude of the Jacobin government in France towards the religion -professed by nine-tenths of the inhabitants is truly instructive. After -prating about liberty, fraternity, and equality, and the rights of man -for a hundred years, the successors of the revolutionary _Constituante_ -are preparing to deal a deathblow at the most sacred rights of the -individual, to overstep the most arbitrary acts of any regime, nay of -the Inquisition itself. These, at least, only concerned themselves with -outward manifestations of personal idiosyncrasies tending to disturb the -social order. But the successors of the Jacobins of the _Constituante_, -so proud of their blood-stained origin, direct their attacks, to-day, -against that most intangible thing the Vow, which has no existence -except in the inner conscience of the individual, seeing that monastic -vows which involved "civil death" were abolished by law in 1790, and all -religious are, to-day, free to exercise the rights of citizens--to buy, -sell, contract, or vote. The vow cannot even be considered a convention -or a contract binding together the members of a religious association. - -The ground on which it is proposed to declare religious congregations -illegal without interfering with Masonic and other associations is, said -Waldeck Rousseau, that "our public right [_droit public_] and that of -other States proscribes all that constitutes an abdication of the rights -of the individual, right to marry, to possess, all, in fact, that -resembles personal servitude." - -Thus in the name of liberty and the famous rights of man, I am denied -the right to exercise my freewill by electing to remain single, because -not to marry would be an abdication of one of the rights of the -individual, and resemble "personal servitude." Anything more grotesquely -inconsistent cannot well be imagined, and this project of law has been -in process of elaboration in the lodges since twenty years! In 1880, -when the decree against the Jesuits and all congregations of men was -promulgated, it was declared illicit and unconstitutional by 1500 -jurists, and 400 of the higher magistrates, who refused their -connivence, were removed from office. One of my best friends was among -these victims. The decree was enforced _manu militari_, but the current -of public opinion was so strong that, ere long, these establishments -were reopened and continued their good works unmolested. - -It was next proposed to crush out the Congregations by fiscal measures. -This also has proved inadequate, and the present project of law is the -supreme effort of a most paternal and absolute Republic to secure the -liberty of thousands of unappreciative subjects, by preventing them from -exercising it in the choice of a mode of life. Truly a strange -aberration of liberty, equality, and fraternity! - -Of course it is an open secret that what is aimed at is the destruction -of the Catholic Church in France, and the establishment, if possible, of -a national church with a "civil constitution of the clergy" as was -attempted in 1792. - -Before attacking the citadel it is proposed to demolish the two great -ramparts of the Church, Christian education and Christian charity, by -disbanding the noble men and women who man these ramparts. - -It is a notorious fact, well established by Taine, that the French -Revolution, with all its saturnalia of carnage and nameless tyranny, was -the work of a handful, some ten thousand in all, and even many of these -were foreigners. They carried all before them, and I fear that history -will repeat itself. - -The moral unity of France was destroyed for ever by the Huguenots in the -seventeenth century. Louis XIV sought in vain to restore it by the -Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The Revolution also tried to -enforce moral unity by the unlimited practice of the "_Sois mon frere ou -je te tue_." It is in the name of this lost moral unity that the -coalition in power now propose to crush out all educational and -religious liberty. French Protestantism can hardly be said to exist any -longer. In 1799, when their religious and civil liberties were restored, -Rabaut de St. Etienne, then president of the _Constituante_, stated -their number to be 2,000,000 in a population of 26,000,000. After a -century of complete liberty and equality, the _Agenda Protestant_ of -Lyons states their number to be 650,000 in a population of 37,000,000. -In the usual process of Protestant disintegration, the Huguenots, -erstwhile so zealous for Calvinistic purity of doctrine, have evolved -into the freethinking materialists, who form an important contingent in -the anti-religious Masonic coalition I referred to some months ago. - -The situation in France painfully recalls that of Constantinople some -forty years before the fall of the Eastern Empire. A house divided -against itself cannot stand. - - - - -A PAGAN RENAISSANCE - - -_10th August, 1901._ - -In a previous article I asserted that the revolutionary spirit so -rampant to-day is a new version of that renaissance of Paganism in the -fourteenth century which culminated in the Protestant revolt. I find the -same view expressed in Goldwin Smith's recently published work on the -United Kingdom. In a chapter on the Renaissance he writes as follows: -"Our generation may look upon this period with interest, since it is -itself threatened with an interregnum between Christian morality and the -morality of science." - -"Much learning maketh thee mad" might be said to our generation, that -seems to be science mad and blissfully unconscious of the paradoxes of -its programme. We are promised a scientific religion or a religion of -science, meaning probably a religion worthy of men of science, unmindful -of the fact that men of the highest attainments have been nurtured in -the Church in every century, and that the supernatural must always be an -indispensable element of religion. - -Now Mr. Goldwin Smith raises our expectations to a future era in which -"the morality of science" is to succeed to the hiatus or interregnum -with which we are threatened to-day, as in the fifteenth century, when -the Church was "drugged," he says. - -In his excellent work on _Social Evolution_, Kidd accentuates the fact -that our Western civilization, the highest yet attained, has been wholly -religious and not scientific; that in intellectual capacity and -attainments we are, even now, far below the average Greek mind of -centuries ago. This civilization of ours, marvellous in spite of all its -shortcomings and blots, is founded on abnegation and self-sacrifice -which are wholly irrational, scientifically speaking. It is indeed -scientifically impossible for science to have any other morality than -the law of brute force and the survival of the strongest, whether it be -on the battlefield, the mart, or on 'change. The law of supply and -demand is a corollary of this law. - -Complacency for the weak and the lowly, that characterized Christianity -from the beginning, and found expression in the legend of the Holy -Grail, is all folly, the sublime folly of the Cross. The equality and -brotherhood of man is also part of this "foolishness," so repulsive to -the cultured Greek mind. Nay, all our much-vaunted "free institutions" -have grown out of this mustard seed, to which our Lord compared His -kingdom on earth. "When the tree falls the shadow will depart," as -Tennyson wrote in another connexion. Nothing will be left to our poor -science-ridden humanity but the cruel glare of human egoisms, passions, -and ambitions. - -In one of those sonorous paradoxes which his soul loved, J. J. Rousseau -assures us that "all men are born free, and everywhere they are in -chains." That all men are born free is as false as that all men are born -upright and virtuous. History and experience give the lie to both -assertions. It is an incontrovertible fact that before Christ slavery -was the normal status of the masses in every age and clime, and Lucanus -only expressed an universally accepted axiom when he cynically declared -that the human race only existed for a few: _Humanum paucis vivit -genus_. - -The doom of slavery was sealed when Peter began his memorable discourse, -saying "Men and brethren" to circumcised and uncircumcised alike. On -that day the Church began her mission of liberation by subjugation to -the Christian law. - -But so ancient and deeply-rooted an institution as slavery could not -wisely nor safely be felled suddenly. It was not till 1167 that Pope -Alexander III published the charter of Christian liberty. "This law -alone," writes Voltaire (_Essai sur les moeurs_, chap. LXXXIII), -"should render his memory precious to all people, as his efforts on -behalf of liberty for Italy should endear him to Italians." - -Wherever Christianity permeates, even in an emaciated form, slavery must -disappear, and wherever Christianity has not penetrated slavery is and -always will be a standing institution, with its concomitant degradation -of women. - -Another proposition, a corollary of the first, is equally true. If, and -when, and where Christianity disappears, liberty, which is bound up with -and inseparable from the Christian law, will also diminish and -disappear, _tantum quantum_. - -The world, in my opinion, has never adequately laid to heart the -terrible lessons taught by the French Revolution. They are not laid bare -in their naked hideousness. The glamour of those much-violated -principles of 1789, and the catchwords of liberty, equality, and -fraternity are used to cover up the dire significance of that event. In -a moment of wild delirium, the most illustrious of nations allowed its -government to pass into the hands of a band of atheists prepared by -Voltaire and his ilk. Christianity was solemnly abjured in the name of -the whole nation, and the worship of Reason inaugurated with all the -paraphernalia of ritual and the pomp of worship. What was the immediate -result? In the twinkling of an eye all liberty vanished. Terror reigned -supreme. The most sacred rights of the individual were proscribed. Men -could no longer call their lives their own under the law of _Suspects_. -From my window at Lyons, I could see the monument to the victims of -1793. This city had at first submitted to the Revolutionary government, -but the Lyonnais revolted when they found themselves deprived of civil -and municipal liberties they had enjoyed under the most despotic kings. -Lyons was besieged by those singular champions of liberty who, according -to Macaulay, "crowded into a few months more crimes than had been -committed by the French kings in as many centuries." - -Lyons succumbed after a gallant resistance of ten months. This quarter, -where stands the monument to the victims, was then swampy ground, and it -was literally soaked that year, not with the overflow of the Rhone, but -with human gore. On the beautiful Place Bellecour two guillotines -functioned day and night, but they were inadequate to the bloody task, -and the citizens were mown down in batches on the Place des Jacobins. -The successors of these Freemason Jacobins control the destinies of -France to-day, by means of a Socialist parliamentary majority, obtained -by the means I described in a previous article. They lost no time in -ostracising tens of thousands of France's noblest sons and daughters, -who may not live as they see fit, nor exercise a profession which is -open to all by law. The law Falloux of 1852 confers on all citizens duly -qualified the right to teach or open schools, and it is still -unrepealed. Millions of parents are deprived of the right to educate -their children as they see fit in their native land. Exile is the price -of liberty. This is the beginning of that diminution of liberty which -must always accompany the elimination of the Christian principle on -which our civilization reposes. - -With stupendous cynicism Waldeck Rousseau calls the Associations Bill a -"law of liberty and of appeasement." One or two passages will exemplify -the character of this infamous Act. - - ART. I - - All associations can be formed freely and without authorization. - - ART. XIII - - No religious association can be formed without authorization given - by a law which will determine how it is to function. - -One of M. Waldeck Rousseau's henchmen stated the truth squarely, a few -days ago, when he said "the enemy is God," improving on Gambetta's -maxim, "Le clericalisme voila l'ennemi." - -Already there are symptoms that the Premier is being carried away by his -Socialist advance guard. When they now demand the suppression of the -Concordat he no longer protests as earnestly as he did, affirming his -devotion to the secular clergy, whose interests, he used to declare, -were the main object of the Trouillot or Associations Bill. - -The trial of Comte Lur Saluce by a so-called "High Court," composed of -senators, was a most peculiar episode. Accused of plotting to restore -the monarchy, his defence was one long, incisive, itemized arraignment -of the Third Republic and all its works and ways. His judges listened -with much interest, fascinated, no doubt, by the truth of his -statements, after which they found him guilty with extenuating -circumstances--a tacit admission apparently that his enmity to the Third -Republic was justified. Meanwhile, poor France is threatened with all -the horrors of another revolution, if the same elements compose the next -parliament, as they most certainly will, if opposition candidates are -not even allowed to hold meetings unmolested, as at Toulouse and Lyons -recently. - -Religious liberty has however found a new home in a most unexpected -quarter, none other than the realm of the Grand Llama of Tibet, who is -sending a special embassy to the Czar. The latter may follow the good -example and proclaim religious liberty in all the Russias, at the same -time as the Calendar reforms which are being prepared. The two questions -are not as irrelevant to each other as one might suppose at first -sight. - - - - -INCONSISTENT JACOBINISM - - -_11th November, 1901._ - -In 1894, 1895, and 1896 I contributed several papers on the Eastern -Question to the _Progress_. At that time public opinion was much excited -and indignant over the massacres in Armenia, but none of the Powers who -signed the Berlin Treaty thought fit to interfere. Massacres on a small -scale were renewed from time to time, and a few months ago they reached -considerable proportions; but nothing was done to punish the culprits, -or to protect the victims of Turkish barbarity. - -This week a mild surprise has been caused by the sending of the French -fleet to Turkish waters. The callous lethargy, which a sense of duty, a -chivalrous sympathy with the weak and the oppressed, could not dispel, -has yielded to a financial exigency. Two naturalized citizens are -creditors of the Sultan for a large sum. It is true they have been -receiving most usurious interest these last fifteen years, but now -Lorando and Turbini wish to recover their capital; and lo! the might of -France is put forth on their behalf! It is said that M. Waldeck -Rousseau, the Premier, is professionally interested in the matter, and -will receive a fee even bigger than the one he earned when he saved his -clients in the Panama scandal, who are now in the seats of the mighty. -The long-suffering French taxpayer will grudgingly pay the expenses of -this naval demonstration, and the Porte will promptly pay up in order to -be rid of his unwelcome visitors. But France does not mean to be a -simple collector for MM. Lorando and Turbini. - -The elections of 1902 are at hand, and the semi-Jacobins in power are -anxious to obtain the suffrages of the better element, and not be -entirely carried away captive by their Socialist and ultra-Jacobin -supporters, through whom they have seized the reins of government. - -The Crimean war, as I have shown in _Slav and Moslem_, was partly -brought about by a similar preoccupation on the part of Napoleon III, -who had just made himself emperor by an infamous _coup d'etat_. -Voltairean France had allowed her protectorate over the Eastern -Christians to fall into desuetude, and Russia supplanted her. But when -the latter exercised her treaty-acquired rights, France and England -combined against her. - -To-day with impudent inconsistency the Third Republic, which has done -its utmost, these thirty years, to dechristianize France, sees fit to -exact from the Porte that French religious schools be allowed to -multiply freely, and that its protectorate over Eastern Christians be -distinctly recognized. - -What is more, the Republic demands that the Catholic University of -Beyruth deliver diplomas entitling the recipients to practise medicine -in all parts of the Turkish empire. Now, considering that the Third -Republic has just made a most iniquitous law against religious -congregations, depriving French parents of the means of educating their -children in accordance with their faith, it is a grotesque incongruity -that the Turks should be compelled to harbour these congregations and -their schools, which are being closed in France with a latent view to -establishing a Government monopoly of education. - -This university of Beirut, and practically all the French schools and -hospitals in Turkey, are under the direction of Jesuits, Dominicans, -Assumptionists, etc., and they are of great importance to French -influence, as they implant this language and the love of a nation that -has such admirable sons and daughters. - -I have no doubt that railroad concessions will also be demanded, and -that all details were discussed during the Czar's recent visit to Paris. -Russia is using France to checkmate Germany in her Bagdad railway -scheme, and to undermine her influence with the Sultan. - -The deaths of Abdul Hamid and the Emperor of Austria may at any moment -precipitate the European crisis which all expect and fear. - -Meanwhile, neither China nor the Moslems have said their last word. In -the heart of China, Tung-fu-Siang and Prince Tuan may, even now, be -engaged in founding a new Mohammedan power. A China galvanized by that -dangerous vitality of Islam would mean the extinction of Europe in -China. And if any great Moslem chief should succeed in combining the -interests of the faithful in Africa and Turkey, the European nations may -all look to their laurels. - -The self-conceit and self-complacency of the white races are simply -immense. This self-complacency is unparalleled, except perhaps by that -which distinguished the Jewish people. Because Providence had chosen -them for the accomplishment of certain designs which were to embrace the -whole human race in their ultimate scope, the Hebrews flattered -themselves that the Gentiles only existed for their benefit, as the -yellows, browns, and blacks do for us to-day. When the chosen people had -filled their cup of iniquity, heedless of that last pathetic appeal, -"Jerusalem, Jerusalem," etc., there came that terrible siege (A.D. 70) -which made them henceforth a people without an altar, without a country. - -Another proud empire arose, intoxicated with material and military -greatness, and we all know how the barbarians, our forefathers, -overthrew the mighty empire of the Caesars. - -We, their descendants, flatter ourselves that because we wield the -sceptre of civilization and science, we do so in virtue of some inherent -race-qualities, and that our candlestick can never be moved, whatever -may have happened to the rushlights of antiquity. But if we have been -in the vanguard of civilization and science since many centuries, it is -merely because we were Christendom. To-day Protestantism has devoured, -one by one, all the vital truths of Christianity, till it is strictly -true to say of many so-called Christian peoples and individuals, "Thou -hast a name"--for Christian beliefs with their practical sides have been -almost eliminated. - -When the apostasy of the governments of Christian peoples shall have -been consummated, when unlimited divorce, which is successive polygamy, -shall be generalized; when monogamy shall vanish from our codes, which -forms, with freedom from slavery, the line of demarcation between -Western and Eastern civilization--then indeed shall we be ready for the -burning. - -The modern barbarians are at our gates, nay, in our midst. Godless -education and the peculiar political methods of unscrupulous, educated -proletariat are rapidly preparing what may be termed government by -anarchy. - -Yesterday I spent a few hours at Nice, and was waiting for a tramway to -return home, when a youth of about fifteen, with a candid, ingenuous -countenance, waved his newspapers just out with the cry: "Voila la lutte -sociale. Buy _La lutte sociale_." I took the extended copy, asking the -youth if he believed in the _lutte sociale_. - -"Oh yes, of course I do," he replied with a most convinced air. - -"What is this _lutte sociale_?" I inquired. This he "did not know." - -Glancing through the leading article, I read a virulent denunciation of -the clergy, and a most contemptuous diatribe against the masses, _a la -Voltaire_. "They [the masses] are formed of vicious, ignorant, covetous -individuals.... What writers call 'the soul' of the multitude is in -general nothing but an immense horrible cry of wild beasts, an -accumulation of the lowest instincts of the human brute ... they do not -reason, they howl and they strike." - -It is these masses that unscrupulous politicians and secret societies -are preparing to hurl against organized society as in 1789, after having -destroyed in them from infancy all reverence for God or man: _Ni Dieu ni -maitre_--neither God nor master. - -In self-defence, society will be compelled to restore Christianity, or -slavery--or perish. - - - - -UNAUTHORIZED CONGREGATIONS - - -_25th April, 1902._ - -I hesitate to write anything more on religious conditions at the present -time, because I shall have to repeat what I have written in these -columns since two years. My worst previsions have been realized. The -Budget of Cults which I had hoped would be thrown as another sop to -Cerberus, has been voted by a compact Ministerial majority. - -If the clergy of France, with the Holy See, do not themselves reject all -connexion with a distinctly pagan government, and hold their own as the -Church did in the first three centuries, I fear this fair land may -revive the experiences of the Byzantine or Bas Empire, as it is aptly -called, for there is a distinct determination to enslave or to destroy -the Church. - -The French are an optimistic people. From year to year they keep -repeating that matters will soon improve, that the next elections will -make everything right and restore liberty. - -France's great misfortune is, I repeat, that respectable people will -not, as a rule, touch politics, or soon give them up in disgust, while -denaturalized Frenchmen and naturalized foreigners do nothing else for a -living. - -In 418 the Emperor Honorius wished to establish a representative -government in Southern Gaul. "But," writes Guizot, "no one would send -representatives, no one would go to Arles." This same state of mind is -working the ruin of France to-day. - -On March 17th, 1900, I wrote: "Thus the bad element captures the votes -of the labouring masses by the circulation of vile newspapers and -brilliant promises of the Social Utopia that is coming. Consequently -both Houses are packed with this element, whose war cry is _Vive la -Sociale_, and whose emblem is the red flag of anarchy which was waved -under the very nose of President Loubet at a recent Republican fete. -With a parliament and a ministry like this any legislation is possible. -If other means fail, all the Congregations engaged in teaching will be -suppressed.... But Waldeck Rousseau is no fool," I added. "He and his -Freemason employers know that there are some thirty odd millions of -French Catholics.... The Government cannot afford to rouse them from -their political lethargy by violent measures.... Religious liberty must -be destroyed by degrees." - -Two years have elapsed since the notorious Associations or Trouillot -Bill has been passed; and the law Falloux (1850), which guarantees -liberty of teaching, may already be considered as abrogated in favour of -a state monopoly of education. - -Never since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), strongly -reproved by Pope Innocent, has so great a blow been dealt at liberty of -conscience and the rights of free citizens. The pendulum of progress has -been set back at least two hundred years; nay, we witness an odious -reversion to Lacedaemonian state tyranny. And this crime against liberty, -this liberticide, is committed in the twentieth century, amid the -plaudits of all sectarian haters of the Catholic Church, and in a -country which unceasingly flaunts its catchwords of "Liberty, Equality, -Fraternity." - -The general elections of May, 1902, will not, I fear, modify the -situation. I doubt, indeed, if any efforts, however earnest and -well-concerted, could now retrieve the political situation. - -Waldeck Rousseau, whose wily effrontery is something more than human, -knows this, and begins to throw off his mask of Liberalism. - -His recent political speech in the mining centres near Lyons was bold -enough, judging by a stenographic report, for the _Officiel_ and _Havas_ -toned it down somewhat. - -He gave it to be understood that only those congregations who relieved -the State in caring for the maimed, the halt, the blind, and the insane -were to be tolerated. In other words, the souls of her children are to -become the prey of a pagan State, but their diseased bodies are to be -left to the care of the Church! - -Eight Jesuits are being prosecuted for preaching Advent sermons, though -they have closed their establishments and dispersed. The proper course, -apparently, would be to arraign the bishops and cures who had invited -these Jesuits to occupy their pulpits. Waldeck Rousseau is too wily for -that. His policy is to make a fine distinction between the secular and -regular clergy--to divide and conquer. - -Three other Jesuits, who profess theology at the Institut Catholique, -obtained from Rome dispensation of their vows, in order to be able to -retain their chairs at the Institut. They, too, are being prosecuted for -alleged violation of the Associations Bill. - -I think the situation is clear, and that if any Catholics here or -elsewhere still misapprehend the true purport and scope of this law of -1901, their purblindness is no longer admissible. - - - - -A COMBES COUP _DE MAIN_ - - -_23rd August, 1902._ - -The elections of May, 1902, have not improved the situation in France. -No efforts, as I said, however earnest, could now retrieve the political -situation. For twenty-five years the "Grand Orient" has been gathering -into its hands all the threads of power; ministers, presidents, cabinets -are made, unmade, remade, as it suits the well-conceived plans of this -band of sectarian Jacobins, who differ from other Freemasons in that -with them God is both non-existent and _l'ennemi_ to be vanquished, -while at the same time they are strictly a political organization, whose -object is to control the country and conform it to their own image. - -The Associations Bill, or to speak more accurately, the law against all -Christian education, was decreed by the lodges in 1877. An abortive -attempt was made to carry it through in 1880. That attempt was -premature, because the "Grand Orient" had not yet gained complete -control over the judiciary. To-day very nearly every part of the -administration is in their power. - -People wondered why Waldeck Rousseau resigned immediately after the -elections, which seemed a tribute to the success of his administration. -The reason of this shuffling of the cards is evident. It had been -resolved, as soon as the elections were assured, to make a _coup de -main_, and close, summarily, 3000 primary schools, frequented by -hundreds of thousands of children of the poorer classes, and this a few -weeks before the holidays, without the slightest regard to the fact that -state lay schools were already inadequate, while in many places there -were none but congregational schools. - -Now Waldeck Rousseau, speaking for the Government, had most formally -declared that these schools were in no wise affected by the law of 1901 -(Associations Bill), and continued to be regulated by the law of 1885 on -primary education. It was by making this solemn declaration that Waldeck -Rousseau obtained votes enough to carry Art. XIII of the Associations -Bill, which is now being flagrantly violated by the closing of these -3000 primary schools. - -Many of these schools were conducted by a few Sisters in buildings owned -by private individuals, and the sealing up of these premises was a -distinct violation of property rights. In one instance, the proprietor -resorted to the use of a ladder to go in and out of his house; in -another the local tribunal removed the seals and restored the house to -the owner; but the Government had the premises sealed again. I cannot -say who had the last word, but it is certain that there is open -conflict between the judiciary and the executive. The tribunals have not -yet been sufficiently _epures_, nor the magistrates sufficiently -_domestiques_. It is consoling to think that there are still a few -magistrates in France who have not "bowed the kneel to Baal, nor kissed -his image." - -But a complete _epuration_ of the army and of the judiciary is going on. -All the "suspects" are being displaced, from the humblest _garde -champetre_ to the highest prefect and magistrate. It will then be smooth -sailing for the coalition in power. - -The _coup de main_ against the primary schools having been resolved -upon, it is easy to understand how desirable it was that Waldeck -Rousseau should not be on the Ministerial bench to undergo -interpellations and eat his own words. A quondam Seminarist was put in -his place, and bore the brunt of the interpellations. He contented -himself with saying that "M. Waldeck Rousseau had made a -mistake"--_voila tout!_ The Left meanwhile came to his assistance by -banging their desks and vociferating against the deputies of the Right -and Centre. A free fight was taking place in the hemicycle, when M. -Combes produced the decree, closing the session, and so ended this -disgraceful scene at two o'clock in the morning. - -Of course it is pretended by Ministerialists that all these primary -schools of the poor were closed in virtue of Art. XIII of the law of -1901. This is absolutely false. Jules Laroche, a Liberal who cannot -even be suspected of "clericalism," in his public letter, announcing to -M. Combes an interpellation, expressed himself as follows, quoting M. -Waldeck Rousseau's own words, consigned in the _Officiel_ of March 19th, -1901:-- - -"As to the right to open private schools, the Chamber knows that this is -regulated by a special law; a simple declaration is enough, the school -is then under the State Inspector. Art. XIII [Associations Bill] has -absolutely nothing to do with the legislation on education, and the new -law does not touch it at all." - -"Thus spoke Waldeck Rousseau," continues M. Laroche. "It was on this -formal, categoric, and solemn declaration that we voted Art. XIII. You, -M. le President [Combes], are not applying Art. XIII. You are violating -it, you are transforming the law of 1901 into a trap, and the loyal and -categorical declaration of M. Waldeck Rousseau into the act of a -traitor" (_en oeuvre de trahison_). - -This is enough for any one who cares to know the truth. It is thus that -the French people are fooled and led on, step by step, to their -destruction. - -Nevertheless, many admirers of these sectarian persecutors prefer to -believe that all these primary schools and infant asylums were closed -because they refused to comply with the Associations Bill! Many of these -teachers belonged to amply authorized Congregations. Those of Savoy and -the county of Nice had letters patent from the King of Savoy and -Piedmont, and the treaty of annexation to France, 1860, distinctly -stipulated that the religious congregations and ecclesiastical -properties should never be molested; it was one of the conditions on -which the inhabitants consented to be annexed. Of all this the Third -Republic makes litter. - -The amusing part of M. Combes' _coup de main_ is that his minions even -went around expelling small groups of three to five sisters employed by -the Government in the infirmaries of State Lyceums! In these instances, -however, they neglected to seal up the premises, as they did in the case -of private owners--a fine Jacobin distinction between _mine_ and -_thine_. - -The Socialist Mayor of Reims recently took upon himself to laicize the -civil hospital, which, strange to say, had been served uninterruptedly -for two hundred years by a congregation called "Soeurs de l'hopital," -whom even the Revolutionists of 1793 had spared. - -Ministerial organs like the _Matin_ are now busy assuring the public -that the sick, the blind, the insane, are not all to be cast into the -streets like the children of the poor, until the Government finds time -and money to build schools for them. - -If the Congregations devoted to the sick, the maimed, and the blind -could make common cause with the teaching Congregations, if all refused -to demand authorization, which is merely a trap and a noose, the -Government, I think, would be checkmated. But, of course, Christian -charity will not allow them all to go on strike and throw their poor and -sick and halt upon the hands of the Government. It will be their turn -soon, and meanwhile they are holding the clothes of those who stone -Stephen. No concessions, no pliancy on the part of the persecuted, will -disarm or arrest the Government--the "Grand Orient," I mean. - -The final purpose of these Freemasons is to crush out Christianity by -means of anti-religious education of all classes, and have, if possible, -a national, Republican institution, to be known as the Church of France. -It is said that M. Combes is preparing a formula of the oath to be taken -by the clergy of this institution; it is a revival of the Civil -Constitution of the Clergy of 1793, and we may also look for a renewal -of the persecution of the _non-assermentes_ or non-jurors of that epoch. - -Decidedly these modern Jacobins have no imagination; all their -proceedings have a twang of ancient history. Read in Taine's _Ancien -Regime_, "_La conquete Jacobine_," and it will seem like current -history. You will read how prefects and maires and gens d'armes often -knocked in the dead of night at the doors of peaceful sisters and -ordered them to disperse. At Avignon, recently, the police had to -barricade the streets to prevent thousands of indignant men and women -from manifesting before the Prefecture. Lyons is preparing to resist. -The speech pronounced by the Socialist mayor, M. Augagneur, at the -political banquet on 14th July, would certainly warrant retaliation. - -After the usual stereotyped glorification of that disgraceful -performance known as _La Prise de la Bastille_, M. Augagneur said: "The -new Bastille we must take to-day is that power, far more dangerous, of -the spirit of the past incarnated in the Church, acting by its priests, -its preachers, its monks, its professors, by all its lay accomplices. It -is this Bastille we must destroy, if we do not wish to see wasted the -immense efforts of 113 years ... thus, gentlemen, I invite you to drink -to the success of the campaign being waged by the Government." This is -clear speaking. "No greater misfortune can befall a nation," wrote -Lecky, "than to cut itself away from its own past as France has done." -It is this misfortune that these blinded sectarians are seeking to -consummate in hatred of the Catholic Faith, which is so bound up with -the fibres of the nation that they can only be torn out with the last -palpitating remnants of national life. - - - - -LEGALIZED DESPOTISM - - -_15th February, 1903._ - -A curious feature in the case of the doomed Congregations in France is -that more than nine hundred awards were made to them for educational -work during the Paris Exhibition of 1900. Leroy Beaulieu, who presided -over this international jury, has written several articles, and a most -scathing letter to M. Combes, on the subject of his malicious official -calumnies. He, Brunetiere, Paul Bourget, and many other distinguished -Frenchmen have countersigned a Defence, presented by the Salesian -Fathers, in which not less than thirty-four misstatements made by M. -Combes are rectified. In general, it may said that all these official -statements are as unreliable as those made by the Commissioners of Henry -VIII. The Chambers were supposed by the law of 1901 to decide what -Congregations were to be granted authorization. They really were allowed -no voice in the matter. M. Combes presented only the names of four or -five, Les freres de St. Jean de Dieu and some others, who are to be -spared for the present. The remaining sixty-four were condemned without -a hearing. - -Parents of the richer classes will soon be compelled, like the poor, to -send their children to government schools, keep them at home, or send -them to foreign lands to be educated. - -The true character of the Jacobin policy is becoming every day more -apparent. - -The social body, like our own, has its periods of adolescence and -senility, its maladies and critical periods, while the axiom that -nations have the government they deserve is attested by the fact that -governments correspond to the national pathology. - -The individuals too who dominate in turbulent times are like straws on -an impetuous stream. They merely serve to show the direction of the -current and its force. - -Danton and Robespierre did not make the Revolution. It made them. A -popular fallacy exists that the Revolution ended with the fall of -Robespierre, or at any rate when Napoleon planted his artillery before -the doors of the National Assembly. It is not over yet, and the men in -power to-day are but straws on the surface. - -The French Revolution was an avatar of the revolution of the sixteenth -century, or rather one of the periodical renaissances or revolts of -Paganism against Christianity. No doubt many economical causes were at -work in 1789 and there was an urgent need for readjustment. - -The _corveable_, or what we call to-day the taxpayer, then as now, -groaned and repined against the excessive burdens laid upon him. -Proportion guarded, it is even true to say to-day that all tradesmen, -agriculturists, and shopkeepers, all _except_ the _vendors of alcohol_, -are as much crushed by taxes now as the _corveables_ were in 1789. - -The moving spirit, the genius and soul of the Revolution were the -Jacobin Clubs. There were organized the Civil Constitution of the -Clergy, theo-philanthropy, the worship of the prostitute as Goddess of -Reason, the _noyades_ and the _fusillades_ which made France a vast -charnel-house. - -To-day the Jacobin Clubs have changed their signboards, they are now -Lodges of the Grand Orient. But the spirit is unchanged. The ideal is -always the same--the destruction of all revealed religion, and with it -the noblest fruit of Christianity, Liberty. - -The Jacobin mind, served by organs of political administration, is to -constitute the Omnipotent and Infallible State, the golden image before -which all must bow down and worship and sacrifice--for is not sacrifice -the soul of worship? They must sacrifice all preconceived, congenital, -and inherited notions of honour, morality, and religion, and acquiesce -humbly in those edicted by the Omnipotent Infallible State; for _de -facto_ infallibility is always a concomitant of supremacy. A necessary -corollary of moral unity, established by an omnipotent State, is an -evening up of social and financial conditions. No man may possess more -learning, more wealth, or more prestige than his neighbour. Thus after -having preluded by the assault on personal liberty, depriving thousands -of men and women of the right to live in communities, the Jacobin -Omnipotent State is itself to constitute one vast Congregation in which -all, _nolens volens_, must live and practise _Poverty_ by submitting to -fiscal confiscations for the laudable purpose of equalizing fortunes, -_Chastity_ or unchastity according to new Government formulae regarding -divorce and free love, etc., with a view to procreation under -governmental supervision, and above all _Obedience perinde ut -cadaver_--Obedience to the Omnipotent Infallible State, henceforth the -only regulator of their own and their children's morality. - -Since twenty-five years every law, every constitutional and electoral -manipulation, has been elaborated at the lodges. To-day sixteen -Commissions composed of their most trusted members are masticating the -execution of the Associations Bill, or rather the wholesale executions -of this _guillotine seche_ which are imminent. No congregation of men -engaged in preaching or teaching is to be tolerated, or its members -allowed to exercise these functions even individually. The same rule -will be applied to the congregations of women. Those engaged in primary -schools have nearly all been dispersed by decree, and in violation of -the law, as I have shown. The suppression of those who teach the -children of the rich is only a question of a short lapse of time. - -The rulings of these Commissions will be presented to the Chambers, and -the "bloc" will vote as one man. It is an admirable means of eliminating -all useless discussion on the part of the opposition minority, which -every day grows lesser, and still more less, and will soon reach the -vanishing point. Thus after being governed by decrees and ministerial -circulars, France will be governed by Commissions as under the -Constituante, and the ideal of the Omnipotent State, universal teacher, -preacher, and general purveyor, may be realized ere long. Surely a -strange outcome of a century of Liberalism! - -From whatever point of view we consider the suppression of all religious -Congregations and of educational liberty, we must admit that a grave -violation of personal and civil liberty has been committed and will soon -be consummated. - -The Moslems for a long time levied on the Spaniards and the Venetians a -tax of so many boys and girls a year, but no Government of a free people -has yet called on all parents to stand and deliver, not their purse, but -the souls of their children, that it may sow therein the tares of a -hideous state materialism. The right free citizens have to follow their -inclination and conscience by living in community and practising the -counsels of evangelical perfection to which they feel called is a most -sacred part of personal liberty. - -"Liberalism," writes Taine, "is the respect of others. If the State -exists, it is to prevent all intrusion into the private life, the -beliefs, the conscience, the property of the individual. When the State -does this, it is the greatest of benefactors. When it commits these -intrusions itself, it is the greatest of malefactors." - -Curiously similar was the judgment of an old Spanish peasant with whom -Montalembert conversed during his travels in Spain after one of its -nineteenth-century anti-clerical revolutions and the usual -accompaniment, the suppression of religious Congregations. Pointing with -her bare and scraggy arm to some deserted monastery buildings, she -pronounced these two eloquent words, "_Suma tyrania_," acme of tyranny! - - - - -DESPOTISM PLUS GUILE - - -_6th June, 1903._ - -The true character and scope of the Associations Bill can no longer be -dissimulated. It should have been labelled "An Act for the suppression -of religious congregations and Christian education preparatory to the -suppression of Catholicism in France." - -Nor is this all. It looks as if this Trouillot or Associations Bill, -with its numerous articles, was merely a vulgar trap set by the -Government to extract from the doomed unauthorized Congregations -accurate information regarding their property and members, in order to -seize the former and see to it that the latter are for ever debarred -from teaching. These inventories were a necessary part of all demands -for authorization, without which no Congregation could henceforth exist. -I say "seize," for every one knows that "liquidation" means purely and -simply spoliation and confiscation. - -I have in previous articles dwelt on the bad faith of the Combes -ministry in closing by simple decree some three thousand free parochial -schools, in spite of the solemn assurance given by M. Waldeck Rousseau, -on behalf of the State, that these schools were in no wise affected by -the new law of 1901 (Associations Bill). At the last session of the -Chambers a more monstrous illegality was committed. - -"Both the letter and the spirit of the law of 1901 were violated." These -are the words pronounced at Bordeaux recently by M. Decrais, an -ex-minister, who was thereupon elected senator by an imposing majority. - -The law distinctly provided that the demand for authorization of each -religious order be submitted to the vote of the Chambers, but M. Combes -just bunched them all into three categories--preaching, teaching, -contemplative--and they were sent to execution by cartloads, like the -victims of 1793. - -In vain the Right protested against the illegality of this proceeding. -"What do we care for legality? We have the majority," were some of the -cynical utterances of the Left, who banged their desks, stamped their -feet, and vociferated to drown the voices of speakers of the Right. -Worst of all, M. Combes produced, and used with much effect, a document -purporting to bear the signature of many Superiors of Congregations, -urging all to sell out their government bonds. - -In vain the Right demanded that the authenticity of this document be -proven before taking the final vote. This act of M. Combes speaks for -itself. - -The wholesale suppression of all preaching and teaching orders is, -moreover, a distinct violation of Art. I of the Concordat, which is an -organic law of the French State. This article provides, "that the -Catholic religion shall be freely exercised in France." - -The allegation that this Concordat does not mention religious -Congregations is a mere quibble. - -"No church," declares Guizot, "is free that may not develop according to -its genius and history," and every one knows that preaching and teaching -Congregations have always formed an integral part of the Catholic -Church, her most important organs of expansion in fact. - -This wholesale suppression of preaching and teaching Congregations is a -violation not only of the law of 1901 and of the Concordat, but also of -the law Falloux, 1850, which entitles all persons duly qualified to -teach and open schools. It was then that the great preacher and teacher, -the Dominican Lacordaire, speaking in the Chambers as deputy, pointed to -his white robe, exclaiming, "I am a liberty." - -The Charter of 1830 (under the _Monarchie de Juillet_, as the reign of -Louis Philippe of Orleans was called) conferred this liberty, in theory; -but it remained ineffective until the law Falloux finally abolished the -state monopoly of education, which Napoleon had centred in the -University of Paris. - -But the Third Republic brushes aside Art. I of the Concordat, the loi -Falloux, 1850, the scholar laws of 1885, and its own new-fledged law of -1901, all with the utmost unconcern. - -"What do we care for liberty," as the Left cynically exclaimed. Quite as -little as they care for the wishes of the whole country, expressed by -innumerable petitions, and the votes of 1500 Municipal Councils of -Communes, whom the Government condescended to consult. One thousand and -seventy-five of these voted for the Congregations; about four hundred -voted against them; the others abstained. The attitude of the people in -every place where Congregations were dispersed, with the aid of the -regular army and the police, leaves not the slightest doubt that if a -referendum had been taken as in Switzerland, more than two-thirds of the -nation would have voted for Liberty and the Congregations. - -With the astute hypocrisy that characterizes him, Waldeck Rousseau -professed intense devotion to the secular clergy and declared that the -law of 1901 (Associations Bill) was devised to protect them from the -encroachments of the regular clergy or monks. He thought to divide and -conquer. Now that seventy-two bishops have sent a combined petition to -Parliament on behalf of the Congregations, and the whole secular clergy -have openly identified their cause with that of the Congregations, this -ministerial fiction can no longer be upheld. - -The Left or "bloc" are clamouring already for the suppression of the -secular or parochial clergy, who they say "are all in connivance with -the Congreganists." - -M. Combes has sent a circular to the bishops requiring that all churches -and chapels _non concordataires_ be closed, and threatening to close -even the parish churches which existed already in 1808, if any member of -a dispersed Congregation preached in it. - -Only four bishops, I am happy to say, "had the courage to submit," to -use the words of a ministerial organ. - -The language in which the French prelates have expressed their _non -possumus_ is worthy of the best traditions of the Church, and when these -sectarian persecutors shall have completely thrown off the mask, another -glorious page will be added to her history, I trust. - -Jealous, no doubt, of M. Trouillot's laurels, M. de Pressense, son of a -Protestant pastor, and some others have attached their names to projects -of law for what is mendaciously and hypocritically called "the -Separation of Church and State," meaning a law for the complete -shackling of the Church in France in view to its suppression. - -I think it is very desirable that the lodges should do their worst here -and now. But it is just possible that Waldeck Rousseau may return and a -halt be called. - -M. Combes and _his employers_ the "Grand Orient" must see that they -have gone a little too far. Civil war on a small scale has been raging -on many points of France for two or three weeks; and they would be -running blood if French Catholics carried concealed weapons as people do -in South Carolina and Kentucky. As it is, there have only been -innumerable broken limbs and heads and no end of arrests. M. de Dion, a -deputy wearing his insignia of office, which offered him no immunity, -appeared handcuffed before the police court, and was there and then -condemned to three days' imprisonment for "manifesting." A young lady of -twenty was condemned to eight days' imprisonment for having cried -"Capon" to a justice of the peace, who beat a hasty retreat when he -found himself confronted by a few hundred men in the hall of a convent -into which he had forced an entrance with the aid of state locksmiths, -or _crocheteurs_. Here on my boulevard, Cimiez Nice, two squadrons of -cavalry and numerous infantry were called out to aid the police at 4 -a.m. in beating back the crowds who were "manifesting" against the -expulsion of the Franciscans. At Marseilles, Avignon, etc., the main -streets had to be barricaded, and cavalry charged the crowds, wounding -great numbers. Of course all these grand manifestations of popular -indignation are carefully belittled or suppressed by foreign -correspondents of English and American papers. In the _Evening Post_, -August 25th, M. Othon Guerlac, with lofty affectation of impartiality, -echoes all the commonplaces of ministerial calumnies against the -Congregations, but he has not one word to say about the monstrous -illegalities committed by the Government from first to last. - -The indignant protestations of the foreign colony have suspended for a -time the closing of churches and convents on this Riviera. - -The Ministerials have not even the courage to do evil logically and -consistently, with equal injustice to all. - -Two years ago Waldeck Rousseau, in his famous political speech at -Toulouse, declared religious vows to be contrary to public law; and in -the same breath he introduced the law of 1901, inviting all -Congregations to apply for authorization. His colleague, M. Brisson, at -the session in which fifty-four Congregations of men were executed _in -globo_, loftily declared "that the Republic would never put its -signature to an act alienating human liberty." And at that very moment, -three or four of these Congregations were nestling, securely, under the -protecting wing of M. Combes. That of St. Jean de Dieu has a first-rate -establishment for men in need of surgical treatment, similar to the one -conducted by Augustine nuns, at which Madame Waldeck Rousseau was -operated on recently. None of these will be interfered with, no matter -how heinous their vows may be. - -It would be foolish, I repeat, for Catholics to rejoice at the possible -return of Waldeck Rousseau, or at any _machine en arriere_ policy. - -M. Combes has been hired to do an odious job, when it is done he, too, -will retire or fall. But the well-matured plans of the Grand Orient will -be carried out with long-drawn, unrelenting, satanic astuteness. This is -the peril I noted in my first article from France, March 17th, 1900. - - - - -UNCHANGING JACOBINISM - - -_6th May, 1903._ - -Last August I described the true spirit and scope of the Associations -Bill, as it is called, and which many supposed was a mere matter of -domestic economy. It should have been called an act for the suppression -of all religious associations preparatory to the elimination of -Christianity in France. _L'ennemi c'est Dieu._ It is evident to-day that -the law of 1901 was a mere trap set by the Government to obtain from the -Congregations accurate information regarding their pecuniary resources, -in order to seize their property (for the term "liquidation" is only an -euphemism); and regarding their members, so that they may be marked men -and women, for ever debarred from preaching or teaching. The law -required that demands for authorization of each religious order or -association be submitted to the Chambers. M. Combes just bunched them -all into three categories: preaching, teaching, and contemplative. At -the request of the Government, the majority or "bloc" then sent them to -execution by cartloads, as in 1793. Then the categories were labelled -royalists, _emigres_, and Catholic priests. - -It is much to the credit of these fifty-four Congregations of men that -their lives were so free from reproach that _three_ times the Government -had recourse to the same incident of a certain Superior, said to have -been condemned to hard labour in the year 1868! As another instance, the -case of the Frere Duvain was alleged. Like the Frere Flamidien, the -former had been recently arrested and imprisoned on false charges. For -since then, only a week or so ago, Frere Duvain too was acquitted as -wholly innocent! - -These wholesale executions have been committed not only illegally, but -in spite of the fact that out of 1600 municipal councils consulted on -the subject, 1200 voted for the maintenance of the Congregations. About -100 abstained, and the others voted against. The prefects, being mere -satraps of the Government, were nearly all opposed to the Congregations. - -The Government has been profuse in its protestations that its object in -suppressing the religious Congregations was to protect the secular -clergy against their encroachments. But since seventy-two bishops signed -a petition to the Chambers on behalf of the Congregations, and are daily -raising their voices to denounce the tyranny which has ostracized them, -this mask also falls. The right to preach and to teach are corollaries -of the right of free speech and free thinking. All liberties, indeed, -are inseparably connected, and must stand or fall together. - -Meanwhile the loi Falloux, 1850, is still extant; nevertheless -thousands of citizens are placed _hors la loi_, because they live and -dress in a certain way. - -The Concordat, a solemn pact and contract between the Holy See and the -French Government in 1801, is still supposed to be in vigour, and one of -its most important clauses provides for the "free exercise of the -Catholic religion in France," and Guizot affirms that no Church is free -that may not develop and function according to its genius and -traditions. Teaching and preaching religious associations have, from the -beginning, formed an integral part of the Catholic Church. The -suppression of her schools was one of the first means resorted to by -Julian the Apostate when he undertook to restore paganism. The Third -Republic invents nothing. Its next step will be to attack the secular -clergy and establish a department of State known as the National Church, -ministered to by servile state functionaries, recruited among apostate -excommunicated priests, of whom there are always a few lying around. It -is erroneously supposed that the Catholic Church in France is an -established or state Church; that the clergy receive a salary and are -functionaries. This is absolutely false. Two decisions of the Court of -Cassation have decided that they are not functionaries. - -To understand their position we must recall that the Convention -confiscated all Church property and lands, the pious donations of kings -and people which had accumulated during fifteen centuries of national -progress and prosperity. Not satisfied with this act of spoliation, they -threw these lands on the market with the precipitation and greed that -characterize all revolutionary iconoclasts, fondly believing that the -whole nation had sloughed off Christian superstitions regarding _ipso -facto_ excommunications of all, who seized or even acquired Church -lands. They were mistaken. These holdings became a drug on the market. -From common prudence and honesty, if not from higher motives, few could -be found willing to traffic in the pious gifts and foundations of their -ancestors. Ten years of massacres, of civil and foreign wars, and -anarchy, did not improve matters. Two classes of landed proprietors, two -standards of valuation were created, and civil and religious discord was -perpetuated in this material form. When Napoleon undertook the work of -reconstruction, his first care was to restore normal conditions in the -real estate market by obtaining a clear title to the confiscated lands -of the Church. There was but one person who could give this clear title. -To him Napoleon appealed, and the Concordat was signed. - -Pius VII could not, however, relinquish all claims to the confiscated -lands without compensation. Hence the engagement entered into by the -French Government to pay in perpetuity adequate subsidies for the -maintenance of an adequate number of bishops and parochial clergy. This -was the consideration [the _do ut des_] for which the Pope, as supreme -chief of the Catholic Church, gave a clear title to the confiscated -lands. The payment of these subsidies became henceforth a charge on the -public treasury, a portion of the national debt, just like the payment -of interest on state bonds. - -The suppression, at the present moment, of these subsidies in the case -of the Bishop of Nice and many other bishops and hundreds of parish -priests is a partial repudiation of this part of the public debt. And -there is nothing to prevent the repudiation of the whole. "What do we -care for legality?" "We have the majority," were utterances which passed -unrebuked in the Chambers recently. They can imprison and kill the Roman -Catholic clergy. The First Republic did both most freely. So did Nero -and Bismarck. It also tried the experiment of a national schismatic -Church and failed. The Third Republic openly proclaims its intention of -renewing the experiment in which Abbe Gregoire, with _carte blanche_ -from the Republic, so signally failed a hundred years ago. - -To understand the abnormal conditions prevailing in France, we must -remember that France is in revolution since a century or more. The -Revolution of 1793 was essentially a religious movement, born of the -monstrous alliance of the French ruling classes with the spirit of -libertinage and infidelity. It destroyed the monarchy and all the -institutions of the ancient regime, merely because they were associated -with the Catholic Church, whose destruction was their main object--a -means to an end. The final purpose was the destruction of Christianity -and its noblest fruit, liberty. The ideal, then as now, is the -omnipotent State, sole purveyor, teacher, and preacher. This may seem -exaggerated, but it is strictly the spirit and the tendency of the -Revolution since 1789. Napoleon was the offspring and the incarnation of -the Revolution. After Austerlitz, he threw off the mask, and clearly -showed his intention of establishing state despotism on the ruins of all -civil and religious liberty. There was but one will in Europe that -resisted him. Alone of all the sovereigns of Europe, the aged, -defenceless Sovereign Pontiff refused to enter into his continental -_blocus_ against England, declaring that all Christians were his -children, and we know the story of his long martyrdom at Fontainebleau. -Capefigue, in the third of his ten volumes on the Consulate and the -Empire, comments on the singular fact that the First Republic always -bitterly antagonized the United States, and he explains this "singular -phenomenon" by the reason that the former was a government of tyranny -and anarchy, whereas the Republic of Washington was one of law and -liberty. - -What was true then is equally so to-day. The United States owe their -independence to his most Christian Majesty, the murdered Louis XVI, and -not to any pagan French Republic. Louisiana was ceded by the Emperor -Napoleon, and not by any French Republic, first, second, or third. There -can be no sympathy between the two republics other than that of -sectarian sympathy with persecutors of the Catholic Church. I speak of -the Government, not of the French people, whose genius and high -qualities we must always admire. - -Methods have greatly altered in all departments, but the generating -principle, the inner mind of Jacobinism, is unchanged. We hear no more -about the worship of the Goddess of Reason and theo-philanthropy. -Jacobin clubs have changed their signboards; they are now called Lodges -of the "Grand Orient," but they rule France with an iron hand by means -of the Socialist vote. When the day of reckoning comes with the -Socialist masses, who are now being used as cats' paws, the Revolution -will again enter into one of its acute phases. Millerand and Jaures are -merely politicians who fall into line with the Government quite -gracefully. But, as Lincoln said, you cannot fool all the people all the -time. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church will reap the benefits of -persecution. The Congregations will carry on their work elsewhere, and -she will more than recuperate her losses on this little point of earth -called France. Unhappy country that is committing "national suicide," to -use the expression of Leroy Beaulieu. - - - - -DEATH OF WALDECK ROUSSEAU - - -_August, 1904._ - -I refer my readers to what I wrote on May 4th, 1901, regarding the -advent of the Waldeck Rousseau Cabinet, and its policy after the sudden -and suspicious death of M. Felix Faure, rapidly replaced by M. Loubet. I -then related how Socialist revolutionists were skilfully used to obtain -a majority with which both Houses were packed to carry through the -odious legislation of the last few years. - -The laws of 1901 (Associations Bill), and of July 7th, 1904, suppressing -all teaching religious orders, are measures which represent the closing -of some twenty-seven thousand Christian schools! - -Two days after the law was voted some 3000 _authorized_ institutions -were ordered to close their doors, and almost immediately was -inaugurated the long series of _liquidations_, a genteel euphemism for -wholesale spoliation of the victims, deprived of their homes, and of -their only means of earning a living, as they may no longer teach. - -There is nothing more tragically pathetic than the last appearance in -the Senate of M. Wallon. This veteran republican, called the "Father of -the Constitution," and now a hoary octogenarian, raised his quavering -voice in one last eloquent denunciation of the laws of 1901, 1902, and -1904. Condemning the shameless violation of property rights, he boldly -applied to the Government the Article of the Code which debars the -assassin of the testator from inheriting his property. "Messieurs," he -cried, "on n'herite pas de ceux qu'on a assassines." "Gentlemen, it is -not permitted to inherit from those we have destroyed." - -Equally tragical was the last appearance in the Senate of M. Waldeck -Rousseau, so near his last hour. - -He had risen from his bed of sickness to unburden his conscience by -protesting against the anti-clerical fury of his ci-devant supporters -and instruments. In vain he denounced the violations of his law of 1901, -travestied by that of 1904 suppressing even authorized Congregations. -The verve of the great tribune had abandoned him. His speech was but a -hollow echo of its former eloquence. Twice he reeled and was forced to -steady himself by clinging to the railing. When he rose for the second -time, to reply to the sarcasms of M. Combes, he suddenly lost the thread -of his discourse, and before he had ended, many benches were vacated; -the forum, where his words had so often been greeted with wild applause, -was almost empty. - -"He threw down the thirty pieces of silver, saying, I have sinned. And -they said, What is that to us? See thou to it. And he went forth." - -It is needless to inquire whether the story of attempted suicide be true -or not; to-day he is no more. The last two years of his life were a long -agony, of which the last two hours were passed on the operating table. -While he was dying under the surgeon's knife the minions of his -successor, M. Combes, were invading a convent of Notre Dame Sisters. -They even insisted on going into the infirmary to inventory beds and -blankets. A sick nun was so shaken by the emotion caused by this -unwonted intrusion, that she had a seizure and died before the minions -of the law had left the convent. - -And thus persecutor and persecuted met on the threshold of eternity. - -This sister is only one of the many hundreds of infirm and aged who have -been literally killed by this infamous legislation of 1901 and 1904, and -only one of the thousands who are dying of hardships and privations. -Many of them are living on four sous a day. - -The Government wanted to give M. Waldeck Rousseau a national funeral, -strictly pagan and masonic of course; but he had left instructions to -the contrary, and is to be buried from his parish church, Ste. -Clothilde. Whether he received the last Sacraments of the Church or not -is still a matter of conjecture. The death of Waldeck Rousseau will not -in any way affect the trend of politics. The recent municipal elections -are proclaimed a victory for the Government. As usual not one-third of -those inscribed voted. _A quoi bon?_ Before the law of 1901 was voted, -the immense majority of the municipalities consulted pronounced in -favour of the Congregations. This made no difference. - -Before the law of 1904 suppressing authorized Congregations was voted, -the Right demanded that the municipal councils be consulted again. The -Government peremptorily refused. As I have said before, nothing can -restrain Jacobin tyranny but a national cataclysm which would bring -about a violent reaction. "We have the majority, what do we care for -legality?" as the Left proclaimed recently at the Palais Bourbon. - -They have no other rule of conduct but the "fist right," now known as -"the majority." - - - - -LIBERTY AND STATE SERVITUDE - - -_July, 1904._ - -Modern democracy, which flatters itself that it has shaken off all the -shackles of authority, is itself but an evolution of what it so loftily -contemns. If we are free to-day, it is because our fathers have borne -the yoke of Christ. - -In one of his sonorous paradoxes, Rousseau declared that "men are born -free and everywhere they are in chains." - -That all men are born free is as false a statement as that all men are -born upright and virtuous. History and experience give the lie to both -assertions. Men are not born free. Our rights and liberties are secured -by laws which are a circumscription of the sphere of individual -independence for the benefit of the community, and this in virtue of a -divine "thou shalt not," written on the tablets of the heart, or on -tables of stone. Human laws have no sanction except in divine law, and -no man has a right to command his fellow-men, except within the limits -of natural and of divine law. - -The sum of liberty in every community is the sum of its amenity to law, -both divine and natural. Hence Plato's remark that "republics cannot -exist without virtue in the people," and Montesquieu's assertion that -"the vital principle of democratic government is virtue." All human laws -deriving their sanction from divine and natural laws, it follows that -liberty must diminish when these laws are violated with impunity. - -Plutarch, referring to the Golden Age, which, according to all writers, -even Voltaire, came first, writes that "in the days of Saturn all men -were free." Our data regarding this period are not numerous, -unfortunately; but we learn from the traditions of all peoples, as well -as by revelation, that something momentous happened, which abolished the -Golden Age. Prometheus stole fire from heaven and was chained to a rock. -Sisyphus was compelled to roll a stone uphill all his days. Adam was -condemned to labour in the sweat of his brow, etc. The myths are -various, but the central idea is always the same--a crime punished by a -penalty involving the loss of liberty. - -What the nature of the act of disobedience committed by Adam when he ate -the forbidden fruit we do not know. Probably we should not understand -even if we were told; for the magnitude of a crime is always -commensurate with the intellect of the criminal, and knowledge has -considerably diminished among the sons of men. To name anything as Adam, -or whoever is thereby designated, named all the creatures in the Garden -implies that his knowledge of them was adequate, while the great trouble -with all our up-to-date science is, that back of every phenomenon, of -every fact, stands an inexorable X, an unknown quantity that baffles -research. - -If we could wrest her secret from the Sphinx in any one instance, it is -probable that the whole book of nature would stand revealed. But the -angel with the flaming sword guards the portal. - -With the passing away of the Golden Age, or "the days of Saturn, in -which all men were free," there came a diminution of light, and above -all of liberty. What justice does in individual cases, when malefactors -are incarcerated, seems to have been accomplished on a large scale, when -the masses of a race, nay of the whole species, were reduced to slavery. -For though our data regarding the "days of Saturn when all men were -free" are scant, we do know, beyond a peradventure, that before Christ -slavery was the normal condition of the masses in every age, in every -clime; not alone among barbarous and predatory tribes, who reduced their -captives to this condition, but also among the most stable and cultured -communities--in Assyria, in Babylon, Egypt, Idumea, Rome, Greece, -everywhere. Nor was there found one sage, one legislator, to raise his -voice against an inveterate institution, which one and all deemed a -_sine qua non_ of any society, of any government. Lucanus only expressed -an universally accepted axiom when he wrote that "the human race only -existed for a few"--_Humanum paucis vivit genus._ Towards the end of the -Republic, when Rome numbered a million and a half inhabitants, there -were only some 20,000 proprietors; all the rest were slaves. - -Sages and legislators of antiquity who considered slavery a _sine qua -non_ of government were not wrong. Vast numbers of human wills cannot be -left in freedom without a restraint of some kind. "Christianity alone," -writes the Rationalist Lecky, "could affect the profound change of -character which rendered the abolition of slavery possible" (_History of -Rationalism_, II, 258). - -When Peter the Fisherman proclaimed the brotherhood of man, saying "Men, -brethren" to all alike, the Church began her perennial mission of -liberty by sanctification. Individually, men must be delivered from the -yoke of evil passions by Christianity, so that the masses might be -delivered from servitude. - -The powers of darkness, that are now waging fierce warfare on the -Christian Church, understand perfectly what the legislators of antiquity -understood and practised. Being resolved to uproot Christianity and its -moral teaching, which alone have rendered freedom and government -compatible, they are casting about for some new kind of slavery, which -apparently is to take the form of State Socialism. A coterie is to -concentrate in its hands all the power, all the wealth, all the natural -resources of the country. This coterie will be named the State; the -others, the cringing, crouching millions yclept the Sovereign People, -will have nothing left but to obey the edicts of the Omnipotent -Infallible State, only teacher, preacher, and general purveyor. _Humanum -paucis vivit genus._ - -This reversion to the pagan regime from which Christianity delivered us -will be the just penalty of apostasy from Christianity. - -If, and when, and where Christianity is crushed out, liberty both civil -and personal, which are bound up with and inseparable from it, will -disappear in exact proportion _tantum quantum_. - -We need only turn a few pages of contemporary history and read the -lessons taught by the French Revolution. The most illustrious of -nations, in the zenith of its civilization, allowed the government to -pass into the hands of a band of neo-pagans prepared by Voltaire and his -ilk. Christianity was solemnly abjured; its temples were desecrated; at -Notre Dame a prostitute, posing as the Goddess of Reason, was -worshipped; on the Champ de Mars the new religion of theo-philanthropy -was inaugurated. - -What was the immediate consequence? In the twinkling of an eye all -liberty vanished. The most sacred rights of the individual were -proscribed. Men could no longer call their lives their own under the Law -of Suspects, a time to which Camille Pelletan, _ministre de la marine_, -actually referred, yesterday, as "an hour when under the influence -necessary, but somewhat enervating, of Thermidor, the Republic was in -danger." - -Without going so far back as 1793, we have but to read the records of -the Commune in 1870, which was a phase of the Revolution that is still -marching on. One of the moving spirits of this time was Raul Ripault. M. -Clemenceau was only Mayor of Montmartre, and M. Barrere, now ambassador -at Rome, was an active member. - -To Monseigneur Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, one of the hostages taken -and shot by the Commune, Raul Ripault said, "Ta liberte n'est pas ma -liberte, aussi je te fait fusiller" ("Thy liberty is not my liberty, so -I have you shot"). - -Liberty, I repeat, is bound up with and inseparable from Christianity. -To-day, as in 1793, a coterie of atheists or neo-pagans have captured -all the avenues of power by means of godless schools and the Socialist -vote, and even by hobnobbing with the red flag of anarchy, which waved -unrebuked around M. Loubet at that famous fete called Triomphe de la -Republique. - -They have worked, steadily and intelligently, to this end since -twenty-five years, while two-thirds of the country have been absolutely -indifferent to politics. Some even affect to ignore the name of the -President. Laborious, honest Frenchmen as a rule despise politics, and -cannot be induced to take part in them or be candidates for office. One -has but to consult the electoral returns to see how many hundreds of -thousands abstain from voting. Thus the Government has passed into the -hands of the Judeo-Masonic coterie.[3] - -As in 1793, the first result is the diminution of liberty. It was long -sought to represent the Associations Bill (1901) as a mere measure of -domestic economy. It was the entering wedge of tyranny. The object to be -attained is the suppression of all Christian education, by the -suppression of all religious teachers, preparatory to a state monopoly -of education. - -The indignant protestations and the tumultuous manifestations of men and -women who fill the streets with cries of "Vive la liberte!" "Vivent les -soeurs!" are wholesome signs; but I think it is just as well that the -Jacobins should go on and do their worst. Overvaulting tyranny, like -ambition, doth overleap itself. At the Gare St. Lazare, recently, some -ten thousand people accompanied the expulsed sisters of St. Vincent to -the train with cries of "Liberty! Liberty!" The police were powerless. - -In another place the population unharnessed the horses of the omnibus -that was taking some other sisters to the station. They dragged the -conveyance back and broke down the doors of the convent which had been -sealed by the Government. - -In Paris at least 50,000 children of the poor have been thrown into the -streets; for the state schools were already inadequate, and 30,000 or -more children were waiting for a chance to comply with the law of -compulsory education.[4] In a mining town, a _creche_, or infant asylum, -where 150 babies from six months to four years of age were cared for -while their mothers worked, was closed suddenly. - -When we think of all the suffering and inconvenience caused by these -executions, we are amazed that more blood has not flowed. - -The right parents have to educate their children as they see fit, and -the right all citizens have to live as they see fit, and teach when duly -qualified, are primordial, inalienable rights that cannot be violated -without crime, and a crime which must find its repercussion in all -civilized countries. In general it may be said that every Government has -a right to administer its own affairs as it sees fit. This is precisely -what the Turks assumed when they were massacring the Bulgarians and the -Armenians. But Europe thought differently in 1877. The Jacobins of 1793, -who had conquered France then, as to-day, by cleverly combined -manoeuvres in which fear played a large part, also thought it was -nobody's business, if they saw fit to drown, proscribe, and guillotine -by tens of thousands, in order to enforce their peculiar views of -liberty. But every act of tyranny, every crime against liberty, offends -all Christendom. It cannot be circumscribed by national frontiers. Soon -all Europe was weltering in blood. The First Consul marched rough-shod -over Europe, imposing French liberty on unappreciative nations. And we -all know how the allied armies occupied Paris in 1815 and curbed the -Revolution for a season. History repeats itself. - - - - -THE FRENCH REVOLUTION - - -_27th June, 1904._ - -The Associations Bill, pre-eminently an act of oppression and religious -persecution, has been rendered doubly odious by the many illegalities by -which it has been surrounded, some of which I enumerated in my letter in -the _Evening Post_ of May 6th. Not long since, M. Decrais, ex-Minister -of the Waldeck-Rousseau Cabinet, was elected by a large majority at -Bordeaux, after he had branded the wholesale execution of the religious -orders as "a violation of the spirit and the letter of the law of 1901," -and assured his electors that he had not voted with the Government on -that occasion. Indeed, these Jacobins seem to revel in illegality for -its own sake, and cannot even respect their own enactments. - -Civil war on a small scale has been raging since nearly two months in -various parts of France. It became quite monotonous to read the recital -of all these expulsions _manu militari_ which filled the columns of the -daily Press. The programme was almost the same in every case. The crowds -varied from three hundred to many thousands, according to the locality, -and were more or less violent in their denunciations of the Government; -the police and the regular army, employed to surround the convents and -disperse the crowds of manifestants, were also more or less numerous, -and acted more or less brutally. The troops as a rule left their -barracks at night, arrived on the scene at 2 or 3 a.m., and awaited -daybreak before surrounding the house. Then, the Commissaires ringing in -vain, the doors are battered down, police and soldiers enter the breach -and find a few old monks in the chapel, for as a rule the communities -had dispersed. The delinquents are marched off between two rows of -soldiers, the crowds break out in seditious cries of "Vive la liberte, a -bas les tyrans," numerous arrests of both sexes are made, and the -country is informed that, fanaticized by the monks, men and women have -assailed the representatives of the law. - -It was on one of these occasions that Mlle. de Lambert cried "Capon" to -a justice of the peace because he had beaten a hasty retreat when he -found, in a cloister, two or three hundred angry men instead of a few -old monks. She was condemned to be imprisoned for eight days. On the -expiration of her term some five thousand persons went to the prison to -give her an ovation, but found that she had been removed. - -At Nice there was a small community of Franciscans on the Boulevard -Carabacel. Their chapel was very popular with the humbler classes of -Nicois, as well as with visitors, and manifestations like those that -occurred at the church of La Croix de Marbre, much frequented by -American sailors, were expected. Several companies of infantry and -cavalry were sent to surround the building at 3 a.m.; but hundreds of -persons had spent all night on the premises, and the usual -manifestations and arrests occurred. Even after the premises had been -sealed up, police agents were detailed to guard them night and day. This -was very amusing, considering that policemen are so scarce in Nice that -people are robbed in broad daylight in the most-frequented quarters. - -All these grotesque executions _manu militari_ represent one of the most -recent violations of the law, wholly gratuitous in this instance, seeing -that the Government had itself traced the method of procedure. On -November 28th, 1902, M. Valle, Minister of Justice, said:-- - - "We have to examine if, after refusal of authorization and a decree - closing an establishment, we should continue to have recourse to - armed force, or whether it is not preferable to have recourse to - the tribunals. M. Chamaillard himself recognizes that it is better - to substitute judicial sanction to the sanction of force, always - brutal. It is this substitution we ask you to vote" (_Officiel_, - November 29th). - -Again, December 2nd, the Minister said:-- - - "The Government abandons the right to have recourse to force, and - asks you to substitute judicial for administrative sanction. This - is the object of the proposed law" (_Officiel_, December 3rd, p. - 1221, col. 2). - -On December 4th this law was passed. Therefore all these executions -_manu militari_, before the tribunals had pronounced, were another -flagrant violation of law. But, as I said, these Jacobins seem to revel -in illegality for its own sake. Meanwhile the tribunals, civil and -military, have been kept busy condemning officers who refused to take -part in these degrading, unsoldierlike expeditions, as well as men and -women guilty of manifesting in favour of liberty. - -The fate of the Congregations of women engaged in teaching is a foregone -conclusion. Nay, M. Combes is closing many of these establishments even -before the demands for authorization have been submitted to the Chambers -to be refused _in globo_. I was in Lyons recently when two -establishments of the Society of the Sacred Heart were dispersed in the -middle of the school year, without the slightest regard to the -convenience of the pupils or their teachers. More than three thousand -persons invaded the railway station at 7 a.m. for the departure of the -first group of exiles. An enthusiastic ovation was given them, in which -all the passengers took part, and the bouquets were so numerous that -they had to be piled into a vacant car. In the afternoon there was a -second departure for Turin. This time the police took timely -precautions. The avenues leading to the vast square were barricaded -against all but travellers. These ladies have educated several -generations of Lyonnaises, and were greatly esteemed. - -It would be too long to relate the exploits of the Government's -henchmen, who have distinguished themselves at Paris and elsewhere. It -is simply astounding that such things should happen in any civilized -country and in a century so proud of its progress, liberty, and -enlightenment. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was an offence -against liberty and justice, but it occurred two hundred and fifty years -ago--almost in the Dark Ages. Some time ago, Mr. Bodley, in his -excellent work on France, commented on the extraordinary phenomenon of a -republic persecuting, in the name of liberty, a religion professed by -more than two-thirds of the nation and officially represented in the -State as the dominant religion of the country. To understand this -phenomenon we must bear in mind that French republicanism is not a form -of government, but merely the _modus operandi_ of a secret society. The -Grand Orient has openly proclaimed that there would be no republic but -for them. And all the laws have been elaborated at their convents since -two decades. - -Above all we must remember that France is in revolution since a hundred -years and more. There have been intervals of calm which resembled -convalescence, but these have been followed by new paroxysms, as in -1830, 1848, 1870, and to-day. Madame de Stael's clever saying that -Napoleon was "Robespierre a cheval" is by no means as flippant as might -appear. The genius of the Jacobin Revolution was embodied in the -Convention and the Comites de Salut Public, and the representative of -this dictatorial tyranny was Robespierre. When Napoleon substituted -himself for the Convention and the Directory he abated none of the -pretensions of the Revolution. On the contrary, he consolidated them and -enlarged immensely their field of operation by riding rough-shod, not -over France alone, but over all Europe; hence the happy expression of -Madame de Stael, "Robespierre a cheval." - -Unlike the upheaval known as the Reformation, the French Revolution was -essentially a religious movement, a vast renaissance of paganism -prepared by the atheistic philosophy of the eighteenth century, with -which the ruling classes became so largely imbued. It is a great mistake -to suppose that these philosophers were seeking the welfare of the -masses or the reign of the people, whom no one so thoroughly despised as -did Voltaire. The true object of the Revolution, prepared by the -encyclopedists, was the destruction of Christianity and its noblest -fruit, freedom, in order to establish on the ruins of both the reign of -the Omnipotent Infallible State, the statue of gold before which all -must fall down and worship or perish. "Sois mon frere, ou je te tue." -For it has always been a peculiarity of French free-thinkers that they -could never tolerate any free-thinking but their own. If the -revolutionists of 1793 inflamed the passions of the masses against the -clergy and the nobles, it was merely to use the arms of this Briareus to -batter down the monarchy and all the institutions of the ancient regime, -just as the Jacobin Republicans of to-day are using the Socialists to -accomplish the work begun by their predecessors a century ago. The final -purpose of all is the destruction of Christianity. - -We have but to turn the pages of any reputable French history (Taine, -Capefigue, Guizot) to see that liberty was the last preoccupation of the -Jacobin conquerors. One of the worst Roman emperors is said to have -wished that the people had but one head that he might cut it off. This -also seems to have been the idea of the Revolution, for by abolishing -all social hierarchy, all intermediate classes, all guilds and -associations, provincial parliaments, and local institutions, nothing -was left standing but a defenceless people and the omnipotent State, -which was a coterie composed sometimes of five hundred, sometimes of -four, and finally of one, the first Consul and Emperor. - -Never had the tyranny of the omnipotent State been more completely -realized than by the Jacobins, and their heir-at-law, Napoleon. In the -heyday of his power this great despot found but one opponent. There was -but one force that measured itself with him and vanquished. When -Holland, Prussia, Denmark, all Europe in fact, became tributary to -Napoleon and entered into his continental scheme, in the blockade of all -European seaports, Pius VII alone refused to close Ancona, Ostia, and -Civita Vecchia against British commerce, and to prevent any Englishman -from entering the Papal States. When cabinets and rulers all succumbed -to "Robespierre on horseback," and the inhabitants of every land became -the prey of the victor, the Spanish people alone found, in their -religious faith, the nobility and the energy of a free people, that rose -in their weakness to shake off the octopus that was fastening itself on -their vitals. Napoleon had seized, by guile and treachery, the persons -of the Royal Family of Spain, and had nominated a new tributary king, -his brother Joseph, to the throne of Spain, when the monks, the clergy, -and the peasantry organized that wonderful guerilla war, which is so -little known, and is, nevertheless, one of the most glorious episodes in -the history of liberty. Two signal defeats of the French army destroyed -the prestige of Napoleon and his motley armies, composed of conscripts -from many vassal nations, who now began to ask themselves why they could -not do what Spanish peasants had done in spite of Manuel Godin, the -Prime Minister, who had sold them to the enemy. - -After the restoration of the Bourbons in 1815 it seemed as if the -Revolution were over, but in 1830 it broke out anew. Charles X barely -escaped with his life. The "Monarchy of July," as the reign of Philippe -d'Orleans is called, was merely a phase of the Revolution. In 1848 the -revolutionary fever again seized the nation in an acute form and was not -limited to France. - -It was at this time, strange to say, that a group of resolute Catholics -entered the political arena and fought the battle of liberty in -educational matters against the monopoly of the University. -Montalembert, Dupanloup, Berryer, Lacordaire conquered, inch by inch, a -liberty inscribed in the Charter of 1830, but ineffective so far. La loi -Falloux was not passed till 1850 but long before, Guizot, with unerring -statesmanship, had proclaimed "liberty in teaching to be the only wise -solution," and declared that "the State must accept the free competition -of its rivals, both lay and religious, individuals and corporations" -(_Memoirs_, t. III, 102). St. Marc Girardin, reporter of the Educational -Commission (1847), expressed himself thus:-- - - "Even before the Charter, experience and the interest of studies - required and obtained liberty in teaching. Here certainly we may - say that liberty was ancient and arbitrary despotism new. I do not - need to defend the principle of this liberty, for it is in the - Charter. I only wish to show that it has always existed in some - form. Emulation is good for studies. Formerly the emulation was - between the University and the Congregations, and studies were - benefited. In 1763 Voltaire himself deplored the dispersion of the - Jesuits because of the beneficial rivalry that existed between them - and the University.... A monopoly of education given to priests - would be an anachronism in our day. But to exclude them would be a - not less deplorable anachronism." - -Thus spoke a representative Liberal fifty years ago. Napoleon had -established a state monopoly of education in the hands of the University -of Paris. Villemain and Cousin were educational Jacobins. There was a -state rhetoric, a state history, and a state philosophy, which was, of -course, Cousin's eclecticism. Any professor with leanings to Kant or -Comte was sent to Coventry. This state monopoly was abolished by the loi -Falloux (1850), and its reestablishment is the true purpose of the law -of 1901. During the last fifty years congregational schools multiplied -in proportion to the great demand, i.e. to such an extent that -government schools could not compete with them successfully. Hence the -Trouillot Bill (Associations). - -In 1870 the Revolution again triumphed. This time it was not -"Robespierre on horseback," but Robespierre draped in toga and ermine; -the reign of despotism in the name of law and liberty; praetors and -quaestors dilapidating public funds, and giving and promising largesses. -At one time it seemed as if the Republic would be overthrown. It was -then that M. Grevy appealed to Rome, and Leo XIII, while reproving -certain laws, advised the clergy and the Catholics to rally to the -Republic in the interest of peace. They did so. But no sooner did the -Republic feel secure than it began to enact a series of laws offensive -to Catholics. I refer to the divorce and scholar laws, and unjust fiscal -laws against Congregations. - -Foreigners wonder why thirty million French Catholics allow themselves -to be thus tyrannized over by a handful of Freemasons. I fear it is a -hopeless case of atavism, which will prove the undoing of France, under -the representative system. In 418 the Emperor Honorius wished to -establish this system of government in Southern Gaul, but, writes -Guizot, "the provinces and towns refused the benefit; no one would -nominate representatives, no one would go to Arles" (_History of -Civilization_). This same tendency is operating the ruin of France -to-day. Honest, laborious Frenchmen have an invincible repugnance to -politics and this periodical electioneering scramble. Moreover, it would -mean ruin and famine for hundreds of thousands of functionaries if they -dared to vote against the Government. - -Meanwhile the anti-clericals or lodges of the Grand Orient, largely -composed of Jews, Protestants, and naturalized foreigners, have been -hard at work these twenty years preparing the election of their -candidates and abusing the minds of the working classes by immoral, -irreligious printed stuff, and above all by the multiplication of -drinking-places where adulterated strong drinks are sold for the merest -trifle. The number of these licensed places is simply appalling. Nearly -every grocery, every little vegetable store, and even many tobacco -stores where stamps are sold, have a drinking stand. It is needless to -say that neither Chartreuse nor any decent liqueur is ever sold at such -places. These drink stands supplement the innumerable cabarets and -cafes, in town and country, where elections are engineered. - -Leroy Beaulieu recently related the following incident of his encounter -with one of the habitues of these political institutions. - -In Easter week I was coming out of the chapel of the Barnabites one -morning when I met a workman somewhat the worse for liquor, shaking his -fist against the grated convent window. "Ah! you haven't skedaddled yet, -you dirty skunks." - -And when I asked him why he was so anxious to see them expelled, he drew -himself up proudly and replied: "Because they are not up to the level of -our century!" ("Ils ne sont pas a la hauteur de notre siecle!") - -Meanwhile a crime has been committed against liberty, humanity, and -justice, and it seems to move the world no more than the passing of a -summer cloud, because no blood has been shed. The right which men and -women have to dress and dispose of their lives as they choose is a most -sacred part of personal freedom. - -"Liberalism," says Taine, "is the respect of others. If the State exists -it is to prevent all intrusions into private life, the beliefs, the -conscience, the property.... When the State does this it is the greatest -of benefactors. When it commits these intrusions itself it is the -greatest of malefactors." The young and the strong can begin life anew -elsewhere, in the cloister or out of it, but what shall we say of those -tens of thousands aged and infirm, who, after having passed thirty to -fifty years in teaching or in other good works, find themselves suddenly -thrown into the streets, homeless and penniless? The Associations Bill -entitles them "to apply" for indemnity. But this is merely illusory. -Years will elapse before "the liquidation" is accomplished, and there -will be no assets except for the Government and its friends. Public -subscriptions are being opened all over France for these victims of -Jacobin tyranny. - -Moreover, the right which parents have to give their children teachers -of their own choice is also an inalienable right. The Lacedaemonian State -imposed physical training on all its sons. The Turks for centuries -levied a tax of so many boys and girls a year on the Spaniards and the -Venetians, but no Government has yet called on every parent to "stand -and deliver," not the purse, but the souls of their children, that it -may sow therein, from tenderest infancy, the tares of a hideous state -materialism. With cynical hypocrisy this Government protests that -liberty of teaching is intact, while parents see all the teachers of -their own choice proscribed. The rich can send their sons to be educated -across the border, but the law of _stage scolaire_ is intended to meet -this alternative. Those who have not frequented state schools are to be -made pariahs, ineligible for the army, the navy, or any civil -function--truly a singular application of the words "Compel them to come -in," which should be inscribed on all the scholar institutions of France -to-day. - - - - -A PAPAL NOTE - - -_13th June, 1904._ - -The storm of words aroused the world over by a Papal diplomatic Note is -another proof that the Papacy has lost none of its power and prestige, -and is still, on this threshold of the twentieth century, the -incarnation of moral power opposed to mere brute force, the right of the -strongest. In reading the many silly comments on this Note in different -parts of the globe, we are reminded of the brick thrown into the -frog-pond and the emotion it caused. - -Long before M. Loubet went to Rome it was well known that he would not -be received by the Vatican, and the Papal Note is practically the same -as the one drawn up by Leo XIII on a previous occasion, when it was -sought to obtain a deviation from the policy of the Vatican in favour of -a predecessor of M. Loubet. The protest itself contained nothing new, -and was merely a reiteration of Papal claims to sovereignty in Rome, and -a notice to rulers of other Catholic countries that there was no change -in the policy of the Vatican, that declined to receive the visit of any -such ruler who came to Rome as the guest of Victor Emmanuel. - -The long session devoted to the discussion of the incident was merely a -little anti-clerical diversion to kill time; otherwise the Papal Note -would have remained pigeon-holed in M. Delcasse's desk, where it had -lain unheeded for weeks, when suddenly, at the psychical moment, M. -Jaures' new Ministerial organ, _l'Humanite_ (_commanditee_ by the Jews), -published the copy of the Note which had been addressed, it is said, to -the King of Portugal. Then the little comedy was enacted at the Palais -Bourbon, and the whole Socialist Ministerial Press clamoured, -hysterically, for condign punishment of the Vatican and the vindication -of the national honour. But nothing was done. M. Delcasse declined to -state clearly if the ambassador to the Vatican, M. Nisard, had really -been recalled, while M. Combes loftily sneered at "the superannuated -claims of a sovereignty dispossessed since thirty-five years." Yet he -must have learned at the Seminary that the Papacy was exiled from Rome -for eighty years once upon a time.[5] But all these ferocious Radicals -declined to take advantage of this opportunity to denounce the -Concordat, and M. Combes' best friend, _The Lantern_, is now denouncing -him as a traitor and a fraud. History is repeating itself: _La -Montagne_ (the Extreme Left of 1793) is getting ready to execute the -_Girondins_ called Radicals to-day. No efforts of opportunism will save -them from the _guillotine seche_ which awaits them. - -The silly talk of some of the great dailies who represent the Pope as -"greatly worried" and confronted with the necessity of making an -apology, can only be excused on the ground of ignorance of the whole -situation. Personally I desire to see the Concordat denounced. The -letter and the spirit of its first and most important article, which -provided for liberty and the free exercise of the Catholic religion, -have been flagrantly violated by the laws of 1901 and 1904, and by the -illegalities committed by the executors of these laws. - -All that remains of the Concordat is the indemnity paid yearly to the -Catholic Church, as a very slight compensation for the millions stolen -by the revolutionary government of 1792, known as the First Republic. -Though it must be said to the credit of those Jacobins that when they -instituted the budget of cults they recognized that they had taken the -property of the Church, and that the payment of these yearly subsidies -was part of the National Debt. - -The Jacobins of to-day, less scrupulous than their forefathers of 1790, -are craving for the repudiation of this portion of the National Debt. - -The untold wealth of the Congregations, the billions held out as a -glittering lure by Waldeck Rousseau in 1900 as a nest-egg for _retraites -ouvrieres_, having melted into thin air "the bloc" or Ministerial -majority must be held together by the prospect of some new quarry. -Those, who for years past made a fine distinction between the secular -clergy and the regular or _congreganist_ clergy are now convinced that -there is no distinction to be made between them. When New York dailies -kindly advise the French clergy and Catholics to give up what their -editors are pleased to call "their salaries" and adopt the American -system, they merely proclaim their ignorance of the situation. - -The French would gladly sacrifice everything, even to the noble church -edifices built and endowed by their ancestors during long centuries, if -thereby they could secure liberty and separation from the State, as they -are understood in the United States. But all the alleged projects of -"Separation" are merely projects of strangulation. The articles of all -these projects of law are as unacceptable as were those of the Trouillot -Associations Bill, even if it had not been superseded by the _table -rase_ of the law of 1904 suppressing all teaching orders whatsoever. - -The carrying into execution of any of these projects of "Separation," -even the least Jacobin, would render the normal existence of the -Catholic Church in France impossible. This has been the aim and purpose -of the Third Republic ever since its advent. For, once again, I repeat -that Republicanism in France is not a form of government; it is the -_modus operandi_ of a secret society, of the same secret society which -established a monarchy in Italy, in order to have a pretext for seizing -Rome and destroying, if possible, the prestige of the Papacy. In both -cases the object was the same, the weakening and the destruction of the -Church. - -The Freemasons in France openly proclaim that they founded the Republic. -The scholar and anti-clerical laws since twenty-five years, all the -laws, in fact, have been prepared in the lodges. Of this, too, they make -no secret. To suppose that the Chambers in any way represent the French -nation is an egregious mistake. The lodges prepare the elections; their -candidates people both Houses. In my first letter to the _Review_ in -1900 I showed how the abstention of honest laborious Frenchmen from -politics had thrown the power into the hands of the Freemasons, who are -chiefly Jews, Protestants, and infidels. To-day this coterie of about -twenty-five thousand reigns supreme. - -A few resolute, capable, bigoted Freemasons are the master minds of the -coterie; the others, "the bloc," just follow suit. If a current of -reaction set in to-morrow they would glide with it most gracefully. - -It is simply impossible to retrieve the situation in France to-day by -any ordinary legal means. To suppose that the people are in sympathy -with the Government because they do not overthrow it implies total -ignorance of the situation. The voting machinery of the country is -falsified, and can no more be relied on than a clock out of gear, which -rings out the hours haphazard. Even if every Frenchman inscribed as a -voter did his duty and went to the polls, which they do not, it would -make no difference to-day. - -If death had not cut short Waldeck Rousseau's career we might witness a -_machine en arriere_ policy. It is even possible, now, that a moderate -Rouvier-Ribot ministry may succeed the Combes despotism. - -But I have no confidence in any palliatives. The evil is too -deep-seated. Only by blood and anguish can France be redeemed, and the -sooner the crisis comes the better; a few years later it may be too -late. This is why I desire the denunciation of the Concordat, for with -Gambetta, and all his anti-clerical successors, I think it may be the -ruin of the Third Republic. - -Excommunications and interdicts are no longer published as in former -days, but they operate nevertheless. And, as in the past, there is -always some ruler ready to execute the mandate; though this, too, is not -done in the same way. There is not, necessarily, any invasion of -territory. - -Germany and Italy (yes, and England too) are keenly awaiting the moment -when they may seize France's birthright. Both are assiduous in their -marks of deference to the Holy See. Victor Emmanuel would gladly -evacuate Rome to-morrow if he dared. Thirty-five years are the mere -twinkling of an eye in the lives of nations. Yet there are simple-minded -people who look upon the Piedmontese occupation of Rome as an immutable -fact. - - - - -FREEMASONRY - - -_December, 1904._ - -We cannot adequately appreciate the religious and politico-social -conditions of countries like Italy, France, Spain, Austria, Belgium, -unless we take into account the action of Freemasonry in all its -ramifications--Carbonari, Grand Orient, Mafia, etc. - -There is eternal enmity between them and Christianity. It was said in -the beginning: "I will put enmity between thy seed and the seed of the -Woman," etc. The Catholic Church being the largest, strongest, most -accredited and influential Christian Society, it is against her, -naturally, that all attacks are directed. In Protestant countries people -shrug their shoulders and sneer at the idea of Freemasons militating -against Christianity, or any political order. This is not surprising. A -distinguished atheist of the eighteenth century used to say that -"England was the country where Christianity did the least harm because -it was divided into so many rivulets." Here we have the explanation of -the different attitude of Freemasons in Protestant countries, split up -into innumerable sects, and in Catholic countries, where "One holy -Catholic Church" still holds sway over the whole nation practically. - -The great purpose of the French Revolution in 1792 was to break up the -Church in France. For this purpose the throne and all the institutions -of the ancient regime, some of them very excellent, were all overthrown. - -The revolutions of Italy in the nineteenth century had no other purpose. -The destruction of the Papacy was considered a means of disrupting the -Catholic Church, not in Italy only. Mazzini, Garibaldi, Crispi, Cavour, -etc., were all fierce republican anarchists; the last thing they wanted -was an Italian monarchy. But they were Freemasons, and the "Order" -imposed its will. An Italian monarchy demanded Rome as its capital, -whereas a republican system would, no doubt, have left the Papacy in its -ancient city. "A schism," wrote Renan in 1870, "seems to me more than -probable, or rather it already exists; from latent it will become -effective.... It seems to me inevitable that there will soon be two -Popes, and even three.... The schism being made in the papal person, the -decomposition of Catholicism will follow; a quantity of reforms will -then be possible." - -Napoleon III, a dignitary of the order, entered into the plot, and -received Savoy and the county of Nice. Rome was seized 20 September, and -the Franco-Prussian war brought swift and condign punishment on Napoleon -for his complicity. - -Simultaneously with the establishment of a monarchy in Italy, the Grand -Orient established a republic in France, always with the same purpose, -the disruption of the Church. During the last four years of residence in -Europe I have repeated in the Press of the United States that -Republicanism is not a form of government here, but the _modus operandi_ -of a secret society. The manifesto issued by the Grand Orient (3 -November, 1904) is an irrefutable proof of my allegation. It is the most -astounding document ever made public. They evidently consider that -France is a conquered country which can never shake off their -domination. "Without the Freemasons," says the document, "the Republic -would not exist." The elaborate spy system they had established at the -Ministry of War is defended on the ground that "the head partner, or -_commanditaire_, of a great industrial enterprise in which he has placed -his capital has the right to denounce to the manager the peculations of -his employees." - -Thus France is an industrial company; the ministers are managers -appointed by the head partner, the Grand Orient! But the most revolting -part of this manifesto is the manner in which the deputies of the "bloc" -are whipped into line like a pack of disorderly hounds under the lash of -their keeper. "We denounce to our lodges and to all masons present and -future the votes of fear, defaillance, cowardice, of a certain -number.... We shall have our eyes on them ... and they will find -themselves treated as they would have treated those to whom they were -bound by interest if not by loyalty." - -The revolutions which have convulsed Spain during the last century, down -to the recent Republican riots in Madrid and Brussels, are all traceable -to the "Order" which issued this manifesto. Among the rioters killed -were Frenchmen. The visit of M. Chaumie, Minister of Public Instruction, -to Italy, and the famous Congres de Libre Pensee, are all manifestations -of the Grand Orient, which will never rest until it has destroyed the -stability and peace of other Catholic countries, as it has done in -France. When I arrived at Innsbruck in July last, I saw many students -with bandaged heads and arms. An Italian student had knocked the book -out of the German professor's hand with his cane. This was the origin of -that last riot. What has occurred recently at Innsbruck is far more -serious, and was undoubtedly prepared at Rome in September.[6] A band of -Italian anarchist students were sent to the University of Innsbruck to -cause trouble. One hundred and thirty-eight of them were arrested, -yesterday, with revolvers and other weapons on their persons. - -Two years ago I was in Venice when there was a monster international -gathering of students. The Marseillaise and the Hymn of Garibaldi were -vociferated by these thousands on the Place of St. Mark. Why the -national anthems of other nations were not given is clear. The whole was -a Freemason demonstration of the Grand Orient like the Congres de Libre -Pensee at Rome, presided over by M. Brisson, the President of the French -Chambers. - -The revolutionary strikes at Milan, Genoa, Venice, etc., which were made -to coincide with the birth of the heir of the House of Savoy, are -symptomatic. The Grand Orient undoubtedly find that they have been -marking time long enough in Italy. They have not been able to carry -their divorce law there yet. - -There is a Socialist party in Italy which is not anarchist and Freemason -as in France, but sincerely desires the good of Italy. One of its -leaders declared, recently, that they would lend their aid even to the -Papacy for the common weal. Between this party and the secret societies -and their henchmen, the position of Victor Emmanuel is not enviable. Ere -long, therefore, we may see the aid of the Pope and of the Catholic -vote, now in abeyance to a great extent, solicited both by the monarchy -and the reforming Socialists. - -There is really no insuperable difficulty in reconciling the -independence of the Papacy and the integrity of the Italian kingdom. The -Principality of Monaco has surely never been considered an obstacle to -the integrity of France, nor the Republic of San Marino to that of -Italy. Why should not the Pope be left in peaceful possession of the -Trastevere and the port of Ostia, for instance? There is no difficulty -except with the Grand Orient, this _imperium in imperio_. - -All through the centuries, "the Papacy has had to negotiate, -simultaneously, with each of the republican cities of Italy, with -Naples, Germany, France, England, and Spain. They all had contests -(_demeles_) with the Popes, and these latter always had the advantage" -(Voltaire, _Essai sur les moeurs_, II, 87). - -In the same work, page 81, Voltaire relates the Congress held at Venice, -where Barbarossa made his submission. "The Holy Father," he says, -"exclaimed: 'God has willed that an aged man and priest triumph without -fighting over a terrible and powerful emperor.'" The triumph over the -machinations of the Grand Orient will be no less striking. - - - - -FREEMASONRY - - -_21st January, 1905._ - -In these columns (_The Progress_, December 10th, 1904), I referred to -the recently published Manifesto of the Grand Orient of France (November -4th, 1904), defending its attitude with regard to the elaborate spy -system, a veritable _regime des suspects_ which they had established, -not in the War Office only, but in every Department of State. The Press, -both in England and in the United Sates, has been singularly reticent -regarding this most remarkable document, whose authenticity cannot be -gainsaid. - -It is, however, the key to the whole politico-religious situation in -France, and more or less in other Catholic countries. - -Republicanism in Catholic countries will always be the _modus operandi_ -of this secret society in some one or other of its ramifications. The -Carbonari, who engineered all the Italian revolutions in the nineteenth -century, sent their emissary, Orsini, to remind Napoleon III of his -obligations and duties. The gentle reminder was a bomb, and Orsini paid -the death penalty, but not without leaving a letter with certain behests -which were soon complied with. The Italian campaign against Austria was -undertaken ere long. - -In the _Evening Post_, November 8th, 1904, I find in a review of Count -Hubner's _Memoirs_ the following extract: "The Emperor of the French, -placed at the summit of greatness, had forgotten the pledges made in his -youth to those who dispose of the unknown dark powers. Orsini's bomb -came to remind him. A ray of light suddenly struck his mind. He must -have understood that his former associates never forgot or forgave, and -that their implacable hatred would be appeased only when the renegade -returned to the bosom of the sect." - -An example of the power wielded by these secret societies is the case of -the ex-Minister of Public Instruction in Italy. Prosecuted for -misdemeanour and extensive peculations while in office, the Freemasons -compassed his escape to Geneva. He was condemned by default, when, lo -and behold, he quietly returns to Italy in triumph and is elected -deputy.[7] - -Since eight weeks the French papers (non-Ministerial of course) are -daily printing _fiches_ or spy documents stolen from the Grand Orient. -No end of duels and prosecutions for slander have been the result. Nor -were army officers the only victims. Even Monsieur and Madame Loubet -have come in for their share! In some cases the spies of the Grand -Orient have denied the authenticity of these documents. Thereupon M. de -Villeneuve has printed photographed copies of the letters in question. - -Brother Bedderide, an advocate of the bar at Marseilles, an active spy -on magistrates and other civil functionaries, has been expelled from the -Order of Advocates. The Grand Orient will no doubt amply compensate him, -for they are as generous to their friends as they are implacable to -their foes. - -Read this passage from the Manifesto of the Grand Orient, 4th November, -1904: "All our workshops know the campaign waged against us by the -reaction, nationalist, monarchical, and clerical. They seek to travesty -acts in which we justly glory and thanks to which, we have saved the -Republic. A traitor, a felon, bribed by the Congregations [poor -congregations recently shorn of all] lived in our midst since ten -years.... As sub-secretary he gained the confidence of our very dear -brother Vadecard [Secretary of G. O.] and became the confidant of all -our secrets. He projected to steal from our archives documents confided -to us ... new Judas, he sold them to the irreconcilable enemies of our -brethren. Brother Bidegain is in flight like a malefactor. We signal him -to Masons all over the world. In waiting the just punishment of his -crime, the Council of the Order summons him before masonic justice, and -until the final sentence is rendered, we suspend all his titles and -prerogatives.... And now we declare to the whole Freemason body that in -furnishing these documents [spy denunciations] the Grand Orient has -accomplished only a strict duty. We have dearly conquered the Republic -and claim the honour of having procured its triumph.... Without the -Freemasons the Republic would not be in existence.... Pius X would be -reigning in France." - -Then follows the menace quoted in my last to the tricky, cowardly -deputies who voted against the Government, which was saved by two votes -more than once. The memorable slap administered by M. Syveton to General -Andre compelled M. Combes to throw the Minister of War overboard, though -the latter protested to the last, "They want my skin, but they shall not -have it." The Minister of Public Instruction also nearly succumbed. He -declared that if a certain _ordre de jour_ were not voted he would throw -down his portfolio there and then. The votes were not forthcoming but he -clung to his portfolio and contented himself with another _ordre de -jour_. - -All the performances at the Palais Bourbon are indeed a most amazing -comedy. - -Meanwhile M. Syveton, who negotiated the purchase of the purloined -documents from the Grand Orient, and slapped General Andre on the -ministers' bench, got his quietus in a very mysterious way on the very -day on which he was to have retaken his seat in the Chambers (after his -thirty days' punitive exclusion), and on the eve of his appearance -before the Cours d'Assise for that famous slap. His defence, carefully -prepared by himself, was published in the papers next day. It is a long -incisive arraignment of the Government in imitation of Cicero's -_Catalina_. All the witnesses, who were to have appeared in his defence, -were also witnesses against the Government. In fact the trial was to -have been a great political manifestation, and the Government had every -interest in its not taking place. Since two weeks public opinion is on -tenter-hooks regarding the death of M. Syveton. It was declared at first -to be a vulgar accident by the Ministerial organs. While M. Jaures, -strange to say, published in _Humanity_ a most remarkable brief, -establishing clearly the guilt of Madame Syveton, and, still more -strange, the latter did not prosecute him for it. Then the suicide -theory was adopted, and the most odious, baseless, and unproven -calumnies were launched against the memory of the dead man. His widow -even accused him of having stolen funds of the Nationalist party. All -this in order to explain his suicide on the eve of what was expected to -be a great political triumph of the Nationalists, and for which M. -Syveton was preparing with the ardour of a fighter by temperament, just -forty years old. - -The autopsy, made before the twenty-four legal hours had elapsed, -revealed seventeen per cent of oxide of carbon in the blood. The lungs, -brain, and viscera, strange to say, were not examined at all, but -placed under seals for eleven days! They are now to be examined. -Meanwhile the last person who must have seen M. Syveton alive, must have -been the emissary of the Government, who, according to custom, served -the writ on the dead man, commanding his presence in court in -twenty-four hours. Who was he, and why was he never heard of again? - -No one believes seriously that M. Syveton committed suicide. His father -and brother-in-law have begun a prosecution for murder against X, in -which the Mutual Life is also interested. - -As to Brother Bidegain, the traitor, he was at Salonica when last heard -of. His sudden death there was announced; but I think the rumour is -false. It would be very imprudent, coming so soon after the other. But -he will have to make his peace with the G. O. or beware. He cannot be -prosecuted for stealing these documents, as they represent no monetary -value, and, moreover, the Grand Orient has no legal existence or civil -personality. They are said to have millions of _main morte_, but they -simply ignore the Associations Bill. - -In conclusion, I hope it will be understood that I do not accuse many -honest Freemasons of England and the United States of being _particeps -criminis_ in all or any of the doings of the Grand Orient, Carbonari, -Mafia, Cimorra, Senuisi, or the secret societies of Islam or in China. - -Freemasonry assumes different aspects in different circumstances, but it -is the eternal enemy of militant organized Christianity. It does not -trouble itself with Christianity "divided into many rivulets," and -consequently harmless, according to the saying of Lord Shaftesbury, who -was of opinion that "England was the country in which Christianity did -the least harm because it was divided into so many rivulets." - -The Catholic Church alone is an enemy worthy of its steel, and wherever -these two foes meet there must be war--latent or overt. - -This war is on in France, and must be fought to the finish. - - - - -PART SECOND - - -_October, 1904._ - -M. Combes, who proclaimed at the Chambers two years ago that he had -taken office only to wage war on Clericalism, enumerated his deeds of -prowess recently in a political speech at Auxerre. Fifteen thousand -scholar establishments, strongholds of the ghostly enemy, had been -demolished! "Gentlemen, you will grant that this is a great deal for a -ministry obliged to fight at every instant for its own existence," he -exclaimed. - -We are now coming to the second part of the Jacobin programme. As I -wrote last year in the _Evening Post_ (June 27th), the true object of -the Revolution in 1790, as to-day, is the destruction of Christianity -and its offspring, Liberty, in order to establish on the ruins of both, -the reign of the Omnipotent Infallible State, before which all must fall -down and worship or disappear. To-day the State is M. Combes and his -"bloc," a very poor avatar of the Titanic Corsican who measured himself -with all Europe. There was but one force that resisted him, and against -this obstacle M. Combes stumbled when he demanded, peremptorily, that -the Vatican withdraw letters addressed to two bishops needing to be -disciplined. The Holy See was acting in the plenitude of its spiritual -jurisdiction. M. Combes curtly demanded that Pius X send in his -resignation, as "the political system of the Republic consists in the -subordination of all institutions, whatever they may be, to the -supremacy of the State." - -This is the latest phase of a very old struggle which began in the days -of the Apostles. In the history of all the nations of antiquity, the -problem of Church and State and their correlations existed, and was -solved, easily and summarily, by the system proclaimed by M. Combes. The -ruler of each nation was the Pontifex Maximus of his realm. This system, -with its necessary concomitant of national religions, reached its -culminating point in the worship of the "divine Caesars," the acme of -human servitude. - -Now Christianity was a profound and radical innovation. Never had the -supremacy of the ruler or the State been questioned before the Apostles -proclaimed the Creed in "One Holy Catholic Church," destined to -transcend all natural and political boundaries, without distinction of -class or colour. Not less radical was the second innovation, a necessary -corollary of the first, viz. the ecclesiastical autonomy and -independence of the new spiritual society or Church, one, Catholic. -"Never," writes J. B. Martineau, "until the Church arose did faith -undertake the conquest alone, and triumph over diversities of speech and -antipathies of race." - -But Paganism, with its system of state absolutism in spiritual as well -as in temporal matters, has never accepted its defeat by the Catholic -Church, a spiritual, autonomous society, distinct from the State. The -tale of Byzantine heresies, from the fourth to the eighth century, were -all efforts of each successive Emperor of Constantinople to shake off -the spiritual supremacy of Rome, and be again the Pontifex Maximus of -his dominions. The long struggle of the Investitures, the Constitutions -of Clarendon, statutes of Praemunire, State Gallicanism, the Civil -Constitution of the Clergy, 1792, Josephism in Austria, the Kultur-Kampf -laws in Germany and Switzerland, 1870-76 were all episodes of this -struggle, between the new dispensation and the ancient system of -national religions under state supremacy. In the sixteenth century there -was a vast renaissance of this latter system in a new dress called -Erastianism. Lord Clarendon declared that this spiritual supremacy of -rulers was "the better moiety of their sovereignty." The old pagan, or -Erastian system, triumphed in the eastern empire with the Schism of -Photius, in Russia under Peter the Great, in England under Elizabeth, in -all the Protestant States of northern Europe. - -The well-defined purpose of the Revolution and of Napoleon, its -heir-at-law, was to establish this system in France. After long and -arduous negotiations the Concordat of 1801 was concluded with Pius VII. -It was a bilateral contract between two sovereignties, the French -Republic, as party of the first part, and the Holy See as party of the -second part. It contains seventeen articles. To these, Napoleon, without -the knowledge of the Pope, added seventy-six articles, and published -both documents, in conjunction, as the law of Germinal l'an X. Great was -the indignation, and loud were the protestations of the party of the -second part, as we may well suppose. Nor is this surprising when we -consider that one of these "organic articles" (24th) requires that all -professors in ecclesiastical seminaries shall "submit to teach the -doctrine of the Declaration of 1682, and the bishops shall send act of -this submission to the Council of State." In other words, the Catholic -Church in France was to turn Protestant. Even Louis XIV, who had had -this famous Declaration drawn up to spite Pope Innocent, who alone in -Europe had dared to oppose him, never exacted that it should be taught, -and had practically suppressed it before he died. Since the Council of -the Vatican the subscribing to and teaching the Declaration of 1682 -would be an act of formal heresy and apostasy. The fifty-sixth of the -organic articles renders obligatory the use of the Republican calendar -to the exclusion of the Gregorian. There are other articles equally -absurd, which have never been observed. - -Now M. Combes declares that "in deliberately separating the diplomatic -convention (Concordat) from the organic articles, Pius VII and his -successors have destroyed its efficacy." Napoleon himself understood -this and, for seven years, he held Pius VII a close prisoner, hoping to -break his spirit and wring from him another Concordat which would be an -abdication. Fortunately, the tide of war turned against Napoleon, and -the new Concordat was never ratified. M. Combes recognizes that no -Government since a century has been able to enforce the "organic -articles," and that the only course left is "divorce," and by this -unstatesmanlike term he means the repudiation of thirty or forty million -francs of the national debt. The payment in perpetuity of suitable -subsidies to the Catholic clergy is stipulated for by Article 14 of the -Concordat. It is a _quid pro quo_ of Article 13, by which the Holy See -consented to give a clear title to all the Church property confiscated -by the Revolution. The payment of these subsidies was inscribed on the -national debt by the spoliators themselves, the Conventionals of 1792, -and it was solemnly recognized as part of this debt in 1816, 1828, 1830, -and 1848. The salaries paid to Jewish and Protestant clergymen are -purely gratuitous. Their property was not stolen by the Revolution in -1792. They had no part in the Concordat. - -But the projected spoliation of the Catholic clergy is a mere detail, -and would be an insignificant ransom, if at this price the French -Catholics could have liberty such as we enjoy in England and the United -States. "Separation" means strangulation in Jacobin parlance. They would -infinitely prefer Erastianism. But the defection of the Bishops of Dijon -and Laval, on whom they counted, and the spontaneous and unanimous -adhesion of the episcopate to the Holy See, which provoked the thunders -of M. Combes against the Vatican in July, have shown the impossibility -of a schism. It was tried for four years a century ago and failed. The -"Separation" plan was also tried in 1795 for two or three years, and was -an epoch of virulent persecution. History will repeat itself, though not -exactly in the same words. - - - - -ALCOHOLISM IN FRANCE - - -_July 10th, 1905._ - -The Chambers continue the discussion of the Bill of alleged separation -in a perfunctory, apathetic way, and it is curious that M. Rouvier, the -successor of M. Combes, has never once condescended to speak or even to -be present at these sessions. - -The utter lack of interest in these debates is misinterpreted to mean -indifference on the part of the French public. This is not correct. It -is, as I have often repeated, the great misfortune of France that people -will not concern themselves with politics, and they only begin to -interest themselves in a law when it is applied. - -Even I, who have followed the phases of the religious persecution with -keen interest since four or five years, can hardly wade through these -tedious, irksome columns, in which ambiguity reigns supreme. Even M. -Briand, the reporter of the law and spokesman of the Government, being -questioned closely as to the sense of certain passages, replied "It is" -and "It is not" in the same breath. He is evidently of the opinion that -language is a convenient means of disguising thought. - -This Bill is, I repeat, a law of guile, spoliation, and tyranny from -first to last. There is a general impression that it will never be -executed entirely. They will content themselves with spoliation, for the -present at least. It is hard to persuade a people who have had religious -worship gratis for fifteen centuries, that they must now pay for the -privilege of attending Mass, while their Government subsidizes opera -dancers and singers, of whose services not one in a million ever avails -himself. - -While the Socialist majority, or _bloc_, are revelling over perspective -spoliation and sacrilegious confiscations, the handwriting on the wall -is dimly perceived. The enemy is at the gates--nay, within the -walls--while legislators are discussing "with what sauce they will eat -the cures," though they have not yet digested their copious repast of -congregations. - -Yesterday the reports of the Chambers on Separation were unusually -tedious, and the _rendu compte_ ended with this phrase: "To-morrow -amnesty for the _bouilleurs de cru_ and wine frauders." This heartless -Government, that flings aged and infirm _congreganists_ out of their -homes without mercy for age or sex, has, at least, one tender spot in -its make-up. It is for the liquor traffic in all its forms. -Falsification of wine is carried on to such an extent that it is -impossible for grape growers to make a living. I dilated recently in -these columns on the anti-clerical propaganda by means of an immoral, -irreligious Press, and the multiplication of these drink-stands to an -extent which is simply appalling.[8] - -New York, with three millions, has 10,000 liquor saloons. Paris, with -two-and-a-half millions, has 30,000 _debits de boissons_. - -The _Gaulois_ recently published some figures which I think are -accurate. - -Fifty years ago 735 hectolitres of absinthe were consumed in France; -to-day 133,000 are consumed. - -Fifty years ago 600,000 hectolitres of alcohol were consumed; to-day -2,000,000 hectolitres are consumed. - -The intermediate figures show that the increase has been in almost -geometric progression in recent years. - -In 1880 the consumption had increased from 735 hectolitres of absinthe -to 13,000. In 1885 it was still only 112,000. - -In 1905 it was 133,000. - -Sixty years ago there were only 10,000 demented in France. To-day there -are more than 80,000. - -Belgium has just made a law prohibiting not only the manufacture, but -all traffic in absinthe, which cannot even be transported through the -country. In this admirably governed commonwealth there is, it is said, -but one saloon _brasserie_ to every two thousand inhabitants. Formerly -the number of drinking-places was limited and restricted in France; -to-day the highest of high licence prevails. - -Recently I counted not less than fourteen places where alcoholic drinks -were sold in a charming little seaside village of four or five hundred -inhabitants. - - - - -THE LAW OF SEPARATION - - -_June 3rd, 1905._ - -There is still a persistent tendency in the Press to believe or -make-believe that the Bill of alleged Separation, still pending in the -French Chambers, means Separation as it is understood in England and the -United States, and that the whole question is only one of dollars and -cents, or of the suppression of the Budget of Cults. It is true that -there is to be a partial repudiation of the National Debt by the -suppression of the few paltry millions paid yearly to the French clergy -as a slight indemnity for the vast amount of property confiscated by the -Jacobins of 1792, but this is a mere detail, and would be considered but -a small ransom, if, thereby, the Church could enjoy the same liberty as -in the United States. - -The Associations Bill was proclaimed to be a "law of liberty," and we -know to-day that it was only a vulgar trap set by the Government to -betray the Congregations into furnishing exact inventories of all their -property so that it might be more easily confiscated. - -The Separation Bill is also a law of perfidious tyranny aimed at the -very existence of the Church in France. M. Briand caused great hilarity -in the Chambers when, by a slip of the tongue, he declared that in every -part of it "could be seen the hand of our spirit of Liberalism."[9] What -is evident throughout is the hand of the secret society which has -governed France since twenty-five years, and in whose lodges and -convents all the anti-religious laws have been elaborated. - -The Chambers are merely its _bureaux d'enregistrement_, and not even -that. Under the _ancien regime_ the Parliament could and often did -refuse to enregister royal acts and decrees. - -It was two years before the Parliament of Paris consented to enregister -the Concordat of 1516. But the Chambers to-day are merely the executive -of the Grand Orient. This is the plain unvarnished truth, which is -corroborated by all who have any knowledge of French politics. - -I have repeated many times in the Press of the United States that -Republicanism in France is not a form of government, but the _modus -operandi_ of a secret society. Before me are _verbatim_ reports of their -assemblies and the speeches made at their political banquets in 1902. At -that time only unauthorized Congregations had been suppressed. This, it -was declared, "was not enough.... The Congregations must be operated on -with a vigorous scalpel, and all this suppuration must be thrown out of -the country; only thus will the social body, still very sick with acute -clericalism, be cured." In July, 1904, all the authorized Congregations, -too, were suppressed, as we know. Even this was not enough. - -At the general "convent" of the Grand Orient, January, 1904, it was -said: "We have yet a great effort to make.... The separation of Church -and State will be in the order of the day in the Chambers in January, -1905.... The Cabinet and the Republican Parliament will end the conflict -between the two contracting parties of the Concordat. The destruction of -the Church will open a new era of justice and goodness." - -M. Combes, then in power, was notified of the wishes of the Grand -Orient, and he telegraphed back that he would conform thereto. - -The sensation caused by the publication of the spy documents, or -_fiches_, stolen from the Grand Orient by M. Syveton and de Villeneuve -nearly overthrew the Republic last November. The assassination of M. -Syveton saved the Government and struck terror into the Nationalist -camp. The publication of the spy documents ceased, and the lodges -continued their work with a new figure-head, M. Rouvier instead of M. -Combes. - -On 4th November, 1904, the Grand Orient published a political manifesto -which is a most important document from an historical and sociological -standpoint. - -It is simply amazing that the government of a once great nation should -have passed into the hands of a secret society which, though it has no -legal standing, treats France as if it were a great business concern of -which the Freemasons are the _commanditaires_, the ministers "the -managers," and the deputies and functionaries the employees. - -Already in 1902, at the closing banquet of the "convent," Brother -Blatin, a "venerable," had declared: - -"The Government must not forget that Masonry is its most solid -support.... - -"But for our Order neither the Combes Cabinet nor the Republic itself -would exist. M. and Mme. Loubet would still be simple little bourgeois -in the little town of Montelimar.... But the Government must remember -that we are only at the opening of hostilities. Until we have destroyed -every congregation, denounced the Concordat, and broken with Rome, -nothing is done." In conclusion, these remarkable words were pronounced, -of which the manifesto of 4th November, 1904, is only an echo: "In -drinking to French Freemasonry I really drink to the Republic, because -the Republic is Freemasonry operating outside its temples; and -Freemasonry is the Republic under cover of our traditions and symbols." -Is this clear enough? - -The Revolution of 1790 was undoubtedly due to Freemasonry, which about -that time began to appear openly for the first time, and almost -simultaneously, in France, Great Britain and America, etc. The Palladian -Rite, established in France in 1769, found a congenial field of -operation in the corrupt society of the _Regence_ and Louis XV. - -Its aim then, as to-day, is the same--the destruction of Christianity. -The Jacobin Clubs of 1792 were simply Masonic lodges. M. Waite, an -eloquent apologist of the fraternity, makes the following statement in -_Devil Worship in France_, page 322: "There is no doubt that it -[Masonry] exercised an immense influence upon France during the century -of quakings which gave birth to the great Revolution. Without being a -political society, it was an instrument eminently adaptable to the -subsurface determination of political movements.... At a later period it -contributed to the formation of Germany, as it did to the creation of -Italy. But the point and centre of masonic history is France in the -eighteenth century." - -This explains the outbreak of _Kulturkampf_ in Germany and Switzerland -soon after 1870, and the wave of anti-religious furor which swept over -Italy at the same period. To-day Catholicism has repulsed Freemasonry in -Germany, and the victory is not far distant in Italy. The Liberal -Socialist party is waning, and it is always with these elements of -socialistic anarchy that Freemasonry operates under a guise of liberty. - -The efforts being made to break up the Austro-Hungarian and the Russian -Empire are undoubtedly traceable to these Judeo-Masonic secret -societies. But France remains the great battlefield. Christianity and -Freemasonry are about to fight a decisive duel. One or the other must -perish. "Si nous ne tuons pas l'Eglise, elle nous tuera," said a -prominent Mason recently. The suppression of the Congregations and their -27,000 schools was, as they said, "only the opening of hostilities." The -battle must be fought to the finish. I have repeatedly affirmed that -France was held firmly in the coils of the Grand Orient, which has -packed both Houses with its creatures, thanks to the political apathy of -respectable Frenchmen. - -The Separation Bill is merely a blind, a slip-knot which can be drawn at -any moment to strangle the victim around whose neck it is cast. When his -Socialist accomplices of the Left reproached M. Briand with being too -liberal, he replied, "If necessary we can always amend the law or make -another." Only two short years ago M. Combes openly pronounced against -any project of separation. M. Rouvier was of the same opinion, but the -masters of France have spoken! - -In vain it was pleaded that the country be consulted before taking so -important a step. The perfidious feature of the Bill is just this--that -nothing will be changed until two years (1907) hence, when the "bloc" -will probably have gained a new lease of life by this manoeuvre; for -in May, 1906 they will be able to say to their electors, "You see the -law is voted, and nothing is changed." - -Article I sounds sweetly liberal: "The Republic assures liberty of -conscience and guarantees the free exercise of worship under the -following restrictions" (contained in some forty more articles). In my -opinion these numerous little "_restrictions_" will render the normal -existence of the Church in France impracticable. Of course she will -continue to exist, as she existed during the Terror, and under the -_Directoire_ and Diocletian. - -Another article, not yet voted, provides for the final disposition of -church buildings twelve years hence. That, apparently, is the allotted -span of life meted out to us by Masonic Jacobins. - -Article II with sweet inconsistency declares that "the Republic neither -recognizes nor subsidizes any cult," and immediately after it inscribes -on the Public Budget the service of _aumoniers_ of state lyceums and -colleges. - -Peasants and poor struggling tradesmen and artisans must pay for the -luxury of religious worship or go without, but the sons of the rich, who -frequent these state schools, are to be provided for, gratis, by this -liberal Republic, which neither "recognizes nor subsidizes any -worship," except, of course, Islamism in Algeria, which is now, _ipso -facto_, the religion of the State. - -It is very pitiful to see so momentous a question treated with such -flippancy and indecent haste. - -All their utterances in the Chambers and in their Press show that the -Freemasons are convinced that they would be defeated if the next -elections were made on this issue. Therefore they must "do quickly." - -Alone of all the nations of Christendom, France totally disregarded Good -Friday this year. The Stock Exchange remained open and the Chambers met -as usual. The apostasy of the State will soon be complete. - -In Spain, where I spent Holy Week, the young king has taken a decided -stand against the Revolution. He has caused vehement enthusiasm by -reviving Christian customs fallen into desuetude during a century of -revolutions. On Holy Thursday he washed and kissed the feet of twelve -poor men whom he afterwards served at table, aided by the grandees of -Spain. On Friday he returned from church alone and on foot, and was -wildly acclaimed. We are so accustomed to see the menus of the banquets -of the rich, that it was refreshing to read, for once in the daily -papers, the menu of a banquet of some poor old men served by a king. - -This is the counter-revolution, and M. Salmeron and his Republican -Socialist Freemasons, French and Spanish, who recently caused riots in -many cities, might as well suspend operations. Only the assassination of -Alphonse XIII can prevent Spain from recuperating steadily. In Italy, -too, the counter-revolution is setting in. The Socialists, _alias_ -Freemasons, are succumbing to the Conservative or clerical party. The -Quirinal is steering for Canossa. France must bear the brunt till she, -too, can have her counter-revolution. - - - - -CATHOLICISM IN GERMANY - - -GERMANY, _August, 1905_. - -While Freemasonry in France seems on the point of triumphing over -Christianity by the destruction of all religious education and a law of -alleged Separation of Church and State, it is interesting to recall that -only thirty-five years ago Catholicism in Germany was as much menaced as -it is in France to-day. Churches were closed, prisons were full of -priests, bishops, and archbishops, and Bismarck, like M. Briand of -France, swore he would never, never go to Canossa. - -In 1871 there were only fifty-eight Catholics in the Reichstag, -representing 720,000 electors; in 1903 there were more than a hundred, -representing 1,800,000 electors; and to-day this Catholic Centre forms -the ruling majority in the country. The Emperor understands this -perfectly, and hence his amenities towards the Church and the Holy See. - -I have no doubt that the great Catholic Congress was held recently at -Strasburg with his knowledge and approval, not to say at his suggestion. -The event is significant coming so soon after his own investiture, at -Metz, with the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, conferred upon him by the -papal legate in the presence of the German cardinals and archbishops, -and the highest military dignitaries of the empire. - -At this Catholic Congress of Strasburg, forty thousand delegates of the -federated societies of Germany paraded the streets with banners and -music. The whole city was decorated, papal colours being most -conspicuous. These popular federated societies count half a million -members, grouped in nine hundred associations, that have 350 press -organs of their own. - -What makes the strength of these Catholic organizations in Germany is -that they represent all classes of society--princes, peasants, artisans, -nobles, and bourgeois--whereas Socialism finds its recruits almost -exclusively, amongst the proletariat, cultured and uncultured, chiefly -the latter. - -At the Congress, Prince d'Arenberg renewed the usual protestations -against the Piedmontese occupation of Rome, and the Bishop of Strasburg -rejoiced that, "in spite of the devastations of the French Revolution, -the ancient faith was still flourishing in Alsace, whence he hoped it -_might soon extend its salutary influence_." - -These events are significant following the diplomatic humiliation -inflicted on France when M. Delcasse, Minister of Foreign Affairs, was -peremptorily dismissed at the behest of Germany. - -Not long since the Socialist Bebel saucily told M. Jaures the French -would never have a pension for old age until the Germans gave it to -them. Nothing, too, would please William more than to play the role of a -paladin of religious liberty to the oppressed French Catholics. - -Nor is there anything to prevent the resuscitation of the Germanic -Confederation as it existed in the Middle Ages. The Habsburgs and the -Austrian Empire might never have arisen, and the Hohenstauffens might -still be reigning, if they had had sense enough to keep their hands off -the Papacy. Napoleon, too, might have founded a dynasty as long-lived as -that of the Bourbons, had he not also fallen into the same evil ways, -and sought to dominate the whole Church by enslaving the Sovereign -Pontiff. His nephew, the third Napoleon, in his youth, unfortunately -became the bondsman of secret societies, whom he aided and abetted in -the spoliations of 1870 which preluded his fall. - -The Third Republic, too, will be shattered on the same rock, though not -before having caused irretrievable wrong to France, I fear. - - - - -PSEUDO-SEPARATION - - -_19th August, 1905._ - -In the past, marauding kings and robber barons bound to themselves their -fighting lieges by investing them with vast tracts of stolen lands which -they, in turn, distributed among their leal followers. - -The Third Republic has found a better way. To say nothing of the -extensive network of electoral strongholds that they have established -all over the country by unlimited and most abusive high licence, the -masters of France have enlisted the enthusiastic support of myriads of -pettifogging lawyers and all the nondescript red-tapers of law by the -unlimited supply of lucrative jobs, pickings, and perquisites, furnished -by the notorious laws of 1901 and of 1904, and their bandit operations -called "liquidation." - -They do not all pocket a few hundred thousands, like the millionaire -Socialist, M. Millerand, appointed by M. Waldeck Rousseau, but all have -a share in the carving up of the quarry. Not content with devoting to -this novel kind of graft all the holdings of the hapless Congregations, -who fell into its trap and asked for authorization, the Government has -kindly put up more than four millions and a half of public money, thus -far, to cover the cost of innumerable lawsuits, expropriations, etc., -going on all over the country since four years. The mobilizing of the -regular army for the expropriations was in itself an important item. All -this reckless, thriftless expenditure, joined to the continuous drain of -millions from the _Caisses d'Epargne_ and the exodus of capital, will -lead up to national bankruptcy as in 1795. - -To throw dust in the eyes of the public, domestic and foreign, a most -elaborate document has been published regarding pensions and retreats -for aged _congreganists_ ruthlessly thrown into the streets. - -This document is a huge farce, seeing that these pensions are only -conditional to there being funds enough, and there will be no assets -left. The Chartreux of Grenoble had some hundreds of their aged workmen -on their pension list. These were, in common justice, creditors of the -order, and should have received compensation from the _liquidateur_. But -the latter repudiated their claims absolutely.[10] - -What a fall was there from the billions of the Congregations, held out -as a glittering lure by Waldeck Rousseau in 1900, to bait his Socialist -majority with promises of pensions for workmen, etc. - -The Bill of alleged Separation, eminently calculated to bring Church and -State into constant contact and collision, holds out another golden -perspective. To use an expressive slang term, there is in it unlimited -_poil a gratter_, fur to scratch, for years to come--nay, as long as the -Republic lasts. - -A few days after it was voted, 200 "venerables" of the Grand Orient -offered a banquet to M. Briand, the reporter of the Law of Separation, -while at a Socialist Congress presided over by M. Combes, the President -of the Commission of Separation, referring to this law, declared "that -the war against the Church must be carried on without intermission." - -Commenting thereon, the _Temps_ sarcastically wrote: "If the clerical -spectre is still to haunt us, was it worth while to be turning like -squirrels in a cage for the past five years?" - -The gist of the law is in the articles that regard "_Associations -cultuelles_," which are aimed at the destruction of Catholic hierarchy -and unity. M. Ribot sought, in vain, to obtain that religious edifices -and property should be attributed only to associations approved by the -bishop in each diocese. The words _bishop_ and _diocese_ are most -carefully eschewed throughout the law. The attribution of property is to -be made to "associations formed in conformity with the rules of general -organization of the cult whose exercise they are to assure" (Art. 4). -The formula is most perfidious, and intentionally so, whereas the -amendment of M. Ribot and the one little word bishop might have rendered -the law supportable. - -What are "the rules of general organization"? The seventy-six Organic -Articles, perfidiously added by Napoleon to the Concordat, purported to -be "rules of general organization of Catholic worship." Some of these -are rankly heretical, and have of course never been observed. These -Organic Articles are abrogated together with the Concordat by the new -law (Art. 37), but what is to prevent the Conseil d'Etat, composed -exclusively of Freemasons, from deciding that these articles are still a -criterion, being the _statu quo ante_? - -By similar means all their church property was taken from the Catholics -of Geneva (1872-5) and turned over to apostate French priests, Loyson, -Carrere, etc. - -A like contingency is foreseen by Art 8. It is anticipated that rival -associations may claim the same church property, and that scissions may -arise in associations, regularly formed and invested. - -Now in these cases the decision does not lie with the bishop, nor even -with the ordinary civil courts. Decrees of Conseil d'Etat are suspended -everywhere like swords of Damocles, or rather like the blades of the -_guillotine seche_, which has replaced the bloody guillotine of "the -grand ancestors of 1793," whom these up-to-date Jacobins invoke so -complacently. We must not forget, too, that Conseil d'Etat means Conseil -du Grand Orient. It is said that the Masons are secretly organizing -_Associations cultuelles_, so-called Catholic. Human nature has not -changed since 1790, and it would be strange, if they could not pick up -another Abbe Gregoire or two, and a Talleyrand to boot. They can always -import some of that ilk from Geneva if necessary. - -Moreover, these _Associations cultuelles_ can be dissolved for so many -reasons (five), at a moment's notice, by a decree of Conseil d'Etat, -that it does not seem worth while to form them. - -The paltry reserve fund the _Associations cultuelles_ are allowed to -have must, like the rest of their funds, be deposited in the -Government's strong-box, and can only be used "for building, repairing, -embellishing church edifices." - -Evidently, it is not intended that there shall be any further -ecclesiastical recruitment. Seminaries are eliminated, _ipso facto_, as -they cannot exist on thin air. - -I do not enter into the details regarding pensions of aged priests, as -it is all too contemptible, the sums accorded being just enough to -starve on. But we may note a few violations of liberty and justice. - -1. All church property, movable or immovable, to which are attached -_fondations_ not directly regarding public worship, which are, in other -words, charitable or educational, are to be turned over to civic -institutions. Thus testators who left money for Christian parochial -schools and charities see it applied to the paganizing of the rising -generation and the poor. - -2. All churches and chapels arbitrarily closed by M. Combes are to -remain disaffected, i.e. confiscated. - -3. Ecclesiastical archives and libraries of episcopal sees and grand -seminaries that are claimed by the State are to be immediately -transferred to the State. This reveals the whole Jacobin mind. The -Church is to be deprived of all social action, by education and charity, -which she has exercised since two thousand years, and she must be -mummified like the Photian and Coptic and Nestorian Churches. - -The confiscation of these archives and libraries by a pagan state is, to -my mind, the most serious loss. Money can always be found again, but -when impious vandals have destroyed or dispersed these libraries and -archives, they can never be replaced. All English students deplore the -irreparable loss, caused by the cynical and base uses made of invaluable -manuscripts by reforming vandals in the sixteenth century. - -4. The Law of Separation deprives communes of the right to give any -subventions for religious worship--though the State inscribes on its own -budget the stipends to chaplains of lyceums frequented by children of -the rich, notwithstanding Art. II. - -5. A whole class of citizens are placed _hors la loi_, in that they are -deprived of the right of trial by jury for offences amenable to this -procedure. They (priests) are placed on the same footing as convicted -anarchists. - -6. Divine service is assimilated to any public meeting. A band of -Socialists may fill the church and render prayer impossible by their -irreverent attitude but they cannot be expelled unless they resort to -violence. - -7. The same class of individuals can invade any cathedral at any hour -and insist on inspecting, gratis, all its treasures (_objets mobiliers -classes_). In other words, these venerable edifices, the church of Brou, -Notre Dame, etc., are treated already like public museums, less well in -fact. And all this, we are told seriously, is "Separation." - -Meanwhile the two parties most nearly concerned in this question, the -Holy See and the French people, thirty-five million Catholics, have -never been consulted. - -M. Briand with remarkable impudence asserted that, since thirty-five -years, the country had sighed after "Separation," though he well knows -that no one thought about it but the Grand Orient. He himself admitted, -in the same session, that the question did not exist (_n'etait pas -posee_) at the beginning of this legislature (1902), and was only raised -by the Pope's violations of the Concordat. This lie, which tends to -become historic, was amply exploded, when M. Combes was convicted in the -Chambers of having suppressed a document, which amply justified Pius X's -action in the case of the Bishops of Dijon and Laval, which the lodges -used as a _casus belli_. Moreover, we must remember that the current -Jacobin thesis is that the Seventeen Articles of the Concordat, which -alone were signed by Pius VII, and the Seventy-six Organic Articles, -added _ex parte_ by Napoleon, in violation of every code of honour and -equity, form an intangible whole. Nevertheless, the Seventeen Articles -of the Convention which were alone signed by Pius VII and Napoleon, in -Messidor l'an IX, took effect as soon as the ratifications were -exchanged. The churches, seminaries, etc., were immediately "placed at -the disposal of the Bishops," and the stipulated indemnities were -forthcoming. - -It was not till Germinal l'an X that the Seventy-six Organic Articles -were promulgated, together with the Convention. - -Now no one surely can be accused of violating articles regarding which -he has never been consulted. Yet this is precisely the ground taken by -the Jacobins. - -A senator of the Right alleged, in defence of the Concordat, Art. 1134 -of the Code Civil: "Conventions legally formed are a law to those who -make them. They can only be revoked, by mutual consent, by those who -make them, and for causes which the law recognizes." - -Thereupon the reporter replied: "There was a Convention between Pius VII -and Napoleon; this Convention formed a whole (_un ensemble_) with the -Seventy-six Organic Articles." And as no Government has ever been able -to enforce these articles, some of which are rankly heretical, the -reporter alleged Art. 1184 of the Code against Art. 1134 to defend the -Government's _ex-parte_ denunciation of the Concordat. This Art. 1184 -declares that "a Convention is rescinded when one of the parties does -not keep his engagements." - -In other words, they say Pius VII and his successors have always -protested against the Seventy-six Organic Articles which the former did -not sign, therefore we are justified in denouncing, _ex parte_, the -Convention or Concordat of Seventeen Articles signed by Pius VII and -Napoleon. - -It is by this sophism that the Third Republic justifies the repudiation -of a portion of the National Debt; for the payment of annual indemnities -to the Catholic clergy was undoubtedly placed on the "Grand Livre" of -France by the Constituante, and recognized as part of the National Debt -by succeeding legislatures, before and since 1801. - -Recently, when it was proposed to suppress, without indemnity, the -_Majorats_ of the _ancien regime_, M. Rouvier, President de Conseil, -indignantly rejected the motion, saying, "Il ne faut jamais que la -signature de la France soit protestee." But when it is a question of -mere Catholics, the sense of national honour becomes blunted. They are -_hors la loi_. This form of jurisprudence has been familiar to -highwaymen from time immemorial--for them, the unarmed are always _hors -la loi_. - -M. Raiberti, a deputy from Nice, eloquently protested against the vote -of urgency, declaring that the country had never been consulted. "No -law," he said, "can be just and stable which does not express the wishes -of the people." All in vain. The Socialist voting machine worked -automatically at every turn towards the end. - -It is an incontestable fact that Separation has never appeared on any -programme these thirty-four years, except on that of 181 deputies at the -elections of 1902. Nevertheless, 341 (against 249) have just voted for -this law of Separation that is the negation of fifteen centuries of -national history.[11] - -The _Gazette de France_ calculates the number of electors represented by -these 341 deputies who carried the Separation Bill in the Chambers in -July:-- - - "On a total of 11,219,992 French electors only 2,997,063 pronounced - yesterday by their deputies in favour of the denunciation of the - Concordat and the spoliation of the Church, voted by a so-called - majority. - - "We must bear in mind that at the elections of 1902 the majority - only vanquished by 200,000 votes out of 8,000,000 voters inscribed, - and there are 400,000 functionaries. Thus spoke a senator (de - Cuverville), and he further quoted the declarations of M. Deschanel - in a public speech, July, 1905. - - "A minority, he declared, governs the country, and a law voted by a - certain majority represents 25 to 30 per cent. One deputy is - elected by 22,000, another by 1000. The Department du Nord has - 500,000 more inhabitants than six departments of the south-east, - yet it has five deputies less. Roubaix, with 125,000 inhabitants, - has one deputy, while the Department of Basses Alpes, with 115,000 - inhabitants, has five deputies." - -It is easy to see how a little judicious electoral geometry and -arithmetic will always give the Government a majority. Each -_arrondissement_ having a deputy, it is only necessary to cut up a given -district, notably anti-clerical, into a great many _arrondissements_, in -order to secure an increased number of deputies, _blocards_; and vice -versa the process need only be reversed in districts suspected of -"clericalism." We must also remember that at least one-third of the -electors never vote, and so the Government can always have a majority. - -This Separation Law is, as M. Briand said, only "transitory." It is, I -repeat, eminently perfidious. There is no form of tyranny, vexation, and -spoliation which cannot be legalized by its equivocal articles. It -contains all that is necessary to eliminate Catholicism from France as -far as public worship is concerned. - -On June 3rd I wrote, "What these Jacobins want is to have the law voted -before the elections of May, 1906, and then say to the people, 'You see -the law is voted, and nothing is changed.'" At the final session after -the vote, M. Briand, in a speech now pasted up all over the country, -said, "Our work is done. What have you to say? You tried to trouble the -conscience of the French Catholics, but can you find anything in the -Bill to warrant your grievances? Dare now to tell the people the -churches are to be closed, the priests proscribed." Yet all this, alas! -arrived almost immediately after the first Separation Law made in 1795. - -"No one," echoed M. Deschanel, a smooth-tongued, dainty politician like -M. Rousseau, "can maintain that this law is the work of hatred and -persecution, unless it is travestied by some profoundly dishonest -Government." - -"Like that of M. Combes, who travestied Waldeck Rousseau's Associations -Bill," rejoined a deputy of the Right. - -This Law of Separation bears the same imprint as that of 1901; both -emanated from the same quarter. It is, I repeat, a masterpiece of guile -and arbitrary tyranny. Any sense can be given to the ambiguous language -in which the most important articles are couched, and their -interpretation is not to be left to ordinary civil tribunals. The _jus -et norma_ in all doubtful questions is to be the Conseil d'Etat. In -other words, the Grand Conseil of the Grand Orient is to be the supreme -court of first and last appeal. - -The Church in France might just as well descend into the catacombs here -and now. It will come to this, unless some cataclysm rouse the French to -a violent uprising, in which the Third Republic and all its works and -ways will be swept away. - -The Senatorial Commission is composed of fourteen Jacobin Freemasons. -Their rulings are a foregone conclusion. The Separation Bill may be -considered already voted in the Senate. - -Great crimes against liberty, justice, and humanity cannot be -circumscribed by national frontiers. They offend all Christendom, and -though nations may, supinely, say "Am I my brother's keeper?" they pay -the penalty sooner or later. France in acute revolution will mean Europe -in flames, as in 1792. - - - - -THE PROGRESS OF ANARCHY - - -_12th October, 1905._ - -The stories that are going the rounds of the whole European Press leave -little doubt as to the fact, that a once great, free nation had her -Foreign Minister, M. Delcasse, kept in office by the King of England -while he was in Paris this spring, and that two months later, he was -dismissed at the behest of Germany, who tore up the Anglo-French -Convention regarding Morocco and inaugurated the Congress of Algeciras. -No nation can act as France has done with impunity.[12] - -This is curious too when we consider that France is so sensitive about -the _ingerence_ of even a spiritual sovereign, that the denunciation of -a Concordat and the rupture with the Holy See were ascribed to the fact -that Pius X had taken the liberty of suspending two French bishops! - -It is also interesting to recall that the Bill of alleged Separation -was first voted at the Congress of Free-Thought held at Rome, in -September, 1904. The motion was made by Professor Haeckel, of the -University of Jena, Prussia, that: "We congratulate M. Combes in his -struggle for free-thought against theocratical oppression, and for the -radical separation of Church and State." Allemane, a French Socialist -deputy, exclaimed: "This is not enough. We want the abolition of the -Church." Robin, another French deputy, rejoined: "We are equally opposed -to both. We demand the abolition of Church and State." - -I have already stated how the annual convent of the Grand Orient of -France notified M. Combes (September, 1904) of their wishes regarding -the passage without delay of the Separation Bill. This Bill was voted, -or rather enregistered, by the Chamber of Deputies in July, as it will -be done shortly by the Senate.[13] - -Yesterday in Paris, the bureau of the "Federation of International -Free-Thought" actually intimated to the French Senate its behest that -the Law of Separation of Church and State be voted, without discussion -or amendment, before December 31st. When we consider that this bureau is -composed of one French Socialist Freemason deputy, the others being -German, Belgian, and Italian, it seems preposterous! It would be so, -even if all were Frenchmen, seeing that the Senate is supposed to be a -free deliberative body, having the responsibility of accepting or -rejecting what is done in the lower House. - -The London _Saturday Review_ is almost the only organ in the English -language which seems adequately to appreciate the enormity of the -religious persecution in France. - -"The extraordinary conspiracy of silence on this momentous matter, in -the English Press," writes the _Saturday Review_, London (July 8th, -1905), "is doubtless due to the fact that English Christians and -gentlemen are usually considered unfit to represent English newspapers -on the Continent. The Paris correspondents of our leading journals, -being nearly all men of oriental extraction, cannot, however honourable -and enlightened, be expected to entertain any interest in the fate of -the Christian religion. We are invariably led by these gentlemen to -believe that all is for the best in the best of republics. When, a -fortnight ago, France suddenly realized that she was within sight of a -war with her ancient foe on the other side of the Rhine, a thrill of -terror passed over the land at the mere thought that while engrossed in -the work of dechristianizing France, and hustling monks and nuns up and -down the country, the politicians in power had demoralized the army, -neglected the navy, and left the frontiers almost entirely unprotected. -Things have quieted down since then, but none the less there is a -feeling of unrest which makes people dread the passage of a law that -may lead to internal divisions and disorders even more serious than -those which agitate France at the present time." - -Referring to the Bill of alleged Separation, the _Saturday Review_ -continues: "_La Lanterne_ (the organ of the 'bloc') intimates that 'it -only accepts the Bill as it stands as a preliminary; we must silence the -priests and prevent them from infusing any more of the virus of religion -into the minds of the people.' ... To a thinking foreigner, the -spectacle presented by contemporary France is an amazing one. Here is a -great nation, which for sixteen centuries has proclaimed herself 'eldest -daughter of the Church,' renouncing her great position as protector of -the Catholics in the east and breaking off her connexion with the -Vatican, at a time when Germany is menacing her and proclaiming at Metz, -of all places in the world, her imperial wish to become more friendly -with the Church." - -This is an allusion to the Emperor William's having himself invested by -the papal legate with the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, surrounded by -German cardinals and prelates, as well as the highest military -dignitaries of Alsace-Lorraine. For me, the dismissal of M. Delcasse and -the whole Moroccan incident are the handwriting on the wall which the -French are slow to read. On the Feast of St. Michael, September 29th, -the Minister of Public Worship held high revelry at a banquet of five -hundred Freemasons in the church of the recently expropriated convent of -the Ursuline nuns at Ave-ranche, just opposite that wonderful pile known -as the Mount St. Michel, a mediaeval monastery and church. It is not -stated whether--like Balthazar--he sent for the vessels of the temple. - -The crimes against justice, liberty, and humanity committed in France, -since four years, are without a parallel in Europe since the Revolution -of 1790, if we except, of course, the atrocities in the Turkish Empire. -But most dire racial and religious antagonism may be alleged on behalf -of the Turk. In Spain, too, similar violations of liberty, justice, and -humanity have been committed during the nineteenth century, but this was -done in the heat and turmoil of revolutionary and anarchist upheavals. -In France they were committed in cold blood, under cover of law. Nearly -27,000 Catholic schools, freely patronized by Catholic parents, have -been suppressed, thousands of aged men and women have been dragged out -of their homes and cast into the street, _vi et armis_, the regular army -being employed in a great many cases. Their homes, built up by years of -patient labour, have been confiscated and sold for a trifle. Yet many of -them were authorized and had contracts with the Government. Recently, -convent and school buildings, estimated at 200,000 francs, were sold for -2200 francs. - -Two days ago, forty-three nuns of the Benedictine Order were expelled -from their homes; eleven of them were over seventy, and quite infirm. -The Congregations who were wary enough not to ask for authorization, and -realized what they could before going into exile, are not to be pitied -so much. Unfortunately, the majority fell into the Government's trap and -asked for authorization, which obliged them to declare all their assets, -that have been confiscated, and of which they will never see one cent. -Not only have all the assets been consumed in the process called -"liquidation," but the Government has been obliged to put up over -4,000,000 of the public money to cover the expenses of the -"liquidators." So ends the myth of the "billions of the Congregations," -held out as a glittering lure by Waldeck Rousseau in 1900 to his -Socialist henchmen. - -The terrible inroads, made by anti-patriotism and anarchical Socialism -by means of public-school teachers, are seriously alarming the creators -of this modern Frankenstein. Domiciliary perquisitions are being made -just now, in many cities, to seize the leaders of a conspiracy to -debauch the young conscripts who begin their two years' military service -now. A brochure, called _Crosse en l'air_ (meaning military revolt), has -reached, it is said, the million mark of circulation, in spite of the -Government. - -The conclusion of the Russo-Japanese war is an illustration of what I -wrote in _Slav and Moslem_ ten years ago, page 170: "Henceforth -commerce, not ideas, will rule in the council chambers of the world. -Politics will be forged in counting-houses and warehouses, 'where only -the ledger lives,' in whose dusty atmosphere none but merchantable ideas -are current. Wars will be declared, peace be made, alliances formed or -repudiated, according to their probable effect on the pulse of the -market." - -Without wishing to derogate from the merit of Mr. Roosevelt's good -offices, I am convinced he could not have succeeded if the financial -consideration had not rendered the belligerents docile. Japan was -absolutely at the end of her financial resources; the Russian coffers -were not far from empty. By the intermediary of the President, both -parties were given to understand that not a yen or kopeck more could -they borrow if peace were not concluded there and then. Any prolongation -of that war would have meant financial panic in many countries, chiefly -in France. Israel, by its bankers, has its hand on the throttle in -Christendom, and can make for peace and war more than all the peace -congresses. When we reflect on the three cruel, uncalled-for wars which -followed the Hague Conference in 1898, we can only tremble for the -future, if there is to be a new peace congress. In spite of conferences -and Jew bankers, guns will continue to "go off by themselves." These -Delcasse revelations are not calculated to render the Germans more -friendly to France or England, and the knowledge they have acquired of -France's inability and unwillingness to fight must be a strong -temptation to a nation whose population is increasing at a formidable -rate, in spite of emigration, while that of France is stationary, not to -say steadily decreasing. - -Belgium, that great country in a very small compass, has doubled hers -since 1830. With 7,000,000 inhabitants, the figure of her business -operations is now the same as that of France with 38,000,000. This last -statement was made by M. Leygnes, ex-minister, in a recent political -speech, regarding the steady decadence of France under Jacobin rule -since twenty years. - -No country wants war, but all fear it. The causes of unrest are manifold -and legion. - -In an important political speech made by Lord Beaconsfield (Disraeli) at -Aylesbury, September 20th, 1873, he expressed himself as follows: "I can -assure you, gentlemen, that those who govern must count with new -elements. We have to deal not with emperors and cabinets only. We must -take into consideration secret societies, who can disconcert all -measures at the last moment, who have agents everywhere determined men -encouraging assassinations, and capable of bringing about a massacre at -any given moment." - -The passage is quoted in an article in the _Nineteenth Century_ (1876), -"A History of the 'Internationale.'" The "Internationale," by the way, -is fast superseding the "Marseillaise." The verse of blasphemy against -Christ and His mother is followed by one which ends with these words: -"Our balls are for our generals." A short time ago there were prolonged -riotous strikes on the eastern frontier. A striker was killed -accidentally. Thereupon M. Berteaux, the Minister of War, retired a -general and imprisoned a captain and a lieutenant for the crime of -having allowed the lancer regiments to carry lances when they were sent -out against the strikers! - -To propitiate these rioters the Minister of War went to Longwy, and the -strikers marched past singing the "Internationale," and the Minister of -War actually saluted the red flag! He afterwards protested in the -newspapers that he did not salute the red flag, but the men and women -who were escorting it! This Minister of War began life as dry-goods -commercial traveller. He is to-day a millionaire _agent de change_ at -the Paris Bourse, and is said to ambition the presidential chair. - -Shakespeare wrote: "Motley is the only wear." In France, everything -seems to be running to red. I have witnessed here two "free-thought" -funerals, one last April and another yesterday, in which pall and -banners were red, and even the coffin was draped in flaming red. Red "is -the only wear," though it is not easy to understand why "free-thought" -should necessarily blush--for itself. At the "Free-Thought" convention -held, recently, at Paris, under government patronage, anarchy dominated, -just as it did at Rome last September. Red was the keynote. - - - - -THE ABOLITION OF THE CONCORDAT - - -_February 3rd, 1906._ - -On August 19th, 1905, I described some of the odious features of the -alleged Separation Bill voted by the House of Deputies on July 7th, at -"midnight, the hour of crime." It may truly be ranked in that category -to which Cicero referred when he said, "There are laws which are merely -conventions among thieves." "The vote of the Senate is a foregone -conclusion," I wrote. The order had been given; every amendment (there -were about a hundred) was rejected automatically, and the law was voted, -December 6th, 1905, by a majority of 180 to 101. "The French -Government," I wrote (June 30th, 1900), "is on the verse of apostasy. Is -this a cause, a presage, or a symptom of national decadence? All three I -fear. Nations stand or fall with their governments. They have the -government they deserve, and are punished for the evil doings of their -rulers! 'I gave them a king in my wrath,' was once written of the Jews. -Is there sufficient vitality left in the French national constitution to -reject the poison which is undermining it, and of which alcoholism, -unknown in France fifty years ago, is but the outward and visible sign?" -To-day this apostasy, not of the nation, but of the French State, is -complete. It is the latest, though by no means the last act of a series -of anti-religious laws, elaborated by the Grand Orient and voted by -majorities and cabinets formed by them. I dealt with this subject on -March 17th, 1900, and said, then, that "with a Parliament and Ministry -like this any legislation is possible." - -The pseudo-Separation Bill is the most important legislation -accomplished in France since a century at least, and it has been done in -a manner which would not be tolerated in any free, civilized country. An -Act, which is the repudiation of fifteen centuries of national life, and -is fraught with the gravest consequences both political and religious, -interior and exterior, has been rushed through both Houses with most -unseemly, "scandalous haste." "You are treating it," said a senator, "as -if it were a question of a fourth-rate railroad." There was only one -deliberation in the Chamber of Deputies, and not one in the Senate we -may say. Senators of the Right were allowed to soliloquize eloquently. -Their speeches were admirable from every point of view and might well -have given pause to the Left. But these were dumb, by order. With few -exceptions, the reporter and President of the Separation Commission and -the Minister of Worship alone spoke, to curtly and peremptorily repulse -the proposed amendments. M. Rouvier, Prime Minister and Minister of -Foreign Affairs, who did not speak at all in the House of Deputies, -made but one appearance, on November 9th, at the first session of the -Senate, to declare that "the question was essentially a political one," -and that there was "a primordial and dominant interest for the -Government that this reform should be completed before the Senate went -before the electoral body." He further declared "that the Senate had -given its adhesion in advance ... if it were otherwise the Government -would resign." Surely a singular speech to make to a deliberative -assembly, on a matter that transcends in importance anything that has -been transacted in the French Parliament since 1793. - -If the law were not what Cicero calls "a convention among thieves," how -did M. Rouvier know "that the Senate had given its adhesion in advance"? -Indignant at the systematic refusal of the Left to enter into any -discussion, a senator exclaimed: "You are a deliberative assembly; try -at least to keep up appearances." MM. Monis and Clemenceau spoke on the -Left, not to refute the arguments of the Right, but to travesty history, -to malign and misrepresent, and to discuss subjects wholly irrelevant. -M. Monis entered into a long digression on the Franco-Prussian war in -order to incriminate a French cardinal and Pius IX. He was ably refuted -by M. de Lamarzalle. - -Whence this unseemly haste to vote a measure so important on the ragged -edge of a legislature? Next month one-third of the Senate is to be -renewed, the presidential term expires, and in May general elections are -to take place. In vain the Right, in learned and eloquent speeches, -adjured the Senate to postpone the final vote: (1) till one-third of the -Senators had been replaced; (2) till the Municipal Councils had been -consulted; (3) till the country had been consulted; (4) until after the -general elections of May, 1906. All in vain. "_Motions prejudicielles_" -and a hundred odd amendments all had the same fate. - -The explanation of this "scandalous haste" is very simple. The reporter -of the Commission said: "If you do not vote this liberal law now, you -can say good-bye to it, for you will never see it again." - -The country has never been consulted, and the Government wishes to -confront the people with the _accomplished_ fact, and above all to be -able to say, as I pointed out in my last: "You see the law is voted and -nothing is changed." If this law had been passed two years ago, it would -have gone into operation a year before the general elections and the -people might have been roused. On the other hand, if it hung fire now, -it would certainly have to be placed in all the electoral programmes. -Everything has been planned and foreseen by the lodges since twenty -years.[14] - -Several senators of the Right convincingly established that there was no -adequate reason for this unseemly haste--that no organic law had ever -been passed without a second reading; and they adjured the Senate not to -abdicate. M. de Chamaillard even offered to withdraw all the proposed -amendments (about a hundred) if the Senate would not vote the "urgency" -and give the law a second reading. All in vain. - -No one ignores or denies that the true purpose of the law is to -dechristianize France; even the spokesmen of the Government could not -dissimulate the truth. The coterie of Freemason Jacobins who have ruled -France for the past twenty years have not renounced their scheme of -national schismatic churches; only, instead of having one, which was -seen to be impossible, they propose to establish dozens of them by means -of associations of worship. Articles 4, 6, 8, 19 dealing with these -associations contain the whole venom of the law. In vain the -obscurities, the anomalies, the legal antinomies were pointed out, and -explanations demanded. _Reglements d'organization and Conseil d'Etat_, -it was said, would settle everything later on! In this _Review_, August -19th, I commented on the text of the law--and not one word, not one -comma, has been changed by the Senate! - -To-day, Islamism is, _ipso facto_, the only religion recognized by the -French Government; its ministers and mosques and schools are provided -for, and its ceremonies are often honoured by the presence of state -officials. This, in spite of Article 2, "the Republic recognizes and -subventions no worship." - -Another point worth noticing is that while discussing Article 1, "The -Republic assures liberty of conscience," the Minister of Public Worship, -speaking for the Government, clearly indicated that state functionaries -would never be permitted to send their children to any but government -schools. - -There are three points on which I insist in conclusion: (1) That the -country has not been consulted. At the general elections, 1902, not one -senator, and only 130 deputies out of 580 had "Separation" in their -programmes, and the Budget of Worship was voted in 1902, 1903, 1904 by a -compact majority who would then have been indignant had it been said -that they were acting against the wishes of the country. On January -27th, 1903, M. Combes himself repelled a suggestion of denunciation of -the Concordat thus: "If you do this by an improvised vote ... you will -throw the country into the greatest difficulties, trouble consciences, -and cause a veritable peril to the Republic." Now the country has not -been heard from since 1902. Yet the law was rushed through, on the eve -of a new election, for reasons I have indicated. - -(2) We must remember that when continual violations of the Concordat are -alleged as an excuse for the rupture, the Jacobins constantly confound -the seventy-five Organic Articles with the seventeen articles of the -Convention called Concordat, 1801, which alone was signed by Pius VII. - -(3) The suppression of the indemnity _Concordataire_ is, as far as the -Catholic clergy are concerned, a partial repudiation of the National -Debt. It was recognized as such by laws of 1789, 1790, 1791, 1793, 1801, -etc. - -This law of pseudo-Separation is not only a law of spoliation, but also -of supreme tyranny, in that in the name of Separation, it pretends to -regulate minutely the mode of existence of its victims, in future, by -special codes, and deprives them of the right to have more than the -strictest necessary for a hand-to-mouth existence. - -I am convinced that to acquiesce in regard to these "associations of -worship" will be to fall into the Government's trap as the Congregations -did when they applied for authorization in 1902. It will only mean -retreating before the enemy, and postponing the hour of violent -persecution and combat, which must come before the Jacobin-Freemason -yoke can be broken. - - - - -THE INVENTORIES - - -_12th February, 1906._ - -Year by year, I have foreshadowed and characterized the programme of -persecution, spoliation, and arbitrary tyranny which is that of the -Judeo-Masonic coterie which governs France, by means of the Socialist -vote. We have now reached the second part of this programme. - -In 1901 the Associations Bill was, according to Waldeck Rousseau, -intended to give legal standing and liberty to the unauthorized as well -as to the authorized Congregations. We all know, to-day, how -twenty-seven thousand of their schools have been closed, and how the -Congregations, simple enough to fall into the Government's trap by -asking for authorization and furnishing inventories of their property, -have been robbed of everything and turned adrift. - -The inventories now being made in the churches, amid scenes of violence -and bloodshed, with the cooperation of the regular army, represent the -first step on the road to wholesale spoliation and strangulation. If -only the victims would be docile and resigned there would be no trouble -whatever. Resistance will compel the operators to be drastic, when they -would rather go slowly and surely. The French voters should be -consistent. After giving themselves such law-makers, they ought at least -not to wince when the laws made by them are put into execution. But this -is an incurable idiosyncrasy of the French; they are clear-sighted, -energetic, and practical in the administration of their private affairs, -but when it comes to politics and government, they are absolutely -apathetic and purblind. Any pothouse politician can wheedle them out of -their votes, who would find it difficult to coax a sou out of their -pockets. All they ask is to be left in peace to attend to their business -and pleasures. It is only when the unpleasant practical sides of laws -like those of 1902, 1904, and 1905 are brought home to them that the -peasant seizes his pitchfork, and the bourgeois his cane, and bloody -manifestations occur all over France, as in 1902, 1904, and to-day -(1906). - -Generally speaking, inventories are made only when property is about to -change hands, as in cases of death and bankruptcy. Now the adherents of -the Catholic Church in France are numerous and very much alive, and they -cannot see why their ecclesiastical furniture and property should be -inventoried, quite forgetting that they gave carte blanche to the "bloc" -of Briands, Brissons, Combes, etc., who made the law they are now -resisting. - -If _Associations cultuelles_ are formed, a consummation most devoutly to -be deprecated by every friend of Catholic France, evidently they will -be composed by bishops, cures, and their present _conseils de fabrique_, -and there will not be any transmission of property. - -If there were no _animus furtandi_, no malevolent projects of -strangulation in the background, the Government would have contented -itself with denouncing the Concordat, and repudiating that portion of -the National Debt represented by the _Budget of cults_, instituted by -the Jacobins themselves, in 1790, when they appropriated Church property -and assumed the charge of maintaining Catholic worship in France. -Neither Protestant nor Jewish worship was included, originally, in the -_Budget de Cults_, seeing that their Church property had not been -touched, and they had no part in the Concordat. - -When the Anglican Church was disestablished or separated from the State -in Ireland, it surely never occurred to Mr. Gladstone and his Government -to order inventories to be made in the churches. - -To understand this revolt of the French people just now, we must recall -their past experience with inventories. In 1790 a decree obliged all -cathedral chapters and titulars of benefices to furnish complete -inventories of all their holdings, and in March, 1791, about four -hundred millions of Church property was seized and sold by the State. In -1901 the Congregations were invited to furnish ample inventories with -their demands for authorization; no authorizations were given, but the -inventories were very useful for the wholesale spoliations which -followed, spoliations which still masquerade under the pseudonym of -"liquidations." - -Moreover, the State makes these inventories to-day as proprietor, though -by no sleight of language can its ownership be proven, even as regards -churches existing before the Revolution, while many costly structures -have been erected and endowed since then by private initiative.[15] - -Fierce riots occurred over one of these churches built on private -grounds. The proprietor produced his title deeds, proving that the -commune had not contributed one cent and that he was absolute owner, but -this made no difference. - -The law Mirabeau of 1789 distinctly recognized that all ecclesiastical -property then existing had been "irrevocably given to the Roman Catholic -Church for public worship and charity." The Jacobins of to-day -apparently base their claims (Art. 12 de Separation) on this loi -Mirabeau, which declares, forthwith, that all this Church property is -"placed at the disposal of the nation," ("_mise a la disposition de la -nation_"). But Art. 12 of the Concordat uses exactly the same words in -speaking of what was left, in 1801, of Church property, edifices, -etc.--"_sont mises a la disposition des eveques_"--all was "placed at -the disposal of the bishops"; and the faithful, moreover, were invited -to reconstitute the stolen patrimony by gifts and legacies, which are -now to be confiscated. - -Church edifices and everything pertaining thereto, as well as pious -legacies (_fondations_), are to confiscated, if _Associations -cultuelles_ are not formed before 6th December, 1906, or if said -associations are dissolved for any of the five cases foreseen by the law -ironically called of "Separation." Lineal descendants may claim -_fondations_ made by ancestors, but this liberal provision is illusory, -as all important bequests are made by people who are childless. Thus the -dead are despoiled as well as the living. - -The recitals which fill the daily papers of churches besieged and -assaulted by _gens d'armes_ and the regular army are very sickening, -coming so soon after a similar campaign against convents. There are -places where no workmen will break down doors or pick locks for the -fiscal agents, and they are obliged to carry operators, or official -_crocheteurs_, around with them. - -Recently two thousand soldiers were mobilized against a village church. -In many places the regular army have occupied the churches, -unexpectedly, before daylight, and thus the people were outwitted and -the inventories were made quietly. Though, if we may believe a -functionary interviewed by a reporter of the _Journal de Geneve_, not -one inventory has been made thoroughly, as the Government is very -anxious to have it over. The probability is that the odious work will -soon be suspended entirely, so that all may be forgotten before the -elections of May.[16] - -Yesterday two superior officers of the Engineering Corps at Cherbourg -had their swords broken by the Government, because they manifested their -disgust too openly. Many others are under arrest, because they refused -to lead the assault on Church edifices, and their careers may be -considered at an end.[17] - -The first article of this Law of alleged Separation declares that "the -Republic assures liberty of conscience." Yet surely it is a violation of -liberty of conscience to command a Catholic officer to batter down the -doors of his parish church. Moreover, when this article of the law was -being discussed in the Senate, the Minister of Cults (M. Briand), -speaking for the Government (as M. Rouvier was never present!), gave it -to be clearly understood that functionaries would never be allowed to -send their children to any but government schools! Yet surely it must be -a matter of conscience with any Catholic to send his children to -schools, which are frankly and aggressively materialistic and atheist. - -Article II declares that "the Republic recognizes, salaries, and -subventions no religion." This too must not be taken literally. For, as -I anticipated last year (May 29th), this law, made against thirty-five -million French Catholics, is not applicable to six million Mohammedans -of Algeria. Their mosques, their ulemas, their schools and congregations -will continue to be supported by the Republic which neither recognizes -nor supports any religion. This is just, seeing that the Third Republic -took all their ecclesiastical property, promising annual subsidies -instead, just as the Jacobins of 1790 did with regard to the Catholics, -only in the latter case the capital appropriated is retained, while the -charge is repudiated. - -Meanwhile Islamism is the state religion of France, _ipso facto_; the -only one whose ceremonies and mosques are honoured by government -officials on solemn occasions. Shades of Godfrey de Bouillon and St. -Louis! - -Spoliation and poverty would be endurable if only the Church were truly -separated from the State. But the latter presumes to dictate to the -Church a new organization of its parishes (_Associations cultuelles_), -to limit its financial resources, and decide how these are to be -obtained, how they must be invested, and what use may be made of them. - - - - -DUC IN ALTUM - - -_20th August, 1906._ - -"And the Lord said to Peter, Launch out into the deep," _Duc in altum_. -To-day again the successor of Peter has heard the word of command, _Duc -in altum_. He has exercised that _potentiorem principalitatem_ or -eminent leadership ascribed to the Roman See by St. Irenaeus in the -second century, and the whole leash of anti-clericals are transported -with rage and surprise at this grand act of Pius X, the one contingency -for which they were not prepared. The previous encyclical (_Vehementer_) -had left them indifferent. They treated it as a mere rhetorical -manoeuvre destined to cover a retreat, and as a covert acquiescence in -their law of tyranny and spoliation. - -The whole venom of this law is, as I wrote a year ago (August 19th, -1905), contained in the numerous articles that regard _Associations -cultuelles_--which are aimed at the very life of the Church, by the -destruction of her hierarchy, which is the basis of her constitution. In -the English and American Press it is sought, disingenuously, to -make-believe that these associations were merely "boards of trustees" -to administer Church property, and that similar associations exist in -the United States, England, Germany, etc., with the approbation of the -Holy See. This is not so; French parishes already have _fabriques_ and -_conseils de fabriques_, that correspond to boards of trustees. They are -abolished by the Law of Separation, and for them are substituted these -_Associations cultuelles_, in which the bishops have no standing and no -authority whatever. Any seven, twelve, or twenty-five persons, calling -themselves Catholics, because they happen to be baptized, can form one -of these associations, claim a church and all its revenues, and run the -parish to suit themselves. - -Even after one association has been legally formed "according to the -general rules of worship" (Art. 4), a most ambiguous expression, which -the lawmakers deliberately refused to make explicit, it is anticipated -that scissions may occur, and that rival associations may claim the same -Church property. In all these contentions the bishop has no voice except -incidentally. The Conseil d'Etat, an administrative tribunal composed -exclusively of Freemasons, is the supreme judge of the orthodoxy of -these associations. The phrase "formed according to the general rules of -worship" was supposed to offer ample guarantee to Catholics. Yet -recently the _Journal Officiel_ has officially registered four or five -schismatic associations, formed by already interdicted priests. They are -in insignificant hamlets, it is true, one of them being a parish of -only 175 members, but they are test cases, and show how foolish it would -have been to trust to the illusory guarantee offered by Article 4, -"according to the general rules of organization of worship." - -The discussion raised by M. Combes with the Vatican, regarding the words -_nobis nominavit_ in the canonical investiture of French bishops -presented by the Government as candidates, and then the affair of the -deposition of the Bishops of Dijon and Laval, 1894, convinced them that -a national schismatic church was impossible, so they fell back on this -alternative scheme of _Associations cultuelles_, destined to set in -motion a process of slow disintegration and gradual decomposition. A -noted Freemason said recently, "Twenty years of secular schools have -made us the masters of France; with twenty years of _Associations -cultuelles_ every trace of the Catholic religion in France will be -effaced." - -In the Senate M. Berger, a Protestant Freemason, made the following -interesting statement (_Journal Officiel_, p. 1380): "The law," he said, -"had been slumbering in the Republican programme for the past fifty -years ... but how can a law be perfect that has had only one -deliberation?... Instead of this a voice cries to us, 'Vote, vote.' Here -are articles in disagreement with each other--Vote. They are in -contradiction with the spirit of the law--Vote. They violate existing -rights--Vote, vote. Do your duty as a Republican.... Well, yes, I will -vote this law from a sense of duty."[18] - -This same senator described the true character of the _Associations -cultuelles_ when he said, "They are free associations destined to take -the place of the ancient Church." - -Not less clear was the statement of M. Briand, Minister of Public -Worship: "Dissensions may arise, not in matters of dogma only, but in -questions of administration. We must allow those, who do not wish to -submit, to form independent autonomous associations if they wish to use -the same church." - -If Christians anywhere wonder at the severity of the papal encyclical -rejecting these associations, it is because they have not even scanned -the text of the law, and accept, unchallenged, the misrepresentations of -a Press which seems to derive all its information from organs like _La -Lanterne_, _L'Action_, _Le Siecle_, _Le Temps_, etc. This Law of alleged -Separation presumes to dictate to the Catholic Church, an organization -in which episcopal authority, the basis of her divinely given -constitution, is completely set at naught. The Roman Pontiff, her -supreme head, was not once consulted, and in order to make it impossible -to do so, they began by severing all connexion with the Vatican in 1904. -It is very much as if, after suppressing all their schools and -colleges, the English Government were to pass a law declaring that -Quakers and Presbyterians are to be deprived of all their ecclesiastical -property unless they consent to adopt episcopacy and the Book of Common -Prayer. Would any one under these circumstances hesitate to say that -Quakers and Presbyterians were persecuted? I trow not. - -When Henry VIII had resolved to reduce the Church of England to the -condition of a department of State, his first step was to undermine her -constitution by removing the keystone of the arch. To do this it was -necessary to detach the clergy from Rome, the See of Peter on whom the -Church is founded. In 1530 he compelled them "to acknowledge the king to -be the singular protector and only supreme lord, and, so far as the law -of Christ will allow, supreme head of the English Church and clergy." In -1532 Convocation further abdicated by the elimination of the saving -clause, "as far as the law of Christ will allow." They also consented to -have their canon law revised by a Royal Commission, "with a view to the -elimination of all canons contrary to the laws of God and of the realm." -Their abdication and submission were recorded in an Act of Parliament, -and "henceforth," writes Wakeman, the Anglican author of a history of -the English Church, "the Church of England will be at the mercy of -Parliament." We all know how the schism and apostasy of this great -province of the Church were consummated by Elizabeth. The fate of -Moscow, and that of Constantinople five centuries before, was the same. -Detached from Rome, they fell beneath the tyranny of the State. - -It is this condition that the Judeo-Masonic coterie would fain have -brought about in France. The seventy-six Organic Articles added -surreptitiously to the Concordat of 1801 had no other object in view. -But, as M. Combes admitted in the Chambers, the Papacy never accepted -them, and no government had ever succeeded in enforcing them. The -question of _nobis nominavit_ and that of the Bishops of Dijon and Laval -were the last abortive efforts to bring about a schism. Failing this, -they resolved to reduce the Church in France to the condition of a -Polish Diet, in which the Conseil d'Etat, i.e. the Grand Orient, would -have enjoyed an unlimited _liberum veto_. - -Even legally speaking, these _Associations cultuelles_ could not -function normally, because their situation was anomalous. They were -neither owners, _usufruitiers_, nor simple tenants of the Church -property of which they had the charge and the responsibility. The law -is, as I said before, full of antinomies and obscurities. Senators of -the Right pointed them out one by one. All in vain. Decrees of Conseil -d'Etat will settle every question as it arises was always the -Government's reply. - -The trap was smartly constructed, and neatly baited with the greater -portion of the present patrimony of the Church, some two million -pounds, it is said, and all Church edifices, etc. Everything is to be -confiscated if _Associations cultuelles_ are not formed by December -11th, 1906. - -Considering the disastrous consequences of not forming associations, it -is not surprising that some Catholics, and even some priests, were -disposed, once more, to retreat before the enemy by forming some kind of -Janus-faced association, canonical on one side, and in conformity with -the law on the other. But it is absolutely false that a majority, or -even a minority, of the bishops at the Assembly were in favour of the -acceptation of the Law, _telle quelle_. - -The clergy and the Catholics of France have been retreating before the -enemy for twenty years and more, quite forgetting the "Resist the devil -and he will flee from you." - -Leo XIII, in his profound attachment to France, loyally lent his aid to -the Third Republic when implored by M. Grevy. He begged the clergy and -the Catholics to rally to the new regime in the interest of peace. - -He even discountenanced the formation of a Catholic party in France at -that time, because Catholics being divided, politically, into three -camps--Royalists, Republicans, and Imperialists or Bonapartists--he -feared strife, and did not wish the Catholic religion to be identified -with any form of government. - -At the time of Leo's death the _Journal de Geneve_ (Protestant) declared -that "this Pontiff had at least one miracle to his credit, in that to -the end he had maintained kindly relations with an ungrateful Republic -that repaid his condescendence and friendly aid by reiterated -provocations." This is quite true. The scholar laws of 1886, when this -campaign against religion was begun by irreligious instruction, given -under a mask of _neutralite_, now completely laid aside; unjust fiscal -laws against the Congregations; and finally the laws of 1901, 1902 and -1904 which embittered Leo's last hours, were so many acts of hostility, -leading up to the final assault, all foreseen and prepared in the -Judeo-Masonic lodges since a century we may say. "Il faut serier les -questions," said Gambetta, whose maxim was _Le clericalism c'est -l'ennemi_; and "clericalism," it seems now, means simply _God_. To-day, -they openly proclaim that God is the enemy. - -After destroying the outposts and the ramparts by the destruction of all -her religious orders engaged in teaching, preaching, and ministering to -the poor and the halt, it was resolved to storm the citadel, the Church -of France herself, and the Law of alleged Separation was sprung upon the -nation. - -If any confirmation were needed as to the great hopes the Masonic -coterie had founded on the _Associations cultuelles_, we find it in the -unanimous outburst of surprise and fury which some of their more -moderate Press organs sought in vain to dissimulate. Billingsgate cannot -furnish the _Lanterne_ with terms adequate to the occasion; all the more -so, that from the beginning it has affirmed, in most scurrilous -language, that never, never would the Church refuse the "liberalities" -of the law, by which is meant the permission to keep some of her -property. Three editorials of _La Lanterne_--November 25th, 1905, "Ils -capitulent!"; August 16th, 1906, "C'est la guerre"; and "La folie -supreme," of August 20th--are most interesting revelations of the -contemporary Jacobin mind.[19] Even the millions represented by the -confiscation of the _menses episcopales_, etc., which the law had -assigned to the _Associations cultuelles_, cannot console these -sectarian Jacobins, whose budget shows a deficit of hundreds of -millions. They loudly proclaim that the law must be enforced -_integrally_, forgetting that the numerous articles regarding -_Associations cultuelles_ are already null and void, and that they -themselves propose to annul those regarding pensions to aged priests. If -they had the courage to enforce Article 35 of the law (_police des -cultes_) every French bishop would be in prison for reading the -encyclical of August 15th in the churches. Other articles of the _police -des cultes_ also fall to the ground, as they were aimed at -_Associations cultuelles_, who were to be held responsible if a preacher -used seditious language in the pulpit. - -No _Associations cultuelles_ will be formed except by Freemasons -masquerading as Catholics; but at least there will be no confusion, no -disorganization of the Church, which was the main purpose of the law. -Thus has Pius X unmasked their batteries and spiked their guns. They -will have to resort to other arms, those of undisguised persecution, the -very thing they wished, above all, to avoid. - -Little is left standing of the Law of Separation but the articles of -spoliation and confiscation. If these Jacobins have the courage to -enforce them "integrally," as they say, even to the confiscation of -Church edifices, it will mean, for the present, the most threadbare -poverty. Whether they will dare to do so remains to be seen. - -M. Clemenceau stopped the inventories, because, he said, "it was not -worth while to have riots and bloodshed for the pleasure of counting a -few candelabras." He and his employers may find that it is not worth -while to risk the Republic for the sake of some Church edifices, for -which they have no use. - -They may content themselves for the present with seizing all the -available cash, which will go the way of the "billions" of the -Congregations, and the exchequer will grow poorer and poorer, till the -vanishing point of national bankruptcy is reached as in 1793.[20] - -Referring to the critical condition in which the Church was placed under -the feudal system owing to the abusive practice of investiture by laymen -of ecclesiastical dignitaries, Guizot writes: "There was but one force -adequate to save the Church from anarchy and dissolution, this was the -Papacy" (_History of Civilization_). - -To-day also, the Papacy, alone, could rally the clergy and the faithful -in complete unity, to offer a solid and compact resistance to these -associations of a law of anarchy and dissolution. "That they all may be -one that the world may believe" (John XVI). - -By a stroke of his pen Pius X, whom these anti-clericals affect to -despise as an ignorant peasant, has broken up their cunningly contrived -trap. To reject the associations seemed fraught with dire consequences -and a perilous launching into deep waters. Happily the French episcopate -are worthy and equal to the emergency. My "First Impressions" regarding -them (p. 5) were correct. - -Their addresses to Pius X and to their flocks, form, with the -encyclicals "Vehementer" and "Gravissimo" (15th August), one of the -grandest pages of the annals of the Church. "Satan hath desired to sift -you as wheat"; to sift you in sore persecutions; to sift you by poverty -and by riches; to sift you in the flux and reflux of barbarian -invasions; to sift you in the ruins of crumbling empires, that you, like -them, might become as "dust which the wind scattereth," the dust of -sects and schisms and national churches. "But I have prayed for thee, -Peter, and thou, confirm thy brethren." _Duc in altum._ - - - - -SEPARATION - - -_24th November, 1906._ - -Disguise the fact as they may, there is religious persecution in France. -Never since the days of Julian the Apostate has any war been waged -against Christianity more malign, more insidious. The ancient Faith was -crushed out, by sheer force, in England and in many parts of the -Continent, in the sixteenth century. In France, too, it seemed, in the -eighteenth century, as though Christianity had received its quietus by -the same brutal means. But methods have greatly altered. Masonic -Jacobins, to-day, shudder at the mere suggestion of blood. A senator of -the Right warned the Government that the Separation might lead to -bloodshed. Thereupon the minister Briand made a gesture of deprecation. -"Pray do not speak of blood," he cried. One man was killed during the -inventories; and immediately they were stopped, and the Rouvier Ministry -fell. Yesterday again in the Chambers M. Briand exclaimed, "Du sang, -quelle parole atroce!" ("Blood, what an atrocious word!"). - -They have pondered the words of the Divine Master, "Fear not them that -kill the body"; and they are determined that there shall be no more -martyrs in the usual sense, no more guillotines, no more _noyades_ as in -1790. But they mean to choke out every germ of Christianity by casting -the minds of the rising generation in a mould of atheism, and to quench -every divine spark in the adult by degrading him in his own eyes to the -level of a mere animal, that must seize every fleeting advantage, by -fair means or foul, because there is no hereafter. - -"We have combated the religious chimera, and by a magnificent gesture we -have put out all the lights in heaven, which will never more be -rekindled.... But what then shall we say to the man whose religious -beliefs we have destroyed?" Thus spoke on November 8th, 1906, M. -Viviani, Socialist Minister of Labour. At the same tribune, the very -next day, M. Briand declared that his Government was not anti-religious, -but only irreligious, or neutral. Meanwhile both this Minister of Public -Instruction and M. Clemenceau, in public speeches all over the country, -have been reviling and calumniating the religion of the nation, and -congratulating public instructors on their zeal in emancipating the -minds of their pupils from all religious superstition, thus training up -"true men whose brains are not obstructed by mystery and dogma," whose -"consciences and reason are emancipated." - -In December 1905, this same M. Briand declared that the Government would -never suffer that its hundreds of thousands of public functionaries -send their children to any but state schools, and to make assurance -doubly sure, a law is deposed, and will soon be passed, establishing a -state monopoly of instruction. Disconcerted by the attitude of the -Papacy and the splendid unity of the clergy and their flocks, the one -contingency for which they were not prepared, the French atheocracy has -decided to content itself with spoliation for the present. A receiver is -to be appointed for all the holdings of the Church, _menses -episcopales_, pious and charitable foundations, libraries, etc. The Left -clamoured for the immediate attribution of the property to the communes, -as the law requires. But M. Briand declared that it would be for them "a -nest of vipers" and "poison their budgets"! - -M. Lassies summed up M. Briand's discourse by these unparliamentary -words: "Vous avez du toupet, vous----" ("You have brass enough, -you----"). - -Not daring to close the churches at present, they have resorted to a -subterfuge (_cousu de blanc_) in order to avoid doing so. The Republic -having promised religious liberty, they say the faithful and their -priests may come together "accidentally" and "individually" in the -churches. Now the text of the law is formal. Art. I says: "The Republic -guarantees the free exercise of public worship, under _the following -restrictions_." Then follow the restrictions, i.e. articles regarding -the associations; in other words, the constitution of the new -_by-law-established_ churches, which were to inherit all the patrimony -of the ancient Church and take its place. - -M. Briand himself, before the encyclical, had openly proclaimed that -there could be no public worship without these associations. The efforts -made by M. des Houx of the _Matin_ (alias "Mirambeau"), M. Decker David -(a deputy mayor), and other agents of the lodges or of the Republic, to -form these associations have been ludicrously pathetic. Failing these, -the Government has decided to leave the churches open for another year, -nevertheless. To storm them, and hold them after they had been stormed, -would be too perilous an enterprise, judging by the troubles caused by -the inventories. Therefore they have resolved to reduce the clergy by -famine, by military conscription, the suppression of seminaries, and -other vexatory measures. Moreover, the closing of the churches is the -one measure that would convince the masses that something had happened, -and that their religion was really persecuted. To the extreme Left, -clamouring for the immediate confiscation of Church edifices and -property, M. Briand said, "You want to strangle the Catholics right -away; we do not wish to do so" (November 9th, 1906). Precisely. What -they do wish is to empty the churches by every means, then close them, -one by one. - -On December 11th, 1906, state receivers are to be appointed for all -Church property, movable and immovable. The very sacred vessels and -ornaments, chasubles, etc., are all appropriated, and merely lent to the -Catholics, temporarily, at the Government's good pleasure. There has -been of late years a dearth of treasures of ancient religious art in the -Salles Drouots of Paris, Frankfort, Munich, etc. But soon Jew -_brocanteurs_ will be in clover. All that escaped the revolutionists of -1790 will be scattered to the four winds ere long. This is one of the -by-products, duly discounted, of this "law of liberty" called -"Separation." - -But they still have a latent hope that the inextricable difficulties -will force Catholics to capitulate and form associations. M. Briand's -circular, 31st August, 1906, ordered his prefects to report to him any -_subreptice_ associations not in conformity with the law of 1905. -Cardinal Lecot's society for the support of aged priests (their old age -pension fund being taken like everything else) is certainly of this -category. It conforms to none of the requirements of the law of 1905, -nevertheless M. Briand gives it a clean bill of health (November 9th). -His speech in the Chambers is a complete repudiation of his circular of -August 31st, and is a tissue of misrepresentation and tergiversation. He -harps upon Article 4 ("the associations must be formed according to the -general rules of worship"), which he declares "places all the -associations under the control of the bishops and of the Holy See." -Article 8 of the law provides, it is true, for endless schisms, all -subject to the decisions of the Conseil d'Etat, alone competent to judge -if an association is or is not orthodox, i.e. "formed according to the -general rules of worship." In this Article 8, also, he finds a guarantee -which should satisfy all reasonable Catholics! - -Now this same M. Briand, as Minister and reporter of the law, combated -(April 6th, 1905) in the Chambers a proposed amendment tending to -safeguard ecclesiastical authority in this matter. "You wish to turn -over to the Pope, by means of the bishops (_la haute discipline_), the -government of these associations. We cannot subject the faithful to this -discipline." - -In the Senate, too, this same minister declared "that even after one -association had been legally formed, dissensions might arise, not only -in matters of dogma, but also of administration; we must allow those, -who do not wish to submit, to form another independent association if -they wish to use the same church."[21] - -If the intentions of the Government were so benevolent as M. Briand -pretends, why did they not accept the insertion of the word "bishop" in -Article 4? It would have rendered the associations tolerable; but this -they strenuously opposed, and the keystone of their law was demolished -by the _non possumus_ of Pius X, August 15th. In the Chambers (November -9th) M. Briand admitted that "the law had been made in view of the -organization of _Associations cultuelles_." This I have affirmed since -nearly two years, and it is in vain that, elsewhere, M. Briand seeks to -make-believe that the law has accomplished its purpose, which, in -reality, it has just missed. - -Even to-day, if the intentions of the Government are as candid and -benignant as M. Briand pretends, why do they not insert one little -amendment in the text of the law which would make it possible for the -Church to form these associations? No, not so. They wish the Holy See to -accept the word of some irresponsible minister, or some declaration of -the Conseil d'Etat, equally valueless. - -In 1901 Waldeck Rousseau solemnly declared in the Chambers that Article -13 of the Associations Bill in no wise affected the parochial schools, -and two days after the law was voted three thousand of these schools -were summarily closed. He had also assured the Vatican that authorized -Congregations had nothing to fear. Even M. Delcasse and the Ambassador -at Rome had given similar assurances to the Vatican before the law of -1901 was deposed in the Chambers. With these and similar precedents it -would be idle indeed to attach any faith to M. Briand's dulcet, fair, -feline, fallacious utterances in the Chambers (November 9th). They are -merely "words, words," and _verba volant_. Moreover, how long will M. -Briand and the Clemenceau Cabinet be able to resist the Socialist impact -of the advance guard? - -More than a year ago, I wrote that any interpretation could be given to -some of the ambiguous terms in which the law was couched, and that this -ambiguity was deliberate and intentional. - -By his own authority. M. Briand (Chambers, November 12th, 1906) has -offered the Catholics one year more in which to form associations under -the Separation Bill. Thereupon M. Puech, a deputy of the Left, flung -these biting words at the Government: "The law without the associations -is void ... it has fallen to pieces.... And you have no associations. In -1907 you will not have them any more than in 1906.... Void, nothingness, -chaos, behold your law." "In 1790," said the same deputy, "as to-day, -the struggle was engaged between two principles, between dogma and -science.... The Constituante was not firm. Camille Desmoulins spoke like -M. le Ministre Briand.... Three succeeding assemblies were forced -logically to extreme measures--death and transportation." - -The astute guile that characterizes M. Briand's declarations in the -Chambers can only be compared to that of Julian the Apostate, who began -his reign by a grand edict of toleration. Or rather it recalls those -deliberations of that council in Pandemonium (Book II, _Paradise Lost_): -"Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood, the fiercest spirit, now -fiercer by despair, spoke thus: My sentence is for open war of wiles I -boast not." But he was overruled by Beelzebub, who "pleaded devilish -counsel first devised by Satan," and which consisted in "seducing the -puny habitants of Paradise to our party" by guile and fraud. - -These associations of the law of 1905, which ignorant or malevolent -writers continue to represent as being the same as those of Prussia and -other half-Protestant countries, were a most ingenious device for -inducing the Church to commit suicide by the repudiation of her divinely -given constitution. - -The point, that essentially differentiates associations for public -worship in Prussia and elsewhere from those of the law of 1905, is that, -in the former, the Catholic hierarchy was respected. In them the curate -is by right president, episcopal authority is paramount, and the State -cannot intervene if dissensions arise. Now Articles 8, 9, etc., of the -French law are the very antipodes of all this.[22] - -The fact is that there can be no real accord between the Church and the -French atheocracy, whose openly avowed object is the radical destruction -of the religious idea, even of natural religion. - -Never perhaps, in the history of humanity, has there been such a -monstrosity as a distinctly atheistic state. Pagan antiquity, even the -Grecian Republics, had a cult of some kind. The First Republic, under -Robespierre, having decreed the abolition of Christianity, immediately -substituted theo-philanthropy. But the Third Republic proclaims itself -atheist, and insists that the nation shall be made atheist by means of -public schools. - -Hitherto the words lay, layman, meant in French as in English, simply, -not of the clergy; to-day, _laique_ in France means atheist. _L'ecole -laique_ means, not a school taught by laymen, but a school of -infidelity. Catholic lay or secular schools are still holding their own -against the state schools, which are nearly empty in some communes. - -Not satisfied with having suppressed twenty-seven thousand religious or -congregational schools, the annual September convent of the Grand Orient -has decided that all these Christian lay schools, primary and secondary, -must disappear. It also finds that the State _lycees de filles_ "are not -sufficiently laicized," meaning of course not sufficiently atheized and -depraved. Yet the work seems to be well under way, if we are to judge by -the following extracts from the discourse pronounced on the grave of a -child of twelve by one of her companions of an _ecole laique_ near -Allevard, in presence of the whole school. "For thee infinite -nothingness has begun, as it will begin for all of us. Thy death, or -rather the supposed Being who caused it, must be very wicked or very -stupid.... He made thee the victim of a society refractory to society -solidarity.... We really cannot excuse this celestial iniquity." I -transcribe from the anti-clerical _Depeche Dauphinoise_. The spectacle -of this free-thought funeral, and of a little schoolgirl blaspheming -over the grave of a playmate, is simply hideous. Poor hapless victims of -a pagan state, that nevertheless enlists the sympathies of Christians -who spend millions on missions to the heathen Chinese! - -This Masonic convent has also decided "that the means of production and -exchange must be restituted to the collectivity." Therefore we know in -advance what the new Chambers will accomplish: State monopoly of -instruction, and State Socialism prepared and accomplished as rapidly -as possible. - -Under these circumstances it really does not matter very much if the -churches remain open or not, for the present. As an English ecclesiastic -recently observed, "We can do without our churches, but we cannot do -without our schools." - -It is by means of Christian schools that Europe was redeemed from -barbarism, and preserved from relapsing into its first estate. Each -generation, in turn, must be redeemed from barbarism, as were our -forefathers, by the Christian upbringing of the young, otherwise -retrogression must inevitably ensue. Every gardener understands this. It -is natural law in the spiritual world. To descend and retrograde is so -much easier than to ascend. - -To-day, the eternal enemy of God and man seeks to wrest from the Church -the great fulcrum by which Christendom was upraised from barbarism, and -to use her own arms against the Church, by converting schools into -nurseries of infidelity and immorality. - -In vain secularists would tell us that history, geography, and grammar -are neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Mohammedan. The venom of -infidelity and vice can be conveyed by the conjugation of a verb. -Physical geography may be used as a catapult against the very notion of -right and wrong. As to the misuse of history, its possibilities are -unlimited. Moreover, the Church, that has received the divine -commission to "teach all nations," needs the aid of all the arts and -sciences to accomplish this mission. The Catholic Church, that is -essentially, and _jure divino_, _Ecclesia docens_, will never forego her -right to teach them all, as she has been doing for two thousand years. -In the sixteenth century China seemed hopelessly closed against -Christian missionaries. But where apostles failed to penetrate, a man of -science, who was also a saint, succeeded. Mathew Ricci, the Jesuit -savant, was welcomed by mandarin _literati_, and founded the first -Christian mission in China in 1581. - -All the old universities of Europe were founded by the Church. The arts -and sciences grouped themselves around the Chair of Theology, as -hand-maidens around their mistress. Religion is, indeed, the aromat -which alone preserves them from becoming corrupt and corrupting. -Already, society is beginning to discover the evil effects of separating -religion from learning. The knowledge and uses of fire form one of the -main lines of demarcation that separate us from animals. Monkeys -appreciate the kindly blaze, but the smartest of them has never -attempted to light a fire. - -When men, with this distinctive and dangerous knowledge of fire, shall -have degraded their mentality to that of the simian by atheism or -secularism, and its concomitant materialism, the social order will no -longer be possible. A few rudely constructed, diminutive bombs can lay -the proudest city in ruins. - -To-day, as in 1790, France is the field on which another great battle is -to be fought between Christianity and paganism, and its results will be -far-reaching. The French atheocracy has "said unto God, Depart from us; -for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways" (Job XXI. 14). Churches, -here and there, have already been profaned by Masonic revelry, the cross -has been demolished on every highway, and removed from every school and -hospital. The State, disposing of all the power and all the riches of -the nation, is at the command of a secret society that is the sworn and -avowed enemy of religion. If the Church again come forth victorious from -the struggle, stronger and purer through poverty and persecution, "if -the Christian Hercules uplift Antaeus, son of the earth, into the air and -stifle him there, then--_patuit Deus_." - - - - -LIBERTY AND CHRISTIANITY - - -Liberty is, pre-eminently and indisputably, a product of Christianity -and must diminish with every diminution of the faith. "Other -influences," writes Lecky, "could produce the manumission of many -slaves, but Christianity alone could effect that profound change of -character that rendered the abolition of slavery possible, and there -are," he says, "few subjects more interesting than the history of that -great transition" (_History of Rationalism_, II, 258). - -There is, indeed, no grander spectacle than that of the Catholic Church -proclaiming, in ages of barbarism, a divine "Thou shalt not" to masters, -whose power over their slaves was unlimited by any law, and even -assuming jurisdiction over them in virtue of a moral law, above all -human laws. - -Ecclesiastical jurisprudence enacted penalties against "masters who took -from their theows (Saxon slaves) the money they had earned; against -those who slew their theows without just cause; against mistresses who -beat their theows so that they died within three days.... Above all, the -whole machinery of ecclesiastical discipline was set in motion to -shelter the otherwise unprotected chastity of the female slaves" -(Wright's _Political Condition of the English Peasantry in the Middle -Ages_). "That Church which seemed so haughty and so overbearing in its -dealings with kings and nobles," writes Lecky, "never failed to listen -to the poor and the oppressed, and for many centuries their protection -was the foremost of all the objects of its policy" (_History of -Rationalism_, II, 260). Simultaneously with the gradual abolition of -slavery, we find the elevation of woman, and her redemption from -polygamy, a natural concomitant of slavery. "No ideal," writes Lecky, -"has exercised a more salutary influence than the mediaeval conception of -the Virgin [he means devotion to]. For the first time, woman was -elevated to her rightful position and the sanctity of weakness was -recognized. No longer the slave, the toy of man, no longer associated -only with ideas of degradation and sensuality, woman rose, in the person -of the Virgin Mother, into a new sphere, and became the object of a -reverential homage of which antiquity had no conception. Love was -idealized. The moral character and beauty of female excellence was for -the first time felt ... a new kind of admiration was fostered. Into a -harsh, and ignorant, and benighted age this ideal type infused a -conception of gentleness and purity, unknown to the proudest -civilizations of the past.... In the millions who have sought with no -barren desire to mould their characters into her image ... in the new -sense of honour, in the softening of manners in all walks of society, in -this, and in many ways, we detect its influence. All that was best in -Europe clustered around it [the devotion to Mary], and it is the origin -of many of the purest elements of our civilization" (_History of -Rationalism_, I, 231). - -These are striking words from the pen of a rationalist, and would that -all women understood that the laws of divorce, the first-fruits of the -weakening of the Christian principle, and the pagan renaissance in -Europe, mark also the first steps of their retrogression to the -condition, from which they were uplifted by Christianity. - -After centuries of judicious preparation, the emancipation of all -Christians was proclaimed by Pope Alexander III. "This law alone," -writes Voltaire, "should render his memory precious to all, as his -efforts on behalf of Italian liberty should endear him to Italians" -(_Essai sur les moeurs_). - -Mr. Hallam has satirically remarked in his _History of the Middle Ages_, -page 221, that "though several popes and the clergy enforced manumission -as a duty on laymen, the villeins on church lands were the last to be -emancipated." But he well knows, for he has told us himself on page 217 -of the same work, that "the mildness of ecclesiastical rule and the -desire to obtain the prayers of the monks induced many to attach -themselves as serfs to monasteries." An old German proverb, too, says: -"It is good to live under the crozier." When the monasteries were -suppressed by Henry VIII, we know by Strype's _Chronicles_, that misery -and vagrancy reached terrible proportions. - -But while freely admitting that "in the transition from slavery to -serfdom, and from serfdom to liberty, the Catholic Church was the most -zealous and the most efficient agent" (II, 234), Lecky is loath to admit -that her action in the sphere of political liberty was equally -efficacious, and that this second emancipation could have been -accomplished slowly, and judiciously, as was the first, without the -upheavals, the violence, and the excesses of the sixteenth and the -eighteenth centuries. Yet on page 158, vol. II, he reminds us that "St. -Thomas Aquinas, the ablest theologian of the Middle Ages, distinctly -asserts the right of subjects to withhold obedience from rulers who were -usurpers or unjust." "To the scholastics of those days also," he says, -"we chiefly owe the doctrine of the mediate rights of kings, which is -very remarkable as the embryo of the principles of Locke and Rousseau." -Authority considered in the abstract is of divine origin; but still the -direct and immediate source of regal power is the nation, according to -Suarez. Apparently, the noisy standard-bearers of civil liberties and -political rights, in the eighteenth century, were not exactly pioneers, -but mere plagiarists. - -"As long," continues Lecky, "as the object was not so much to produce -freedom, as to mitigate servitude, the Church was still the champion of -the people.... The balance of power created by the numerous corporations -she created or sanctioned, the reverence for tradition, which created a -network of unwritten customs with the force of public law, the -dependence of the civil on the ecclesiastical power, and the right of -excommunication and deposition, had all contributed to lighten the -pressure of despotism" (II, 235). - -We must array Mr. Lecky against himself, and conclude that the Church -did more than "mitigate servitude"; she also produced freedom by the -institution of these numerous guilds and unwritten laws, many of which -still existed until they were swept away by the Revolution of 1790, -which left nothing standing but an omnipotent tyrant, called the State, -and a defenceless people, _corveable_, _taillable_, and guillotinable, -at mercy. These "unwritten customs with the force of public law" made -Spain the freest country in Europe, until the seventeenth century. To -suppress these _fueros_ of the commons, or unwritten constitutional -liberties, was one of the chief objects of the Spanish Inquisition, -established by royal authority, and aimed chiefly at the bishops, as -champions of popular rights. One of its first victims was the saintly -Archbishop of Toledo. The Basque provinces retain their _fueros_ intact -to this day. - -In France too liberty succumbed with the Public Law of Europe (1648). - -In 1314 Philippe le Bel, in order to obtain subsidies, convoked the -States General (Les Trois Etats). From that time to 1359, they were -convoked seven times. In the first half of the fifteenth century there -were fourteen convocations. From 1506 to 1558 there was an interruption -of fifty-two years. From Henry II to the minority of Louis XIII, the -States met six times. In 1614 was held the last convocation of the Trois -Etats, until 1789. - -Under the despotic Louis XI (1401-83), Philippe de Commines still dared -to write with impunity: "Il n'y a roi ni seigneur qui ait pouvoir, outre -son domaine, de mettre un denier sur ses sujets sans octroi et -consentement, sinon par tyrannie et violence." ("It would be tyranny and -violence for any king or lord to raise a penny of taxation on his -subjects, without their leave and consent.")[23] - -"Nevertheless," writes de Tocqueville, "the elections were not abolished -till 1692 ... the cities still preserved the right to govern themselves. -Until the end of the seventeenth century we find some which were small -republics, in which the magistrates were freely elected by the citizens -and answerable to them, and in which public spirit was active and proud -of its independence" (_Ancien Regime_, p. 83). - -Mr. Lecky is pleased to attribute to the papal power "some of the worst -calamities--the Crusades, religious persecutions, the worst features of -the semi-religious struggle that convulsed Italy.... It is not -necessary," he continues, "to follow in detail the history of [what he -is pleased to call] the encroachments of the spiritual on the civil -power" (II, 155), though it would be more correct to say the -encroachments of the civil on the religious power. - -But it is very necessary to do so, because though the main object of -these struggles of the spiritual power with despotic kings was the -independence of the Church, it cannot be gainsaid that personal and -civil liberty were thereby enhanced, as Lecky himself admits (p. 235). - -It would be too long to discuss here the Crusades, which merely saved us -from the fate now enjoyed by Islamic countries, or the alleged -persecution of the Manichaeans, who, under the name of Albigenses, -menaced to disrupt the incipient civilization of Europe by their -subversive tenets of anarchy and collectivism, equally opposed as they -were to ecclesiastical and to civil government. - -The "semi-religious wars," or the so-called "wars of investiture," which -both he and Montesquieu disingenuously confound with the wars of Italian -independence, eminently contributed to the cause of civil liberty in -England, not less than in Italy, and elsewhere. Anselm, Becket, and -Stephen Langton were worthy coadjutors of the policy of St. Gregory VII -and the pioneers of political liberty. No one understands this better -than Mr. Wakeman, the Anglican author of a recent History of the English -Church. - -"It is true," he says, "that Anselm could not have maintained the -struggle [against clerical investiture by laymen] at all if he had not -had the power of Rome at his back. Englishmen quickly saw that the -question between Anselm and Henry was part of a far wider question. They -felt that bound up with the resistance of the archbishop was the sacred -cause of their own liberty. The Church was the one power in England not -yet reduced under the iron heel of the Norman kings. The clergy was the -one body which still dared to dispute their will. To them belonged the -task of handing on the torch of liberty amid the gloom of a tyrannical -age. The despotism of the crown was the special danger to England in the -eleventh and twelfth centuries. It was the Church that, in that time of -crisis, rescued England from slavery. Had there been no Becket, Stephen -Langton, Archbishop of York, would have failed to inspire the barons to -wrest the Charter from John" (p. 105). And on page 108 he continues: -"From the Conquest to the time of Simon de Montfort two great dangers -threatened England, the uncontrolled will of unjust, wicked kings and -the grinding administrative despotism of the government. From both she -was saved by the Church. In her own canon law she opposed to the king's -laws a system which claimed a higher sanction, was based on principles -not less scientific, and was already invested with the halo of -tradition." - -It is this same canon law that the Church in France is, to-day, opposing -to the tyranny of an omnipotent State or parliamentary majority, _alias_ -Grand Orient, which has, since four years, crushed out two of the most -sacred liberties--the right to live in community and the right to -educate one's children in the Christian faith, the faith of our fathers, -"once delivered to the saints." - -The long struggle, between the Popes and the German rulers, who sought -to establish their despotic rule in Italy and enslave the whole Church -by making the bishops of Rome their domestic chaplains, resulted in the -glorious Congress of Venice, 1177, confirmed by the Peace of Constance, -which is the first instance in history of peoples wresting political -liberties from regal tyrants. The Magna Charta is the second in point of -time. - -After a long and seemingly hopeless struggle with Frederick Barbarossa, -Alexander III, to whom this Hohenstaufen had opposed a series of servile -anti-popes, triumphed, and with him triumphed the League of the Italian -Cities, of which he was the unarmed chief. Milan, Brescia, Pavia, and -other cities, which had been razed to the ground by the tyrant, thanked -the Pope for having rendered them their liberty. Alexandria, an -important city of the Piedmont, bears the name of this peaceful -liberator. Voltaire refers to these events in the following terms: -"Barbarossa finished the quarrel by recognizing Pope Alexandria III, -kissing his feet, and holding his stirrup." (Le maitre du monde se fit -le palefrenier du fils d'un gueux qui avait vecu d'aumones.) "God has -permitted," exclaimed the Pope, "that an old man and a priest should -triumph, without fighting, over a terrible and powerful emperor" (_Essai -sur les moeurs_, II, 82).[24] - -In the Eastern or Byzantine Empire, the clergy, at an early date, and -long before the schism of 1054, began to succumb to Caesaro-papism, a -revival of the ancient pagan system, in which the temporal ruler was -also the high-priest of his realm, and we well know that neither -personal nor civil liberty ever found foothold in this _Bas Empire_. - -"While the ecclesiastical monarchy of the West," writes a Protestant -historian, "could lead onward the mental development of the nations to -the age of majority, could permit and even promote freedom and variety -within certain limits, the brute force of the Byzantine despotism -stifled and checked every free movement" (Neander, _History of the -Church_, VIII, 244). - -The French kings, even more than the English before Henry VIII, strove -hard to establish the same system, and above all to exempt themselves -from the Christian law of monogamy, which, with personal freedom, -constitutes the great line of demarcation between Eastern, and Western -or Latin civilization. Montesquieu assures us that a neighbour's wife, -unlawfully taken, or their own unjustly repudiated, caused all, or -nearly all, the troubles between the Papacy and the French kings. - -On the whole, however, civil liberty in Europe had reached an advanced -stage in the fifteenth century. Cities and provinces really had more -self-government then, than during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and -eighteenth centuries, more than they have now in some countries, notably -in France. - -The neo-paganism of the Renaissance was one of those periodical revolts -of what St. Paul calls the "carnal mind, which is enmity with God." -"Sapientia carnis inimica est Deo" (Rom. VIII). It was a conjuration -against Christianity and culminated in the Protestant revolt, which for -ever destroyed the unity of Christendom, and set in motion a progressive -scepticism or rationalism, which is Protestantism in its last analysis. - -For more than three centuries English writers have repeated that the -Protestant revolt was a struggle for liberty of conscience, -notwithstanding the incontrovertible fact that all its foremost leaders -were bitterly opposed to religious toleration, and that the sects -relentlessly persecuted each other, as well as the adherents of the -ancient faith. - -Protestantism being, intrinsically, the nursery of rationalism, was -necessarily a diminution of Christianity, and produced a corresponding -diminution of liberty, both personal and civil. At the Congress of -Westphalia, 1648, where, as Macaulay states, "Protestantism reached its -highest point, a point it soon lost and never regained" (_Essay on -Ranke_), was formulated the monstrous axiom _Cujus regio ejus religio_, -which became the common law of Europe in lieu of the hitherto prevailing -rule of One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism. Henceforth, as in pagan days, -each ruler assumed the right to dictate the religious beliefs of his -subjects in the new system of national churches. The "territorial -system" it was called, and represented the net result of a century of -Protestantism. - -There were, indeed, no fiercer despots over men's consciences than the -so-called "reformers." If any doubt let him read their lives. Let him -read of the bloody strife that rent the Netherlands after they had -shaken off the Spanish yoke; how the great Barneveldt fell a victim to -miserable oppression of Gomarists by followers of Arminius, and vice -versa; how Remonstrants persecuted contra-Remonstrants, all on account -of some metaphysico-religico distinctions neither understood clearly. - -Then let us consider the embarkation of the Pilgrim Fathers from -Holland, where they had sought asylum from the rigid conformity enforced -by reformed England. Finding themselves no better off in the republic, -which had emancipated itself, simultaneously, from Spain and Rome, the -Pilgrim Fathers shook the dust of the old world from their feet and -sought a new hemisphere. Surely in the primeval forests men might hope -to interpret Scripture and serve God each according to his own lights. -Not so. No sooner were the camp fires lighted, and the barest -necessities of life provided for, than we find a theocracy of the most -hard and fast type established by the Argonauts of the Golden Fleece of -religious toleration. A veritable office of the Holy Inquisition was -instituted "to search out and deliver to the law" all who "dared to set -up any other exercises than what authority hath set up." While it was -gravely affirmed that "these cases were not a matter of conscience, but -of a civil nature," Sir John Saltonstall wrote from England to the first -Puritan Grand Inquisitors, Wilson and Cotton, remonstrating "at the -things reported daily of your tyranny, as that you fine, whip, and -imprison men for their consciences." - -The acts of the Inquisition dwindle into insignificance if we place in -the other balance the excesses committed, and the penal laws enacted -from 1530 to 1829 against Dissenters and against English Roman Catholics -in England. The Toleration Act of William and Mary, 1701, relieved -Protestant "Recusants," but the penal laws against Catholics were -maintained till 1829, though many had fallen into desuetude. The -principal were: For hearing Mass a fine of 66 pounds and one year's -imprisonment; they were debarred from inheriting or purchasing lands; -they could hold no office nor bring any action in law; they could not -teach under pain of perpetual imprisonment; they could not travel five -miles without a licence, nor appear within ten miles of London under -penalty of 100 pounds; while the universities were closed against them -by test acts. Catholics having been thus deprived of all means of -obtaining a liberal education and raising their voice on behalf of the -truth, Protestant writers, since three hundred years, have been able to -travesty and misrepresent, unchallenged, all the facts connected with -the Reformation. - -In France Louis XIV persecuted the Huguenots in virtue of the _Cujus -regio ejus religio_ (Whose the kingdom his the religion), and in spite -of the protests of Innocent XI, who instructed his legate d'Adda to beg -James II to intercede for them, declaring that "men must be led, not -dragged to the altar." - -The German, Swiss, and Scandinavian rulers made, modified, and changed -the religion of their subjects at will. Of the intolerance of the -Calvanistic Republic of Geneva less said the better. Oppenheim, often -pawned by its needy electors, is said to have changed its form of -Protestantism fifteen times in twenty-one years. In Denmark, where -Lutheranism was paramount and unadulterated, we find, writes Dollinger, -"that the nobility made use of the Reformation to appropriate not only -the Church lands, but that owned by the peasants." "A dog-like servitude -weighs down the Danish peasants, and the citizens, deprived of all -representative power, groan under oppressive burdens" (_Geshicte von -Rugen_, p. 294, quoted by Dollinger). - -"The dwellers on the great estates of the Church were now obliged to -exchange the mild rule of the clergy for the oppressive rule of the -nobility," writes Allen, page 313. "By these laws and enforced compacts -the spoliation and the degradation of once free peasants were -accomplished." In 1702 Frederick IX abolished slavery, but glebe -serfdom, as in Russia, continued till 1804. Until 1766 the education of -the people stood at the lowest grade, and it was not till 1804 that -freedom was conferred on 20,000 families who had been in a state of -serfdom since the Reformation. - -In Sweden we find the great Protestant hero, Gustavus Vasa, -appropriating all the commonage lands of the villages, and even the -weirs, the mines, and all uncultivated lands. Gustavus was, of course, -obliged to share the spoils with his henchmen, whose rule was even more -oppressive, and the peasants became wholly impoverished and degraded. - -In Germany we find the same record of spoliation and oppression of the -peasantry, whose rights there was none to defend since bishops no longer -sat in the Diet. In 1663, 1646, 1654, the personal liberty of the -peasants was progressively annihilated. "Then was forged that slave -chain," writes Boll, "which our peasantry have had to drag within a few -decades of the present day" (_Mecklenburg Geschichte_). In 1820 this -glebe serfdom was abolished by the Grand Duke. - -In Pomerania, united with Brandenburg since the Reformation, -Protestantism was paramount already in 1534, and the fate of the -peasantry was the same. The oppression was so intolerable that even -those whose farms had not been appropriated or turned into grazing -grounds, as in Ireland, fled the country. In the peasant ordinance of -1616 they were declared "serfs without any civil rights," and preachers -were compelled to denounce fugitives from the pulpit. - -The Elector of Brandenburg, it will be recalled, was the first to abjure -Catholicism, and founded what became in 1701 the Prussian monarchy. - -There was no general Diet since 1656. The Estates no longer met, and the -rulers imposed taxes at their will. Peasants fled to Poland, or became -mendicant vagrants or brigands. - -The Lutheran clergy were mere puppets in the hands of their tyrannical -rulers, who even dictated or revised their sermons at times. Prussian -despotism reached high-water mark under Frederick the Great, but he -being a frank and consistent rationalist, who believed "in letting every -man be blessed in his own way," religious persecution ceased. - -In Brunswick and Hanover the spoils of the Church appeased for a time -the greed of reformation princes, but habits of luxury were engendered -by their ill-gotten wealth, and they soon resorted to "money clipping." -The towns lost all their inherited independence. For the decisions of -municipal councils were substituted governmental decrees and circulars, -as in France to-day, and ere long all trace of the ancient freedom of -the Estates was lost. "The clergy," writes Havemann, "had long since -sunk into dependence.... The cities were languishing from lack of public -spirit.... The power of modern states was unfolding itself over the sad -remains of the ancient life and liberty of the Estates." - -In Saxony there was a nip-and-tuck struggle between Lutheranism and -Calvinism in which the rack and the scaffold were freely used by -Lutheran princes, who enforced their form of Protestantism according to -the axiom _Cujus regio ejus religio_. - -On the Church lands in England had lived a dense population of tenant -farmers. When these lands were confiscated by Henry VIII, thousands of -these peasantry became helpless paupers under the new regime. Vagrancy -and mendicancy reached alarming proportions. It was enacted that vagrant -beggars should be enslaved. If they tried to escape they were to be -killed. - -It appeared to Burnet (_History of Reformation_) that the intention of -the nobility was to restore slavery. According to Lecky there were -72,000 executions in the reign of Henry VIII; vagrant beggars furnishing -a large contingent. - -Under Elizabeth charity by taxation or poor rates was resorted to for -the first time in the history of Christendom. - -I think we must admit that liberty, both civil and religious, made -shipwreck at the Reformation, and that the champions of the Protestant -revolt were not exactly actuated by a desire for the well-being and -freedom of conscience of their fellow-men. - -In England all was laboriously reconquered till 1829, when Catholics -were _emancipated_ on their native soil.[25] - -Some Catholic countries, Spain and Italy, were saved from the horrors of -religious wars, but all felt the effects of the new rationalistic -spirit, which, being a diminution of Christianity, was also a diminution -of liberty. They lost many civil liberties, and despotism strengthened -its bands, till the great upheaval of 1790 destroyed the whole fabric of -Europe and inaugurated a system of constitutional representative -government. - -Representative government, our modern fetish, was not unjustly rated by -J. J. Rousseau, when he said "that a people with a representative -government were slaves except during the period of elections, when they -were sovereigns." France to-day is a striking illustration.[26] - -An amusing incident is related by Leroy Beaulieu of a Neapolitan who -hired donkeys to tourists. He was an eager advocate of representative -government in 1869. Questioned as to his reasons, he said that since -twenty-one years he had been hiring donkeys to English, French, and -American tourists, who enjoyed representative governments and were all -rich. Some years later the eminent economist met him again, and -congratulated him on Italy's having acquired a representative -constitution. The disabused peasant bitterly denounced the new regime in -that the burden of taxation had trebled, and that the very donkey he -hired out was taxed. - -If the laws, or at least all important ones, were submitted to -untrammelled public vote, then only might we say that the government was -truly representative. - -In many cases universal suffrage means the tyranny of ignorant, -unprincipled majorities, while nowhere can it oppose an effective -barrier against the accumulation of immense wealth in a few hands, and -the creation of all-powerful oligarchies. When the majorities and the -oligarchies come into collision, liberty will succumb. There will be -more than one Bridge of Sighs. - -It is in vain that false philosophers would persuade us that altruism, -some vague "moral element of Christianism," will combine with -rationalism and perpetuate our Christian civilization in some -transcendent form. - -Christian civilization and morality are intimately and indissolubly -connected with Christian dogma. The Fatherhood of God, Jupiter Optimus, -was not unknown to the ancients, but the brotherhood of man, involving -personal liberty and also civil liberty by extension, is essentially a -Christian predicate, and is based on the dogma of the Incarnation. - -The lofty contempt our modern rationalists express for the fierce -controversy waged over two Greek vowels by the partisans of _Homoousion_ -and _Homoiousion_ merely betrays their ignorance of its vital -importance. On that dogma, so nobly maintained by the See of Peter and -Athanasius, rests our whole fabric of Christian civilization, the -brotherhood of man, and its logical sequence, freedom from slavery. - -It is as absurd to suppose that the "moral element of Christianity" will -continue to exist after the erosion of Christian dogma, as to expect -that a tree we have hewn down will continue to bear fruit. It may indeed -for a time remain verdant, and even put forth new shoots, just as we -often see the loveliest flowers and fruits of Christianity in the lives -and characters of individuals with whom the Christian faith has almost -ceased to exist. But let us not be deceived. The lingering sap will -cease to flow, and the last semblance of life will fade away. "The -elements of dissolution have been multiplying all around us," writes -Lecky. And when rationalism or secularism, or neo-paganism in other -words, which has already corroded Christendom to so great an extent, -shall have accomplished its work of disintegration with the aid of -godless schools and gross literature, society will, I repeat, be -compelled to restore Christianity, or slavery, or perish. - - - - -CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION - - -"At the end of the fourth century," writes Guizot, "the Church saved -Christianity ... resisted the internal dissolution of the Empire and the -barbarians, and became the bond, the medium, and the principle of -civilization.... Had the Church not existed the whole world must have -been abandoned to purely material force" (_History of Civilization_, I, -38).... "When all was chaos, when every great social combination was -vanishing, the Church proclaimed the unity of her doctrine and the -universality of her right; this is a great and powerful fact which has -rendered immense service to humanity" (_ibid._, II, 19). - -This unity was indeed the great factor in European civilization. On it -the new civil societies, like wild olive branches, were grafted, so to -speak. It became the bond of political unity, a kind of centripetal -force, we may say, and the redemption from that inordinate love of -independence which characterized the barbarians. - -Consequently the new civil societies made the maintenance of religious -unity the foremost object of their policy. It became the public law of -all Europe and the common law of each state. To impugn this unity was -considered a most heinous offence not against God only, but against the -nation and against all Christendom. - -"Thus," writes another great Protestant, "Christianity became -crystallized into a single bond embracing all nations, and giving to all -life, civilization, and all the riches of the mind" (Hurter, _Life of -Innocent III_, I, 38). - -A corollary of this system of an universal Christian society was the -recognition of a supreme tribunal. "One of the most elevated principles -of the age," writes the same eminent German, "was that, in the struggles -between the peoples and their rulers, there should be a superior -authority charged to recall laws not made by men, though their -interpreter were himself a man." Referring to the fiercely contested -election of Othon, he continues: "Othon was the first to have recourse -to Rome, the tribunal with whom rested the decision in these matters, -when the parties did not wish to resort to the arbitrament of war." - -In France we find the great Suger, Abbot of St. Denis, remonstrating -with the Bishop of the free chartered city of Beauvais, brother of the -King, with whom he was often at odds. - -"I beseech you not to raise a guilty hand against the King ... for you -must see the consequences of armed insurrection against the King, -especially if it be without consulting the Sovereign Pontiff.... If the -King, drawn aside by evil counsellors, has not acted rightly, it was -proper to have informed him by the bishops and notables, or rather by -our Holy Father the Pope, who is at the head of the whole Church, and -could easily have reconciled all differences." - -In England we have many instances of both laymen and clergy appealing to -the arbitrament of the Papacy. - -"The recognition of some principle of right, powerful enough to form a -bond of lasting concord, has always been the dream of statesmen and -philosophers," writes Lecky. "Hildebrand sought it in the supremacy of -the spiritual power, and in the consequent ascendency of moral law" -(_History of Rationalism_, 245). - -Voltaire pays homage to this public policy of the Middle Ages. "The -interests of the human race required a controlling power to restrain -sovereigns and protect the lives of peoples. This controlling power of -religion could well be placed in the hands of the Papacy. The Sovereign -Pontiffs warning princes and people of their duties, appeasing quarrels, -rebuking crimes, might always have been regarded as the images of God on -earth. But men, alas, are reduced to the protection of laws without -force" (_Essai sur les moeurs_, II). - -He describes what really did exist for centuries, though, of course, -papal arbitration was not always efficacious. Every great institution -needs time to develop and mature. It would not be great were it -otherwise. Moreover there were, unfortunately, many troublous times -between the sixth and the fifteenth century, in which the Papacy itself -was captive, buffeted, demeaned, and exiled by the struggles and -ambitions of turbulent political factions in Rome itself. The very day -on which Gregory VII excommunicated the German Emperor, he was seized -and imprisoned by a noble Roman bandit, until his people were able to -deliver him by main force. - -"Another corollary of this universal Christian Society was that right -found a protector in the common Father of the faithful; in the grand -idea of a supreme chief who without employing material force judged in -last resort.... What great misfortunes would France and all Europe have -been spared if, in the reign of Louis XVI, an Innocent III had been -Pope. His role would have been to save the lives of the people" -(Hurter's _Innocent III_, II, 200-23). To German Protestant writers like -Hurter, Voigt, Neander, etc., is due the honour of vindicating the true -role of the Papacy in the Middle Ages. - -The rights of suzerainty exercised by the Papacy also formed part of the -public law of Europe. In those wild, lawless days, when robber barons -enjoyed the privilege of being highwaymen on their own estates, and -often extended their depredations to those of their neighbours, property -rights had no sanction, and the weaker succumbed to the stronger in -virtue of the "fist right," which we now translate variously by "the -right of the strongest," political "majorities," and the "survival of -the fittest." - -The practice then arose among weak owners of dedicating their lands to -the Church, in order to obtain spiritual or moral protection against the -brute force of stronger neighbours. What private owners did in a small -way was done by princes on a larger scale. - -Referring to the peculiar incidents when roving Norman pirates, in -possession of Sicily and Naples, seized the person of the Pope and -insisted on becoming his vassal, Voltaire writes as follows:--"Robert -Guiscard, wishing to be independent of the German Emperor, resorted to a -precaution which private owners took in those days of trouble and -rapine. The latter gave their property to the Church under the name of -Oblata, and, paying a slight tax, continued to enjoy the use of it. The -Normans resorted to this custom, placing under the protection of the -Church in the hands of Nicholas II (1059) not only what they held, but -also their future conquests (on the Saracens). This homage was an act of -political piety like Peter's Pence; the two pence of gold paid by the -Kings of Portugal; like the voluntary submission of so many kingdoms" -(_Essai sur les moeurs_, II, 44). - -It was thus that England became a fief of the Holy See, a most -unfortunate circumstance, as the temporal pecuniary obligations arising -therefrom were exploited to estrange the English from the See of Peter, -in the following centuries. - -"In 1329," continues Voltaire, "the King of Sweden, who wished to -conquer Denmark, addressed the Pope as follows: 'Your Holiness knows -that Denmark depends on the Roman See and not on the German Emperor.' -... I only wish to show," Voltaire adds, "how every prince who wished to -recover or usurp a domain appealed to the Pope.... In this case the Pope -defended Denmark, and said he could only decide on the justice of the -case when the parties had appeared before his tribunal, according to the -ancient usage." - -Nor did Christians alone appeal to this spiritual tribunal. The bull of -Innocent III, cited by Hurter, is an excellent exponent of the mind of -the Church in all times. "As they (the Jews) claim our succour against -their persecutors, we take them under our special protection, following -in this the example of our predecessors, Calixtus, Eugenius, Alexander, -Clement, and Celestin. We forbid every one to force a Jew to be -baptized, for he who is compelled cannot be said to have the faith. No -Christian must dare commit any violence against them, nor seize their -property, without a legal judgment. Let no one trouble them on their -feast days by striking or throwing stones at them," etc. - -It will be objected that the fulcrum of Western civilization was a -spiritual despotism. But these terms exclude each other. Can we call an -authority despotic which had no material force, and rested only on a -divine commission and the common sense of prince and people, recognizing -its credentials--on public opinion in fact? - -It was a fundamental law of every state that any one, no matter what his -rank, who impugned the Unity of the Faith, or committed offences so -heinous as to justify the supposition that he was no longer a Christian, -fell under the ban of the Church and became outlawed, if at the end of a -year he had not been absolved. In his _Historia Imperatorum_ Schafnaburg -explains the wintry flight of Henry IV across the Alps to Canossa by his -eagerness to be absolved before the year had revolved, because otherwise -he would have forfeited his crown. _Ut ante hanc diem non absolveretur, -deinceps juxta Palatinas leges indignus regio honore habeatur._ - -Three causes were generally admitted as sufficient for the -excommunication of a sovereign. First, if he fell from the faith. -Second, if he ravaged or seized ecclesiastical lands or desecrated -churches. Third, if he repudiated his own wife or appropriated his -neighbour's. This latter point, as Voltaire and Montesquieu have pointed -out, was the cause of nearly all the quarrels between the French kings -and the Papacy, a fact which our Jacobins, in the Chambers and -elsewhere, deliberately ignore, when they mendaciously misrepresent the -Church as having constantly encroached on the civil power. The case of -Philippe Augustus and the hapless Ingleburge of Denmark was a test case, -so to speak. - -"It was not," writes Hurter, "a question of contested claims of the -Papacy, but of this great question, Is the sovereign subject to the laws -of Christianity? It had to be decided whether the royal will should -triumph or not over the force regarded as constituting the unity of -Christendom" (_Life of Innocent III_). Montesquieu's testimony is -unimpeachable when he testifies that this Public Law of Europe was -universally recognized. "All the sovereigns," he writes, "with -inconceivable blindness, themselves accredited and sanctioned, in public -opinion, which had no force except by it." - -If the laws against heretics, who were to our forefathers what the -anarchists are to us, were oppressive, some of the blame should surely -be apportioned to the laymen who sat in the mixed assemblies in which -they were made. "Almost all Europe, for many centuries, was deluged in -bloodshed at the direct instigation or with the full approval of the -ecclesiastical authorities." It is in this disingenuous way that Lecky -refers to the operations of the Public Law of Europe against the -Albigenses or Manichaeans of Provence, and probably to the wars of -Italian independence and the Thirty Years War. Until the thirteenth -century he assures us that practically no persecutions (prosecutions) -against heretics occurred. It was then that the Public Law of Europe -began to be trampled on by sectarians who adopted and propagated -Gnostic, Paulician, Manichaean, and other subversive theories, imported -from the East by Semitic-Islamic settlers in the fair lands of Provence. -Spain and Italy, the countries in which the Public Law of Europe was -maintained, were the only ones who were spared the horrors of civil -religious wars. They were saved by inquisitions, it will be retorted. - -Without seeking to defend the system, we may be permitted to inquire -whether it were not preferable, at that time, to execute some -ringleaders of religious revolt (30,000 in three centuries is a fair -estimate), than to deluge whole countries in blood for many decades, -about controversies which not one in a million could possibly grasp? -Lecky the rationalist assures us that "the overwhelming majority of the -human race, necessarily, accept their opinions from authority. Avowedly -like Catholics, or unconsciously like Protestants. They have neither -time nor opportunity (nor capacity) to examine for themselves" (_History -of Rationalism_, I, 101). - -Does any one seriously believe that the Camisards were fighting for -predestination and infant damnation, which have been shelved recently by -Presbyterians in the United States? - -In England, France, Germany, everywhere, greed and political ambition -were the incentives; the passions of ignorant masses were merely used as -a means. Back of both, and behind all, we descry secret societies, the -true pandemoniums, where these revolts are organized, and whence Mammon, -"the least-erected spirit that fell," Moloch, "horrid king besmeared -with blood," Belial, and all that crew, described by Milton, are sent -forth to execute the behests of the eternal enmity between "the -serpent's seed and the seed of the woman." - -In this unholy struggle "all the bonds of cohesion on which political -organization depended were weakened or destroyed," writes Lecky. "The -spirit of private judgment had descended to those totally incapable of -self-government, and lashed their passions into the wildest fury" -(_History of Rationalism_, p. 239). Voltaire is even less complimentary. -He describes the Hussites as "wild beasts whom the severity of the -emperor had roused to furor." - -In Germany, apostate ecclesiastical and secular electors were seeking -their own aggrandizement. Bishoprics with their manses were converted -into hereditary principalities. As to their Swedish ally, Gustavus -Adolphus, I refer my readers to the judgment of a Protestant admirer of -this doughty champion of the Reformation. On page 329 of _Thirty Years -War_ Schiller writes as follows:-- - -"The last, the greatest service, Gustavus Adolphus could render to -religious and civil liberty was to die (1632, at battle of Lutzen).... -It was no longer possible to doubt that he was seeking to establish -himself in Germany, not as a protector, but as a conqueror. Already -Augsburg boasted that it had been chosen as the capital of the new -monarchy. The Protestant princes, his allies, made claims which could -only be satisfied by despoiling the Catholics. It is then permitted to -conclude that like the barbarian hordes of yore, he intended to divide -the conquered provinces of Germany among the Swedish chiefs of his army. -His conduct towards the unfortunate Elector Palatine, Frederick V, is -unworthy of a hero. The Palatinate was in his hands, justice and honour -required that he return it to the legitimate sovereign. But to avoid -doing so he had recourse to subtleties which make us blush for him." - -It is only fair to add that Gustavus did finally restore the Palatinate -to Frederick, but as a fief of the Swedish crown. - -What, I ask, has been gained by the overthrow of the Public Law of -Europe? For this was waged the Thirty Years War, one of the most cruel -the world has known. Atrocities were committed on both sides, and the -_tu quoque_ argument is very foolish. But if it be admitted that -defensive war is always just and righteous, we must allow that the -Catholics were justified in fighting for their public law. They were in -possession since more than twelve centuries, and were resisting -assailants who showed no quarter, and who robbed them of their churches -and persecuted them, relentlessly, whenever they gained the upper hand, -just as the Puritans did in Maryland. And what was the net result of the -Thirty Years War? The loss of liberty both civil and religious. The -German electors, ecclesiastical as well as secular, had been but -administrators of free citizens, who now became subjects with little or -no voice in the government. As to religious liberty, the new axiom -_Cujus regio ejus religio_ was substituted for One Lord One Faith. The -ruler of each realm became the infallible Pontiff of his subjects. "If -any gratitude from this scandalous and accursed world were to be gained, -and I, Martin Luther, had taught and done nothing else than this, that I -have enlightened and adorned the temporal authority, for this alone -should it be thankful to me, since even my worst enemies know that a -like understanding as to the temporal authority was completely concealed -under the Papacy" (Walch's _Augs._, XIV, p. 520). - -In this same connexion Schiller makes the following statement. "No -country changed religion oftener than the Palatinate. Unhappy -weathercock of the political and religious versatility of its -sovereigns, it had twice been forced to embrace the doctrines of Luther -and then to abandon them for those of Calvin. Frederick III deserted the -Confession of Augsburg, but his son re-established it by most violent -and unjust measures. After closing all the Calvinist temples and exiling -the ministers and school teachers, he ordered by his will that his son -should be brought up by Lutherans; his brother, however, annulled this -will and became regent under the young Frederick IV, who was confided to -Calvinists with strict orders to destroy in his mind the "heretical -doctrines of Luther by all means, by beating and whipping even." It is -easy to guess how subjects were treated when the heir to the throne was -thus tyrannized over" (_Thirty Years War_, p. 40). - -What, I ask, has Europe gained by the overthrow of its public law? -Strife, anarchy, nihilism in religion as in philosophy. After centuries -of dabbling, floundering, and blundering, we are again seeking to devise -some principle of unity, some Amphictyonic Council to supplement the -illusory balance of power; to set up a Court of Arbitration to replace -the one that really did exist in the Middle Ages and functioned as well -as could be expected in those days of liquescence. - -All in vain. The grand Peace Congress from which the Papacy was excluded -was followed, almost immediately, by two most cruel wars which were -pre-eminently subjects for arbitration. Men will submit to this court -questions about which they do not care enough to fight about them, but -these subjects only will they submit to arbitration. Unless the Lord -build the house, in vain they labour who build. - -There is only one tribunal that can ever arbitrate efficaciously, and -this is the one which presided at the Genesis of Christendom.[27] - -Socialists and anarchists, without having pondered the passage from -Guizot I quoted in beginning this chapter, understand perfectly that our -Western or Christian civilization is grounded on the unity of one Holy -Catholic Church, and the destruction of the social structure being the -object of their ambition, they very logically direct all their efforts -to destroying this foundation. - -The work of disintegration was begun in the sixteenth century. -"Socinius, the most iconoclastic of Protestants, predicted that the -seditious doctrines by which Protestants supported their cause would -lead to the disintegration of society" (_History of Rationalism_, II, -239). - -This work of disintegration has made rapid progress since the eighteenth -century in virtue of the law of accelerated movement. The French -Revolution, like the Protestant revolt, was essentially a work of -disintegration. The successors of the Masonic Jacobins of 1790 openly -proclaim their set purpose of completing the work begun by the _grands -ancetres_ of bloody memory. - -"The Revolution," wrote Renan (in the preface to _Questions -contemporaines_), "has disintegrated everything, broken up all -organizations, excepting only the Catholic Church. The clergy alone -have remained organized outside the State. As the cities, in the days of -the ruin of the Roman Empire, chose bishops for their representatives, -so in our provinces the bishops will soon be the only leaders left in a -dismantled society." - -The object of the Separation Law was to accomplish the disintegration of -the Church, the only organized body, outside the State, which the -Revolution failed to disintegrate, because Pius VI rejected, _in toto_, -the civil constitution of the clergy. These noble French priests were -drowned, guillotined, proscribed, and imprisoned by tens of thousands, -but the Church in France maintained the principle of life strong within -her, and on the third day she rose again. - -What violence failed to accomplish a century ago, the Third Republic -hoped to compass by guile and fraud, labelled liberty and legality. - -The true purpose of the Law of Separation was to break up the Church -into an ever-increasing number of viviparous _Associations cultuelles_, -independent of all ecclesiastical control. - -The successor of Pius VI, Ithuriel-like, has pierced the thin disguise -of the toad lurking in the purlieus of Eden.[28] Instead of a divided -demoralized clergy, the Masonic Jacobins are confronted by the serried -ranks of an invincible phalanx. - -"At the end of the fourth century," writes Guizot, "it was the Church -with its magistrates, its institutions, and its power that vigorously -resisted the internal dissolution of the empire and of the barbarians, -and became the bond, the medium, and the principle of civilization -between the Roman and the barbarian worlds" (_History of Civilization_). - -Now, as in the fourth century, we are menaced with social dissolution. -The barbarians are at our gates, nay, in our midst, and not in France -alone, by any means. A ferocious, self-seeking atheistic materialism is -disrupting Christendom. And let us not be deceived. Societies are never -saved and regenerated except by their generating principle; and the -generating principle of Western civilization is Christianity. - -Therefore, I repeat, that society will be compelled, in self-defence, to -restore Christianity or slavery, in some form; State Socialism -perhaps--or perish. - -_21st November, 1906._ - - - - -APPENDIX - - - PAGE 29 - - SEANCE DU 28 DECEMBRE, 1906. - - Au _Senat Journal Officiel_, page 1236. - -M. DELAHAYE: "M. Briand's law is older than himself. We find traces of -it in all the Masonic convents.... Gentlemen, why are we going to vote -this additional law, as we did the first Separation Law, without -changing an iota?... Because the lodges have so decided. - -"The Convent, the public should be told, is the general assembly of the -lodges.... The Convent, called during the Revolution _La Convention_, is -the source of all our evils. On 12 November, 1904, brother Lafferre (a -senator), thirty-third degree, read the following _ordre du jour_: 'The -general assembly of the Grand Orient addresses to M. Combes warm -assurances of sympathy and confidence, and begs him to persevere -courageously in the struggle to defend the Republic against clericalism, -and accomplish social, military, and fiscal reforms. The Assembly -demands that at the session of January, 1905, Separation and the -_retraites ouvrieres_ be discussed simultaneously.'" - -M. Lafferre and the reporter of the new Separation Law here applauded -ironically. - -M. Delahaye continued: "Let us pass to the Convent of 1905, seance 23 -September, 1905. - -"Le Frere Roret, reporter (of the Masonic Commission): ... A wish more -important, and which will be adopted without discussion, emanates from -the Congress of the region of Paris. It regards the Separation and has -been slightly modified by the (Masonic) Commission (of political and -social studies). The Congress demands that the Separation Law voted in -the Chambers be amended by the Senate. Your Commission judges that it is -most important that this law be voted immediately and promulgated before -the legislative elections (May, 1906), so that the country may see that -it is a liberal law and not at all vexatious.... Your Commission -proposes the following vote: 'The Convent emits the wish that the law, -imperfect but perfectible, be adopted by the Senate as rapidly as -possible and promulgated before the elections, but that it be amended -later by the Republican Parliament and rendered more distinctly -_laique_.'" - -M. Delahaye continued: "It is well to notice that laic has two meanings. -For us it means not ecclesiastic; for Freemasons it means atheistic, -anti-Catholic.... I have proved, incontestably, that M. Briand is here -as the mouthpiece of Freemasonry, to which he says he does not -belong.... There is a privileged Congregation in France which holds -property as a _societe immobiliere_ of the Grand Orient by 'interposed -persons.' This Congregation is about to sell its real estate of the Rue -Cadet (Paris). It received an offer of 1,250,000 francs. The State -offers to buy it for 1,300,000 francs, to be used as a telephone -office.... I wish to know why the State does not simply expropriate this -Congregation, seeing that it is illegal, because this _societe -immobiliere_ is simply a _personne interposee_?... Gentlemen, the book -just published by one of your former friends, M. Flourens (ex-minister), -_La France Conquise Edward VII and Clemenceau_, is going to enlighten -rulers deaf to the voice of the Pope (who had condemned Masonry since -1728). The Bourbons and the French nobility, whom Freemasonry had doomed -to death, were dancing on the first floor of the lodges, while overhead -sentence was being passed on them.... In spite of many changes of -government since a century, we are descending steadily, because your -principles, destructive of family, country, and private property, have -entered into our legislation.... We have a fine army, but at your touch -it becomes no more than a national guard. We have many vessels, but no -navy.... Ere long kings and emperors, who now utilize Freemasonry, will -end by saying, 'This instrument is very dangerous.'" - -There were cries of "_Cloture, cloture_." The discussion was closed. No -one replied to M. Delahaye. - - - PAGES 113-125 - -Commenting on the annual Convent of the Grand Orient, September, 1906, -the _Journal de Geneve_, the leading Swiss Protestant daily, made the -following statements:-- - - - "LE ROLE DE LA MACONNERIE - - "_Septembre, 1906._ - - "Il ne faut pas se dissimuler que la franc-maconnerie tient entre - ses mains les destinees du pays (la France). Quoiqu'elle ne compte - que vingt-six mille adherents, elle dirige a sa guise la politique - francaise. Toutes les lois dont le catholicisme se plaint si - amerement ont ete d'abord elaborees dans ses convents. Elle les a - imposees au gouvernement et aux Chambres. Elle dictera toutes les - mesures qui seront destinees a en assurer l'application. Nul n'en - doute, et personne, non pas meme les plus independants, n'oserait - heurter de front sa volonte souveraine. Il serait aussitot brise, - celui qui se permettrait seulement de la meconnaitre. - - "Jamais, depuis l'epoque ou Rome commandait aux rois et aux - princes, on ne vit pareille puissance. Et cette puissance est - d'autant plus forte, a cette heure, qu'elle vient de subir - victorieusement une crise redoutable. Apres l'affaire des fiches, - on croyait la maconnerie morte, tout au moins bien malade; mais, a - force d'audace, elle a triomphe de ses ennemis, qui deja sonnaient - joyeusement l'hallali. Les deux tiers des membres de la Chambre - actuelle sont francs-macons. - - "La volonte de la franc maconnerie, nul ne l'ignore plus, c'est de - detruire le catholicisme en France. Elle se dresse comme une Eglise - contre l'Eglise de Rome. Elle n'aura ni cesse ni repit, qu'elle ne - l'ait jetee bas, qu'elle n'en ait seme les poussieres au vent. Tous - ses ressorts sont uniquement tendus vers ce but. Les autres - religions, si meme elle ne les ignore momentanement, elle parait - les menager. Elle se dit sans doute que, le catholicisme ayant - rendu l'ame sous son etreinte, l'aneantissement des autres - confessions ne serait pour elle que jeu d'enfant. - - "Mais l'adversaire n'est pas encore terrasse, auquel elle s'etait - attaquee. Il est comme Antee, qui, toutes les fois qu'il touchait - le sol, retrouvait de nouvelles forces. Elle s'en rend bien compte. - C'est pourquoi, crainte que d'un tour de reins desespere il ne se - dresse dans toute sa vigueur, elle n'a point pousse jusqu'ici la - lutte a fond. Parfois meme elle semble accorder une treve; elle - rentre dans ses quartiers. Mais, des que la vigilance des - catholiques lui parait suffisamment endormie, elle se jette de - nouveau sur sa proie. Elle continuera cette tactique jusqu'au - triomphe definitif. - - "Ce triomphe est-il prochain ou lointain? Pour le moment, la - defiance de Rome est bien eveillee, et Pie X n'est peut-etre pas de - ces hommes qui se laissent prendre aux feints desarmements. - - "Quelques-uns se demanderont comment il peut se faire qu'une - minorite si faible gouverne ainsi tout un pays. C'est pourtant tres - simple. D'abord les macons sont etroitement unis; et l'union fit - toujours la force. Ensuite, appartenant tous aux classes moyennes, - ils exercent par leur situation personnelle, par leurs - fonctions--tous les gros bonnets de l'administration sont affilies - a la franc-maconnerie--une influence tres grande. L'on peut dire - qu'ils disposent de toutes les faveurs gouvernementales; et ces - faveurs, ils ne les distribuent qu'a bon escient. Non seulement - donc ils tiennent a leur discretion tous ceux qui occupent un poste - quelconque de l'Etat, mais encore tous ceux qui aspirent a en - occuper un, et ils sont legion. Ca leur fait une armee formidable, - disciplinee par l'interet. - - "On comprend que, dans ces conditions, la franc-maconnerie n'ait - qu'a faire un signe aux pouvoirs publics pour qu'elle soit - immediatement obeie. Quoi qu'elle decide, ce sera execute sur - l'heure. - - "La franc-maconnerie, dit-il, sait mieux que le gouvernement - lui-meme, quelle somme de resistance, en ce moment, le catholicisme - peut opposer a un assault decisif. Elle n'ignore pas que, quoiqu'il - soit tres ebranle, il serait tres hasardeux de le vouloir abattre - d'un dernier coup. Elle craint surtout que, si elle ne parvenait - pas a lui faire exhaler le soupir supreme, il ne retrouvat une - nouvelle vie, la volonte et l'energie de vaincre a son tour. - - "La franc-maconnerie se gardera de compromettre, dans une lutte - chanceuse, les fruits de longs efforts. Elle a emprunte sa devise a - Rome: 'Patiens quia aeterna,' et elle attendra qu'elle puisse - frapper a coup sur. Les probabilites sont donc pour que, tout en - s'opposant a ce que des relations soient renouees avec le - Saint-Siege, elle ne chassera pas les catholiques de leurs derniers - retranchements, c'est-a-dire de leurs eglises; elle les y laissera - tranquilles, jusqu'au jour ou, par un nouveau coup d'audace, elle - s'en emparera. - - "Un de ses orateurs a prophetise qu'avant peu on entendrait des - 'batteries d'allegresse' sous les voutes de Notre-Dame; et les - propheties maconniques ne se sontelles pas souvent realisees?" - - - PAGE 204 - - On November 9th, 1906, M. Briand described the Status of the Church - in France as follows (_Officiel_, 2459): "The churches are affected - to public worship and must remain so indefinitely.... It is our - duty to leave them open.... Reunions are possible, you may have - them. The priest may live in direct communication with the people, - he may receive manual gifts. Perhaps the Catholic hierarchy about - which you are so much concerned will suffer. Perhaps this faculty - left to the faithful to live with their priest haphazard (_au - hasard de la rencontre_) will soon dry up the revenues of the - priests; it will certainly dry up those of the bishops." - - It is well also to recall here the words pronounced by M. Briand, - October 17th, 1905 (_Journal Officiel_, 1223), regarding the - _Associations cultuelles_: "They will be hardly born on the 11th - December, 1906. They will not have had time to obtain funds. If we - deprive them of the patrimony of the _fabriques_ and _menses - episcopales_ it will be impossible for them to maintain public - worship, and the faithful will be unable to practise their - religion." - - Yet the Government impudently declares to-day that the Catholics - are hard to please! - - On December 1st, 1906, M. Briand sent forth an ukase commanding - every priest to consider public worship assimilated to public - meetings, and to make a declaration to the mayor according to the - law of 1881. - - Now the law of 1905 says that public worship cannot be regulated by - the law of 1881. Moreover, this law requires the constitution of a - bureau, and that a declaration be made before each meeting - twenty-four hours in advance. M. Briand took upon himself to modify - the law (_l'assouplir_) and to say no bureau was necessary, and - that one declaration would do for a year! The clergy made no - declarations. A few were made by Anarchists and Freemasons. - - From the 12th to the 20th December the police were kept busy making - thousands of _proces verbaux_ all over France. This idea of making - 65,000 prosecutions every day was soon found to be grotesque and - impracticable. Moreover, under the law of 1881 it is the owner of - the public hall or the cafe or cabaret who is prosecuted for not - making the required declaration. The State and the communes being - now the alleged owners of the churches since December 11th, 1906, - _they_ should have been prosecuted and not the priests. This same - M. Briand, who thus modified the law of 1881, had declared in the - Chambers: "Common right no longer exists if you interpret it - otherwise than the law" (November 9th, _Journal Officiel_, p. - 2438). - - Since December 11th, 1906, the Church in France is very much in the - condition of the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. - - On December 29th, 1906, a new Law of Separation was passed. It - confers on 36,000 mayors the right to invest 36,000 priests with a - precarious use of Church edifices, _sauf desaffection_. The - time-limit is to be decided, _a l'amiable_, between the mayors and - their nominees. Truly this is the _reductio ad absurdum_ of - separation. - - M. Briand assures us "that the mayor will accord the church to the - _cure_ most capable of keeping it in good condition" (_Journal - Officiel_, p. 3398, December 21st, 1906). This is lay orthodoxy. - "As to the period of enjoyment, it is impossible to fix it by law," - says M. Briand, "to one, two, or three years" (_Officiel_, p. - 3407), "'ce sont des questions d'espece qui seront tranchees selon - les communes'; it will vary in each commune." - - To this M. Ribot replied: "'C'est l'anarchie dans 36,000 communes.' - At every election this question will be raised, Shall we leave the - church to the _cure_ or not? You are making of this question, - eminently a governmental one, a municipal question, given over to - dissensions, competitions, and coteries" (_Officiel_, p. 3407). - - The new Law of Separation (December 29th) abolishes the - sequestration ordered on December 11th of all Church revenues, - etc., till December, 1907. It turns over immediately to the - communes and to lay institutions all the property of the Church. - Yet on November 9th (_Journal Officiel_, p. 2461) M. Briand stoutly - resisted the Left, clamouring for this very thing. "We must not - raise illusory hopes," he said. - - "No," cried a deputy, "it will be like the milliard of the - Congregations." - - "There are fourteen millions of revenue," continued M. Briand," -...but are they 'liquid,' free of charges? The communes are - stretching out their hands to receive. You will give them what? - Nests of lawsuits. Yes, nests of vipers that will poison the - communes with their venom." - - To explain this change of policy M. Briand said: "We have acquired - the certitude that the situation is without issue. It was - impossible to expect that during the next year regular associations - (of 1905) will be constituted to claim this property of the - _fabriques_. We cannot remain another whole year in this - uncertainty" (_Journal Officiel_, p. 3396, December 21st). A French - proverb says: "Souvent femme varie bien fou qui s'y fie." - - And in the same session M. Briand, to explain why it was not - possible to lend the churches to _cures_ under the new law for any - definite time, said: "In fixing no term the Government is logical. - Having a law to execute (that of 1905), and having the conviction - that the Church will end by accepting it, we could not give to - uncontrolled associations under the law of 1901, which are a - concession to the Church, the same advantages as to _Associations - cultuelles_" (1905) (_Journal Officiel_, p. 3407, December 21st, - 1906). - - The new law of December 28th, 1906, says the use of the churches - can be obtained by the declaration of the _cure_ individually, or - of an association formed according to the law of 1901, or rather - according to _certain_ articles of this law _only_. The Church may - not avail herself of the articles which permit the formation of - associations called "of public utility"--like the S.P.A., for - instance. - - This is what these Jacobins understand by combating the Church. A - _coup de liberte_ by dint of liberty! They speak of giving _droit - commun_, common right. But they never do so. The Church is excluded - from the right of forming _Associations d'utilite publique_ - conferred by the law of 1901, though placed under this law since - December 28th, 1906. The new law is only a makeshift. M. Briand - said (21st December, p. 3398, _Journal Officiel_): "Evidently this - legislation is not definitive. Turn the pages of history up to the - Revolution; you will see that the Convention had the same - difficulties as we to-day. See the number of laws voted in the year - 1795 alone" (there were eleven Laws of Separation). Just so. France - stands where she did in 1795. - - PAGE 228 - - RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN CATHOLIC MARYLAND - - Confirmed by the Lord - Proprietary by an instrument - under his hand & seale. - - PHILLIP CALVERT. - 26th August 1650. - - Enacted & made at a - Genall Session held 1 & - 20 day of Aprill Anno D[~m] - 1649 as followeth viz. - - An act concerning Religion. - - fforasmuch as in a well - governed & Xpian Co[~m]un Wealth matters concerning Religion and - the honor of God ought in the first place to bee taken into serious - consideracon & endeavoured to bee settled. Be it therefore ordered - and enacted by the Right Hoble Cecilius Lord Baron of Baltemore - absolute Lord Proprietary of this Province with the advice & - consent of this Generall Assembly. That whatsoever 'pson or 'psons - within this province & the Islands thereunto belonging shall from - henceforth blaspheme God that is curse him or deny our Saviour - Jesus Christ to be the sonne of God, or shall deny the holy Trinity - or the unity of the Godhead, or shall use or utter any reproachfull - speeches concerning the said Holy Trinity shal be punished with - death & confiscation to the lord Proprietary and his heirs.... - - And bee it also further enacted by the same authority advise and - assent that whatsoever 'pson or 'psons shall from henceforth uppon - any occasion of offense or otherwise in a reproachful manner or way - declare call or denominate any 'pson or 'psons whatsoever, - inhabiting residing or traffiqueing or commerceing within this - Province or within any of the Ports Harbors Creeks or Havens to the - same belonging, an heritik, Scismatick Idolater, puritan, - Independent, Calvenist, Anabaptist Brownist Antimmoniam, Barrowist - Roundhead, Sepatist Presbiterian, popish prest, Jesuite, Jesuited - papist or any other name or terme in a reproachful manner relating - to matter of Religion shall for every such offense, forfeit and - loose the some of tenne shillings one half thereof to be paid unto - the person of whom such reproachfull words are or shall be spoken - and the other half thereof to the Lord Proprietary.... And whereas - the inforceing of the Conscience in matters of religion hath - frequently fallen out to be of dangerous Consequence in these - Commonwealths where it hath been practised. And for the more quiet - and peacable govt of this Province & the better to pserve - mutuall Love & Amity amongst the inhabitants thereof. Be it - therefore also by the L[-o] Proprietary with the advice and consent - of this Assembly Ordeynd & enacted that noe persons whatsoever - within this province or the Islands Ports Harbors Creeks thereunto - belonging professing to believe in Jesus Christ shall from - henceforth bee any waies troubled Molested or discountenanced for - or in respect of his or her religion nor in the free exercise - thereof within this province ... nor any way compelled to the - beliefe or exercise of any other Religion against his or her - consent soe as they be not unfaithfull to the Lord Proprietary or - molest or conspire against the Civill Govt established.... And - that all & every person that shall presume contrary to this act - directly or indirectly either in person or Estate wilfully to wrong - disturb or molest any person ... in respect to his or her Religion - shall be compelled to pay trebble damages to the party soe wronged - or molested & for every such offence shall also forfeit 20s - sterling ... or if the ptie soe offending as aforesaid shall refuse - or be unable to recompense the party soe wronged ... then such - offender shall be severely punished by publick whipping & - imprisonmt without baile or maineprise.... - -The ffreemen have assented. - - - - -BY THE SAME AUTHOR - - -_SLAV AND MOSLEM_ - -SOME OPINIONS - -"_Slav and Moslem_ does you the greatest honour, for I quite understand -how difficult it is for foreigners to comprehend so correctly as you do -the origin, the value, and the destinies of our institutions. - -PRINCE CANTACUZENE. - -"_Russian Imperial Legation, Washington._" - -"The perusal of your valuable and interesting book on the historical -relations of Slav and Moslem has afforded the keenest pleasure. - -A. ISWOLZY. - -"_Legation Imperiale de Russe pres le Saint Siege._" - -"We are separated from the Western world by difference of race, culture, -and history, and the Western mind is very hard in understanding us. -Therefore the testimony of a just and unprejudiced mind is always -gratefully appreciated in Russia. - -C. POBEDONOSTZEFF, - -"_Petersburg._ _President du Saint Synod_." - -"I was not only pleased with _Slav and Moslem_, but acknowledge a large -accretion to my knowledge of the subject. - -Your friend, -LEW WALLACE, -_Author of 'Ben Hur,' and formerly Ambassador -of U.S. to Constantinople_." - -"I consider _Slav and Moslem_ the clearest exposition on the Eastern -Question I have ever met with. - -J. HUGHES, -_Author of the "Dictionary of Islam_." - -"I regard _Slav and Moslem_ as a very valuable contribution to the -history of Russia. You are entitled to great credit for your -comprehensive view of the Russian Government and people. - -JOHN SHERMAN, - -"_Washington._ _Senator and Diplomat, U.S._" - -"Your development of the historical relations of Russia and Turkey is -admirable and full of interest. In vigorous and picturesque language you -have presented the other side. - -JOHN A. KASSON, - -"_Washington._ _Senator and Diplomat_." - -"I find no words to express the historic breadth of your political -summary, and the deep and genuine philosophy and truth of your treatment -of this great drama. - -CASSIUS MARCELLUS CLAY, -_Ten years Minister of the U.S. at St. Petersburg_." - -"I have read _Slav and Moslem_ with much interest, as it contains many -suggestions to fruitful thought regarding this great empire. - -ANDREW D. WHITE. - -_Legation of the U.S., St. Petersburg._" - -"_Slav and Moslem_ is written with justice, clairvoyance, and talent. - -JULIETTE ADAM." - -"I have read many books on Russia, but none met with my approval to such -an extent as _Slav and Moslem_.... The statements and descriptions of -the Russians are so correct.... During the years of my official stay I -studied the people, their history and language, and know what I am -talking about. - -JOHN KAREL, -_U.S. Consul at St. Petersburg_." - -"For the chapter on the Crimea alone your book deserves the thanks of -all who would study the present century. - -GEO. J. LEMMON, -_Lecturer and Publicist_." - -SOME PRESS NOTICES - -"Vivid historical sketches.... Eminently worthy of careful -perusal."--_The Press_ (Philadelphia). - -"The author shows an intelligent mastery of his subject." - -_Herald_ (Boston). - -"Its every sentence is clear-cut and positive.... The subjects are all -treated with a vigour and boldness that rivet the attention from first -to last." - -_The American_ (Baltimore). - -"The author has a surprisingly firm grasp on his subject.... Vivid, -thorough, original." - -_The Tribune_ (Salt Lake City, Utah). - -"Intensely readable.... It is one of the notable books of the -day."--_Commercial Gazette_ (Cincinnati). - -"From first to last the book is one of unusual interest." - -_The Chronicle_ (Augusta, Ga.). - -"A sober and trenchant defence of Russia." - -_Times Star_ (Cincinnati) - -"Mr. Brodhead writes lucidly and discriminatingly.... Interesting and -suggestive throughout." - -_The Churchman_ (New York). - -"J. Brodhead's work on the Eastern is creating a more and more favorable -impression throughout the country." - -_The Press_ (New York). - -PLYMOUTH -WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS - - * * * * * - - -FOOTNOTES: - -[1] I transcribe the following from _Le Lyon Republicain_ (ministerial -anti-clerical), 1905:--"The criminality of youths from sixteen to -twenty-five is increasing in shameful and overwhelming proportions. This -collection of beardless scoundrels, cynically vicious, murderers, -thieves, _souteneurs_, is the curse of our large cities.... It is only -since fifteen or eighteen years at most that criminalists notice this -remarkable depravation of youths almost children.... May we not ask if -the State that has done the most for instruction has not done the least -for education? Truly this frightful development of youthful criminality, -of alcoholism, and anti-socialism must make us reflect." - -"_Fifteen years or eighteen at most._" The scholar anti-Christian laws -of Jules Ferry, Goblet, Paul Bert, date from 1882 to 1895, and by their -fruits they are judged. - -[2] In January, 1906, M. Poincare, minister of finance, in reply to M. -Grousseau, admitted that up to February, 1905, the State had advanced -the sum of 4,551,319 frs. to the liquidators of the Congregations. - -[3] "Vel Judam non videtis, quomodo non dormit, sed festinat tradere me -Judaeis?" (Feria V in Coena Domini--"See ye not Judas, how he sleeps not, -but makes haste to betray me into the hands of the Jews?") - -[4] According to a recent article in the _Figaro_, 8th October, 1906, -among the conscripts sent this month to the army by Paris, ninety could -neither read nor write; seventy-nine could read only. - -[5] It was only at the annual September Convent of the Grand Orient, -1904, that it was decided to rush the assault on the Church itself by -the law of alleged separation. "Il nous reste un rude coup de collier a -donner ... la separation figurera en Janvier prochain a l'ordre du jour -de la chambre." - -[6] At the Free-Thought Congress. - -[7] His native city recently hoisted the French flag and proclaimed its -annexation to the Third Republic, 1906. Of course it was only a platonic -demonstration on the part of Sicilian Freemasons. - -[8] M. Rouvier had obtained a law obliging every one without exception -who distilled anything to pay the usual tax on alcohol. This law was -made and repealed by the same Parliament, so that now every one who has -a peach or a plum tree can manufacture any kind of alcohol of poor -quality, and retail it in the _buvettes_ or drink-stands which are found -at every step almost; in every little vegetable and grocery shop, even -in Government tobacco stores where stamps are sold. These _buvettes_ are -the curse of France to-day. They have caused far greater ravages than -the Franco-Prussian war. - -[9] "We do not wish to see the secular arm placed at the service of -free-thought," said a deputy of the "bloc" not long since. "Meanwhile -the secular arm in the service of free-thought has closed all our -schools and colleges," retorted a deputy of the Right. - -[10] On November 17th, 1906, the Bishop of Nancy wrote as follows to M. -Briand, Minister of Cults, regarding the sad plight of the Sisters du -Saint Coeur de Marie at Nancy: "In 1902, 56 of them were huddled together -in a small house situated at the extremity of their grounds.... Their -spacious chapel was razed to the ground and in its place three private -houses have been built. The property was sold for 527,000 francs. The -liquidator promised that in conformity with the law the sisters should -receive pensions. Out of the 56 there remain to-day but 44. Of these 10 -are over seventy, and 22 of them are over sixty.... In these last four -years they have received out of the 527,000 francs only 12,000 in three -instalments.... They owe 17,800 to their baker, butcher, etc., and are -threatened with starvation if further credit be denied them.... Are -these aged women, who have devoted their lives to the instruction of the -poor, to die of cold and hunger, M. le Ministre?" And these things -happen in the twentieth century under a Government that proclaims the -rights of man and of the poor! - -[11] There is no such thing as proportional representation in France, -and the whole electoral machinery is manipulated to give the Government -a majority. - -[12] Recently in the Chambers (November 13th, 1906), M. Lassies -criticized that part of M. Clemenceau's declaration in which he referred -to the Holy See "as a foreigner subject to foreign influences." "Foreign -influences," said M. Lassies, turning pointedly to M. Delcasse, "we find -them here in the person of the ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs, who fell -from power without our knowing why. Whence came the gust which caused -his fall? From which frontier?" - -[13] The Bill was adopted by the French Senate early in December. - -[14] Everything except the _encyclique_ of August 15th, 1906. - -[15] M. Lefas, deputy of the Right, maintained in the Chambers (Nov. -9th, 1906, _Journal Officiel_, p. 2448) that "the churches could not -form part of the Communal domain when Communes did not exist in France. -Communal domain only began with the existence of the Communes; that is -to say, a hundred years ago." Therefore these Church edifices cannot be -said to belong to the Communes to-day. Formerly France was divided into -parishes, and each parish had its parish church. - -As to the cathedrals, if kings and nobles, like other Catholics, -contributed to their embellishment or construction, they did so as -Catholics. All the guilds and corporations, too, contributed, not only -money, but personal labour. Would this entitle the syndicates of masons, -goldsmiths, etc., of to-day to claim these cathedrals? But the chief -factor in the construction of these noble edifices were the freely given -toil and humble labours of the multitudes of Catholics who raised these -monuments of faith. It is well known that a Catholic church cannot be -dedicated as long as any one has a lien on it, that is, not until the -Church's proprietorship of the building is undisputed. Therefore the -assumption that these edifices belong to the State and the Communes can -only be justified on the theory of the men who, seeing a trunk lying in -the hall of a hotel, said, "This trunk belongs to no one; let us say it -belongs to us." - -The recent judgment of the highest court of England in the case of the -"wees and the frees" of the Scotch Presbyterian Kirk is eminently -applicable in this question of Jacobin appropriations and spoliations. - -[16] These inventories, left incomplete after the fall of the Rouvier -Ministry (February), are being completed now (November, 1906). - -[17] When the daily Press is constantly recording the exploits of -_cambrioleurs_ picking locks and bursting open _coffres forts_ with -dynamite, it is very piquant to see the Government doing the same thing, -flanked by _gens d'armes_ and the regular army. Yesterday at Nantes 1500 -soldiers, with two generals and one colonel, surrounded the cathedral at -5 a.m. Forty locks were picked before noon! In _cambrioleur_ slang this -would be called a "record haul." Thanks to the injunctions of Pius X, -there was no bloodshed, and M. Clemenceau and his friends proclaim that -these inventories are made _sans incident_. - -[18] This Protestant senator seems to have been inspired by an eloquent -passage in Bossuet, "Une voix nous crie, _Marche, Marche_." - -[19] The founder and owner of _La Lanterne_ is said to be a Frankfort -Jew, and it is an open secret that all the advanced Socialist and -anti-clerical dailies are owned or controlled by the princes of Israel. -And it is from these that English and American papers seem to derive all -their information regarding the Church in France. - -[20] LES CAISSES D'EPARGNE. - -Voici le releve des operations des Caisses d'epargne ordinaires avec la -Caisse des depots et consignations du 1er au 10 octobre, 1906:-- - -Depots de fonds 2.830.949 fr. 72. Retraits de fonds 6.576.856 fr. 30. -Excedent des retraits 3.745.906 fr. 58. - -Excedent des retraits du 1er janvier au 10 octobre, 1906, 26.784.318 -fr. 60. - -[21] Thus Notre Dame might witness a Catholic Mass in the morning, a -theosophical reunion at noon, and a positivist conference in the -evening. The Swiss Catholics, 1872-6, had some such experiences: a -venerable priest died recently at Berne who had refused to give up the -keys of his church for other uses, and was imprisoned for many years; -while the last prisoner of Chillon was the Catholic Bishop of Fribourg, -another victim of the Swiss Kulturkampf. - -[22] When public men and editors in France and elsewhere descant on -German _Associations cultuelles_ accepted by the Holy See that rejects -them in France, they stand accused of ignorance or malevolence. M. -Briand basely insinuated (Chambers, 9th November) that the Church in -Germany was being ransomed by France: "Notre situation a nous est-elle -la rancon de la situation d'un pays voisin? Je me borne a poser la -question." The fact is there is no such thing as _German Associations -cultuelles_, each State of the Confederation has its own regulations. -Bavaria has a concordat and a papal nuncio at Munich. The Governments of -Wuertemberg and the Grand Duchy of Baden made special conventions with -the Holy See, 1857 and 1859. Alsace-Lorraine is still under the French -Concordat of 1801 between Pius VII and the First Republic. Prussia and -Hesse in 1873 and 1875 made special conventions with the Vatican. -Prussia has a Legation to the Holy See at Rome. Moreover, in none of the -German states is there separation of Church and State. They all -recognize and subsidize the Catholic Church and one form of -Protestantism. In Prussia several bishops are appointed senators by the -King. In Alsace-Lorraine the Bishop of Strasburg is member of the -Council of State. In Bavaria, Baden, Wuertemberg, the prelates are -members of the Upper House. - -[23] What would Philippe de Commines have said had he heard of the -little _coup de main_ (November 20th, 1906), by which deputies and -senators in _quasi huis clos_ voted themselves an increase of 6000 -francs without any "_octroi or consentement_" of the sovereign people, -delivered from tyranny and servitude by the Revolution? - -[24] There is in the Palace of the Doges at Venice an immense picture -commemorating this Congress, where the Peace of Constance was prepared. - -[25] In refreshing contrast with this record of persecution is the -proclamation of religious liberty in Maryland, 1650. "The Catholics took -quiet possession [of Maryland], and religious liberty obtained a home, -its only home in the wide world ... every other country had persecuting -laws.... Protestants were sheltered against Protestant intolerance. The -disfranchized friends of Prelacy in Massachusetts and the Puritans from -Virginia were welcomed to equal liberty of conscience and political -rights as Roman Catholics in the province of Maryland.... In 1649 the -General Assembly of Maryland passed an Act to this effect, yet five -years later, when the Puritans obtained the ascendency there, they -rewarded their benefactors by passing an Act forbidding that liberty of -conscience be extended to 'popery,' 'prelacy,' and 'licentiousness of -opinion'" (Bancroft's _History of the United States_, I, VII.). - -Lecky corroborates this statement: "Hopital and Lord Baltimore were the -two first legislators who uniformly maintained liberty of conscience, -and Maryland continues the one solitary home for the oppressed of every -sect till Puritans succeeded in subverting Catholic rule, when they -basely enacted the whole penal code against those who had so nobly and -so generously received them" (_History of Rationalism_, II, 58). - -An abridged copy of the Act of 1650, the first Act of religious -toleration, will be found in the Appendix. The original from which I -copied is in the archives of the Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore. - -[26] On November 9th, 1906, the Socialist minister Viviani, after -"putting out the lights in heaven," exclaimed, "What shall we say to -these sovereigns who are slaves economically speaking, to these men who -enjoy universal suffrage yet suffer in servitude? How shall we appease -them?" - -[27] Hall Caine, explaining the title of his book, _The Eternal City_, -expressed himself as follows: "In the new methods of settling -international disputes, the old mother of the Pagan and the Christian -worlds will have her rightful rank.... Her religious and historical -interest, her artistic charm, above all the mystery of eternal life seem -to point to Rome as the seat of the great court of appeal which the -future will see established." - -[28] _Paradise Lost_, Book IV. - - * * * * * - -Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: - -their precedessors=> their predecessors {pg 97} - -evacute Rome=> evacuate Rome {pg 111} - -public shools=> public schools {pg 206} - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Religious Persecution in France -1900-1906, by Jane Milliken Napier Brodhead - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION *** - -***** This file should be named 42434.txt or 42434.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/4/3/42434/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: The Religious Persecution in France 1900-1906 - -Author: Jane Milliken Napier Brodhead - -Release Date: March 29, 2013 [EBook #42434] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - THE - RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION - IN FRANCE - - 1900-1906 - - - _Nihil Obstat_: - JOSEPH WILHELM, S. T. D., - CENSOR DEPUTATUS. - - _Imprimi potest_ - ✠ GULIELMUS, - EPISCOPUS ARINDELENSIS, - VICARIUS GENERALIS. - - WESTMONASTERII, - _Die 6 Aprilis, 1907_. - - - - - THE RELIGIOUS - PERSECUTION - IN FRANCE - - 1900-1906 - - BY - - J. NAPIER BRODHEAD - AUTHOR OF “SLAV AND MOSLEM” - - _LONDON_ - KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO., LTD. - 43 GERRARD STREET, SOHO, W. - 1907 - - - - -PREFACE - - -These Considerations, written during the last six years’ residence in -France, have already appeared in the Press of the United States. They -were written from year to year without any thought of republication, -which seems justified to-day by the acuity of the conflict between the -Church and the French atheocracy, a conflict which cannot but interest -Christians everywhere. - -J. N. B. - - - - -CONTENTS - - - PAGE - -FIRST IMPRESSIONS 1 - -THE TWO CAMPS 7 - -THE ASSOCIATIONS BILL 13 - -THE ASSOCIATIONS BILL 18 - -ARBITRARY INCONSISTENCY 29 - -A PAGAN RENAISSANCE 33 - -INCONSISTENT JACOBINISM 40 - -UNAUTHORISED CONGREGATIONS 46 - -A COMBES _COUP DE MAIN_ 50 - -LEGALIZED DESPOTISM 57 - -DESPOTISM PLUS GUILE 63 - -UNCHANGING JACOBINISM 71 - -DEATH OF WALDECK ROUSSEAU 78 - -LIBERTY AND STATE SERVITUDE 82 - -THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 91 - -A PAPAL NOTE 105 - -FREEMASONRY 112 - -FREEMASONRY 118 - -PART SECOND 125 - -ALCOHOLISM IN FRANCE 131 - -THE LAW OF SEPARATION 135 - -CATHOLICISM IN GERMANY 144 - -PSEUDO-SEPARATION 147 - -THE PROGRESS OF ANARCHY 160 - -THE ABOLITION OF THE CONCORDAT 170 - -THE INVENTORIES 177 - -DUC IN ALTUM 185 - -THE LATEST PHASE OF SEPARATION 197 - -LIBERTY AND CHRISTIANITY 211 - -CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION 233 - -APPENDIX 249 - - - - -THE RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION IN FRANCE - - - - -FIRST IMPRESSIONS - - -LYON, _March 17th, 1900_. - -There seems to be considerable misapprehension in the United States as -to the status of the Catholic Church in France. “One iniquitous -arrangement in France,” writes the _Central Baptist_, “is the support of -the priesthood out of public funds.” In receiving stipends from the -State the French clergy, however, are no more its debtors, nor its -functionaries, than holders of French 3 per cents who receive the -interest of their bonds. When that essentially satanic movement, known -as the French Revolution, swept over this fair land, deluging it in -blood, the wealth of the Church, the accumulation of centuries, was all -confiscated by the hordes who pillaged and devastated, and killed in the -name of Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality, until Napoleon restored order -with an iron hand. A born ruler of men, this Corsican understood that -the principal feature of the work of restoration must be the -reorganization of the Catholic Church in France. Accordingly he -concluded with the Pope the convention known as the Concordat. It was -not possible in the dilapidated state of the country to restore the -millions that had been stolen by those “champions of liberty who,” -according to Macaulay, “compressed into twelve months more crimes than -the kings of France had committed in twelve centuries.” Still less was -it possible to rebuild many noble structures, and recover works of art -sold by sordid harpies or destroyed by impious vandals. It was -accordingly agreed (Arts. 13 and 14, Concordat) that in lieu of this -restitution the State should henceforth pay to the Church, annually, the -stipends of so many archbishops, bishops, curates, etc. - -The Concordat constitutes an organic law of the State. The clergy -receive their stipends, not as a salary, but as the payment of a debt -due to them by the State. It is in vain, therefore, that efforts are -made now to represent the Catholic clergy as salaried functionaries of -the State. The act by which Waldeck Rousseau recently decreed the -suppression of the stipends of certain bishops was wholly arbitrary, -and, moreover, the violation of an organic law. It was the partial -repudiation of a public debt, quite as dishonourable as if the payment -of interest of three per cent bonds were withheld from certain -bondholders. - -The position of Protestant and Jewish ministers in France is entirely -different. They do receive salaries which are purely gratuitous. The -Revolutionists did not trouble them, and they had no part in the -Concordat of 1801. We may say that the French Revolution was appeased, -but it is not over by any means. No nation less well founded and -grounded could have withstood as France has done the shocks and -upheavals of a century. - -To this day France is still profoundly Catholic, in spite of the -millions of public money expended in so-called non-sectarian primary -schools and colleges. Travellers stroll into French churches, in summer, -at High Mass on Sundays at 9.30 or 10.30 generally, and because they -find a very small congregation at this service they report that the -churches are deserted and religion fast dying out. They ignore the fact -that in these churches low masses have been said hourly since 5 a.m., so -that people may comply with their duty, and then go off on their outing. -Lyon has many large beautiful old churches, and many handsome new ones. -Yet not one of them could contain all their parishioners if they wished -to attend the same service. - -For nearly twenty-five years the Government has been running its -educational machine at immense cost, compelling the French to support -schools they will not patronize, as well as those of their own choice. -Nevertheless, State colleges and primary schools are so neglected that -laws are being devised to compel parents to send their children to them. -If all other means fail, the congregations of both sexes occupied in -teaching will be suppressed. This is the Government’s programme. There -is nothing so bad as the corruption of that which is best. France is -still profoundly Catholic, and it is only natural that the struggle -between good and evil should be sharp here. The forces of reaction and -action are always proportionate. Hence it is that France has always been -“the centre of Masonic history,” and of the Goddess Reason’s supreme -efforts against Christianity. Her temperament, too, makes her a choice -field for experiments. - -We can therefore understand M. Waldeck Rousseau’s indignation when so -many bishops openly expressed their sympathy with and admiration for the -Assumptionist Fathers who were condemned recently--and condemned for -what crime? For being an unauthorized association of more than twenty -persons, when there are hundreds of other similar associations at the -present moment. - -Briefly stated, the present phase of the Church in France is simply the -nineteenth-century phase of the struggles of Investiture in the Middle -Ages; the secular power seeking to have and to dominate a national -Church, whose ministers are to be nothing but state functionaries, -bound to serve and to support the Government. This was the old pagan -ideal, and every portion of the Church that has renounced allegiance to -Rome has fallen into this condition. In England, in Russia, in the -Byzantine Empire, in Turkey, in Africa--wherever there is a national -Church--it is little better than a department of State. The Gallican -Church narrowly escaped a similar fate in the days of Louis XIV. The -Civil Constitution of the Clergy was another desperate and abortive -attempt to nationalize and secularize the Church in France. Gloriously, -too, her clergy expiated their momentary Gallican insubordination. All -over France they were guillotined, drowned, and exiled, and imprisoned, -_en masse_, rather than submit to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. -There is nothing more admirable in the history of Christianity than the -conduct of the victims massacred in the convent of the Carmelites, -converted into a prison by the Jacobins. Martyrs and confessors were as -numerous as in the first centuries of the Church, and from their ashes -arose a new French Church purified by poverty and suffering. - -Never have institutions of learning and charity under religious -direction been so numerous. No country has a clergy more zealous, more -learned, more united with the Holy See than that of France to-day. No -wonder then that the powers of darkness are devising means to destroy -the new structure, so zealously and so laboriously raised on the ruins -accumulated by the Revolution of 1790. - -“Not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar among the people.” -Violent measures would rouse French Catholics from their political -apathy. The Government cannot afford to do this. Religious liberty must -be destroyed by degrees--and herein lies the danger. - - - - -THE TWO CAMPS - - -_May 25th, 1900._ - -To the thoughtful and sympathetic observer, France presents a singular -spectacle of duality--two camps and two standards are confronting each -other, neo-paganism and Christianity. By Christianity I mean, of course, -Catholicism, for though there may be good Protestants, who adhere to -some of the truths of revealed religion, such a thing as a good pervert -French Protestant is a _lusus naturæ_, practically non-existent. It is a -notorious fact that Protestants in France as elsewhere in Europe are, as -a rule, absolutely indifferent in religious matters since they have -ceased to be persecuted, and in many cases they have become the enemies -of revealed religion. - -All civilization, all redemption from barbarism, is fostered and -developed around a sanctuary. Consecrated hands have, in every instance, -laid the corner stone of the social edifice. The Church, the -school-house, the university, the courts of justice--these are the -normal steps by which societies, cities, and nations have advanced in -the Old World out of barbarism and chaos since the overthrow of the -Roman Empire. Of France this is pre-eminently true. Hundreds of -villages and towns bear the names of holy missionary monks who built -first a cell, and then a monastery around a chapel, which became the -centre of a village, that grew in time to be a city. We see the same -thing all over Europe and in the British Isles. Gibbon says that the -French bishops made the French monarchy as bees construct a honeycomb. -Like every institution that bears a religious imprint, this monarchy was -long-lived. Those who descant so volubly on the flightiness of the -French people, always overturning their government and never satisfied -with the one they have, would do well to reflect that the French -monarchy lasted some fourteen centuries. When this monarchy was -overthrown by the assassination of Louis XVI there was formed a vortex -in which were engulfed millions of human lives. Not that I consider a -monarchical or any special form of government indispensable to France’s -prosperity. There is, however, one essential condition. The generating -principle of the French nation was the Catholic Faith. Without it, -France would no longer be herself. She would disintegrate interiorly, -and dismemberment and decadence would follow. France is still profoundly -Catholic, in spite of the prodigious efforts made since the days of -Voltaire and Tom Paine by numerous native and alien religious vandals, -whose prostituted intellects were garnished from the storehouse of -centuries of Christian culture. She will always be this or nothing. For -any one who knows France, historically and psychologically, it is -preposterous to think of a substitute creed, corresponding to any of the -various shreds of Christianity, which do duty for religion under the -name of some one or other of the multitudinous Protestant sects. - -France, I repeat, will always be Catholic or nothing. But the Government -is on the verge of apostasy. For the first time in French history the -usual religious observances on Good Friday were suppressed in all the -naval ports. “What thou doest do quickly,” and on this occasion the -order was sent by telegraph on Thursday evening. As I stated in my last -letter, irreligious education is doing its work, and the increase of -juvenile criminals is appalling.[1] - -If the projected law regarding religious associations is voted, it will -be tantamount to the abolition of all religious teaching, as the -existence of these congregations will be rendered impracticable. England -and the United States will be the gainers, as they were when the -Revolution dispersed the priesthood in 1790. - -The French Government is on the verge of apostasy, as I have said. Is -this a cause, a presage, or a symptom of national decadence? All three, -I fear. Nations stand or fall with their governments. They have the -government they merit and they are punished for the evil doings of their -rulers. “I gave them a king in my wrath,” it was written. Is there -sufficient vitality left in the French constitution to reject the poison -that is undermining it, and of which alcoholism, unknown in France fifty -years ago, is but the outward and visible sign? The assertion I make -that the greatness of the French people and their very national -existence is bound up with the Christian Faith is unquestioned by every -thinker in France, even by those who, for diverse reasons, do not -practise their religion, though they all bank on the last sacraments and -would be very sorry to see their wives and children neglect their -religious duties. - -The governments which have succeeded each other since 1880 have -flattered themselves that they could govern without the Church and -against the Church. Bismarck tried it and failed. The Catholic party -triumphed. It still holds the balance of power in Germany, and the -nation is growing daily more powerful and prosperous. In France, alas! -it is quite the contrary. In order to crush what they are pleased to -call the “clerical” party, the Government has allied itself with -Socialists of the reddest streak. Indeed, we may say that anarchy and -socialism, or collectivism as it is called, are sitting in high places. - -Any president or minister who dared to stem the tide would fall. They -must temporize, resign, or die. Carnot was assassinated. Casimir-Perier -resigned; Faure, who steadily opposed the revision of the Dreyfus case, -was poisoned, I am told--at any rate, it is said that he died almost -immediately after swallowing a cup of tea at a soirée. Though the public -has no means of forming a correct judgment regarding the guilt of the -notorious Dreyfus, the most important evidence having been secret, I -have never doubted that he was justly condemned. At any rate, he -accepted the Presidential pardon, and withdrew his appeal, a strange -thing for an innocent man to do. This alone, it would seem, ought to -estop him from a new trial. But unfortunately the whole thing is to be -gone over again, though it is a perfect nightmare for four-fifths of the -French nation. - -I know France intimately since thirty years, and it is with infinite -sorrow that I diagnose her present condition and its perils. - -According to custom, the Imperial Court of Russia retired to Moscow for -Holy Week, and while the Czar, laying aside court etiquette, was -kneeling humbly on the bare floor among his peasant subjects, holding -his lighted candle like them, his allies, the rulers of France, were -desecrating Easter Vigil by inaugurating the Paris Exhibition with -speeches, which seemed to have been compiled from those made by -Robespierre and his companions on that very Champs de Mars a century -ago, when they inaugurated their theo-philanthropy and the worship of -the Goddess of Reason. - -I presume Holy Saturday was selected because it is a high festival among -the Jews; otherwise Easter Monday would surely have been more -appropriate in a country where there are thirty-five million Catholics. -This was on the 9th April, and the Exposition they were in such a hurry -to inaugurate on that particular day is far from ready even now. - - - - -THE ASSOCIATIONS BILL - - -_May 4th, 1901._ - -A year ago I wrote in these columns as follows: “For twenty years the -Government has been running its educational machine at immense loss, -compelling the French to support their own schools as well as those they -will not patronize. Nevertheless, State schools and colleges are so -neglected that laws are being devised to compel parents to send their -children to them. If all other means fail, the congregations of both -sexes occupied in teaching will be suppressed.” - -Now this is the true object of the Associations Bill; all the rest is -merely padding. Liberty of association for Freemasons, Socialists, and -all friends of the Third Republic will be untrammelled as heretofore. -The blow aimed at religious teachers is of peculiar interest at this -hour, when Christians, all over the world, are recognizing the immense -importance of the religious education of the young, if we would preserve -the structure of Western civilization, so laboriously built up during -2000 years, and save its deep foundations from being sapped by the -returning tide of barbarism and paganism. For the revolutionary spirit -of to-day is simply another version of that renaissance of paganism -which culminated in the Protestant revolt. As in the past, it will be -met by a great Catholic revival like that of the sixteenth century, -which Macaulay has so eloquently described in his Essay on Ranke’s -_Papacy_. This is the counter-revolution against which the self-styled -government of “Défense Republicaine” is dressing its batteries. Already -the effects of this revival are felt and, as Macaulay has pointed out, -revivals of the religious spirit, this everlasting factor in the history -of humanity which our pseudo-scientists so unscientifically ignore, -always redound to the benefit of Catholicism. When men like Brunetière, -Bourget, Lemaître, François Coppée, become standard-bearers of truth, we -are consoled for the vociferations of any number of Vivianis, -Trouillots, etc., in and outside the French Chambers, for whom “the -eternal decalogue” is but an antiquated superstition that must be swept -away. - -The law against the Congregations has been opposed in the Chambers by -many Republicans who have no religious scruples, and one may safely -affirm that there is not a respectable Frenchman, outside the coterie in -power, who does not condemn the Bill. - -A few days before its passage, a mass meeting of many trade unions, -presided over by Leroy Beaulieu, was held in Paris to protest against -the projected suppression of the Congregations. The eminent economist -declared that the proposed legislation was one of “national suicide.” -If the law is so repugnant to the French in general, how is it that the -Government always obtains a majority? it may be asked. - -The explanation lies in the fact that while honest Frenchmen have been -attending to their business and leaving politics strictly alone, this -anti-religious campaign has been carefully prepared since many years by -the enemies of Christianity. Like all notable persecutions, it is the -work of secret societies. The Boxers of China are a congeries of these -societies. In the days of Julian the chief instigators and abettors of -persecution were the secret societies of Mithra, whom Renan declared to -have been “veritable Masonic lodges with their initiations, passwords,” -etc. - -Since 1875 the “Grand Orient,” in which the Jewish element predominates, -has gradually been gathering into its hands all the reins of government; -not a very difficult task, seeing that as a rule respectable, -industrious Frenchmen will not touch politics, while the emissaries of -the lodges go out into the slums of mining and industrial centres, and -organize primaries and Socialist clubs that defeat any respectable -candidate who dares to enter the lists against the candidate of the -Government. Jules Lemaître, in the _Echo de Paris_, states that there -are 400 deputies and 10 ministers who are Freemasons. As these latter -number about 25,000 in France, it follows that there is one -representative in Parliament for every 50 Freemason electors, whereas -there is only one representative for every 1800 votes who are not -affiliated to the “Grand Orient.” With a house packed in this way, any -legislation is possible. Madame Sorgues, lately sub-editor of Jaurès’ -Socialist organ, _La Petite Republique_, has published some interesting -revelations, showing how the Judeo Freemasons have made tools of the -Socialists in order to seize the reins of government. “In combating the -combats of Dreyfus,” she writes, “Jaurès and his friends brought about a -singular _rapprochement_ of the two most irreconcilable camps ... the -presents of the kings of capital were accepted. The first service -rendered was to restore the tottering Socialist Press.... All the -advanced [meaning anti-clerical Socialist] dailies have passed into the -hands of the great barons of finance; they are _their_ journals now, not -the journals of the workers.... Then they cast their eyes on Waldeck -Rousseau, the clever rescuer of the Panamists.... The agent of the -Dreyfus politics had the happy thought of introducing into the Cabinet, -Millerand, the Socialist leader, with the consent of his party. -Socialism become ministerial would be _domestiqué_, and rendered -inoffensive against capital,” etc. Last fall, the President, Loubet, -when at Lyons, dared to be the guest of the Chamber of Commerce, in -spite of the Socialist mayor, Augagneur, and his gang. Immediately, the -_Aurore_, a Socialist organ of Paris, clamoured for his suppression in -these terms: “As he is not subject to the same accidents as Felix -Faure, we must defend ourselves without waiting for the good offices of -Judith.” M. Faure, M. Loubet’s predecessor, it will be remembered, is -said to have died suddenly after a cup of tea at a soirée given by a -rich Jewess, and the present ministry of the Dreyfus revision, to which -he had been steadfastly opposed, came into power almost before the -country knew what had happened, bringing in their political wallet -another Dreyfus trial and this notorious Associations Bill. - -If I insist, it is because I wish that it may be clearly understood that -the French people are not guilty of the criminal legislation of which -they are the victims, owing to their incurable reluctance to touch the -mire of politics, left, as a rule, to the most unworthy and -unscrupulous. - -M. Waldeck Rousseau is a smart, wily politician; so was Camille -Desmoulins, an obscure, ambitious lawyer, who saw in the Revolution of -1790 a grand opportunity of reaching a proud eminence. This -accomplished, he had no further use for Revolutionists. “The Revolution -is over,” he said; but it went on and on, until his own head rolled into -the fatal basket. - -How long will all this last? How long will the mad dogs of Socialist -anarchy be held in leash? - - - - -THE ASSOCIATIONS BILL - - -_3rd April,_ 1901. - -Few persons in the United States have the leisure or the means of -following the debates of the French Chambers, and appreciating the Law -on Associations, of which many garbled and falsified versions appear in -metropolitan and other dailies. - -It is pre-eminently a project of tyranny and religious persecution. The -sympathy of sectarian antagonism with anti-Catholic measures, in any -part of the world, is always a foregone conclusion. It does not concern -itself with the arbitrary tyranny involved, alleging, perhaps, that now -the tables are turned, and thirty-five millions of Catholics are being -treated as were the Huguenots from 1685 to 1790. But when former -governments strove to maintain national unity, founded on “One Lord, one -Faith, one Baptism,” their position was that of a man defending his own -house against assailants, while the position of this Government is that -of a small armed band who have taken forcible possession, and mean to -coerce and outlaw the owners by imprescriptible right. But neither -Elizabeth nor Louis XIV ever invoked liberty to palliate their coercive -policy in order to establish, or maintain unity or uniformity. - -As Bodley says in his excellent work on France (1898): “The intolerant -system under the Third Republic differs from all persecutions known to -history in that it is not only practised in the name of liberty, but is -aimed against an established religion”--in possession since fifteen -centuries. - -It is a curious fact that the Huguenots, so clamorous for toleration and -the rights of conscience in the past, have during a century of absolute -liberty and equality, 1793-1900, dwindled from 2,000,000 in a population -of 27,000,000 to 600,000 in a population of 38,000,000. They have -evolved, in the usual process of Protestant disintegration, into the -deistical and atheistical minority who, with the Jews, are now so -determined to restore national unity in national infidelity. For it is a -notorious fact that France is ruled and oppressed by a small coalition -of Freemasons, chiefly Protestants and Jews, who are using the -Socialists as cats’ paws. - -Waldeck Rousseau clearly stated the Government’s programme in his -political speech at Toulouse, and its scope is unmistakable, no matter -what affectation of tolerance and amity for the secular clergy may -accompany it. He is an astute lawyer, and his unruly band of Socialist -henchmen in the Chambers often try his patience sorely by calling a -spade a spade. - -The suppression of religious orders and the confiscation of their -property is no new thing. St. Paul reminds the Hebrews of their -neophyte fervour, and how they accepted being despoiled with joy. -_Rapinam_ is the word used in the Vulgate; modern euphemism eschews the -unsavoury word robbery, and says “_secularization_,” “_liquidation_.” -Julian the Apostate, like the Rousseaus and the Trouillots of to-day, -was also of opinion that the “Clericals” must be impoverished and -discredited in order to crush out Christianity. Henry VIII robbed and -suppressed English monasteries simply because he saw no other means of -replenishing the empty treasury he had inherited. Moreover the religious -orders were not likely to sustain him in his new character of supreme -head of the Anglican Church. Suffering, crime, and ignorance reached -unprecedented proportions in the century that followed, as we learn from -Strype’s _Chronicles_. Lecky asserts that 75,000 vagrant beggars were -hanged in Henry’s reign. - -Suppressions and confiscations have always been a prominent feature in -all revolutions, and they have been numerous in the nineteenth century. -The reason is twofold. Everything that has a religious stamp is -essentially and very properly conservative. It requires infinite pains, -patience, and wisdom to build up or to reconstruct. Any fool or madman -can tear down. _Quieta non movere._ The religious congregations, -therefore, were always the last to abandon the mother country or the -regime under which they had existed for centuries. On the other hand, -revolutionists always have a crying need for money to furnish the -sinews of rebellion, and also, incidentally, to feather the nests of -patriots. What can be more handy, too, than church property, and the -untold wealth of the religious orders! It is true that these gold mines -are sometimes found to be ‘salted,’ as they are in the fantastical -statistics put forth by the Rousseau ministry.[2] They seldom justify -the brilliant expectations of the populace lured by the perspective of -rich spoils, as they are to-day--pensions for the veterans of toil, etc. - -These spoliations have always been followed by an immense recrudescence -of popular misery. It was so in France, in Italy, in Spain--everywhere. - -The twofold motive that instigated these spoliations does not excuse -them, but it explains and perhaps palliates to some extent. In France, -to-day, there is no extenuating circumstance. The Holy See loyally lent -its support to the Third Republic when the second president, M. Grévy, -humbly solicited it at a precarious moment. Leo XIII distinctly -requested the clergy and the faithful to rally to the Republic in the -interest of peace. With very few exceptions the regular and the secular -clergy have strictly abstained from politics. The inquisition of which -the Assumption Fathers were recently the object only succeeded in -incriminating two or three members of the order. - -Of course the regular and secular clergy cannot urge their flocks and -their pupils to embrace the atheistical and pagan ideals of the -coalition in power. If this be disloyalty they are all disloyal. - -Considering that since 1888 not less than 20,000,000 have been added -every year to the public expenditure, one might suppose that the -Government would think twice before depriving itself of this army of -some 180,000 self-sacrificing men and women who minister to the poor, -the sick, the maimed, the blind, the insane, the orphan, and the -outcast. Recently the Prefect of the Department of Bouches du Rhone was -summoned by the anti-clericals to secularize all the hospitals. He -refused to accede to their request, alleging that the budget of charity -was totally inadequate already, and that many indigent sufferers were -turned away from lack of accommodation. This is only one item; what will -it be when the Government has to pay an army of hirelings to minister to -the poor all over the land? But the Congregations do not concern -themselves with bodily wants only. Many of them are devoted to the -education of all classes. This is the head and front of their offending, -and the true reason of their taking off. Every one knows that the -godless scholastic institutions devised by Paul Bert, Ferry, and Jules -Simon are repugnant to the nation, and have been a complete failure. In -spite of the millions of public money lavished upon them, they have -never been able to hold their own against the religious schools of the -Congregations, which are supported entirely by private initiative, and -at the cost of great pecuniary sacrifices on the part of Catholic -parents, who support two sets of schools--those they patronize and those -for which they have no use. Not content with imposing these sacrifices, -as in the United States, the Third Republic now proposes to crush out -all competition by suppressing the teaching congregations, and indeed -all congregations, with the proviso of retaining for the present such as -shall be deemed of public utility--meaning, of course, those who bring -surcease to the straining budget by rendering gratuitous service to -thousands, who would be a burden to the State, in a country already -taxed to its utmost capacity. The tyrannical and arbitrary character of -a measure which declares all conventual institutions “against public -order” on account of their vows, which are likened to “personal -servitude,” and yet utilizing some of them, does not trouble these -modern Dracos. Still less are they concerned with the iniquity of -depriving thousands of citizens of the right to dispose of their lives -as they see fit, and of preventing millions of parents from educating -their children as they choose. - -About the middle of the last century, representative men like -Montalembert, Lacordaire, Berryer, Dupanloup, entered the political -arena to fight the battle of free education against the tyranny of the -State University. They won the day, and freedom in educational matters -seemed henceforth the inalienable appanage of France and of all -communities boasting of Western civilization. - -The aim of the projected Law of Associations is to crush out this -liberty. It is no question of Church and State, but of Christianity and -liberty against atheism and tyranny. All the rest is mere padding. It is -a reversion to Lacedæmonian state tyranny and an odious anachronism. No -wonder, then, that the present Dreyfus-Rousseau ministry should seek to -throw dust in the eyes of the public, even subsidizing press syndicates -to mislead public opinion abroad. - -In a nutshell, the Trouillot Bill amounts to just this: No association -can exist without government authorization, which will never be given to -any religious congregation formed for educational purposes. None need -apply but those who work with the Government. “We will give our money -only to those who please us,” said the Socialist mayor of Lyons -recently. “Our money,” forsooth--considering that the taxpaying portion -of the community of Lyons is strongly Catholic and Conservative. Yet -this municipal autocrat declared that destitute children, who went to -any but state schools, should not be assisted by civic funds. - -It is the true Jacobin spirit that permeates this Republican organism. -The stamping out of religious education is itself but a means to an end. -That arch-traitor Renan declared “that religion would die hard; primary -education and the substitution of scientific for literary studies were -the only means of killing it.” - -The final purpose of this Republic is to establish national unity in -national atheism, with perhaps a creedless church administered by -servile state functionaries--a modified form of the worship of the -Goddess of Reason. In saying this I do not calumniate the Republic, as -Waldeck Rousseau himself clearly stated the governmental programme at -Toulouse. A small coalition of Jews, Protestants, and other Freemasons -have gained control of the country by capturing the Socialist vote. The -latter do not yet see that they are being used as cats’ paws. For what -fellowship can there be between Jew capitalists and collectivists? All -honest, industrious Frenchmen despise politics as a rule. The great -mining and industrial centres and the slums of large cities furnish -practically all the voters, and this proletariat is lured on by -brilliant prospects of the collectivist Utopia that is coming, when the -Congregations and the Church have been abolished. Respectable Frenchmen, -who do try to serve their country by taking a hand in politics, usually -withdraw in disgust, and thus the scum comes to the top and is utilized -by unscrupulous ambition. If any one wants to enjoy a clever, graphic -pen-picture of French politics, let him read _Les morts qui parlent_, by -M. de Vogué. - -The purpose of those in power is, I repeat, to break away completely and -for ever from the Catholic religion, with which the French nation is so -bound up that its fibres can only be torn out with the last palpitating -remnants of national life. “Few greater calamities can befall a nation,” -wrote Lecky, “than to cut herself off as France has done from her own -past in her great Revolution.” To consummate this calamity is the avowed -purpose of this Government. A hue and cry is raised by its Socialist -henchmen at papal _ingérence_ in French affairs, though the Concordat -surely gives the Pope a right to protest against the ostracism and -proposed suppression of the Congregations, as being a violation of -Article I of the Concordat, which guarantees the “free exercise of the -Catholic religion in France.” - -Meanwhile “_The Jewish Alliance_” and the “_Internationale_” operate -freely and openly, causing strikes in every direction, and disorganizing -the industrial conditions here for the benefit of other countries. -During the last few months immense sums are being taken out of the -country, not by the Congregations only by any means. The boom in the New -York Stock Market, which redounds to the credit of the McKinley -administration, may be connected with this migration of personal -property from France. - -It has been France’s glory and misfortune to be a great purveyor of -ideas, ideals, and fashions. She is essentially missionary, and was in -the vanguard of Christianity from the beginning. In the early centuries -of the Church, her monastic missionaries peopled the islands that lie -around this beautiful Riviera. St. Vincent de Lerins, St. Tropez, St. -Aygulf, St. Maxim, have left indelible footprints in these regions. In -her terrible Revolution France was an object-lesson to the nations, -whose intervention saved her from self-extermination. Foreign war was a -boon and a safety-valve. The Commune of 1870 was another warning to the -nations. Again to-day she is being made a spectacle to men and -angels--to men who are, with secret rejoicing, applauding the Waldeck -Rousseau ministry, and all for which it stands. They known full well -that decadence and doom are near. There will be another Sedan, another -Commune. The colonies, Indo-China in particular, will be the first to -fall away in the general dismemberment. - -I know France intimately since more than thirty years, and it is with -infinite sorrow that I diagnose her condition. Her recuperative powers -are very great. I fear, however, that they will prove inadequate after -the next great shock. - -But France’s admirable gift of apostleship, her lofty idealism, which no -number of Voltaires could abase or abate, will not perish with her -territorial integrity, nor even with her national life. Like the -deathless masterpieces of Greece and Rome, her immortal genius will -inform and inspire countless unborn generations, long after France -herself shall have become a mere geographical reminiscence. “I will move -thy candlestick,” it is written--not extinguish. - - - - -ARBITRARY INCONSISTENCY - - -_16th February, 1901._ - -The attitude of the Jacobin government in France towards the religion -professed by nine-tenths of the inhabitants is truly instructive. After -prating about liberty, fraternity, and equality, and the rights of man -for a hundred years, the successors of the revolutionary _Constituante_ -are preparing to deal a deathblow at the most sacred rights of the -individual, to overstep the most arbitrary acts of any regime, nay of -the Inquisition itself. These, at least, only concerned themselves with -outward manifestations of personal idiosyncrasies tending to disturb the -social order. But the successors of the Jacobins of the _Constituante_, -so proud of their blood-stained origin, direct their attacks, to-day, -against that most intangible thing the Vow, which has no existence -except in the inner conscience of the individual, seeing that monastic -vows which involved “civil death” were abolished by law in 1790, and all -religious are, to-day, free to exercise the rights of citizens--to buy, -sell, contract, or vote. The vow cannot even be considered a convention -or a contract binding together the members of a religious association. - -The ground on which it is proposed to declare religious congregations -illegal without interfering with Masonic and other associations is, said -Waldeck Rousseau, that “our public right [_droit public_] and that of -other States proscribes all that constitutes an abdication of the rights -of the individual, right to marry, to possess, all, in fact, that -resembles personal servitude.” - -Thus in the name of liberty and the famous rights of man, I am denied -the right to exercise my freewill by electing to remain single, because -not to marry would be an abdication of one of the rights of the -individual, and resemble “personal servitude.” Anything more grotesquely -inconsistent cannot well be imagined, and this project of law has been -in process of elaboration in the lodges since twenty years! In 1880, -when the decree against the Jesuits and all congregations of men was -promulgated, it was declared illicit and unconstitutional by 1500 -jurists, and 400 of the higher magistrates, who refused their -connivence, were removed from office. One of my best friends was among -these victims. The decree was enforced _manu militari_, but the current -of public opinion was so strong that, ere long, these establishments -were reopened and continued their good works unmolested. - -It was next proposed to crush out the Congregations by fiscal measures. -This also has proved inadequate, and the present project of law is the -supreme effort of a most paternal and absolute Republic to secure the -liberty of thousands of unappreciative subjects, by preventing them from -exercising it in the choice of a mode of life. Truly a strange -aberration of liberty, equality, and fraternity! - -Of course it is an open secret that what is aimed at is the destruction -of the Catholic Church in France, and the establishment, if possible, of -a national church with a “civil constitution of the clergy” as was -attempted in 1792. - -Before attacking the citadel it is proposed to demolish the two great -ramparts of the Church, Christian education and Christian charity, by -disbanding the noble men and women who man these ramparts. - -It is a notorious fact, well established by Taine, that the French -Revolution, with all its saturnalia of carnage and nameless tyranny, was -the work of a handful, some ten thousand in all, and even many of these -were foreigners. They carried all before them, and I fear that history -will repeat itself. - -The moral unity of France was destroyed for ever by the Huguenots in the -seventeenth century. Louis XIV sought in vain to restore it by the -Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The Revolution also tried to -enforce moral unity by the unlimited practice of the “_Sois mon frère ou -je te tue_.” It is in the name of this lost moral unity that the -coalition in power now propose to crush out all educational and -religious liberty. French Protestantism can hardly be said to exist any -longer. In 1799, when their religious and civil liberties were restored, -Rabaut de St. Etienne, then president of the _Constituante_, stated -their number to be 2,000,000 in a population of 26,000,000. After a -century of complete liberty and equality, the _Agenda Protestant_ of -Lyons states their number to be 650,000 in a population of 37,000,000. -In the usual process of Protestant disintegration, the Huguenots, -erstwhile so zealous for Calvinistic purity of doctrine, have evolved -into the freethinking materialists, who form an important contingent in -the anti-religious Masonic coalition I referred to some months ago. - -The situation in France painfully recalls that of Constantinople some -forty years before the fall of the Eastern Empire. A house divided -against itself cannot stand. - - - - -A PAGAN RENAISSANCE - - -_10th August, 1901._ - -In a previous article I asserted that the revolutionary spirit so -rampant to-day is a new version of that renaissance of Paganism in the -fourteenth century which culminated in the Protestant revolt. I find the -same view expressed in Goldwin Smith’s recently published work on the -United Kingdom. In a chapter on the Renaissance he writes as follows: -“Our generation may look upon this period with interest, since it is -itself threatened with an interregnum between Christian morality and the -morality of science.” - -“Much learning maketh thee mad” might be said to our generation, that -seems to be science mad and blissfully unconscious of the paradoxes of -its programme. We are promised a scientific religion or a religion of -science, meaning probably a religion worthy of men of science, unmindful -of the fact that men of the highest attainments have been nurtured in -the Church in every century, and that the supernatural must always be an -indispensable element of religion. - -Now Mr. Goldwin Smith raises our expectations to a future era in which -“the morality of science” is to succeed to the hiatus or interregnum -with which we are threatened to-day, as in the fifteenth century, when -the Church was “drugged,” he says. - -In his excellent work on _Social Evolution_, Kidd accentuates the fact -that our Western civilization, the highest yet attained, has been wholly -religious and not scientific; that in intellectual capacity and -attainments we are, even now, far below the average Greek mind of -centuries ago. This civilization of ours, marvellous in spite of all its -shortcomings and blots, is founded on abnegation and self-sacrifice -which are wholly irrational, scientifically speaking. It is indeed -scientifically impossible for science to have any other morality than -the law of brute force and the survival of the strongest, whether it be -on the battlefield, the mart, or on ’change. The law of supply and -demand is a corollary of this law. - -Complacency for the weak and the lowly, that characterized Christianity -from the beginning, and found expression in the legend of the Holy -Grail, is all folly, the sublime folly of the Cross. The equality and -brotherhood of man is also part of this “foolishness,” so repulsive to -the cultured Greek mind. Nay, all our much-vaunted “free institutions” -have grown out of this mustard seed, to which our Lord compared His -kingdom on earth. “When the tree falls the shadow will depart,” as -Tennyson wrote in another connexion. Nothing will be left to our poor -science-ridden humanity but the cruel glare of human egoisms, passions, -and ambitions. - -In one of those sonorous paradoxes which his soul loved, J. J. Rousseau -assures us that “all men are born free, and everywhere they are in -chains.” That all men are born free is as false as that all men are born -upright and virtuous. History and experience give the lie to both -assertions. It is an incontrovertible fact that before Christ slavery -was the normal status of the masses in every age and clime, and Lucanus -only expressed an universally accepted axiom when he cynically declared -that the human race only existed for a few: _Humanum paucis vivit -genus_. - -The doom of slavery was sealed when Peter began his memorable discourse, -saying “Men and brethren” to circumcised and uncircumcised alike. On -that day the Church began her mission of liberation by subjugation to -the Christian law. - -But so ancient and deeply-rooted an institution as slavery could not -wisely nor safely be felled suddenly. It was not till 1167 that Pope -Alexander III published the charter of Christian liberty. “This law -alone,” writes Voltaire (_Essai sur les mœurs_, chap. LXXXIII), -“should render his memory precious to all people, as his efforts on -behalf of liberty for Italy should endear him to Italians.” - -Wherever Christianity permeates, even in an emaciated form, slavery must -disappear, and wherever Christianity has not penetrated slavery is and -always will be a standing institution, with its concomitant degradation -of women. - -Another proposition, a corollary of the first, is equally true. If, and -when, and where Christianity disappears, liberty, which is bound up with -and inseparable from the Christian law, will also diminish and -disappear, _tantum quantum_. - -The world, in my opinion, has never adequately laid to heart the -terrible lessons taught by the French Revolution. They are not laid bare -in their naked hideousness. The glamour of those much-violated -principles of 1789, and the catchwords of liberty, equality, and -fraternity are used to cover up the dire significance of that event. In -a moment of wild delirium, the most illustrious of nations allowed its -government to pass into the hands of a band of atheists prepared by -Voltaire and his ilk. Christianity was solemnly abjured in the name of -the whole nation, and the worship of Reason inaugurated with all the -paraphernalia of ritual and the pomp of worship. What was the immediate -result? In the twinkling of an eye all liberty vanished. Terror reigned -supreme. The most sacred rights of the individual were proscribed. Men -could no longer call their lives their own under the law of _Suspects_. -From my window at Lyons, I could see the monument to the victims of -1793. This city had at first submitted to the Revolutionary government, -but the Lyonnais revolted when they found themselves deprived of civil -and municipal liberties they had enjoyed under the most despotic kings. -Lyons was besieged by those singular champions of liberty who, according -to Macaulay, “crowded into a few months more crimes than had been -committed by the French kings in as many centuries.” - -Lyons succumbed after a gallant resistance of ten months. This quarter, -where stands the monument to the victims, was then swampy ground, and it -was literally soaked that year, not with the overflow of the Rhône, but -with human gore. On the beautiful Place Bellecour two guillotines -functioned day and night, but they were inadequate to the bloody task, -and the citizens were mown down in batches on the Place des Jacobins. -The successors of these Freemason Jacobins control the destinies of -France to-day, by means of a Socialist parliamentary majority, obtained -by the means I described in a previous article. They lost no time in -ostracising tens of thousands of France’s noblest sons and daughters, -who may not live as they see fit, nor exercise a profession which is -open to all by law. The law Falloux of 1852 confers on all citizens duly -qualified the right to teach or open schools, and it is still -unrepealed. Millions of parents are deprived of the right to educate -their children as they see fit in their native land. Exile is the price -of liberty. This is the beginning of that diminution of liberty which -must always accompany the elimination of the Christian principle on -which our civilization reposes. - -With stupendous cynicism Waldeck Rousseau calls the Associations Bill a -“law of liberty and of appeasement.” One or two passages will exemplify -the character of this infamous Act. - - ART. I - - All associations can be formed freely and without authorization. - - ART. XIII - - No religious association can be formed without authorization given - by a law which will determine how it is to function. - -One of M. Waldeck Rousseau’s henchmen stated the truth squarely, a few -days ago, when he said “the enemy is God,” improving on Gambetta’s -maxim, “Le clericalisme voilà l’ennemi.” - -Already there are symptoms that the Premier is being carried away by his -Socialist advance guard. When they now demand the suppression of the -Concordat he no longer protests as earnestly as he did, affirming his -devotion to the secular clergy, whose interests, he used to declare, -were the main object of the Trouillot or Associations Bill. - -The trial of Comte Lur Saluce by a so-called “High Court,” composed of -senators, was a most peculiar episode. Accused of plotting to restore -the monarchy, his defence was one long, incisive, itemized arraignment -of the Third Republic and all its works and ways. His judges listened -with much interest, fascinated, no doubt, by the truth of his -statements, after which they found him guilty with extenuating -circumstances--a tacit admission apparently that his enmity to the Third -Republic was justified. Meanwhile, poor France is threatened with all -the horrors of another revolution, if the same elements compose the next -parliament, as they most certainly will, if opposition candidates are -not even allowed to hold meetings unmolested, as at Toulouse and Lyons -recently. - -Religious liberty has however found a new home in a most unexpected -quarter, none other than the realm of the Grand Llama of Tibet, who is -sending a special embassy to the Czar. The latter may follow the good -example and proclaim religious liberty in all the Russias, at the same -time as the Calendar reforms which are being prepared. The two questions -are not as irrelevant to each other as one might suppose at first -sight. - - - - -INCONSISTENT JACOBINISM - - -_11th November, 1901._ - -In 1894, 1895, and 1896 I contributed several papers on the Eastern -Question to the _Progress_. At that time public opinion was much excited -and indignant over the massacres in Armenia, but none of the Powers who -signed the Berlin Treaty thought fit to interfere. Massacres on a small -scale were renewed from time to time, and a few months ago they reached -considerable proportions; but nothing was done to punish the culprits, -or to protect the victims of Turkish barbarity. - -This week a mild surprise has been caused by the sending of the French -fleet to Turkish waters. The callous lethargy, which a sense of duty, a -chivalrous sympathy with the weak and the oppressed, could not dispel, -has yielded to a financial exigency. Two naturalized citizens are -creditors of the Sultan for a large sum. It is true they have been -receiving most usurious interest these last fifteen years, but now -Lorando and Turbini wish to recover their capital; and lo! the might of -France is put forth on their behalf! It is said that M. Waldeck -Rousseau, the Premier, is professionally interested in the matter, and -will receive a fee even bigger than the one he earned when he saved his -clients in the Panama scandal, who are now in the seats of the mighty. -The long-suffering French taxpayer will grudgingly pay the expenses of -this naval demonstration, and the Porte will promptly pay up in order to -be rid of his unwelcome visitors. But France does not mean to be a -simple collector for MM. Lorando and Turbini. - -The elections of 1902 are at hand, and the semi-Jacobins in power are -anxious to obtain the suffrages of the better element, and not be -entirely carried away captive by their Socialist and ultra-Jacobin -supporters, through whom they have seized the reins of government. - -The Crimean war, as I have shown in _Slav and Moslem_, was partly -brought about by a similar preoccupation on the part of Napoleon III, -who had just made himself emperor by an infamous _coup d’état_. -Voltairean France had allowed her protectorate over the Eastern -Christians to fall into desuetude, and Russia supplanted her. But when -the latter exercised her treaty-acquired rights, France and England -combined against her. - -To-day with impudent inconsistency the Third Republic, which has done -its utmost, these thirty years, to dechristianize France, sees fit to -exact from the Porte that French religious schools be allowed to -multiply freely, and that its protectorate over Eastern Christians be -distinctly recognized. - -What is more, the Republic demands that the Catholic University of -Beyruth deliver diplomas entitling the recipients to practise medicine -in all parts of the Turkish empire. Now, considering that the Third -Republic has just made a most iniquitous law against religious -congregations, depriving French parents of the means of educating their -children in accordance with their faith, it is a grotesque incongruity -that the Turks should be compelled to harbour these congregations and -their schools, which are being closed in France with a latent view to -establishing a Government monopoly of education. - -This university of Beirut, and practically all the French schools and -hospitals in Turkey, are under the direction of Jesuits, Dominicans, -Assumptionists, etc., and they are of great importance to French -influence, as they implant this language and the love of a nation that -has such admirable sons and daughters. - -I have no doubt that railroad concessions will also be demanded, and -that all details were discussed during the Czar’s recent visit to Paris. -Russia is using France to checkmate Germany in her Bagdad railway -scheme, and to undermine her influence with the Sultan. - -The deaths of Abdul Hamid and the Emperor of Austria may at any moment -precipitate the European crisis which all expect and fear. - -Meanwhile, neither China nor the Moslems have said their last word. In -the heart of China, Tung-fu-Siang and Prince Tuan may, even now, be -engaged in founding a new Mohammedan power. A China galvanized by that -dangerous vitality of Islam would mean the extinction of Europe in -China. And if any great Moslem chief should succeed in combining the -interests of the faithful in Africa and Turkey, the European nations may -all look to their laurels. - -The self-conceit and self-complacency of the white races are simply -immense. This self-complacency is unparalleled, except perhaps by that -which distinguished the Jewish people. Because Providence had chosen -them for the accomplishment of certain designs which were to embrace the -whole human race in their ultimate scope, the Hebrews flattered -themselves that the Gentiles only existed for their benefit, as the -yellows, browns, and blacks do for us to-day. When the chosen people had -filled their cup of iniquity, heedless of that last pathetic appeal, -“Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” etc., there came that terrible siege (A.D. 70) -which made them henceforth a people without an altar, without a country. - -Another proud empire arose, intoxicated with material and military -greatness, and we all know how the barbarians, our forefathers, -overthrew the mighty empire of the Cæsars. - -We, their descendants, flatter ourselves that because we wield the -sceptre of civilization and science, we do so in virtue of some inherent -race-qualities, and that our candlestick can never be moved, whatever -may have happened to the rushlights of antiquity. But if we have been -in the vanguard of civilization and science since many centuries, it is -merely because we were Christendom. To-day Protestantism has devoured, -one by one, all the vital truths of Christianity, till it is strictly -true to say of many so-called Christian peoples and individuals, “Thou -hast a name”--for Christian beliefs with their practical sides have been -almost eliminated. - -When the apostasy of the governments of Christian peoples shall have -been consummated, when unlimited divorce, which is successive polygamy, -shall be generalized; when monogamy shall vanish from our codes, which -forms, with freedom from slavery, the line of demarcation between -Western and Eastern civilization--then indeed shall we be ready for the -burning. - -The modern barbarians are at our gates, nay, in our midst. Godless -education and the peculiar political methods of unscrupulous, educated -proletariat are rapidly preparing what may be termed government by -anarchy. - -Yesterday I spent a few hours at Nice, and was waiting for a tramway to -return home, when a youth of about fifteen, with a candid, ingenuous -countenance, waved his newspapers just out with the cry: “Voilà la lutte -sociale. Buy _La lutte sociale_.” I took the extended copy, asking the -youth if he believed in the _lutte sociale_. - -“Oh yes, of course I do,” he replied with a most convinced air. - -“What is this _lutte sociale_?” I inquired. This he “did not know.” - -Glancing through the leading article, I read a virulent denunciation of -the clergy, and a most contemptuous diatribe against the masses, _à la -Voltaire_. “They [the masses] are formed of vicious, ignorant, covetous -individuals.... What writers call ‘the soul’ of the multitude is in -general nothing but an immense horrible cry of wild beasts, an -accumulation of the lowest instincts of the human brute ... they do not -reason, they howl and they strike.” - -It is these masses that unscrupulous politicians and secret societies -are preparing to hurl against organized society as in 1789, after having -destroyed in them from infancy all reverence for God or man: _Ni Dieu ni -maître_--neither God nor master. - -In self-defence, society will be compelled to restore Christianity, or -slavery--or perish. - - - - -UNAUTHORIZED CONGREGATIONS - - -_25th April, 1902._ - -I hesitate to write anything more on religious conditions at the present -time, because I shall have to repeat what I have written in these -columns since two years. My worst previsions have been realized. The -Budget of Cults which I had hoped would be thrown as another sop to -Cerberus, has been voted by a compact Ministerial majority. - -If the clergy of France, with the Holy See, do not themselves reject all -connexion with a distinctly pagan government, and hold their own as the -Church did in the first three centuries, I fear this fair land may -revive the experiences of the Byzantine or Bas Empire, as it is aptly -called, for there is a distinct determination to enslave or to destroy -the Church. - -The French are an optimistic people. From year to year they keep -repeating that matters will soon improve, that the next elections will -make everything right and restore liberty. - -France’s great misfortune is, I repeat, that respectable people will -not, as a rule, touch politics, or soon give them up in disgust, while -denaturalized Frenchmen and naturalized foreigners do nothing else for a -living. - -In 418 the Emperor Honorius wished to establish a representative -government in Southern Gaul. “But,” writes Guizot, “no one would send -representatives, no one would go to Arles.” This same state of mind is -working the ruin of France to-day. - -On March 17th, 1900, I wrote: “Thus the bad element captures the votes -of the labouring masses by the circulation of vile newspapers and -brilliant promises of the Social Utopia that is coming. Consequently -both Houses are packed with this element, whose war cry is _Vive la -Sociale_, and whose emblem is the red flag of anarchy which was waved -under the very nose of President Loubet at a recent Republican fête. -With a parliament and a ministry like this any legislation is possible. -If other means fail, all the Congregations engaged in teaching will be -suppressed.... But Waldeck Rousseau is no fool,” I added. “He and his -Freemason employers know that there are some thirty odd millions of -French Catholics.... The Government cannot afford to rouse them from -their political lethargy by violent measures.... Religious liberty must -be destroyed by degrees.” - -Two years have elapsed since the notorious Associations or Trouillot -Bill has been passed; and the law Falloux (1850), which guarantees -liberty of teaching, may already be considered as abrogated in favour of -a state monopoly of education. - -Never since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), strongly -reproved by Pope Innocent, has so great a blow been dealt at liberty of -conscience and the rights of free citizens. The pendulum of progress has -been set back at least two hundred years; nay, we witness an odious -reversion to Lacedæmonian state tyranny. And this crime against liberty, -this liberticide, is committed in the twentieth century, amid the -plaudits of all sectarian haters of the Catholic Church, and in a -country which unceasingly flaunts its catchwords of “Liberty, Equality, -Fraternity.” - -The general elections of May, 1902, will not, I fear, modify the -situation. I doubt, indeed, if any efforts, however earnest and -well-concerted, could now retrieve the political situation. - -Waldeck Rousseau, whose wily effrontery is something more than human, -knows this, and begins to throw off his mask of Liberalism. - -His recent political speech in the mining centres near Lyons was bold -enough, judging by a stenographic report, for the _Officiel_ and _Havas_ -toned it down somewhat. - -He gave it to be understood that only those congregations who relieved -the State in caring for the maimed, the halt, the blind, and the insane -were to be tolerated. In other words, the souls of her children are to -become the prey of a pagan State, but their diseased bodies are to be -left to the care of the Church! - -Eight Jesuits are being prosecuted for preaching Advent sermons, though -they have closed their establishments and dispersed. The proper course, -apparently, would be to arraign the bishops and curés who had invited -these Jesuits to occupy their pulpits. Waldeck Rousseau is too wily for -that. His policy is to make a fine distinction between the secular and -regular clergy--to divide and conquer. - -Three other Jesuits, who profess theology at the Institut Catholique, -obtained from Rome dispensation of their vows, in order to be able to -retain their chairs at the Institut. They, too, are being prosecuted for -alleged violation of the Associations Bill. - -I think the situation is clear, and that if any Catholics here or -elsewhere still misapprehend the true purport and scope of this law of -1901, their purblindness is no longer admissible. - - - - -A COMBES COUP _DE MAIN_ - - -_23rd August, 1902._ - -The elections of May, 1902, have not improved the situation in France. -No efforts, as I said, however earnest, could now retrieve the political -situation. For twenty-five years the “Grand Orient” has been gathering -into its hands all the threads of power; ministers, presidents, cabinets -are made, unmade, remade, as it suits the well-conceived plans of this -band of sectarian Jacobins, who differ from other Freemasons in that -with them God is both non-existent and _l’ennemi_ to be vanquished, -while at the same time they are strictly a political organization, whose -object is to control the country and conform it to their own image. - -The Associations Bill, or to speak more accurately, the law against all -Christian education, was decreed by the lodges in 1877. An abortive -attempt was made to carry it through in 1880. That attempt was -premature, because the “Grand Orient” had not yet gained complete -control over the judiciary. To-day very nearly every part of the -administration is in their power. - -People wondered why Waldeck Rousseau resigned immediately after the -elections, which seemed a tribute to the success of his administration. -The reason of this shuffling of the cards is evident. It had been -resolved, as soon as the elections were assured, to make a _coup de -main_, and close, summarily, 3000 primary schools, frequented by -hundreds of thousands of children of the poorer classes, and this a few -weeks before the holidays, without the slightest regard to the fact that -state lay schools were already inadequate, while in many places there -were none but congregational schools. - -Now Waldeck Rousseau, speaking for the Government, had most formally -declared that these schools were in no wise affected by the law of 1901 -(Associations Bill), and continued to be regulated by the law of 1885 on -primary education. It was by making this solemn declaration that Waldeck -Rousseau obtained votes enough to carry Art. XIII of the Associations -Bill, which is now being flagrantly violated by the closing of these -3000 primary schools. - -Many of these schools were conducted by a few Sisters in buildings owned -by private individuals, and the sealing up of these premises was a -distinct violation of property rights. In one instance, the proprietor -resorted to the use of a ladder to go in and out of his house; in -another the local tribunal removed the seals and restored the house to -the owner; but the Government had the premises sealed again. I cannot -say who had the last word, but it is certain that there is open -conflict between the judiciary and the executive. The tribunals have not -yet been sufficiently _épurés_, nor the magistrates sufficiently -_domestiqués_. It is consoling to think that there are still a few -magistrates in France who have not “bowed the kneel to Baal, nor kissed -his image.” - -But a complete _épuration_ of the army and of the judiciary is going on. -All the “suspects” are being displaced, from the humblest _garde -champêtre_ to the highest prefect and magistrate. It will then be smooth -sailing for the coalition in power. - -The _coup de main_ against the primary schools having been resolved -upon, it is easy to understand how desirable it was that Waldeck -Rousseau should not be on the Ministerial bench to undergo -interpellations and eat his own words. A quondam Seminarist was put in -his place, and bore the brunt of the interpellations. He contented -himself with saying that “M. Waldeck Rousseau had made a -mistake”--_voilà tout!_ The Left meanwhile came to his assistance by -banging their desks and vociferating against the deputies of the Right -and Centre. A free fight was taking place in the hemicycle, when M. -Combes produced the decree, closing the session, and so ended this -disgraceful scene at two o’clock in the morning. - -Of course it is pretended by Ministerialists that all these primary -schools of the poor were closed in virtue of Art. XIII of the law of -1901. This is absolutely false. Jules Laroche, a Liberal who cannot -even be suspected of “clericalism,” in his public letter, announcing to -M. Combes an interpellation, expressed himself as follows, quoting M. -Waldeck Rousseau’s own words, consigned in the _Officiel_ of March 19th, -1901:-- - -“As to the right to open private schools, the Chamber knows that this is -regulated by a special law; a simple declaration is enough, the school -is then under the State Inspector. Art. XIII [Associations Bill] has -absolutely nothing to do with the legislation on education, and the new -law does not touch it at all.” - -“Thus spoke Waldeck Rousseau,” continues M. Laroche. “It was on this -formal, categoric, and solemn declaration that we voted Art. XIII. You, -M. le President [Combes], are not applying Art. XIII. You are violating -it, you are transforming the law of 1901 into a trap, and the loyal and -categorical declaration of M. Waldeck Rousseau into the act of a -traitor” (_en œuvre de trahison_). - -This is enough for any one who cares to know the truth. It is thus that -the French people are fooled and led on, step by step, to their -destruction. - -Nevertheless, many admirers of these sectarian persecutors prefer to -believe that all these primary schools and infant asylums were closed -because they refused to comply with the Associations Bill! Many of these -teachers belonged to amply authorized Congregations. Those of Savoy and -the county of Nice had letters patent from the King of Savoy and -Piedmont, and the treaty of annexation to France, 1860, distinctly -stipulated that the religious congregations and ecclesiastical -properties should never be molested; it was one of the conditions on -which the inhabitants consented to be annexed. Of all this the Third -Republic makes litter. - -The amusing part of M. Combes’ _coup de main_ is that his minions even -went around expelling small groups of three to five sisters employed by -the Government in the infirmaries of State Lyceums! In these instances, -however, they neglected to seal up the premises, as they did in the case -of private owners--a fine Jacobin distinction between _mine_ and -_thine_. - -The Socialist Mayor of Reims recently took upon himself to laicize the -civil hospital, which, strange to say, had been served uninterruptedly -for two hundred years by a congregation called “Sœurs de l’hôpital,” -whom even the Revolutionists of 1793 had spared. - -Ministerial organs like the _Matin_ are now busy assuring the public -that the sick, the blind, the insane, are not all to be cast into the -streets like the children of the poor, until the Government finds time -and money to build schools for them. - -If the Congregations devoted to the sick, the maimed, and the blind -could make common cause with the teaching Congregations, if all refused -to demand authorization, which is merely a trap and a noose, the -Government, I think, would be checkmated. But, of course, Christian -charity will not allow them all to go on strike and throw their poor and -sick and halt upon the hands of the Government. It will be their turn -soon, and meanwhile they are holding the clothes of those who stone -Stephen. No concessions, no pliancy on the part of the persecuted, will -disarm or arrest the Government--the “Grand Orient,” I mean. - -The final purpose of these Freemasons is to crush out Christianity by -means of anti-religious education of all classes, and have, if possible, -a national, Republican institution, to be known as the Church of France. -It is said that M. Combes is preparing a formula of the oath to be taken -by the clergy of this institution; it is a revival of the Civil -Constitution of the Clergy of 1793, and we may also look for a renewal -of the persecution of the _non-assermentés_ or non-jurors of that epoch. - -Decidedly these modern Jacobins have no imagination; all their -proceedings have a twang of ancient history. Read in Taine’s _Ancien -Régime_, “_La conquête Jacobine_,” and it will seem like current -history. You will read how prefects and maires and gens d’armes often -knocked in the dead of night at the doors of peaceful sisters and -ordered them to disperse. At Avignon, recently, the police had to -barricade the streets to prevent thousands of indignant men and women -from manifesting before the Prefecture. Lyons is preparing to resist. -The speech pronounced by the Socialist mayor, M. Augagneur, at the -political banquet on 14th July, would certainly warrant retaliation. - -After the usual stereotyped glorification of that disgraceful -performance known as _La Prise de la Bastille_, M. Augagneur said: “The -new Bastille we must take to-day is that power, far more dangerous, of -the spirit of the past incarnated in the Church, acting by its priests, -its preachers, its monks, its professors, by all its lay accomplices. It -is this Bastille we must destroy, if we do not wish to see wasted the -immense efforts of 113 years ... thus, gentlemen, I invite you to drink -to the success of the campaign being waged by the Government.” This is -clear speaking. “No greater misfortune can befall a nation,” wrote -Lecky, “than to cut itself away from its own past as France has done.” -It is this misfortune that these blinded sectarians are seeking to -consummate in hatred of the Catholic Faith, which is so bound up with -the fibres of the nation that they can only be torn out with the last -palpitating remnants of national life. - - - - -LEGALIZED DESPOTISM - - -_15th February, 1903._ - -A curious feature in the case of the doomed Congregations in France is -that more than nine hundred awards were made to them for educational -work during the Paris Exhibition of 1900. Leroy Beaulieu, who presided -over this international jury, has written several articles, and a most -scathing letter to M. Combes, on the subject of his malicious official -calumnies. He, Brunetière, Paul Bourget, and many other distinguished -Frenchmen have countersigned a Defence, presented by the Salesian -Fathers, in which not less than thirty-four misstatements made by M. -Combes are rectified. In general, it may said that all these official -statements are as unreliable as those made by the Commissioners of Henry -VIII. The Chambers were supposed by the law of 1901 to decide what -Congregations were to be granted authorization. They really were allowed -no voice in the matter. M. Combes presented only the names of four or -five, Les frères de St. Jean de Dieu and some others, who are to be -spared for the present. The remaining sixty-four were condemned without -a hearing. - -Parents of the richer classes will soon be compelled, like the poor, to -send their children to government schools, keep them at home, or send -them to foreign lands to be educated. - -The true character of the Jacobin policy is becoming every day more -apparent. - -The social body, like our own, has its periods of adolescence and -senility, its maladies and critical periods, while the axiom that -nations have the government they deserve is attested by the fact that -governments correspond to the national pathology. - -The individuals too who dominate in turbulent times are like straws on -an impetuous stream. They merely serve to show the direction of the -current and its force. - -Danton and Robespierre did not make the Revolution. It made them. A -popular fallacy exists that the Revolution ended with the fall of -Robespierre, or at any rate when Napoleon planted his artillery before -the doors of the National Assembly. It is not over yet, and the men in -power to-day are but straws on the surface. - -The French Revolution was an avatar of the revolution of the sixteenth -century, or rather one of the periodical renaissances or revolts of -Paganism against Christianity. No doubt many economical causes were at -work in 1789 and there was an urgent need for readjustment. - -The _corvéable_, or what we call to-day the taxpayer, then as now, -groaned and repined against the excessive burdens laid upon him. -Proportion guarded, it is even true to say to-day that all tradesmen, -agriculturists, and shopkeepers, all _except_ the _vendors of alcohol_, -are as much crushed by taxes now as the _corvéables_ were in 1789. - -The moving spirit, the genius and soul of the Revolution were the -Jacobin Clubs. There were organized the Civil Constitution of the -Clergy, theo-philanthropy, the worship of the prostitute as Goddess of -Reason, the _noyades_ and the _fusillades_ which made France a vast -charnel-house. - -To-day the Jacobin Clubs have changed their signboards, they are now -Lodges of the Grand Orient. But the spirit is unchanged. The ideal is -always the same--the destruction of all revealed religion, and with it -the noblest fruit of Christianity, Liberty. - -The Jacobin mind, served by organs of political administration, is to -constitute the Omnipotent and Infallible State, the golden image before -which all must bow down and worship and sacrifice--for is not sacrifice -the soul of worship? They must sacrifice all preconceived, congenital, -and inherited notions of honour, morality, and religion, and acquiesce -humbly in those edicted by the Omnipotent Infallible State; for _de -facto_ infallibility is always a concomitant of supremacy. A necessary -corollary of moral unity, established by an omnipotent State, is an -evening up of social and financial conditions. No man may possess more -learning, more wealth, or more prestige than his neighbour. Thus after -having preluded by the assault on personal liberty, depriving thousands -of men and women of the right to live in communities, the Jacobin -Omnipotent State is itself to constitute one vast Congregation in which -all, _nolens volens_, must live and practise _Poverty_ by submitting to -fiscal confiscations for the laudable purpose of equalizing fortunes, -_Chastity_ or unchastity according to new Government formulæ regarding -divorce and free love, etc., with a view to procreation under -governmental supervision, and above all _Obedience perinde ut -cadaver_--Obedience to the Omnipotent Infallible State, henceforth the -only regulator of their own and their children’s morality. - -Since twenty-five years every law, every constitutional and electoral -manipulation, has been elaborated at the lodges. To-day sixteen -Commissions composed of their most trusted members are masticating the -execution of the Associations Bill, or rather the wholesale executions -of this _guillotine sèche_ which are imminent. No congregation of men -engaged in preaching or teaching is to be tolerated, or its members -allowed to exercise these functions even individually. The same rule -will be applied to the congregations of women. Those engaged in primary -schools have nearly all been dispersed by decree, and in violation of -the law, as I have shown. The suppression of those who teach the -children of the rich is only a question of a short lapse of time. - -The rulings of these Commissions will be presented to the Chambers, and -the “bloc” will vote as one man. It is an admirable means of eliminating -all useless discussion on the part of the opposition minority, which -every day grows lesser, and still more less, and will soon reach the -vanishing point. Thus after being governed by decrees and ministerial -circulars, France will be governed by Commissions as under the -Constituante, and the ideal of the Omnipotent State, universal teacher, -preacher, and general purveyor, may be realized ere long. Surely a -strange outcome of a century of Liberalism! - -From whatever point of view we consider the suppression of all religious -Congregations and of educational liberty, we must admit that a grave -violation of personal and civil liberty has been committed and will soon -be consummated. - -The Moslems for a long time levied on the Spaniards and the Venetians a -tax of so many boys and girls a year, but no Government of a free people -has yet called on all parents to stand and deliver, not their purse, but -the souls of their children, that it may sow therein the tares of a -hideous state materialism. The right free citizens have to follow their -inclination and conscience by living in community and practising the -counsels of evangelical perfection to which they feel called is a most -sacred part of personal liberty. - -“Liberalism,” writes Taine, “is the respect of others. If the State -exists, it is to prevent all intrusion into the private life, the -beliefs, the conscience, the property of the individual. When the State -does this, it is the greatest of benefactors. When it commits these -intrusions itself, it is the greatest of malefactors.” - -Curiously similar was the judgment of an old Spanish peasant with whom -Montalembert conversed during his travels in Spain after one of its -nineteenth-century anti-clerical revolutions and the usual -accompaniment, the suppression of religious Congregations. Pointing with -her bare and scraggy arm to some deserted monastery buildings, she -pronounced these two eloquent words, “_Suma tyrania_,” acme of tyranny! - - - - -DESPOTISM PLUS GUILE - - -_6th June, 1903._ - -The true character and scope of the Associations Bill can no longer be -dissimulated. It should have been labelled “An Act for the suppression -of religious congregations and Christian education preparatory to the -suppression of Catholicism in France.” - -Nor is this all. It looks as if this Trouillot or Associations Bill, -with its numerous articles, was merely a vulgar trap set by the -Government to extract from the doomed unauthorized Congregations -accurate information regarding their property and members, in order to -seize the former and see to it that the latter are for ever debarred -from teaching. These inventories were a necessary part of all demands -for authorization, without which no Congregation could henceforth exist. -I say “seize,” for every one knows that “liquidation” means purely and -simply spoliation and confiscation. - -I have in previous articles dwelt on the bad faith of the Combes -ministry in closing by simple decree some three thousand free parochial -schools, in spite of the solemn assurance given by M. Waldeck Rousseau, -on behalf of the State, that these schools were in no wise affected by -the new law of 1901 (Associations Bill). At the last session of the -Chambers a more monstrous illegality was committed. - -“Both the letter and the spirit of the law of 1901 were violated.” These -are the words pronounced at Bordeaux recently by M. Decrais, an -ex-minister, who was thereupon elected senator by an imposing majority. - -The law distinctly provided that the demand for authorization of each -religious order be submitted to the vote of the Chambers, but M. Combes -just bunched them all into three categories--preaching, teaching, -contemplative--and they were sent to execution by cartloads, like the -victims of 1793. - -In vain the Right protested against the illegality of this proceeding. -“What do we care for legality? We have the majority,” were some of the -cynical utterances of the Left, who banged their desks, stamped their -feet, and vociferated to drown the voices of speakers of the Right. -Worst of all, M. Combes produced, and used with much effect, a document -purporting to bear the signature of many Superiors of Congregations, -urging all to sell out their government bonds. - -In vain the Right demanded that the authenticity of this document be -proven before taking the final vote. This act of M. Combes speaks for -itself. - -The wholesale suppression of all preaching and teaching orders is, -moreover, a distinct violation of Art. I of the Concordat, which is an -organic law of the French State. This article provides, “that the -Catholic religion shall be freely exercised in France.” - -The allegation that this Concordat does not mention religious -Congregations is a mere quibble. - -“No church,” declares Guizot, “is free that may not develop according to -its genius and history,” and every one knows that preaching and teaching -Congregations have always formed an integral part of the Catholic -Church, her most important organs of expansion in fact. - -This wholesale suppression of preaching and teaching Congregations is a -violation not only of the law of 1901 and of the Concordat, but also of -the law Falloux, 1850, which entitles all persons duly qualified to -teach and open schools. It was then that the great preacher and teacher, -the Dominican Lacordaire, speaking in the Chambers as deputy, pointed to -his white robe, exclaiming, “I am a liberty.” - -The Charter of 1830 (under the _Monarchie de Juillet_, as the reign of -Louis Philippe of Orleans was called) conferred this liberty, in theory; -but it remained ineffective until the law Falloux finally abolished the -state monopoly of education, which Napoleon had centred in the -University of Paris. - -But the Third Republic brushes aside Art. I of the Concordat, the loi -Falloux, 1850, the scholar laws of 1885, and its own new-fledged law of -1901, all with the utmost unconcern. - -“What do we care for liberty,” as the Left cynically exclaimed. Quite as -little as they care for the wishes of the whole country, expressed by -innumerable petitions, and the votes of 1500 Municipal Councils of -Communes, whom the Government condescended to consult. One thousand and -seventy-five of these voted for the Congregations; about four hundred -voted against them; the others abstained. The attitude of the people in -every place where Congregations were dispersed, with the aid of the -regular army and the police, leaves not the slightest doubt that if a -referendum had been taken as in Switzerland, more than two-thirds of the -nation would have voted for Liberty and the Congregations. - -With the astute hypocrisy that characterizes him, Waldeck Rousseau -professed intense devotion to the secular clergy and declared that the -law of 1901 (Associations Bill) was devised to protect them from the -encroachments of the regular clergy or monks. He thought to divide and -conquer. Now that seventy-two bishops have sent a combined petition to -Parliament on behalf of the Congregations, and the whole secular clergy -have openly identified their cause with that of the Congregations, this -ministerial fiction can no longer be upheld. - -The Left or “bloc” are clamouring already for the suppression of the -secular or parochial clergy, who they say “are all in connivance with -the Congréganists.” - -M. Combes has sent a circular to the bishops requiring that all churches -and chapels _non concordataires_ be closed, and threatening to close -even the parish churches which existed already in 1808, if any member of -a dispersed Congregation preached in it. - -Only four bishops, I am happy to say, “had the courage to submit,” to -use the words of a ministerial organ. - -The language in which the French prelates have expressed their _non -possumus_ is worthy of the best traditions of the Church, and when these -sectarian persecutors shall have completely thrown off the mask, another -glorious page will be added to her history, I trust. - -Jealous, no doubt, of M. Trouillot’s laurels, M. de Pressensé, son of a -Protestant pastor, and some others have attached their names to projects -of law for what is mendaciously and hypocritically called “the -Separation of Church and State,” meaning a law for the complete -shackling of the Church in France in view to its suppression. - -I think it is very desirable that the lodges should do their worst here -and now. But it is just possible that Waldeck Rousseau may return and a -halt be called. - -M. Combes and _his employers_ the “Grand Orient” must see that they -have gone a little too far. Civil war on a small scale has been raging -on many points of France for two or three weeks; and they would be -running blood if French Catholics carried concealed weapons as people do -in South Carolina and Kentucky. As it is, there have only been -innumerable broken limbs and heads and no end of arrests. M. de Dion, a -deputy wearing his insignia of office, which offered him no immunity, -appeared handcuffed before the police court, and was there and then -condemned to three days’ imprisonment for “manifesting.” A young lady of -twenty was condemned to eight days’ imprisonment for having cried -“Capon” to a justice of the peace, who beat a hasty retreat when he -found himself confronted by a few hundred men in the hall of a convent -into which he had forced an entrance with the aid of state locksmiths, -or _crocheteurs_. Here on my boulevard, Cimiez Nice, two squadrons of -cavalry and numerous infantry were called out to aid the police at 4 -a.m. in beating back the crowds who were “manifesting” against the -expulsion of the Franciscans. At Marseilles, Avignon, etc., the main -streets had to be barricaded, and cavalry charged the crowds, wounding -great numbers. Of course all these grand manifestations of popular -indignation are carefully belittled or suppressed by foreign -correspondents of English and American papers. In the _Evening Post_, -August 25th, M. Othon Guerlac, with lofty affectation of impartiality, -echoes all the commonplaces of ministerial calumnies against the -Congregations, but he has not one word to say about the monstrous -illegalities committed by the Government from first to last. - -The indignant protestations of the foreign colony have suspended for a -time the closing of churches and convents on this Riviera. - -The Ministerials have not even the courage to do evil logically and -consistently, with equal injustice to all. - -Two years ago Waldeck Rousseau, in his famous political speech at -Toulouse, declared religious vows to be contrary to public law; and in -the same breath he introduced the law of 1901, inviting all -Congregations to apply for authorization. His colleague, M. Brisson, at -the session in which fifty-four Congregations of men were executed _in -globo_, loftily declared “that the Republic would never put its -signature to an act alienating human liberty.” And at that very moment, -three or four of these Congregations were nestling, securely, under the -protecting wing of M. Combes. That of St. Jean de Dieu has a first-rate -establishment for men in need of surgical treatment, similar to the one -conducted by Augustine nuns, at which Madame Waldeck Rousseau was -operated on recently. None of these will be interfered with, no matter -how heinous their vows may be. - -It would be foolish, I repeat, for Catholics to rejoice at the possible -return of Waldeck Rousseau, or at any _machine en arrière_ policy. - -M. Combes has been hired to do an odious job, when it is done he, too, -will retire or fall. But the well-matured plans of the Grand Orient will -be carried out with long-drawn, unrelenting, satanic astuteness. This is -the peril I noted in my first article from France, March 17th, 1900. - - - - -UNCHANGING JACOBINISM - - -_6th May, 1903._ - -Last August I described the true spirit and scope of the Associations -Bill, as it is called, and which many supposed was a mere matter of -domestic economy. It should have been called an act for the suppression -of all religious associations preparatory to the elimination of -Christianity in France. _L’ennemi c’est Dieu._ It is evident to-day that -the law of 1901 was a mere trap set by the Government to obtain from the -Congregations accurate information regarding their pecuniary resources, -in order to seize their property (for the term “liquidation” is only an -euphemism); and regarding their members, so that they may be marked men -and women, for ever debarred from preaching or teaching. The law -required that demands for authorization of each religious order or -association be submitted to the Chambers. M. Combes just bunched them -all into three categories: preaching, teaching, and contemplative. At -the request of the Government, the majority or “bloc” then sent them to -execution by cartloads, as in 1793. Then the categories were labelled -royalists, _emigrés_, and Catholic priests. - -It is much to the credit of these fifty-four Congregations of men that -their lives were so free from reproach that _three_ times the Government -had recourse to the same incident of a certain Superior, said to have -been condemned to hard labour in the year 1868! As another instance, the -case of the Frère Duvain was alleged. Like the Frère Flamidien, the -former had been recently arrested and imprisoned on false charges. For -since then, only a week or so ago, Frère Duvain too was acquitted as -wholly innocent! - -These wholesale executions have been committed not only illegally, but -in spite of the fact that out of 1600 municipal councils consulted on -the subject, 1200 voted for the maintenance of the Congregations. About -100 abstained, and the others voted against. The prefects, being mere -satraps of the Government, were nearly all opposed to the Congregations. - -The Government has been profuse in its protestations that its object in -suppressing the religious Congregations was to protect the secular -clergy against their encroachments. But since seventy-two bishops signed -a petition to the Chambers on behalf of the Congregations, and are daily -raising their voices to denounce the tyranny which has ostracized them, -this mask also falls. The right to preach and to teach are corollaries -of the right of free speech and free thinking. All liberties, indeed, -are inseparably connected, and must stand or fall together. - -Meanwhile the loi Falloux, 1850, is still extant; nevertheless -thousands of citizens are placed _hors la loi_, because they live and -dress in a certain way. - -The Concordat, a solemn pact and contract between the Holy See and the -French Government in 1801, is still supposed to be in vigour, and one of -its most important clauses provides for the “free exercise of the -Catholic religion in France,” and Guizot affirms that no Church is free -that may not develop and function according to its genius and -traditions. Teaching and preaching religious associations have, from the -beginning, formed an integral part of the Catholic Church. The -suppression of her schools was one of the first means resorted to by -Julian the Apostate when he undertook to restore paganism. The Third -Republic invents nothing. Its next step will be to attack the secular -clergy and establish a department of State known as the National Church, -ministered to by servile state functionaries, recruited among apostate -excommunicated priests, of whom there are always a few lying around. It -is erroneously supposed that the Catholic Church in France is an -established or state Church; that the clergy receive a salary and are -functionaries. This is absolutely false. Two decisions of the Court of -Cassation have decided that they are not functionaries. - -To understand their position we must recall that the Convention -confiscated all Church property and lands, the pious donations of kings -and people which had accumulated during fifteen centuries of national -progress and prosperity. Not satisfied with this act of spoliation, they -threw these lands on the market with the precipitation and greed that -characterize all revolutionary iconoclasts, fondly believing that the -whole nation had sloughed off Christian superstitions regarding _ipso -facto_ excommunications of all, who seized or even acquired Church -lands. They were mistaken. These holdings became a drug on the market. -From common prudence and honesty, if not from higher motives, few could -be found willing to traffic in the pious gifts and foundations of their -ancestors. Ten years of massacres, of civil and foreign wars, and -anarchy, did not improve matters. Two classes of landed proprietors, two -standards of valuation were created, and civil and religious discord was -perpetuated in this material form. When Napoleon undertook the work of -reconstruction, his first care was to restore normal conditions in the -real estate market by obtaining a clear title to the confiscated lands -of the Church. There was but one person who could give this clear title. -To him Napoleon appealed, and the Concordat was signed. - -Pius VII could not, however, relinquish all claims to the confiscated -lands without compensation. Hence the engagement entered into by the -French Government to pay in perpetuity adequate subsidies for the -maintenance of an adequate number of bishops and parochial clergy. This -was the consideration [the _do ut des_] for which the Pope, as supreme -chief of the Catholic Church, gave a clear title to the confiscated -lands. The payment of these subsidies became henceforth a charge on the -public treasury, a portion of the national debt, just like the payment -of interest on state bonds. - -The suppression, at the present moment, of these subsidies in the case -of the Bishop of Nice and many other bishops and hundreds of parish -priests is a partial repudiation of this part of the public debt. And -there is nothing to prevent the repudiation of the whole. “What do we -care for legality?” “We have the majority,” were utterances which passed -unrebuked in the Chambers recently. They can imprison and kill the Roman -Catholic clergy. The First Republic did both most freely. So did Nero -and Bismarck. It also tried the experiment of a national schismatic -Church and failed. The Third Republic openly proclaims its intention of -renewing the experiment in which Abbé Gregoire, with _carte blanche_ -from the Republic, so signally failed a hundred years ago. - -To understand the abnormal conditions prevailing in France, we must -remember that France is in revolution since a century or more. The -Revolution of 1793 was essentially a religious movement, born of the -monstrous alliance of the French ruling classes with the spirit of -libertinage and infidelity. It destroyed the monarchy and all the -institutions of the ancient regime, merely because they were associated -with the Catholic Church, whose destruction was their main object--a -means to an end. The final purpose was the destruction of Christianity -and its noblest fruit, liberty. The ideal, then as now, is the -omnipotent State, sole purveyor, teacher, and preacher. This may seem -exaggerated, but it is strictly the spirit and the tendency of the -Revolution since 1789. Napoleon was the offspring and the incarnation of -the Revolution. After Austerlitz, he threw off the mask, and clearly -showed his intention of establishing state despotism on the ruins of all -civil and religious liberty. There was but one will in Europe that -resisted him. Alone of all the sovereigns of Europe, the aged, -defenceless Sovereign Pontiff refused to enter into his continental -_blocus_ against England, declaring that all Christians were his -children, and we know the story of his long martyrdom at Fontainebleau. -Capefigue, in the third of his ten volumes on the Consulate and the -Empire, comments on the singular fact that the First Republic always -bitterly antagonized the United States, and he explains this “singular -phenomenon” by the reason that the former was a government of tyranny -and anarchy, whereas the Republic of Washington was one of law and -liberty. - -What was true then is equally so to-day. The United States owe their -independence to his most Christian Majesty, the murdered Louis XVI, and -not to any pagan French Republic. Louisiana was ceded by the Emperor -Napoleon, and not by any French Republic, first, second, or third. There -can be no sympathy between the two republics other than that of -sectarian sympathy with persecutors of the Catholic Church. I speak of -the Government, not of the French people, whose genius and high -qualities we must always admire. - -Methods have greatly altered in all departments, but the generating -principle, the inner mind of Jacobinism, is unchanged. We hear no more -about the worship of the Goddess of Reason and theo-philanthropy. -Jacobin clubs have changed their signboards; they are now called Lodges -of the “Grand Orient,” but they rule France with an iron hand by means -of the Socialist vote. When the day of reckoning comes with the -Socialist masses, who are now being used as cats’ paws, the Revolution -will again enter into one of its acute phases. Millerand and Jaurès are -merely politicians who fall into line with the Government quite -gracefully. But, as Lincoln said, you cannot fool all the people all the -time. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church will reap the benefits of -persecution. The Congregations will carry on their work elsewhere, and -she will more than recuperate her losses on this little point of earth -called France. Unhappy country that is committing “national suicide,” to -use the expression of Leroy Beaulieu. - - - - -DEATH OF WALDECK ROUSSEAU - - -_August, 1904._ - -I refer my readers to what I wrote on May 4th, 1901, regarding the -advent of the Waldeck Rousseau Cabinet, and its policy after the sudden -and suspicious death of M. Felix Faure, rapidly replaced by M. Loubet. I -then related how Socialist revolutionists were skilfully used to obtain -a majority with which both Houses were packed to carry through the -odious legislation of the last few years. - -The laws of 1901 (Associations Bill), and of July 7th, 1904, suppressing -all teaching religious orders, are measures which represent the closing -of some twenty-seven thousand Christian schools! - -Two days after the law was voted some 3000 _authorized_ institutions -were ordered to close their doors, and almost immediately was -inaugurated the long series of _liquidations_, a genteel euphemism for -wholesale spoliation of the victims, deprived of their homes, and of -their only means of earning a living, as they may no longer teach. - -There is nothing more tragically pathetic than the last appearance in -the Senate of M. Wallon. This veteran republican, called the “Father of -the Constitution,” and now a hoary octogenarian, raised his quavering -voice in one last eloquent denunciation of the laws of 1901, 1902, and -1904. Condemning the shameless violation of property rights, he boldly -applied to the Government the Article of the Code which debars the -assassin of the testator from inheriting his property. “Messieurs,” he -cried, “on n’hérite pas de ceux qu’on a assassinés.” “Gentlemen, it is -not permitted to inherit from those we have destroyed.” - -Equally tragical was the last appearance in the Senate of M. Waldeck -Rousseau, so near his last hour. - -He had risen from his bed of sickness to unburden his conscience by -protesting against the anti-clerical fury of his ci-devant supporters -and instruments. In vain he denounced the violations of his law of 1901, -travestied by that of 1904 suppressing even authorized Congregations. -The verve of the great tribune had abandoned him. His speech was but a -hollow echo of its former eloquence. Twice he reeled and was forced to -steady himself by clinging to the railing. When he rose for the second -time, to reply to the sarcasms of M. Combes, he suddenly lost the thread -of his discourse, and before he had ended, many benches were vacated; -the forum, where his words had so often been greeted with wild applause, -was almost empty. - -“He threw down the thirty pieces of silver, saying, I have sinned. And -they said, What is that to us? See thou to it. And he went forth.” - -It is needless to inquire whether the story of attempted suicide be true -or not; to-day he is no more. The last two years of his life were a long -agony, of which the last two hours were passed on the operating table. -While he was dying under the surgeon’s knife the minions of his -successor, M. Combes, were invading a convent of Notre Dame Sisters. -They even insisted on going into the infirmary to inventory beds and -blankets. A sick nun was so shaken by the emotion caused by this -unwonted intrusion, that she had a seizure and died before the minions -of the law had left the convent. - -And thus persecutor and persecuted met on the threshold of eternity. - -This sister is only one of the many hundreds of infirm and aged who have -been literally killed by this infamous legislation of 1901 and 1904, and -only one of the thousands who are dying of hardships and privations. -Many of them are living on four sous a day. - -The Government wanted to give M. Waldeck Rousseau a national funeral, -strictly pagan and masonic of course; but he had left instructions to -the contrary, and is to be buried from his parish church, Ste. -Clothilde. Whether he received the last Sacraments of the Church or not -is still a matter of conjecture. The death of Waldeck Rousseau will not -in any way affect the trend of politics. The recent municipal elections -are proclaimed a victory for the Government. As usual not one-third of -those inscribed voted. _A quoi bon?_ Before the law of 1901 was voted, -the immense majority of the municipalities consulted pronounced in -favour of the Congregations. This made no difference. - -Before the law of 1904 suppressing authorized Congregations was voted, -the Right demanded that the municipal councils be consulted again. The -Government peremptorily refused. As I have said before, nothing can -restrain Jacobin tyranny but a national cataclysm which would bring -about a violent reaction. “We have the majority, what do we care for -legality?” as the Left proclaimed recently at the Palais Bourbon. - -They have no other rule of conduct but the “fist right,” now known as -“the majority.” - - - - -LIBERTY AND STATE SERVITUDE - - -_July, 1904._ - -Modern democracy, which flatters itself that it has shaken off all the -shackles of authority, is itself but an evolution of what it so loftily -contemns. If we are free to-day, it is because our fathers have borne -the yoke of Christ. - -In one of his sonorous paradoxes, Rousseau declared that “men are born -free and everywhere they are in chains.” - -That all men are born free is as false a statement as that all men are -born upright and virtuous. History and experience give the lie to both -assertions. Men are not born free. Our rights and liberties are secured -by laws which are a circumscription of the sphere of individual -independence for the benefit of the community, and this in virtue of a -divine “thou shalt not,” written on the tablets of the heart, or on -tables of stone. Human laws have no sanction except in divine law, and -no man has a right to command his fellow-men, except within the limits -of natural and of divine law. - -The sum of liberty in every community is the sum of its amenity to law, -both divine and natural. Hence Plato’s remark that “republics cannot -exist without virtue in the people,” and Montesquieu’s assertion that -“the vital principle of democratic government is virtue.” All human laws -deriving their sanction from divine and natural laws, it follows that -liberty must diminish when these laws are violated with impunity. - -Plutarch, referring to the Golden Age, which, according to all writers, -even Voltaire, came first, writes that “in the days of Saturn all men -were free.” Our data regarding this period are not numerous, -unfortunately; but we learn from the traditions of all peoples, as well -as by revelation, that something momentous happened, which abolished the -Golden Age. Prometheus stole fire from heaven and was chained to a rock. -Sisyphus was compelled to roll a stone uphill all his days. Adam was -condemned to labour in the sweat of his brow, etc. The myths are -various, but the central idea is always the same--a crime punished by a -penalty involving the loss of liberty. - -What the nature of the act of disobedience committed by Adam when he ate -the forbidden fruit we do not know. Probably we should not understand -even if we were told; for the magnitude of a crime is always -commensurate with the intellect of the criminal, and knowledge has -considerably diminished among the sons of men. To name anything as Adam, -or whoever is thereby designated, named all the creatures in the Garden -implies that his knowledge of them was adequate, while the great trouble -with all our up-to-date science is, that back of every phenomenon, of -every fact, stands an inexorable X, an unknown quantity that baffles -research. - -If we could wrest her secret from the Sphinx in any one instance, it is -probable that the whole book of nature would stand revealed. But the -angel with the flaming sword guards the portal. - -With the passing away of the Golden Age, or “the days of Saturn, in -which all men were free,” there came a diminution of light, and above -all of liberty. What justice does in individual cases, when malefactors -are incarcerated, seems to have been accomplished on a large scale, when -the masses of a race, nay of the whole species, were reduced to slavery. -For though our data regarding the “days of Saturn when all men were -free” are scant, we do know, beyond a peradventure, that before Christ -slavery was the normal condition of the masses in every age, in every -clime; not alone among barbarous and predatory tribes, who reduced their -captives to this condition, but also among the most stable and cultured -communities--in Assyria, in Babylon, Egypt, Idumea, Rome, Greece, -everywhere. Nor was there found one sage, one legislator, to raise his -voice against an inveterate institution, which one and all deemed a -_sine quâ non_ of any society, of any government. Lucanus only expressed -an universally accepted axiom when he wrote that “the human race only -existed for a few”--_Humanum paucis vivit genus._ Towards the end of the -Republic, when Rome numbered a million and a half inhabitants, there -were only some 20,000 proprietors; all the rest were slaves. - -Sages and legislators of antiquity who considered slavery a _sine quâ -non_ of government were not wrong. Vast numbers of human wills cannot be -left in freedom without a restraint of some kind. “Christianity alone,” -writes the Rationalist Lecky, “could affect the profound change of -character which rendered the abolition of slavery possible” (_History of -Rationalism_, II, 258). - -When Peter the Fisherman proclaimed the brotherhood of man, saying “Men, -brethren” to all alike, the Church began her perennial mission of -liberty by sanctification. Individually, men must be delivered from the -yoke of evil passions by Christianity, so that the masses might be -delivered from servitude. - -The powers of darkness, that are now waging fierce warfare on the -Christian Church, understand perfectly what the legislators of antiquity -understood and practised. Being resolved to uproot Christianity and its -moral teaching, which alone have rendered freedom and government -compatible, they are casting about for some new kind of slavery, which -apparently is to take the form of State Socialism. A coterie is to -concentrate in its hands all the power, all the wealth, all the natural -resources of the country. This coterie will be named the State; the -others, the cringing, crouching millions yclept the Sovereign People, -will have nothing left but to obey the edicts of the Omnipotent -Infallible State, only teacher, preacher, and general purveyor. _Humanum -paucis vivit genus._ - -This reversion to the pagan regime from which Christianity delivered us -will be the just penalty of apostasy from Christianity. - -If, and when, and where Christianity is crushed out, liberty both civil -and personal, which are bound up with and inseparable from it, will -disappear in exact proportion _tantum quantum_. - -We need only turn a few pages of contemporary history and read the -lessons taught by the French Revolution. The most illustrious of -nations, in the zenith of its civilization, allowed the government to -pass into the hands of a band of neo-pagans prepared by Voltaire and his -ilk. Christianity was solemnly abjured; its temples were desecrated; at -Notre Dame a prostitute, posing as the Goddess of Reason, was -worshipped; on the Champ de Mars the new religion of theo-philanthropy -was inaugurated. - -What was the immediate consequence? In the twinkling of an eye all -liberty vanished. The most sacred rights of the individual were -proscribed. Men could no longer call their lives their own under the Law -of Suspects, a time to which Camille Pelletan, _ministre de la marine_, -actually referred, yesterday, as “an hour when under the influence -necessary, but somewhat enervating, of Thermidor, the Republic was in -danger.” - -Without going so far back as 1793, we have but to read the records of -the Commune in 1870, which was a phase of the Revolution that is still -marching on. One of the moving spirits of this time was Raul Ripault. M. -Clemenceau was only Mayor of Montmartre, and M. Barrère, now ambassador -at Rome, was an active member. - -To Monseigneur Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, one of the hostages taken -and shot by the Commune, Raul Ripault said, “Ta liberté n’est pas ma -liberté, aussi je te fait fusiller” (“Thy liberty is not my liberty, so -I have you shot”). - -Liberty, I repeat, is bound up with and inseparable from Christianity. -To-day, as in 1793, a coterie of atheists or neo-pagans have captured -all the avenues of power by means of godless schools and the Socialist -vote, and even by hobnobbing with the red flag of anarchy, which waved -unrebuked around M. Loubet at that famous fête called Triomphe de la -République. - -They have worked, steadily and intelligently, to this end since -twenty-five years, while two-thirds of the country have been absolutely -indifferent to politics. Some even affect to ignore the name of the -President. Laborious, honest Frenchmen as a rule despise politics, and -cannot be induced to take part in them or be candidates for office. One -has but to consult the electoral returns to see how many hundreds of -thousands abstain from voting. Thus the Government has passed into the -hands of the Judeo-Masonic coterie.[3] - -As in 1793, the first result is the diminution of liberty. It was long -sought to represent the Associations Bill (1901) as a mere measure of -domestic economy. It was the entering wedge of tyranny. The object to be -attained is the suppression of all Christian education, by the -suppression of all religious teachers, preparatory to a state monopoly -of education. - -The indignant protestations and the tumultuous manifestations of men and -women who fill the streets with cries of “Vive la liberté!” “Vivent les -sœurs!” are wholesome signs; but I think it is just as well that the -Jacobins should go on and do their worst. Overvaulting tyranny, like -ambition, doth overleap itself. At the Gare St. Lazare, recently, some -ten thousand people accompanied the expulsed sisters of St. Vincent to -the train with cries of “Liberty! Liberty!” The police were powerless. - -In another place the population unharnessed the horses of the omnibus -that was taking some other sisters to the station. They dragged the -conveyance back and broke down the doors of the convent which had been -sealed by the Government. - -In Paris at least 50,000 children of the poor have been thrown into the -streets; for the state schools were already inadequate, and 30,000 or -more children were waiting for a chance to comply with the law of -compulsory education.[4] In a mining town, a _crèche_, or infant asylum, -where 150 babies from six months to four years of age were cared for -while their mothers worked, was closed suddenly. - -When we think of all the suffering and inconvenience caused by these -executions, we are amazed that more blood has not flowed. - -The right parents have to educate their children as they see fit, and -the right all citizens have to live as they see fit, and teach when duly -qualified, are primordial, inalienable rights that cannot be violated -without crime, and a crime which must find its repercussion in all -civilized countries. In general it may be said that every Government has -a right to administer its own affairs as it sees fit. This is precisely -what the Turks assumed when they were massacring the Bulgarians and the -Armenians. But Europe thought differently in 1877. The Jacobins of 1793, -who had conquered France then, as to-day, by cleverly combined -manœuvres in which fear played a large part, also thought it was -nobody’s business, if they saw fit to drown, proscribe, and guillotine -by tens of thousands, in order to enforce their peculiar views of -liberty. But every act of tyranny, every crime against liberty, offends -all Christendom. It cannot be circumscribed by national frontiers. Soon -all Europe was weltering in blood. The First Consul marched rough-shod -over Europe, imposing French liberty on unappreciative nations. And we -all know how the allied armies occupied Paris in 1815 and curbed the -Revolution for a season. History repeats itself. - - - - -THE FRENCH REVOLUTION - - -_27th June, 1904._ - -The Associations Bill, pre-eminently an act of oppression and religious -persecution, has been rendered doubly odious by the many illegalities by -which it has been surrounded, some of which I enumerated in my letter in -the _Evening Post_ of May 6th. Not long since, M. Decrais, ex-Minister -of the Waldeck-Rousseau Cabinet, was elected by a large majority at -Bordeaux, after he had branded the wholesale execution of the religious -orders as “a violation of the spirit and the letter of the law of 1901,” -and assured his electors that he had not voted with the Government on -that occasion. Indeed, these Jacobins seem to revel in illegality for -its own sake, and cannot even respect their own enactments. - -Civil war on a small scale has been raging since nearly two months in -various parts of France. It became quite monotonous to read the recital -of all these expulsions _manu militari_ which filled the columns of the -daily Press. The programme was almost the same in every case. The crowds -varied from three hundred to many thousands, according to the locality, -and were more or less violent in their denunciations of the Government; -the police and the regular army, employed to surround the convents and -disperse the crowds of manifestants, were also more or less numerous, -and acted more or less brutally. The troops as a rule left their -barracks at night, arrived on the scene at 2 or 3 a.m., and awaited -daybreak before surrounding the house. Then, the Commissaires ringing in -vain, the doors are battered down, police and soldiers enter the breach -and find a few old monks in the chapel, for as a rule the communities -had dispersed. The delinquents are marched off between two rows of -soldiers, the crowds break out in seditious cries of “Vive la liberté, à -bas les tyrans,” numerous arrests of both sexes are made, and the -country is informed that, fanaticized by the monks, men and women have -assailed the representatives of the law. - -It was on one of these occasions that Mlle. de Lambert cried “Capon” to -a justice of the peace because he had beaten a hasty retreat when he -found, in a cloister, two or three hundred angry men instead of a few -old monks. She was condemned to be imprisoned for eight days. On the -expiration of her term some five thousand persons went to the prison to -give her an ovation, but found that she had been removed. - -At Nice there was a small community of Franciscans on the Boulevard -Carabacel. Their chapel was very popular with the humbler classes of -Niçois, as well as with visitors, and manifestations like those that -occurred at the church of La Croix de Marbre, much frequented by -American sailors, were expected. Several companies of infantry and -cavalry were sent to surround the building at 3 a.m.; but hundreds of -persons had spent all night on the premises, and the usual -manifestations and arrests occurred. Even after the premises had been -sealed up, police agents were detailed to guard them night and day. This -was very amusing, considering that policemen are so scarce in Nice that -people are robbed in broad daylight in the most-frequented quarters. - -All these grotesque executions _manu militari_ represent one of the most -recent violations of the law, wholly gratuitous in this instance, seeing -that the Government had itself traced the method of procedure. On -November 28th, 1902, M. Valle, Minister of Justice, said:-- - - “We have to examine if, after refusal of authorization and a decree - closing an establishment, we should continue to have recourse to - armed force, or whether it is not preferable to have recourse to - the tribunals. M. Chamaillard himself recognizes that it is better - to substitute judicial sanction to the sanction of force, always - brutal. It is this substitution we ask you to vote” (_Officiel_, - November 29th). - -Again, December 2nd, the Minister said:-- - - “The Government abandons the right to have recourse to force, and - asks you to substitute judicial for administrative sanction. This - is the object of the proposed law” (_Officiel_, December 3rd, p. - 1221, col. 2). - -On December 4th this law was passed. Therefore all these executions -_manu militari_, before the tribunals had pronounced, were another -flagrant violation of law. But, as I said, these Jacobins seem to revel -in illegality for its own sake. Meanwhile the tribunals, civil and -military, have been kept busy condemning officers who refused to take -part in these degrading, unsoldierlike expeditions, as well as men and -women guilty of manifesting in favour of liberty. - -The fate of the Congregations of women engaged in teaching is a foregone -conclusion. Nay, M. Combes is closing many of these establishments even -before the demands for authorization have been submitted to the Chambers -to be refused _in globo_. I was in Lyons recently when two -establishments of the Society of the Sacred Heart were dispersed in the -middle of the school year, without the slightest regard to the -convenience of the pupils or their teachers. More than three thousand -persons invaded the railway station at 7 a.m. for the departure of the -first group of exiles. An enthusiastic ovation was given them, in which -all the passengers took part, and the bouquets were so numerous that -they had to be piled into a vacant car. In the afternoon there was a -second departure for Turin. This time the police took timely -precautions. The avenues leading to the vast square were barricaded -against all but travellers. These ladies have educated several -generations of Lyonnaises, and were greatly esteemed. - -It would be too long to relate the exploits of the Government’s -henchmen, who have distinguished themselves at Paris and elsewhere. It -is simply astounding that such things should happen in any civilized -country and in a century so proud of its progress, liberty, and -enlightenment. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was an offence -against liberty and justice, but it occurred two hundred and fifty years -ago--almost in the Dark Ages. Some time ago, Mr. Bodley, in his -excellent work on France, commented on the extraordinary phenomenon of a -republic persecuting, in the name of liberty, a religion professed by -more than two-thirds of the nation and officially represented in the -State as the dominant religion of the country. To understand this -phenomenon we must bear in mind that French republicanism is not a form -of government, but merely the _modus operandi_ of a secret society. The -Grand Orient has openly proclaimed that there would be no republic but -for them. And all the laws have been elaborated at their convents since -two decades. - -Above all we must remember that France is in revolution since a hundred -years and more. There have been intervals of calm which resembled -convalescence, but these have been followed by new paroxysms, as in -1830, 1848, 1870, and to-day. Madame de Staël’s clever saying that -Napoleon was “Robespierre à cheval” is by no means as flippant as might -appear. The genius of the Jacobin Revolution was embodied in the -Convention and the Comités de Salut Public, and the representative of -this dictatorial tyranny was Robespierre. When Napoleon substituted -himself for the Convention and the Directory he abated none of the -pretensions of the Revolution. On the contrary, he consolidated them and -enlarged immensely their field of operation by riding rough-shod, not -over France alone, but over all Europe; hence the happy expression of -Madame de Staël, “Robespierre à cheval.” - -Unlike the upheaval known as the Reformation, the French Revolution was -essentially a religious movement, a vast renaissance of paganism -prepared by the atheistic philosophy of the eighteenth century, with -which the ruling classes became so largely imbued. It is a great mistake -to suppose that these philosophers were seeking the welfare of the -masses or the reign of the people, whom no one so thoroughly despised as -did Voltaire. The true object of the Revolution, prepared by the -encyclopedists, was the destruction of Christianity and its noblest -fruit, freedom, in order to establish on the ruins of both the reign of -the Omnipotent Infallible State, the statue of gold before which all -must fall down and worship or perish. “Sois mon frère, ou je te tue.” -For it has always been a peculiarity of French free-thinkers that they -could never tolerate any free-thinking but their own. If the -revolutionists of 1793 inflamed the passions of the masses against the -clergy and the nobles, it was merely to use the arms of this Briareus to -batter down the monarchy and all the institutions of the ancient regime, -just as the Jacobin Republicans of to-day are using the Socialists to -accomplish the work begun by their predecessors a century ago. The final -purpose of all is the destruction of Christianity. - -We have but to turn the pages of any reputable French history (Taine, -Capefigue, Guizot) to see that liberty was the last preoccupation of the -Jacobin conquerors. One of the worst Roman emperors is said to have -wished that the people had but one head that he might cut it off. This -also seems to have been the idea of the Revolution, for by abolishing -all social hierarchy, all intermediate classes, all guilds and -associations, provincial parliaments, and local institutions, nothing -was left standing but a defenceless people and the omnipotent State, -which was a coterie composed sometimes of five hundred, sometimes of -four, and finally of one, the first Consul and Emperor. - -Never had the tyranny of the omnipotent State been more completely -realized than by the Jacobins, and their heir-at-law, Napoleon. In the -heyday of his power this great despot found but one opponent. There was -but one force that measured itself with him and vanquished. When -Holland, Prussia, Denmark, all Europe in fact, became tributary to -Napoleon and entered into his continental scheme, in the blockade of all -European seaports, Pius VII alone refused to close Ancona, Ostia, and -Civita Vecchia against British commerce, and to prevent any Englishman -from entering the Papal States. When cabinets and rulers all succumbed -to “Robespierre on horseback,” and the inhabitants of every land became -the prey of the victor, the Spanish people alone found, in their -religious faith, the nobility and the energy of a free people, that rose -in their weakness to shake off the octopus that was fastening itself on -their vitals. Napoleon had seized, by guile and treachery, the persons -of the Royal Family of Spain, and had nominated a new tributary king, -his brother Joseph, to the throne of Spain, when the monks, the clergy, -and the peasantry organized that wonderful guerilla war, which is so -little known, and is, nevertheless, one of the most glorious episodes in -the history of liberty. Two signal defeats of the French army destroyed -the prestige of Napoleon and his motley armies, composed of conscripts -from many vassal nations, who now began to ask themselves why they could -not do what Spanish peasants had done in spite of Manuel Godin, the -Prime Minister, who had sold them to the enemy. - -After the restoration of the Bourbons in 1815 it seemed as if the -Revolution were over, but in 1830 it broke out anew. Charles X barely -escaped with his life. The “Monarchy of July,” as the reign of Philippe -d’Orléans is called, was merely a phase of the Revolution. In 1848 the -revolutionary fever again seized the nation in an acute form and was not -limited to France. - -It was at this time, strange to say, that a group of resolute Catholics -entered the political arena and fought the battle of liberty in -educational matters against the monopoly of the University. -Montalembert, Dupanloup, Berryer, Lacordaire conquered, inch by inch, a -liberty inscribed in the Charter of 1830, but ineffective so far. La loi -Falloux was not passed till 1850 but long before, Guizot, with unerring -statesmanship, had proclaimed “liberty in teaching to be the only wise -solution,” and declared that “the State must accept the free competition -of its rivals, both lay and religious, individuals and corporations” -(_Memoirs_, t. III, 102). St. Marc Girardin, reporter of the Educational -Commission (1847), expressed himself thus:-- - - “Even before the Charter, experience and the interest of studies - required and obtained liberty in teaching. Here certainly we may - say that liberty was ancient and arbitrary despotism new. I do not - need to defend the principle of this liberty, for it is in the - Charter. I only wish to show that it has always existed in some - form. Emulation is good for studies. Formerly the emulation was - between the University and the Congregations, and studies were - benefited. In 1763 Voltaire himself deplored the dispersion of the - Jesuits because of the beneficial rivalry that existed between them - and the University.... A monopoly of education given to priests - would be an anachronism in our day. But to exclude them would be a - not less deplorable anachronism.” - -Thus spoke a representative Liberal fifty years ago. Napoleon had -established a state monopoly of education in the hands of the University -of Paris. Villemain and Cousin were educational Jacobins. There was a -state rhetoric, a state history, and a state philosophy, which was, of -course, Cousin’s eclecticism. Any professor with leanings to Kant or -Comte was sent to Coventry. This state monopoly was abolished by the loi -Falloux (1850), and its reestablishment is the true purpose of the law -of 1901. During the last fifty years congregational schools multiplied -in proportion to the great demand, i.e. to such an extent that -government schools could not compete with them successfully. Hence the -Trouillot Bill (Associations). - -In 1870 the Revolution again triumphed. This time it was not -“Robespierre on horseback,” but Robespierre draped in toga and ermine; -the reign of despotism in the name of law and liberty; prætors and -quæstors dilapidating public funds, and giving and promising largesses. -At one time it seemed as if the Republic would be overthrown. It was -then that M. Grévy appealed to Rome, and Leo XIII, while reproving -certain laws, advised the clergy and the Catholics to rally to the -Republic in the interest of peace. They did so. But no sooner did the -Republic feel secure than it began to enact a series of laws offensive -to Catholics. I refer to the divorce and scholar laws, and unjust fiscal -laws against Congregations. - -Foreigners wonder why thirty million French Catholics allow themselves -to be thus tyrannized over by a handful of Freemasons. I fear it is a -hopeless case of atavism, which will prove the undoing of France, under -the representative system. In 418 the Emperor Honorius wished to -establish this system of government in Southern Gaul, but, writes -Guizot, “the provinces and towns refused the benefit; no one would -nominate representatives, no one would go to Arles” (_History of -Civilization_). This same tendency is operating the ruin of France -to-day. Honest, laborious Frenchmen have an invincible repugnance to -politics and this periodical electioneering scramble. Moreover, it would -mean ruin and famine for hundreds of thousands of functionaries if they -dared to vote against the Government. - -Meanwhile the anti-clericals or lodges of the Grand Orient, largely -composed of Jews, Protestants, and naturalized foreigners, have been -hard at work these twenty years preparing the election of their -candidates and abusing the minds of the working classes by immoral, -irreligious printed stuff, and above all by the multiplication of -drinking-places where adulterated strong drinks are sold for the merest -trifle. The number of these licensed places is simply appalling. Nearly -every grocery, every little vegetable store, and even many tobacco -stores where stamps are sold, have a drinking stand. It is needless to -say that neither Chartreuse nor any decent liqueur is ever sold at such -places. These drink stands supplement the innumerable cabarets and -cafés, in town and country, where elections are engineered. - -Leroy Beaulieu recently related the following incident of his encounter -with one of the habitués of these political institutions. - -In Easter week I was coming out of the chapel of the Barnabites one -morning when I met a workman somewhat the worse for liquor, shaking his -fist against the grated convent window. “Ah! you haven’t skedaddled yet, -you dirty skunks.” - -And when I asked him why he was so anxious to see them expelled, he drew -himself up proudly and replied: “Because they are not up to the level of -our century!” (“Ils ne sont pas à la hauteur de notre siècle!”) - -Meanwhile a crime has been committed against liberty, humanity, and -justice, and it seems to move the world no more than the passing of a -summer cloud, because no blood has been shed. The right which men and -women have to dress and dispose of their lives as they choose is a most -sacred part of personal freedom. - -“Liberalism,” says Taine, “is the respect of others. If the State exists -it is to prevent all intrusions into private life, the beliefs, the -conscience, the property.... When the State does this it is the greatest -of benefactors. When it commits these intrusions itself it is the -greatest of malefactors.” The young and the strong can begin life anew -elsewhere, in the cloister or out of it, but what shall we say of those -tens of thousands aged and infirm, who, after having passed thirty to -fifty years in teaching or in other good works, find themselves suddenly -thrown into the streets, homeless and penniless? The Associations Bill -entitles them “to apply” for indemnity. But this is merely illusory. -Years will elapse before “the liquidation” is accomplished, and there -will be no assets except for the Government and its friends. Public -subscriptions are being opened all over France for these victims of -Jacobin tyranny. - -Moreover, the right which parents have to give their children teachers -of their own choice is also an inalienable right. The Lacedæmonian State -imposed physical training on all its sons. The Turks for centuries -levied a tax of so many boys and girls a year on the Spaniards and the -Venetians, but no Government has yet called on every parent to “stand -and deliver,” not the purse, but the souls of their children, that it -may sow therein, from tenderest infancy, the tares of a hideous state -materialism. With cynical hypocrisy this Government protests that -liberty of teaching is intact, while parents see all the teachers of -their own choice proscribed. The rich can send their sons to be educated -across the border, but the law of _stage scolaire_ is intended to meet -this alternative. Those who have not frequented state schools are to be -made pariahs, ineligible for the army, the navy, or any civil -function--truly a singular application of the words “Compel them to come -in,” which should be inscribed on all the scholar institutions of France -to-day. - - - - -A PAPAL NOTE - - -_13th June, 1904._ - -The storm of words aroused the world over by a Papal diplomatic Note is -another proof that the Papacy has lost none of its power and prestige, -and is still, on this threshold of the twentieth century, the -incarnation of moral power opposed to mere brute force, the right of the -strongest. In reading the many silly comments on this Note in different -parts of the globe, we are reminded of the brick thrown into the -frog-pond and the emotion it caused. - -Long before M. Loubet went to Rome it was well known that he would not -be received by the Vatican, and the Papal Note is practically the same -as the one drawn up by Leo XIII on a previous occasion, when it was -sought to obtain a deviation from the policy of the Vatican in favour of -a predecessor of M. Loubet. The protest itself contained nothing new, -and was merely a reiteration of Papal claims to sovereignty in Rome, and -a notice to rulers of other Catholic countries that there was no change -in the policy of the Vatican, that declined to receive the visit of any -such ruler who came to Rome as the guest of Victor Emmanuel. - -The long session devoted to the discussion of the incident was merely a -little anti-clerical diversion to kill time; otherwise the Papal Note -would have remained pigeon-holed in M. Delcassé’s desk, where it had -lain unheeded for weeks, when suddenly, at the psychical moment, M. -Jaurès’ new Ministerial organ, _l’Humanité_ (_commanditée_ by the Jews), -published the copy of the Note which had been addressed, it is said, to -the King of Portugal. Then the little comedy was enacted at the Palais -Bourbon, and the whole Socialist Ministerial Press clamoured, -hysterically, for condign punishment of the Vatican and the vindication -of the national honour. But nothing was done. M. Delcassé declined to -state clearly if the ambassador to the Vatican, M. Nisard, had really -been recalled, while M. Combes loftily sneered at “the superannuated -claims of a sovereignty dispossessed since thirty-five years.” Yet he -must have learned at the Seminary that the Papacy was exiled from Rome -for eighty years once upon a time.[5] But all these ferocious Radicals -declined to take advantage of this opportunity to denounce the -Concordat, and M. Combes’ best friend, _The Lantern_, is now denouncing -him as a traitor and a fraud. History is repeating itself: _La -Montagne_ (the Extreme Left of 1793) is getting ready to execute the -_Girondins_ called Radicals to-day. No efforts of opportunism will save -them from the _guillotine sèche_ which awaits them. - -The silly talk of some of the great dailies who represent the Pope as -“greatly worried” and confronted with the necessity of making an -apology, can only be excused on the ground of ignorance of the whole -situation. Personally I desire to see the Concordat denounced. The -letter and the spirit of its first and most important article, which -provided for liberty and the free exercise of the Catholic religion, -have been flagrantly violated by the laws of 1901 and 1904, and by the -illegalities committed by the executors of these laws. - -All that remains of the Concordat is the indemnity paid yearly to the -Catholic Church, as a very slight compensation for the millions stolen -by the revolutionary government of 1792, known as the First Republic. -Though it must be said to the credit of those Jacobins that when they -instituted the budget of cults they recognized that they had taken the -property of the Church, and that the payment of these yearly subsidies -was part of the National Debt. - -The Jacobins of to-day, less scrupulous than their forefathers of 1790, -are craving for the repudiation of this portion of the National Debt. - -The untold wealth of the Congregations, the billions held out as a -glittering lure by Waldeck Rousseau in 1900 as a nest-egg for _retraîtes -ouvrières_, having melted into thin air “the bloc” or Ministerial -majority must be held together by the prospect of some new quarry. -Those, who for years past made a fine distinction between the secular -clergy and the regular or _congréganist_ clergy are now convinced that -there is no distinction to be made between them. When New York dailies -kindly advise the French clergy and Catholics to give up what their -editors are pleased to call “their salaries” and adopt the American -system, they merely proclaim their ignorance of the situation. - -The French would gladly sacrifice everything, even to the noble church -edifices built and endowed by their ancestors during long centuries, if -thereby they could secure liberty and separation from the State, as they -are understood in the United States. But all the alleged projects of -“Separation” are merely projects of strangulation. The articles of all -these projects of law are as unacceptable as were those of the Trouillot -Associations Bill, even if it had not been superseded by the _table -rase_ of the law of 1904 suppressing all teaching orders whatsoever. - -The carrying into execution of any of these projects of “Separation,” -even the least Jacobin, would render the normal existence of the -Catholic Church in France impossible. This has been the aim and purpose -of the Third Republic ever since its advent. For, once again, I repeat -that Republicanism in France is not a form of government; it is the -_modus operandi_ of a secret society, of the same secret society which -established a monarchy in Italy, in order to have a pretext for seizing -Rome and destroying, if possible, the prestige of the Papacy. In both -cases the object was the same, the weakening and the destruction of the -Church. - -The Freemasons in France openly proclaim that they founded the Republic. -The scholar and anti-clerical laws since twenty-five years, all the -laws, in fact, have been prepared in the lodges. Of this, too, they make -no secret. To suppose that the Chambers in any way represent the French -nation is an egregious mistake. The lodges prepare the elections; their -candidates people both Houses. In my first letter to the _Review_ in -1900 I showed how the abstention of honest laborious Frenchmen from -politics had thrown the power into the hands of the Freemasons, who are -chiefly Jews, Protestants, and infidels. To-day this coterie of about -twenty-five thousand reigns supreme. - -A few resolute, capable, bigoted Freemasons are the master minds of the -coterie; the others, “the bloc,” just follow suit. If a current of -reaction set in to-morrow they would glide with it most gracefully. - -It is simply impossible to retrieve the situation in France to-day by -any ordinary legal means. To suppose that the people are in sympathy -with the Government because they do not overthrow it implies total -ignorance of the situation. The voting machinery of the country is -falsified, and can no more be relied on than a clock out of gear, which -rings out the hours haphazard. Even if every Frenchman inscribed as a -voter did his duty and went to the polls, which they do not, it would -make no difference to-day. - -If death had not cut short Waldeck Rousseau’s career we might witness a -_machine en arrière_ policy. It is even possible, now, that a moderate -Rouvier-Ribot ministry may succeed the Combes despotism. - -But I have no confidence in any palliatives. The evil is too -deep-seated. Only by blood and anguish can France be redeemed, and the -sooner the crisis comes the better; a few years later it may be too -late. This is why I desire the denunciation of the Concordat, for with -Gambetta, and all his anti-clerical successors, I think it may be the -ruin of the Third Republic. - -Excommunications and interdicts are no longer published as in former -days, but they operate nevertheless. And, as in the past, there is -always some ruler ready to execute the mandate; though this, too, is not -done in the same way. There is not, necessarily, any invasion of -territory. - -Germany and Italy (yes, and England too) are keenly awaiting the moment -when they may seize France’s birthright. Both are assiduous in their -marks of deference to the Holy See. Victor Emmanuel would gladly -evacuate Rome to-morrow if he dared. Thirty-five years are the mere -twinkling of an eye in the lives of nations. Yet there are simple-minded -people who look upon the Piedmontese occupation of Rome as an immutable -fact. - - - - -FREEMASONRY - - -_December, 1904._ - -We cannot adequately appreciate the religious and politico-social -conditions of countries like Italy, France, Spain, Austria, Belgium, -unless we take into account the action of Freemasonry in all its -ramifications--Carbonari, Grand Orient, Mafia, etc. - -There is eternal enmity between them and Christianity. It was said in -the beginning: “I will put enmity between thy seed and the seed of the -Woman,” etc. The Catholic Church being the largest, strongest, most -accredited and influential Christian Society, it is against her, -naturally, that all attacks are directed. In Protestant countries people -shrug their shoulders and sneer at the idea of Freemasons militating -against Christianity, or any political order. This is not surprising. A -distinguished atheist of the eighteenth century used to say that -“England was the country where Christianity did the least harm because -it was divided into so many rivulets.” Here we have the explanation of -the different attitude of Freemasons in Protestant countries, split up -into innumerable sects, and in Catholic countries, where “One holy -Catholic Church” still holds sway over the whole nation practically. - -The great purpose of the French Revolution in 1792 was to break up the -Church in France. For this purpose the throne and all the institutions -of the ancient regime, some of them very excellent, were all overthrown. - -The revolutions of Italy in the nineteenth century had no other purpose. -The destruction of the Papacy was considered a means of disrupting the -Catholic Church, not in Italy only. Mazzini, Garibaldi, Crispi, Cavour, -etc., were all fierce republican anarchists; the last thing they wanted -was an Italian monarchy. But they were Freemasons, and the “Order” -imposed its will. An Italian monarchy demanded Rome as its capital, -whereas a republican system would, no doubt, have left the Papacy in its -ancient city. “A schism,” wrote Renan in 1870, “seems to me more than -probable, or rather it already exists; from latent it will become -effective.... It seems to me inevitable that there will soon be two -Popes, and even three.... The schism being made in the papal person, the -decomposition of Catholicism will follow; a quantity of reforms will -then be possible.” - -Napoleon III, a dignitary of the order, entered into the plot, and -received Savoy and the county of Nice. Rome was seized 20 September, and -the Franco-Prussian war brought swift and condign punishment on Napoleon -for his complicity. - -Simultaneously with the establishment of a monarchy in Italy, the Grand -Orient established a republic in France, always with the same purpose, -the disruption of the Church. During the last four years of residence in -Europe I have repeated in the Press of the United States that -Republicanism is not a form of government here, but the _modus operandi_ -of a secret society. The manifesto issued by the Grand Orient (3 -November, 1904) is an irrefutable proof of my allegation. It is the most -astounding document ever made public. They evidently consider that -France is a conquered country which can never shake off their -domination. “Without the Freemasons,” says the document, “the Republic -would not exist.” The elaborate spy system they had established at the -Ministry of War is defended on the ground that “the head partner, or -_commanditaire_, of a great industrial enterprise in which he has placed -his capital has the right to denounce to the manager the peculations of -his employees.” - -Thus France is an industrial company; the ministers are managers -appointed by the head partner, the Grand Orient! But the most revolting -part of this manifesto is the manner in which the deputies of the “bloc” -are whipped into line like a pack of disorderly hounds under the lash of -their keeper. “We denounce to our lodges and to all masons present and -future the votes of fear, defaillance, cowardice, of a certain -number.... We shall have our eyes on them ... and they will find -themselves treated as they would have treated those to whom they were -bound by interest if not by loyalty.” - -The revolutions which have convulsed Spain during the last century, down -to the recent Republican riots in Madrid and Brussels, are all traceable -to the “Order” which issued this manifesto. Among the rioters killed -were Frenchmen. The visit of M. Chaumié, Minister of Public Instruction, -to Italy, and the famous Congrés de Libre Pensée, are all manifestations -of the Grand Orient, which will never rest until it has destroyed the -stability and peace of other Catholic countries, as it has done in -France. When I arrived at Innsbruck in July last, I saw many students -with bandaged heads and arms. An Italian student had knocked the book -out of the German professor’s hand with his cane. This was the origin of -that last riot. What has occurred recently at Innsbruck is far more -serious, and was undoubtedly prepared at Rome in September.[6] A band of -Italian anarchist students were sent to the University of Innsbruck to -cause trouble. One hundred and thirty-eight of them were arrested, -yesterday, with revolvers and other weapons on their persons. - -Two years ago I was in Venice when there was a monster international -gathering of students. The Marseillaise and the Hymn of Garibaldi were -vociferated by these thousands on the Place of St. Mark. Why the -national anthems of other nations were not given is clear. The whole was -a Freemason demonstration of the Grand Orient like the Congrès de Libre -Pensée at Rome, presided over by M. Brisson, the President of the French -Chambers. - -The revolutionary strikes at Milan, Genoa, Venice, etc., which were made -to coincide with the birth of the heir of the House of Savoy, are -symptomatic. The Grand Orient undoubtedly find that they have been -marking time long enough in Italy. They have not been able to carry -their divorce law there yet. - -There is a Socialist party in Italy which is not anarchist and Freemason -as in France, but sincerely desires the good of Italy. One of its -leaders declared, recently, that they would lend their aid even to the -Papacy for the common weal. Between this party and the secret societies -and their henchmen, the position of Victor Emmanuel is not enviable. Ere -long, therefore, we may see the aid of the Pope and of the Catholic -vote, now in abeyance to a great extent, solicited both by the monarchy -and the reforming Socialists. - -There is really no insuperable difficulty in reconciling the -independence of the Papacy and the integrity of the Italian kingdom. The -Principality of Monaco has surely never been considered an obstacle to -the integrity of France, nor the Republic of San Marino to that of -Italy. Why should not the Pope be left in peaceful possession of the -Trastevere and the port of Ostia, for instance? There is no difficulty -except with the Grand Orient, this _imperium in imperio_. - -All through the centuries, “the Papacy has had to negotiate, -simultaneously, with each of the republican cities of Italy, with -Naples, Germany, France, England, and Spain. They all had contests -(_démêlés_) with the Popes, and these latter always had the advantage” -(Voltaire, _Essai sur les mœurs_, II, 87). - -In the same work, page 81, Voltaire relates the Congress held at Venice, -where Barbarossa made his submission. “The Holy Father,” he says, -“exclaimed: ‘God has willed that an aged man and priest triumph without -fighting over a terrible and powerful emperor.’” The triumph over the -machinations of the Grand Orient will be no less striking. - - - - -FREEMASONRY - - -_21st January, 1905._ - -In these columns (_The Progress_, December 10th, 1904), I referred to -the recently published Manifesto of the Grand Orient of France (November -4th, 1904), defending its attitude with regard to the elaborate spy -system, a veritable _régime des suspects_ which they had established, -not in the War Office only, but in every Department of State. The Press, -both in England and in the United Sates, has been singularly reticent -regarding this most remarkable document, whose authenticity cannot be -gainsaid. - -It is, however, the key to the whole politico-religious situation in -France, and more or less in other Catholic countries. - -Republicanism in Catholic countries will always be the _modus operandi_ -of this secret society in some one or other of its ramifications. The -Carbonari, who engineered all the Italian revolutions in the nineteenth -century, sent their emissary, Orsini, to remind Napoleon III of his -obligations and duties. The gentle reminder was a bomb, and Orsini paid -the death penalty, but not without leaving a letter with certain behests -which were soon complied with. The Italian campaign against Austria was -undertaken ere long. - -In the _Evening Post_, November 8th, 1904, I find in a review of Count -Hubner’s _Memoirs_ the following extract: “The Emperor of the French, -placed at the summit of greatness, had forgotten the pledges made in his -youth to those who dispose of the unknown dark powers. Orsini’s bomb -came to remind him. A ray of light suddenly struck his mind. He must -have understood that his former associates never forgot or forgave, and -that their implacable hatred would be appeased only when the renegade -returned to the bosom of the sect.” - -An example of the power wielded by these secret societies is the case of -the ex-Minister of Public Instruction in Italy. Prosecuted for -misdemeanour and extensive peculations while in office, the Freemasons -compassed his escape to Geneva. He was condemned by default, when, lo -and behold, he quietly returns to Italy in triumph and is elected -deputy.[7] - -Since eight weeks the French papers (non-Ministerial of course) are -daily printing _fiches_ or spy documents stolen from the Grand Orient. -No end of duels and prosecutions for slander have been the result. Nor -were army officers the only victims. Even Monsieur and Madame Loubet -have come in for their share! In some cases the spies of the Grand -Orient have denied the authenticity of these documents. Thereupon M. de -Villeneuve has printed photographed copies of the letters in question. - -Brother Bedderide, an advocate of the bar at Marseilles, an active spy -on magistrates and other civil functionaries, has been expelled from the -Order of Advocates. The Grand Orient will no doubt amply compensate him, -for they are as generous to their friends as they are implacable to -their foes. - -Read this passage from the Manifesto of the Grand Orient, 4th November, -1904: “All our workshops know the campaign waged against us by the -reaction, nationalist, monarchical, and clerical. They seek to travesty -acts in which we justly glory and thanks to which, we have saved the -Republic. A traitor, a felon, bribed by the Congregations [poor -congregations recently shorn of all] lived in our midst since ten -years.... As sub-secretary he gained the confidence of our very dear -brother Vadecard [Secretary of G. O.] and became the confidant of all -our secrets. He projected to steal from our archives documents confided -to us ... new Judas, he sold them to the irreconcilable enemies of our -brethren. Brother Bidegain is in flight like a malefactor. We signal him -to Masons all over the world. In waiting the just punishment of his -crime, the Council of the Order summons him before masonic justice, and -until the final sentence is rendered, we suspend all his titles and -prerogatives.... And now we declare to the whole Freemason body that in -furnishing these documents [spy denunciations] the Grand Orient has -accomplished only a strict duty. We have dearly conquered the Republic -and claim the honour of having procured its triumph.... Without the -Freemasons the Republic would not be in existence.... Pius X would be -reigning in France.” - -Then follows the menace quoted in my last to the tricky, cowardly -deputies who voted against the Government, which was saved by two votes -more than once. The memorable slap administered by M. Syveton to General -André compelled M. Combes to throw the Minister of War overboard, though -the latter protested to the last, “They want my skin, but they shall not -have it.” The Minister of Public Instruction also nearly succumbed. He -declared that if a certain _ordre de jour_ were not voted he would throw -down his portfolio there and then. The votes were not forthcoming but he -clung to his portfolio and contented himself with another _ordre de -jour_. - -All the performances at the Palais Bourbon are indeed a most amazing -comedy. - -Meanwhile M. Syveton, who negotiated the purchase of the purloined -documents from the Grand Orient, and slapped General André on the -ministers’ bench, got his quietus in a very mysterious way on the very -day on which he was to have retaken his seat in the Chambers (after his -thirty days’ punitive exclusion), and on the eve of his appearance -before the Cours d’Assise for that famous slap. His defence, carefully -prepared by himself, was published in the papers next day. It is a long -incisive arraignment of the Government in imitation of Cicero’s -_Catalina_. All the witnesses, who were to have appeared in his defence, -were also witnesses against the Government. In fact the trial was to -have been a great political manifestation, and the Government had every -interest in its not taking place. Since two weeks public opinion is on -tenter-hooks regarding the death of M. Syveton. It was declared at first -to be a vulgar accident by the Ministerial organs. While M. Jaurès, -strange to say, published in _Humanity_ a most remarkable brief, -establishing clearly the guilt of Madame Syveton, and, still more -strange, the latter did not prosecute him for it. Then the suicide -theory was adopted, and the most odious, baseless, and unproven -calumnies were launched against the memory of the dead man. His widow -even accused him of having stolen funds of the Nationalist party. All -this in order to explain his suicide on the eve of what was expected to -be a great political triumph of the Nationalists, and for which M. -Syveton was preparing with the ardour of a fighter by temperament, just -forty years old. - -The autopsy, made before the twenty-four legal hours had elapsed, -revealed seventeen per cent of oxide of carbon in the blood. The lungs, -brain, and viscera, strange to say, were not examined at all, but -placed under seals for eleven days! They are now to be examined. -Meanwhile the last person who must have seen M. Syveton alive, must have -been the emissary of the Government, who, according to custom, served -the writ on the dead man, commanding his presence in court in -twenty-four hours. Who was he, and why was he never heard of again? - -No one believes seriously that M. Syveton committed suicide. His father -and brother-in-law have begun a prosecution for murder against X, in -which the Mutual Life is also interested. - -As to Brother Bidegain, the traitor, he was at Salonica when last heard -of. His sudden death there was announced; but I think the rumour is -false. It would be very imprudent, coming so soon after the other. But -he will have to make his peace with the G. O. or beware. He cannot be -prosecuted for stealing these documents, as they represent no monetary -value, and, moreover, the Grand Orient has no legal existence or civil -personality. They are said to have millions of _main morte_, but they -simply ignore the Associations Bill. - -In conclusion, I hope it will be understood that I do not accuse many -honest Freemasons of England and the United States of being _particeps -criminis_ in all or any of the doings of the Grand Orient, Carbonari, -Mafia, Cimorra, Senuisi, or the secret societies of Islam or in China. - -Freemasonry assumes different aspects in different circumstances, but it -is the eternal enemy of militant organized Christianity. It does not -trouble itself with Christianity “divided into many rivulets,” and -consequently harmless, according to the saying of Lord Shaftesbury, who -was of opinion that “England was the country in which Christianity did -the least harm because it was divided into so many rivulets.” - -The Catholic Church alone is an enemy worthy of its steel, and wherever -these two foes meet there must be war--latent or overt. - -This war is on in France, and must be fought to the finish. - - - - -PART SECOND - - -_October, 1904._ - -M. Combes, who proclaimed at the Chambers two years ago that he had -taken office only to wage war on Clericalism, enumerated his deeds of -prowess recently in a political speech at Auxerre. Fifteen thousand -scholar establishments, strongholds of the ghostly enemy, had been -demolished! “Gentlemen, you will grant that this is a great deal for a -ministry obliged to fight at every instant for its own existence,” he -exclaimed. - -We are now coming to the second part of the Jacobin programme. As I -wrote last year in the _Evening Post_ (June 27th), the true object of -the Revolution in 1790, as to-day, is the destruction of Christianity -and its offspring, Liberty, in order to establish on the ruins of both, -the reign of the Omnipotent Infallible State, before which all must fall -down and worship or disappear. To-day the State is M. Combes and his -“bloc,” a very poor avatar of the Titanic Corsican who measured himself -with all Europe. There was but one force that resisted him, and against -this obstacle M. Combes stumbled when he demanded, peremptorily, that -the Vatican withdraw letters addressed to two bishops needing to be -disciplined. The Holy See was acting in the plenitude of its spiritual -jurisdiction. M. Combes curtly demanded that Pius X send in his -resignation, as “the political system of the Republic consists in the -subordination of all institutions, whatever they may be, to the -supremacy of the State.” - -This is the latest phase of a very old struggle which began in the days -of the Apostles. In the history of all the nations of antiquity, the -problem of Church and State and their correlations existed, and was -solved, easily and summarily, by the system proclaimed by M. Combes. The -ruler of each nation was the Pontifex Maximus of his realm. This system, -with its necessary concomitant of national religions, reached its -culminating point in the worship of the “divine Cæsars,” the acme of -human servitude. - -Now Christianity was a profound and radical innovation. Never had the -supremacy of the ruler or the State been questioned before the Apostles -proclaimed the Creed in “One Holy Catholic Church,” destined to -transcend all natural and political boundaries, without distinction of -class or colour. Not less radical was the second innovation, a necessary -corollary of the first, viz. the ecclesiastical autonomy and -independence of the new spiritual society or Church, one, Catholic. -“Never,” writes J. B. Martineau, “until the Church arose did faith -undertake the conquest alone, and triumph over diversities of speech and -antipathies of race.” - -But Paganism, with its system of state absolutism in spiritual as well -as in temporal matters, has never accepted its defeat by the Catholic -Church, a spiritual, autonomous society, distinct from the State. The -tale of Byzantine heresies, from the fourth to the eighth century, were -all efforts of each successive Emperor of Constantinople to shake off -the spiritual supremacy of Rome, and be again the Pontifex Maximus of -his dominions. The long struggle of the Investitures, the Constitutions -of Clarendon, statutes of Præmunire, State Gallicanism, the Civil -Constitution of the Clergy, 1792, Josephism in Austria, the Kultur-Kampf -laws in Germany and Switzerland, 1870-76 were all episodes of this -struggle, between the new dispensation and the ancient system of -national religions under state supremacy. In the sixteenth century there -was a vast renaissance of this latter system in a new dress called -Erastianism. Lord Clarendon declared that this spiritual supremacy of -rulers was “the better moiety of their sovereignty.” The old pagan, or -Erastian system, triumphed in the eastern empire with the Schism of -Photius, in Russia under Peter the Great, in England under Elizabeth, in -all the Protestant States of northern Europe. - -The well-defined purpose of the Revolution and of Napoleon, its -heir-at-law, was to establish this system in France. After long and -arduous negotiations the Concordat of 1801 was concluded with Pius VII. -It was a bilateral contract between two sovereignties, the French -Republic, as party of the first part, and the Holy See as party of the -second part. It contains seventeen articles. To these, Napoleon, without -the knowledge of the Pope, added seventy-six articles, and published -both documents, in conjunction, as the law of Germinal l’an X. Great was -the indignation, and loud were the protestations of the party of the -second part, as we may well suppose. Nor is this surprising when we -consider that one of these “organic articles” (24th) requires that all -professors in ecclesiastical seminaries shall “submit to teach the -doctrine of the Declaration of 1682, and the bishops shall send act of -this submission to the Council of State.” In other words, the Catholic -Church in France was to turn Protestant. Even Louis XIV, who had had -this famous Declaration drawn up to spite Pope Innocent, who alone in -Europe had dared to oppose him, never exacted that it should be taught, -and had practically suppressed it before he died. Since the Council of -the Vatican the subscribing to and teaching the Declaration of 1682 -would be an act of formal heresy and apostasy. The fifty-sixth of the -organic articles renders obligatory the use of the Republican calendar -to the exclusion of the Gregorian. There are other articles equally -absurd, which have never been observed. - -Now M. Combes declares that “in deliberately separating the diplomatic -convention (Concordat) from the organic articles, Pius VII and his -successors have destroyed its efficacy.” Napoleon himself understood -this and, for seven years, he held Pius VII a close prisoner, hoping to -break his spirit and wring from him another Concordat which would be an -abdication. Fortunately, the tide of war turned against Napoleon, and -the new Concordat was never ratified. M. Combes recognizes that no -Government since a century has been able to enforce the “organic -articles,” and that the only course left is “divorce,” and by this -unstatesmanlike term he means the repudiation of thirty or forty million -francs of the national debt. The payment in perpetuity of suitable -subsidies to the Catholic clergy is stipulated for by Article 14 of the -Concordat. It is a _quid pro quo_ of Article 13, by which the Holy See -consented to give a clear title to all the Church property confiscated -by the Revolution. The payment of these subsidies was inscribed on the -national debt by the spoliators themselves, the Conventionals of 1792, -and it was solemnly recognized as part of this debt in 1816, 1828, 1830, -and 1848. The salaries paid to Jewish and Protestant clergymen are -purely gratuitous. Their property was not stolen by the Revolution in -1792. They had no part in the Concordat. - -But the projected spoliation of the Catholic clergy is a mere detail, -and would be an insignificant ransom, if at this price the French -Catholics could have liberty such as we enjoy in England and the United -States. “Separation” means strangulation in Jacobin parlance. They would -infinitely prefer Erastianism. But the defection of the Bishops of Dijon -and Laval, on whom they counted, and the spontaneous and unanimous -adhesion of the episcopate to the Holy See, which provoked the thunders -of M. Combes against the Vatican in July, have shown the impossibility -of a schism. It was tried for four years a century ago and failed. The -“Separation” plan was also tried in 1795 for two or three years, and was -an epoch of virulent persecution. History will repeat itself, though not -exactly in the same words. - - - - -ALCOHOLISM IN FRANCE - - -_July 10th, 1905._ - -The Chambers continue the discussion of the Bill of alleged separation -in a perfunctory, apathetic way, and it is curious that M. Rouvier, the -successor of M. Combes, has never once condescended to speak or even to -be present at these sessions. - -The utter lack of interest in these debates is misinterpreted to mean -indifference on the part of the French public. This is not correct. It -is, as I have often repeated, the great misfortune of France that people -will not concern themselves with politics, and they only begin to -interest themselves in a law when it is applied. - -Even I, who have followed the phases of the religious persecution with -keen interest since four or five years, can hardly wade through these -tedious, irksome columns, in which ambiguity reigns supreme. Even M. -Briand, the reporter of the law and spokesman of the Government, being -questioned closely as to the sense of certain passages, replied “It is” -and “It is not” in the same breath. He is evidently of the opinion that -language is a convenient means of disguising thought. - -This Bill is, I repeat, a law of guile, spoliation, and tyranny from -first to last. There is a general impression that it will never be -executed entirely. They will content themselves with spoliation, for the -present at least. It is hard to persuade a people who have had religious -worship gratis for fifteen centuries, that they must now pay for the -privilege of attending Mass, while their Government subsidizes opera -dancers and singers, of whose services not one in a million ever avails -himself. - -While the Socialist majority, or _bloc_, are revelling over perspective -spoliation and sacrilegious confiscations, the handwriting on the wall -is dimly perceived. The enemy is at the gates--nay, within the -walls--while legislators are discussing “with what sauce they will eat -the curés,” though they have not yet digested their copious repast of -congregations. - -Yesterday the reports of the Chambers on Separation were unusually -tedious, and the _rendu compte_ ended with this phrase: “To-morrow -amnesty for the _bouilleurs de cru_ and wine frauders.” This heartless -Government, that flings aged and infirm _congréganists_ out of their -homes without mercy for age or sex, has, at least, one tender spot in -its make-up. It is for the liquor traffic in all its forms. -Falsification of wine is carried on to such an extent that it is -impossible for grape growers to make a living. I dilated recently in -these columns on the anti-clerical propaganda by means of an immoral, -irreligious Press, and the multiplication of these drink-stands to an -extent which is simply appalling.[8] - -New York, with three millions, has 10,000 liquor saloons. Paris, with -two-and-a-half millions, has 30,000 _debits de boissons_. - -The _Gaulois_ recently published some figures which I think are -accurate. - -Fifty years ago 735 hectolitres of absinthe were consumed in France; -to-day 133,000 are consumed. - -Fifty years ago 600,000 hectolitres of alcohol were consumed; to-day -2,000,000 hectolitres are consumed. - -The intermediate figures show that the increase has been in almost -geometric progression in recent years. - -In 1880 the consumption had increased from 735 hectolitres of absinthe -to 13,000. In 1885 it was still only 112,000. - -In 1905 it was 133,000. - -Sixty years ago there were only 10,000 demented in France. To-day there -are more than 80,000. - -Belgium has just made a law prohibiting not only the manufacture, but -all traffic in absinthe, which cannot even be transported through the -country. In this admirably governed commonwealth there is, it is said, -but one saloon _brasserie_ to every two thousand inhabitants. Formerly -the number of drinking-places was limited and restricted in France; -to-day the highest of high licence prevails. - -Recently I counted not less than fourteen places where alcoholic drinks -were sold in a charming little seaside village of four or five hundred -inhabitants. - - - - -THE LAW OF SEPARATION - - -_June 3rd, 1905._ - -There is still a persistent tendency in the Press to believe or -make-believe that the Bill of alleged Separation, still pending in the -French Chambers, means Separation as it is understood in England and the -United States, and that the whole question is only one of dollars and -cents, or of the suppression of the Budget of Cults. It is true that -there is to be a partial repudiation of the National Debt by the -suppression of the few paltry millions paid yearly to the French clergy -as a slight indemnity for the vast amount of property confiscated by the -Jacobins of 1792, but this is a mere detail, and would be considered but -a small ransom, if, thereby, the Church could enjoy the same liberty as -in the United States. - -The Associations Bill was proclaimed to be a “law of liberty,” and we -know to-day that it was only a vulgar trap set by the Government to -betray the Congregations into furnishing exact inventories of all their -property so that it might be more easily confiscated. - -The Separation Bill is also a law of perfidious tyranny aimed at the -very existence of the Church in France. M. Briand caused great hilarity -in the Chambers when, by a slip of the tongue, he declared that in every -part of it “could be seen the hand of our spirit of Liberalism.”[9] What -is evident throughout is the hand of the secret society which has -governed France since twenty-five years, and in whose lodges and -convents all the anti-religious laws have been elaborated. - -The Chambers are merely its _bureaux d’enregistrement_, and not even -that. Under the _ancien régime_ the Parliament could and often did -refuse to enregister royal acts and decrees. - -It was two years before the Parliament of Paris consented to enregister -the Concordat of 1516. But the Chambers to-day are merely the executive -of the Grand Orient. This is the plain unvarnished truth, which is -corroborated by all who have any knowledge of French politics. - -I have repeated many times in the Press of the United States that -Republicanism in France is not a form of government, but the _modus -operandi_ of a secret society. Before me are _verbatim_ reports of their -assemblies and the speeches made at their political banquets in 1902. At -that time only unauthorized Congregations had been suppressed. This, it -was declared, “was not enough.... The Congregations must be operated on -with a vigorous scalpel, and all this suppuration must be thrown out of -the country; only thus will the social body, still very sick with acute -clericalism, be cured.” In July, 1904, all the authorized Congregations, -too, were suppressed, as we know. Even this was not enough. - -At the general “convent” of the Grand Orient, January, 1904, it was -said: “We have yet a great effort to make.... The separation of Church -and State will be in the order of the day in the Chambers in January, -1905.... The Cabinet and the Republican Parliament will end the conflict -between the two contracting parties of the Concordat. The destruction of -the Church will open a new era of justice and goodness.” - -M. Combes, then in power, was notified of the wishes of the Grand -Orient, and he telegraphed back that he would conform thereto. - -The sensation caused by the publication of the spy documents, or -_fiches_, stolen from the Grand Orient by M. Syveton and de Villeneuve -nearly overthrew the Republic last November. The assassination of M. -Syveton saved the Government and struck terror into the Nationalist -camp. The publication of the spy documents ceased, and the lodges -continued their work with a new figure-head, M. Rouvier instead of M. -Combes. - -On 4th November, 1904, the Grand Orient published a political manifesto -which is a most important document from an historical and sociological -standpoint. - -It is simply amazing that the government of a once great nation should -have passed into the hands of a secret society which, though it has no -legal standing, treats France as if it were a great business concern of -which the Freemasons are the _commanditaires_, the ministers “the -managers,” and the deputies and functionaries the employees. - -Already in 1902, at the closing banquet of the “convent,” Brother -Blatin, a “venerable,” had declared: - -“The Government must not forget that Masonry is its most solid -support.... - -“But for our Order neither the Combes Cabinet nor the Republic itself -would exist. M. and Mme. Loubet would still be simple little bourgeois -in the little town of Montélimar.... But the Government must remember -that we are only at the opening of hostilities. Until we have destroyed -every congregation, denounced the Concordat, and broken with Rome, -nothing is done.” In conclusion, these remarkable words were pronounced, -of which the manifesto of 4th November, 1904, is only an echo: “In -drinking to French Freemasonry I really drink to the Republic, because -the Republic is Freemasonry operating outside its temples; and -Freemasonry is the Republic under cover of our traditions and symbols.” -Is this clear enough? - -The Revolution of 1790 was undoubtedly due to Freemasonry, which about -that time began to appear openly for the first time, and almost -simultaneously, in France, Great Britain and America, etc. The Palladian -Rite, established in France in 1769, found a congenial field of -operation in the corrupt society of the _Régence_ and Louis XV. - -Its aim then, as to-day, is the same--the destruction of Christianity. -The Jacobin Clubs of 1792 were simply Masonic lodges. M. Waite, an -eloquent apologist of the fraternity, makes the following statement in -_Devil Worship in France_, page 322: “There is no doubt that it -[Masonry] exercised an immense influence upon France during the century -of quakings which gave birth to the great Revolution. Without being a -political society, it was an instrument eminently adaptable to the -subsurface determination of political movements.... At a later period it -contributed to the formation of Germany, as it did to the creation of -Italy. But the point and centre of masonic history is France in the -eighteenth century.” - -This explains the outbreak of _Kulturkampf_ in Germany and Switzerland -soon after 1870, and the wave of anti-religious furor which swept over -Italy at the same period. To-day Catholicism has repulsed Freemasonry in -Germany, and the victory is not far distant in Italy. The Liberal -Socialist party is waning, and it is always with these elements of -socialistic anarchy that Freemasonry operates under a guise of liberty. - -The efforts being made to break up the Austro-Hungarian and the Russian -Empire are undoubtedly traceable to these Judeo-Masonic secret -societies. But France remains the great battlefield. Christianity and -Freemasonry are about to fight a decisive duel. One or the other must -perish. “Si nous ne tuons pas l’Eglise, elle nous tuera,” said a -prominent Mason recently. The suppression of the Congregations and their -27,000 schools was, as they said, “only the opening of hostilities.” The -battle must be fought to the finish. I have repeatedly affirmed that -France was held firmly in the coils of the Grand Orient, which has -packed both Houses with its creatures, thanks to the political apathy of -respectable Frenchmen. - -The Separation Bill is merely a blind, a slip-knot which can be drawn at -any moment to strangle the victim around whose neck it is cast. When his -Socialist accomplices of the Left reproached M. Briand with being too -liberal, he replied, “If necessary we can always amend the law or make -another.” Only two short years ago M. Combes openly pronounced against -any project of separation. M. Rouvier was of the same opinion, but the -masters of France have spoken! - -In vain it was pleaded that the country be consulted before taking so -important a step. The perfidious feature of the Bill is just this--that -nothing will be changed until two years (1907) hence, when the “bloc” -will probably have gained a new lease of life by this manœuvre; for -in May, 1906 they will be able to say to their electors, “You see the -law is voted, and nothing is changed.” - -Article I sounds sweetly liberal: “The Republic assures liberty of -conscience and guarantees the free exercise of worship under the -following restrictions” (contained in some forty more articles). In my -opinion these numerous little “_restrictions_” will render the normal -existence of the Church in France impracticable. Of course she will -continue to exist, as she existed during the Terror, and under the -_Directoire_ and Diocletian. - -Another article, not yet voted, provides for the final disposition of -church buildings twelve years hence. That, apparently, is the allotted -span of life meted out to us by Masonic Jacobins. - -Article II with sweet inconsistency declares that “the Republic neither -recognizes nor subsidizes any cult,” and immediately after it inscribes -on the Public Budget the service of _aumôniers_ of state lyceums and -colleges. - -Peasants and poor struggling tradesmen and artisans must pay for the -luxury of religious worship or go without, but the sons of the rich, who -frequent these state schools, are to be provided for, gratis, by this -liberal Republic, which neither “recognizes nor subsidizes any -worship,” except, of course, Islamism in Algeria, which is now, _ipso -facto_, the religion of the State. - -It is very pitiful to see so momentous a question treated with such -flippancy and indecent haste. - -All their utterances in the Chambers and in their Press show that the -Freemasons are convinced that they would be defeated if the next -elections were made on this issue. Therefore they must “do quickly.” - -Alone of all the nations of Christendom, France totally disregarded Good -Friday this year. The Stock Exchange remained open and the Chambers met -as usual. The apostasy of the State will soon be complete. - -In Spain, where I spent Holy Week, the young king has taken a decided -stand against the Revolution. He has caused vehement enthusiasm by -reviving Christian customs fallen into desuetude during a century of -revolutions. On Holy Thursday he washed and kissed the feet of twelve -poor men whom he afterwards served at table, aided by the grandees of -Spain. On Friday he returned from church alone and on foot, and was -wildly acclaimed. We are so accustomed to see the menus of the banquets -of the rich, that it was refreshing to read, for once in the daily -papers, the menu of a banquet of some poor old men served by a king. - -This is the counter-revolution, and M. Salmeron and his Republican -Socialist Freemasons, French and Spanish, who recently caused riots in -many cities, might as well suspend operations. Only the assassination of -Alphonse XIII can prevent Spain from recuperating steadily. In Italy, -too, the counter-revolution is setting in. The Socialists, _alias_ -Freemasons, are succumbing to the Conservative or clerical party. The -Quirinal is steering for Canossa. France must bear the brunt till she, -too, can have her counter-revolution. - - - - -CATHOLICISM IN GERMANY - - -GERMANY, _August, 1905_. - -While Freemasonry in France seems on the point of triumphing over -Christianity by the destruction of all religious education and a law of -alleged Separation of Church and State, it is interesting to recall that -only thirty-five years ago Catholicism in Germany was as much menaced as -it is in France to-day. Churches were closed, prisons were full of -priests, bishops, and archbishops, and Bismarck, like M. Briand of -France, swore he would never, never go to Canossa. - -In 1871 there were only fifty-eight Catholics in the Reichstag, -representing 720,000 electors; in 1903 there were more than a hundred, -representing 1,800,000 electors; and to-day this Catholic Centre forms -the ruling majority in the country. The Emperor understands this -perfectly, and hence his amenities towards the Church and the Holy See. - -I have no doubt that the great Catholic Congress was held recently at -Strasburg with his knowledge and approval, not to say at his suggestion. -The event is significant coming so soon after his own investiture, at -Metz, with the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, conferred upon him by the -papal legate in the presence of the German cardinals and archbishops, -and the highest military dignitaries of the empire. - -At this Catholic Congress of Strasburg, forty thousand delegates of the -federated societies of Germany paraded the streets with banners and -music. The whole city was decorated, papal colours being most -conspicuous. These popular federated societies count half a million -members, grouped in nine hundred associations, that have 350 press -organs of their own. - -What makes the strength of these Catholic organizations in Germany is -that they represent all classes of society--princes, peasants, artisans, -nobles, and bourgeois--whereas Socialism finds its recruits almost -exclusively, amongst the proletariat, cultured and uncultured, chiefly -the latter. - -At the Congress, Prince d’Arenberg renewed the usual protestations -against the Piedmontese occupation of Rome, and the Bishop of Strasburg -rejoiced that, “in spite of the devastations of the French Revolution, -the ancient faith was still flourishing in Alsace, whence he hoped it -_might soon extend its salutary influence_.” - -These events are significant following the diplomatic humiliation -inflicted on France when M. Delcassé, Minister of Foreign Affairs, was -peremptorily dismissed at the behest of Germany. - -Not long since the Socialist Bebel saucily told M. Jaurès the French -would never have a pension for old age until the Germans gave it to -them. Nothing, too, would please William more than to play the rôle of a -paladin of religious liberty to the oppressed French Catholics. - -Nor is there anything to prevent the resuscitation of the Germanic -Confederation as it existed in the Middle Ages. The Habsburgs and the -Austrian Empire might never have arisen, and the Hohenstauffens might -still be reigning, if they had had sense enough to keep their hands off -the Papacy. Napoleon, too, might have founded a dynasty as long-lived as -that of the Bourbons, had he not also fallen into the same evil ways, -and sought to dominate the whole Church by enslaving the Sovereign -Pontiff. His nephew, the third Napoleon, in his youth, unfortunately -became the bondsman of secret societies, whom he aided and abetted in -the spoliations of 1870 which preluded his fall. - -The Third Republic, too, will be shattered on the same rock, though not -before having caused irretrievable wrong to France, I fear. - - - - -PSEUDO-SEPARATION - - -_19th August, 1905._ - -In the past, marauding kings and robber barons bound to themselves their -fighting lieges by investing them with vast tracts of stolen lands which -they, in turn, distributed among their leal followers. - -The Third Republic has found a better way. To say nothing of the -extensive network of electoral strongholds that they have established -all over the country by unlimited and most abusive high licence, the -masters of France have enlisted the enthusiastic support of myriads of -pettifogging lawyers and all the nondescript red-tapers of law by the -unlimited supply of lucrative jobs, pickings, and perquisites, furnished -by the notorious laws of 1901 and of 1904, and their bandit operations -called “liquidation.” - -They do not all pocket a few hundred thousands, like the millionaire -Socialist, M. Millerand, appointed by M. Waldeck Rousseau, but all have -a share in the carving up of the quarry. Not content with devoting to -this novel kind of graft all the holdings of the hapless Congregations, -who fell into its trap and asked for authorization, the Government has -kindly put up more than four millions and a half of public money, thus -far, to cover the cost of innumerable lawsuits, expropriations, etc., -going on all over the country since four years. The mobilizing of the -regular army for the expropriations was in itself an important item. All -this reckless, thriftless expenditure, joined to the continuous drain of -millions from the _Caisses d’Epargne_ and the exodus of capital, will -lead up to national bankruptcy as in 1795. - -To throw dust in the eyes of the public, domestic and foreign, a most -elaborate document has been published regarding pensions and retreats -for aged _congréganists_ ruthlessly thrown into the streets. - -This document is a huge farce, seeing that these pensions are only -conditional to there being funds enough, and there will be no assets -left. The Chartreux of Grenoble had some hundreds of their aged workmen -on their pension list. These were, in common justice, creditors of the -order, and should have received compensation from the _liquidateur_. But -the latter repudiated their claims absolutely.[10] - -What a fall was there from the billions of the Congregations, held out -as a glittering lure by Waldeck Rousseau in 1900, to bait his Socialist -majority with promises of pensions for workmen, etc. - -The Bill of alleged Separation, eminently calculated to bring Church and -State into constant contact and collision, holds out another golden -perspective. To use an expressive slang term, there is in it unlimited -_poil à gratter_, fur to scratch, for years to come--nay, as long as the -Republic lasts. - -A few days after it was voted, 200 “venerables” of the Grand Orient -offered a banquet to M. Briand, the reporter of the Law of Separation, -while at a Socialist Congress presided over by M. Combes, the President -of the Commission of Separation, referring to this law, declared “that -the war against the Church must be carried on without intermission.” - -Commenting thereon, the _Temps_ sarcastically wrote: “If the clerical -spectre is still to haunt us, was it worth while to be turning like -squirrels in a cage for the past five years?” - -The gist of the law is in the articles that regard “_Associations -cultuelles_,” which are aimed at the destruction of Catholic hierarchy -and unity. M. Ribot sought, in vain, to obtain that religious edifices -and property should be attributed only to associations approved by the -bishop in each diocese. The words _bishop_ and _diocese_ are most -carefully eschewed throughout the law. The attribution of property is to -be made to “associations formed in conformity with the rules of general -organization of the cult whose exercise they are to assure” (Art. 4). -The formula is most perfidious, and intentionally so, whereas the -amendment of M. Ribot and the one little word bishop might have rendered -the law supportable. - -What are “the rules of general organization”? The seventy-six Organic -Articles, perfidiously added by Napoleon to the Concordat, purported to -be “rules of general organization of Catholic worship.” Some of these -are rankly heretical, and have of course never been observed. These -Organic Articles are abrogated together with the Concordat by the new -law (Art. 37), but what is to prevent the Conseil d’Etat, composed -exclusively of Freemasons, from deciding that these articles are still a -criterion, being the _statu quo ante_? - -By similar means all their church property was taken from the Catholics -of Geneva (1872-5) and turned over to apostate French priests, Loyson, -Carrère, etc. - -A like contingency is foreseen by Art 8. It is anticipated that rival -associations may claim the same church property, and that scissions may -arise in associations, regularly formed and invested. - -Now in these cases the decision does not lie with the bishop, nor even -with the ordinary civil courts. Decrees of Conseil d’Etat are suspended -everywhere like swords of Damocles, or rather like the blades of the -_guillotine sèche_, which has replaced the bloody guillotine of “the -grand ancestors of 1793,” whom these up-to-date Jacobins invoke so -complacently. We must not forget, too, that Conseil d’Etat means Conseil -du Grand Orient. It is said that the Masons are secretly organizing -_Associations cultuelles_, so-called Catholic. Human nature has not -changed since 1790, and it would be strange, if they could not pick up -another Abbé Gregoire or two, and a Talleyrand to boot. They can always -import some of that ilk from Geneva if necessary. - -Moreover, these _Associations cultuelles_ can be dissolved for so many -reasons (five), at a moment’s notice, by a decree of Conseil d’Etat, -that it does not seem worth while to form them. - -The paltry reserve fund the _Associations cultuelles_ are allowed to -have must, like the rest of their funds, be deposited in the -Government’s strong-box, and can only be used “for building, repairing, -embellishing church edifices.” - -Evidently, it is not intended that there shall be any further -ecclesiastical recruitment. Seminaries are eliminated, _ipso facto_, as -they cannot exist on thin air. - -I do not enter into the details regarding pensions of aged priests, as -it is all too contemptible, the sums accorded being just enough to -starve on. But we may note a few violations of liberty and justice. - -1. All church property, movable or immovable, to which are attached -_fondations_ not directly regarding public worship, which are, in other -words, charitable or educational, are to be turned over to civic -institutions. Thus testators who left money for Christian parochial -schools and charities see it applied to the paganizing of the rising -generation and the poor. - -2. All churches and chapels arbitrarily closed by M. Combes are to -remain disaffected, i.e. confiscated. - -3. Ecclesiastical archives and libraries of episcopal sees and grand -seminaries that are claimed by the State are to be immediately -transferred to the State. This reveals the whole Jacobin mind. The -Church is to be deprived of all social action, by education and charity, -which she has exercised since two thousand years, and she must be -mummified like the Photian and Coptic and Nestorian Churches. - -The confiscation of these archives and libraries by a pagan state is, to -my mind, the most serious loss. Money can always be found again, but -when impious vandals have destroyed or dispersed these libraries and -archives, they can never be replaced. All English students deplore the -irreparable loss, caused by the cynical and base uses made of invaluable -manuscripts by reforming vandals in the sixteenth century. - -4. The Law of Separation deprives communes of the right to give any -subventions for religious worship--though the State inscribes on its own -budget the stipends to chaplains of lyceums frequented by children of -the rich, notwithstanding Art. II. - -5. A whole class of citizens are placed _hors la loi_, in that they are -deprived of the right of trial by jury for offences amenable to this -procedure. They (priests) are placed on the same footing as convicted -anarchists. - -6. Divine service is assimilated to any public meeting. A band of -Socialists may fill the church and render prayer impossible by their -irreverent attitude but they cannot be expelled unless they resort to -violence. - -7. The same class of individuals can invade any cathedral at any hour -and insist on inspecting, gratis, all its treasures (_objets mobiliers -classés_). In other words, these venerable edifices, the church of Brou, -Notre Dame, etc., are treated already like public museums, less well in -fact. And all this, we are told seriously, is “Separation.” - -Meanwhile the two parties most nearly concerned in this question, the -Holy See and the French people, thirty-five million Catholics, have -never been consulted. - -M. Briand with remarkable impudence asserted that, since thirty-five -years, the country had sighed after “Separation,” though he well knows -that no one thought about it but the Grand Orient. He himself admitted, -in the same session, that the question did not exist (_n’était pas -posée_) at the beginning of this legislature (1902), and was only raised -by the Pope’s violations of the Concordat. This lie, which tends to -become historic, was amply exploded, when M. Combes was convicted in the -Chambers of having suppressed a document, which amply justified Pius X’s -action in the case of the Bishops of Dijon and Laval, which the lodges -used as a _casus belli_. Moreover, we must remember that the current -Jacobin thesis is that the Seventeen Articles of the Concordat, which -alone were signed by Pius VII, and the Seventy-six Organic Articles, -added _ex parte_ by Napoleon, in violation of every code of honour and -equity, form an intangible whole. Nevertheless, the Seventeen Articles -of the Convention which were alone signed by Pius VII and Napoleon, in -Messidor l’an IX, took effect as soon as the ratifications were -exchanged. The churches, seminaries, etc., were immediately “placed at -the disposal of the Bishops,” and the stipulated indemnities were -forthcoming. - -It was not till Germinal l’an X that the Seventy-six Organic Articles -were promulgated, together with the Convention. - -Now no one surely can be accused of violating articles regarding which -he has never been consulted. Yet this is precisely the ground taken by -the Jacobins. - -A senator of the Right alleged, in defence of the Concordat, Art. 1134 -of the Code Civil: “Conventions legally formed are a law to those who -make them. They can only be revoked, by mutual consent, by those who -make them, and for causes which the law recognizes.” - -Thereupon the reporter replied: “There was a Convention between Pius VII -and Napoleon; this Convention formed a whole (_un ensemble_) with the -Seventy-six Organic Articles.” And as no Government has ever been able -to enforce these articles, some of which are rankly heretical, the -reporter alleged Art. 1184 of the Code against Art. 1134 to defend the -Government’s _ex-parte_ denunciation of the Concordat. This Art. 1184 -declares that “a Convention is rescinded when one of the parties does -not keep his engagements.” - -In other words, they say Pius VII and his successors have always -protested against the Seventy-six Organic Articles which the former did -not sign, therefore we are justified in denouncing, _ex parte_, the -Convention or Concordat of Seventeen Articles signed by Pius VII and -Napoleon. - -It is by this sophism that the Third Republic justifies the repudiation -of a portion of the National Debt; for the payment of annual indemnities -to the Catholic clergy was undoubtedly placed on the “Grand Livre” of -France by the Constituante, and recognized as part of the National Debt -by succeeding legislatures, before and since 1801. - -Recently, when it was proposed to suppress, without indemnity, the -_Majorats_ of the _ancien régime_, M. Rouvier, Président de Conseil, -indignantly rejected the motion, saying, “Il ne faut jamais que la -signature de la France soit protestée.” But when it is a question of -mere Catholics, the sense of national honour becomes blunted. They are -_hors la loi_. This form of jurisprudence has been familiar to -highwaymen from time immemorial--for them, the unarmed are always _hors -la loi_. - -M. Raiberti, a deputy from Nice, eloquently protested against the vote -of urgency, declaring that the country had never been consulted. “No -law,” he said, “can be just and stable which does not express the wishes -of the people.” All in vain. The Socialist voting machine worked -automatically at every turn towards the end. - -It is an incontestable fact that Separation has never appeared on any -programme these thirty-four years, except on that of 181 deputies at the -elections of 1902. Nevertheless, 341 (against 249) have just voted for -this law of Separation that is the negation of fifteen centuries of -national history.[11] - -The _Gazette de France_ calculates the number of electors represented by -these 341 deputies who carried the Separation Bill in the Chambers in -July:-- - - “On a total of 11,219,992 French electors only 2,997,063 pronounced - yesterday by their deputies in favour of the denunciation of the - Concordat and the spoliation of the Church, voted by a so-called - majority. - - “We must bear in mind that at the elections of 1902 the majority - only vanquished by 200,000 votes out of 8,000,000 voters inscribed, - and there are 400,000 functionaries. Thus spoke a senator (de - Cuverville), and he further quoted the declarations of M. Deschanel - in a public speech, July, 1905. - - “A minority, he declared, governs the country, and a law voted by a - certain majority represents 25 to 30 per cent. One deputy is - elected by 22,000, another by 1000. The Department du Nord has - 500,000 more inhabitants than six departments of the south-east, - yet it has five deputies less. Roubaix, with 125,000 inhabitants, - has one deputy, while the Department of Basses Alpes, with 115,000 - inhabitants, has five deputies.” - -It is easy to see how a little judicious electoral geometry and -arithmetic will always give the Government a majority. Each -_arrondissement_ having a deputy, it is only necessary to cut up a given -district, notably anti-clerical, into a great many _arrondissements_, in -order to secure an increased number of deputies, _blocards_; and vice -versa the process need only be reversed in districts suspected of -“clericalism.” We must also remember that at least one-third of the -electors never vote, and so the Government can always have a majority. - -This Separation Law is, as M. Briand said, only “transitory.” It is, I -repeat, eminently perfidious. There is no form of tyranny, vexation, and -spoliation which cannot be legalized by its equivocal articles. It -contains all that is necessary to eliminate Catholicism from France as -far as public worship is concerned. - -On June 3rd I wrote, “What these Jacobins want is to have the law voted -before the elections of May, 1906, and then say to the people, ‘You see -the law is voted, and nothing is changed.’” At the final session after -the vote, M. Briand, in a speech now pasted up all over the country, -said, “Our work is done. What have you to say? You tried to trouble the -conscience of the French Catholics, but can you find anything in the -Bill to warrant your grievances? Dare now to tell the people the -churches are to be closed, the priests proscribed.” Yet all this, alas! -arrived almost immediately after the first Separation Law made in 1795. - -“No one,” echoed M. Deschanel, a smooth-tongued, dainty politician like -M. Rousseau, “can maintain that this law is the work of hatred and -persecution, unless it is travestied by some profoundly dishonest -Government.” - -“Like that of M. Combes, who travestied Waldeck Rousseau’s Associations -Bill,” rejoined a deputy of the Right. - -This Law of Separation bears the same imprint as that of 1901; both -emanated from the same quarter. It is, I repeat, a masterpiece of guile -and arbitrary tyranny. Any sense can be given to the ambiguous language -in which the most important articles are couched, and their -interpretation is not to be left to ordinary civil tribunals. The _jus -et norma_ in all doubtful questions is to be the Conseil d’Etat. In -other words, the Grand Conseil of the Grand Orient is to be the supreme -court of first and last appeal. - -The Church in France might just as well descend into the catacombs here -and now. It will come to this, unless some cataclysm rouse the French to -a violent uprising, in which the Third Republic and all its works and -ways will be swept away. - -The Senatorial Commission is composed of fourteen Jacobin Freemasons. -Their rulings are a foregone conclusion. The Separation Bill may be -considered already voted in the Senate. - -Great crimes against liberty, justice, and humanity cannot be -circumscribed by national frontiers. They offend all Christendom, and -though nations may, supinely, say “Am I my brother’s keeper?” they pay -the penalty sooner or later. France in acute revolution will mean Europe -in flames, as in 1792. - - - - -THE PROGRESS OF ANARCHY - - -_12th October, 1905._ - -The stories that are going the rounds of the whole European Press leave -little doubt as to the fact, that a once great, free nation had her -Foreign Minister, M. Delcassé, kept in office by the King of England -while he was in Paris this spring, and that two months later, he was -dismissed at the behest of Germany, who tore up the Anglo-French -Convention regarding Morocco and inaugurated the Congress of Algeciras. -No nation can act as France has done with impunity.[12] - -This is curious too when we consider that France is so sensitive about -the _ingérence_ of even a spiritual sovereign, that the denunciation of -a Concordat and the rupture with the Holy See were ascribed to the fact -that Pius X had taken the liberty of suspending two French bishops! - -It is also interesting to recall that the Bill of alleged Separation -was first voted at the Congress of Free-Thought held at Rome, in -September, 1904. The motion was made by Professor Haeckel, of the -University of Jena, Prussia, that: “We congratulate M. Combes in his -struggle for free-thought against theocratical oppression, and for the -radical separation of Church and State.” Allemane, a French Socialist -deputy, exclaimed: “This is not enough. We want the abolition of the -Church.” Robin, another French deputy, rejoined: “We are equally opposed -to both. We demand the abolition of Church and State.” - -I have already stated how the annual convent of the Grand Orient of -France notified M. Combes (September, 1904) of their wishes regarding -the passage without delay of the Separation Bill. This Bill was voted, -or rather enregistered, by the Chamber of Deputies in July, as it will -be done shortly by the Senate.[13] - -Yesterday in Paris, the bureau of the “Federation of International -Free-Thought” actually intimated to the French Senate its behest that -the Law of Separation of Church and State be voted, without discussion -or amendment, before December 31st. When we consider that this bureau is -composed of one French Socialist Freemason deputy, the others being -German, Belgian, and Italian, it seems preposterous! It would be so, -even if all were Frenchmen, seeing that the Senate is supposed to be a -free deliberative body, having the responsibility of accepting or -rejecting what is done in the lower House. - -The London _Saturday Review_ is almost the only organ in the English -language which seems adequately to appreciate the enormity of the -religious persecution in France. - -“The extraordinary conspiracy of silence on this momentous matter, in -the English Press,” writes the _Saturday Review_, London (July 8th, -1905), “is doubtless due to the fact that English Christians and -gentlemen are usually considered unfit to represent English newspapers -on the Continent. The Paris correspondents of our leading journals, -being nearly all men of oriental extraction, cannot, however honourable -and enlightened, be expected to entertain any interest in the fate of -the Christian religion. We are invariably led by these gentlemen to -believe that all is for the best in the best of republics. When, a -fortnight ago, France suddenly realized that she was within sight of a -war with her ancient foe on the other side of the Rhine, a thrill of -terror passed over the land at the mere thought that while engrossed in -the work of dechristianizing France, and hustling monks and nuns up and -down the country, the politicians in power had demoralized the army, -neglected the navy, and left the frontiers almost entirely unprotected. -Things have quieted down since then, but none the less there is a -feeling of unrest which makes people dread the passage of a law that -may lead to internal divisions and disorders even more serious than -those which agitate France at the present time.” - -Referring to the Bill of alleged Separation, the _Saturday Review_ -continues: “_La Lanterne_ (the organ of the ‘bloc’) intimates that ‘it -only accepts the Bill as it stands as a preliminary; we must silence the -priests and prevent them from infusing any more of the virus of religion -into the minds of the people.’ ... To a thinking foreigner, the -spectacle presented by contemporary France is an amazing one. Here is a -great nation, which for sixteen centuries has proclaimed herself ‘eldest -daughter of the Church,’ renouncing her great position as protector of -the Catholics in the east and breaking off her connexion with the -Vatican, at a time when Germany is menacing her and proclaiming at Metz, -of all places in the world, her imperial wish to become more friendly -with the Church.” - -This is an allusion to the Emperor William’s having himself invested by -the papal legate with the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, surrounded by -German cardinals and prelates, as well as the highest military -dignitaries of Alsace-Lorraine. For me, the dismissal of M. Delcassé and -the whole Moroccan incident are the handwriting on the wall which the -French are slow to read. On the Feast of St. Michael, September 29th, -the Minister of Public Worship held high revelry at a banquet of five -hundred Freemasons in the church of the recently expropriated convent of -the Ursuline nuns at Ave-ranche, just opposite that wonderful pile known -as the Mount St. Michel, a mediæval monastery and church. It is not -stated whether--like Balthazar--he sent for the vessels of the temple. - -The crimes against justice, liberty, and humanity committed in France, -since four years, are without a parallel in Europe since the Revolution -of 1790, if we except, of course, the atrocities in the Turkish Empire. -But most dire racial and religious antagonism may be alleged on behalf -of the Turk. In Spain, too, similar violations of liberty, justice, and -humanity have been committed during the nineteenth century, but this was -done in the heat and turmoil of revolutionary and anarchist upheavals. -In France they were committed in cold blood, under cover of law. Nearly -27,000 Catholic schools, freely patronized by Catholic parents, have -been suppressed, thousands of aged men and women have been dragged out -of their homes and cast into the street, _vi et armis_, the regular army -being employed in a great many cases. Their homes, built up by years of -patient labour, have been confiscated and sold for a trifle. Yet many of -them were authorized and had contracts with the Government. Recently, -convent and school buildings, estimated at 200,000 francs, were sold for -2200 francs. - -Two days ago, forty-three nuns of the Benedictine Order were expelled -from their homes; eleven of them were over seventy, and quite infirm. -The Congregations who were wary enough not to ask for authorization, and -realized what they could before going into exile, are not to be pitied -so much. Unfortunately, the majority fell into the Government’s trap and -asked for authorization, which obliged them to declare all their assets, -that have been confiscated, and of which they will never see one cent. -Not only have all the assets been consumed in the process called -“liquidation,” but the Government has been obliged to put up over -4,000,000 of the public money to cover the expenses of the -“liquidators.” So ends the myth of the “billions of the Congregations,” -held out as a glittering lure by Waldeck Rousseau in 1900 to his -Socialist henchmen. - -The terrible inroads, made by anti-patriotism and anarchical Socialism -by means of public-school teachers, are seriously alarming the creators -of this modern Frankenstein. Domiciliary perquisitions are being made -just now, in many cities, to seize the leaders of a conspiracy to -debauch the young conscripts who begin their two years’ military service -now. A brochure, called _Crosse en l’air_ (meaning military revolt), has -reached, it is said, the million mark of circulation, in spite of the -Government. - -The conclusion of the Russo-Japanese war is an illustration of what I -wrote in _Slav and Moslem_ ten years ago, page 170: “Henceforth -commerce, not ideas, will rule in the council chambers of the world. -Politics will be forged in counting-houses and warehouses, ‘where only -the ledger lives,’ in whose dusty atmosphere none but merchantable ideas -are current. Wars will be declared, peace be made, alliances formed or -repudiated, according to their probable effect on the pulse of the -market.” - -Without wishing to derogate from the merit of Mr. Roosevelt’s good -offices, I am convinced he could not have succeeded if the financial -consideration had not rendered the belligerents docile. Japan was -absolutely at the end of her financial resources; the Russian coffers -were not far from empty. By the intermediary of the President, both -parties were given to understand that not a yen or kopeck more could -they borrow if peace were not concluded there and then. Any prolongation -of that war would have meant financial panic in many countries, chiefly -in France. Israel, by its bankers, has its hand on the throttle in -Christendom, and can make for peace and war more than all the peace -congresses. When we reflect on the three cruel, uncalled-for wars which -followed the Hague Conference in 1898, we can only tremble for the -future, if there is to be a new peace congress. In spite of conferences -and Jew bankers, guns will continue to “go off by themselves.” These -Delcassé revelations are not calculated to render the Germans more -friendly to France or England, and the knowledge they have acquired of -France’s inability and unwillingness to fight must be a strong -temptation to a nation whose population is increasing at a formidable -rate, in spite of emigration, while that of France is stationary, not to -say steadily decreasing. - -Belgium, that great country in a very small compass, has doubled hers -since 1830. With 7,000,000 inhabitants, the figure of her business -operations is now the same as that of France with 38,000,000. This last -statement was made by M. Leygnes, ex-minister, in a recent political -speech, regarding the steady decadence of France under Jacobin rule -since twenty years. - -No country wants war, but all fear it. The causes of unrest are manifold -and legion. - -In an important political speech made by Lord Beaconsfield (Disraeli) at -Aylesbury, September 20th, 1873, he expressed himself as follows: “I can -assure you, gentlemen, that those who govern must count with new -elements. We have to deal not with emperors and cabinets only. We must -take into consideration secret societies, who can disconcert all -measures at the last moment, who have agents everywhere determined men -encouraging assassinations, and capable of bringing about a massacre at -any given moment.” - -The passage is quoted in an article in the _Nineteenth Century_ (1876), -“A History of the ‘Internationale.’” The “Internationale,” by the way, -is fast superseding the “Marseillaise.” The verse of blasphemy against -Christ and His mother is followed by one which ends with these words: -“Our balls are for our generals.” A short time ago there were prolonged -riotous strikes on the eastern frontier. A striker was killed -accidentally. Thereupon M. Berteaux, the Minister of War, retired a -general and imprisoned a captain and a lieutenant for the crime of -having allowed the lancer regiments to carry lances when they were sent -out against the strikers! - -To propitiate these rioters the Minister of War went to Longwy, and the -strikers marched past singing the “Internationale,” and the Minister of -War actually saluted the red flag! He afterwards protested in the -newspapers that he did not salute the red flag, but the men and women -who were escorting it! This Minister of War began life as dry-goods -commercial traveller. He is to-day a millionaire _agent de change_ at -the Paris Bourse, and is said to ambition the presidential chair. - -Shakespeare wrote: “Motley is the only wear.” In France, everything -seems to be running to red. I have witnessed here two “free-thought” -funerals, one last April and another yesterday, in which pall and -banners were red, and even the coffin was draped in flaming red. Red “is -the only wear,” though it is not easy to understand why “free-thought” -should necessarily blush--for itself. At the “Free-Thought” convention -held, recently, at Paris, under government patronage, anarchy dominated, -just as it did at Rome last September. Red was the keynote. - - - - -THE ABOLITION OF THE CONCORDAT - - -_February 3rd, 1906._ - -On August 19th, 1905, I described some of the odious features of the -alleged Separation Bill voted by the House of Deputies on July 7th, at -“midnight, the hour of crime.” It may truly be ranked in that category -to which Cicero referred when he said, “There are laws which are merely -conventions among thieves.” “The vote of the Senate is a foregone -conclusion,” I wrote. The order had been given; every amendment (there -were about a hundred) was rejected automatically, and the law was voted, -December 6th, 1905, by a majority of 180 to 101. “The French -Government,” I wrote (June 30th, 1900), “is on the verse of apostasy. Is -this a cause, a presage, or a symptom of national decadence? All three I -fear. Nations stand or fall with their governments. They have the -government they deserve, and are punished for the evil doings of their -rulers! ‘I gave them a king in my wrath,’ was once written of the Jews. -Is there sufficient vitality left in the French national constitution to -reject the poison which is undermining it, and of which alcoholism, -unknown in France fifty years ago, is but the outward and visible sign?” -To-day this apostasy, not of the nation, but of the French State, is -complete. It is the latest, though by no means the last act of a series -of anti-religious laws, elaborated by the Grand Orient and voted by -majorities and cabinets formed by them. I dealt with this subject on -March 17th, 1900, and said, then, that “with a Parliament and Ministry -like this any legislation is possible.” - -The pseudo-Separation Bill is the most important legislation -accomplished in France since a century at least, and it has been done in -a manner which would not be tolerated in any free, civilized country. An -Act, which is the repudiation of fifteen centuries of national life, and -is fraught with the gravest consequences both political and religious, -interior and exterior, has been rushed through both Houses with most -unseemly, “scandalous haste.” “You are treating it,” said a senator, “as -if it were a question of a fourth-rate railroad.” There was only one -deliberation in the Chamber of Deputies, and not one in the Senate we -may say. Senators of the Right were allowed to soliloquize eloquently. -Their speeches were admirable from every point of view and might well -have given pause to the Left. But these were dumb, by order. With few -exceptions, the reporter and President of the Separation Commission and -the Minister of Worship alone spoke, to curtly and peremptorily repulse -the proposed amendments. M. Rouvier, Prime Minister and Minister of -Foreign Affairs, who did not speak at all in the House of Deputies, -made but one appearance, on November 9th, at the first session of the -Senate, to declare that “the question was essentially a political one,” -and that there was “a primordial and dominant interest for the -Government that this reform should be completed before the Senate went -before the electoral body.” He further declared “that the Senate had -given its adhesion in advance ... if it were otherwise the Government -would resign.” Surely a singular speech to make to a deliberative -assembly, on a matter that transcends in importance anything that has -been transacted in the French Parliament since 1793. - -If the law were not what Cicero calls “a convention among thieves,” how -did M. Rouvier know “that the Senate had given its adhesion in advance”? -Indignant at the systematic refusal of the Left to enter into any -discussion, a senator exclaimed: “You are a deliberative assembly; try -at least to keep up appearances.” MM. Monis and Clemenceau spoke on the -Left, not to refute the arguments of the Right, but to travesty history, -to malign and misrepresent, and to discuss subjects wholly irrelevant. -M. Monis entered into a long digression on the Franco-Prussian war in -order to incriminate a French cardinal and Pius IX. He was ably refuted -by M. de Lamarzalle. - -Whence this unseemly haste to vote a measure so important on the ragged -edge of a legislature? Next month one-third of the Senate is to be -renewed, the presidential term expires, and in May general elections are -to take place. In vain the Right, in learned and eloquent speeches, -adjured the Senate to postpone the final vote: (1) till one-third of the -Senators had been replaced; (2) till the Municipal Councils had been -consulted; (3) till the country had been consulted; (4) until after the -general elections of May, 1906. All in vain. “_Motions préjudicielles_” -and a hundred odd amendments all had the same fate. - -The explanation of this “scandalous haste” is very simple. The reporter -of the Commission said: “If you do not vote this liberal law now, you -can say good-bye to it, for you will never see it again.” - -The country has never been consulted, and the Government wishes to -confront the people with the _accomplished_ fact, and above all to be -able to say, as I pointed out in my last: “You see the law is voted and -nothing is changed.” If this law had been passed two years ago, it would -have gone into operation a year before the general elections and the -people might have been roused. On the other hand, if it hung fire now, -it would certainly have to be placed in all the electoral programmes. -Everything has been planned and foreseen by the lodges since twenty -years.[14] - -Several senators of the Right convincingly established that there was no -adequate reason for this unseemly haste--that no organic law had ever -been passed without a second reading; and they adjured the Senate not to -abdicate. M. de Chamaillard even offered to withdraw all the proposed -amendments (about a hundred) if the Senate would not vote the “urgency” -and give the law a second reading. All in vain. - -No one ignores or denies that the true purpose of the law is to -dechristianize France; even the spokesmen of the Government could not -dissimulate the truth. The coterie of Freemason Jacobins who have ruled -France for the past twenty years have not renounced their scheme of -national schismatic churches; only, instead of having one, which was -seen to be impossible, they propose to establish dozens of them by means -of associations of worship. Articles 4, 6, 8, 19 dealing with these -associations contain the whole venom of the law. In vain the -obscurities, the anomalies, the legal antinomies were pointed out, and -explanations demanded. _Règlements d’organization and Conseil d’Etat_, -it was said, would settle everything later on! In this _Review_, August -19th, I commented on the text of the law--and not one word, not one -comma, has been changed by the Senate! - -To-day, Islamism is, _ipso facto_, the only religion recognized by the -French Government; its ministers and mosques and schools are provided -for, and its ceremonies are often honoured by the presence of state -officials. This, in spite of Article 2, “the Republic recognizes and -subventions no worship.” - -Another point worth noticing is that while discussing Article 1, “The -Republic assures liberty of conscience,” the Minister of Public Worship, -speaking for the Government, clearly indicated that state functionaries -would never be permitted to send their children to any but government -schools. - -There are three points on which I insist in conclusion: (1) That the -country has not been consulted. At the general elections, 1902, not one -senator, and only 130 deputies out of 580 had “Separation” in their -programmes, and the Budget of Worship was voted in 1902, 1903, 1904 by a -compact majority who would then have been indignant had it been said -that they were acting against the wishes of the country. On January -27th, 1903, M. Combes himself repelled a suggestion of denunciation of -the Concordat thus: “If you do this by an improvised vote ... you will -throw the country into the greatest difficulties, trouble consciences, -and cause a veritable peril to the Republic.” Now the country has not -been heard from since 1902. Yet the law was rushed through, on the eve -of a new election, for reasons I have indicated. - -(2) We must remember that when continual violations of the Concordat are -alleged as an excuse for the rupture, the Jacobins constantly confound -the seventy-five Organic Articles with the seventeen articles of the -Convention called Concordat, 1801, which alone was signed by Pius VII. - -(3) The suppression of the indemnity _Concordataire_ is, as far as the -Catholic clergy are concerned, a partial repudiation of the National -Debt. It was recognized as such by laws of 1789, 1790, 1791, 1793, 1801, -etc. - -This law of pseudo-Separation is not only a law of spoliation, but also -of supreme tyranny, in that in the name of Separation, it pretends to -regulate minutely the mode of existence of its victims, in future, by -special codes, and deprives them of the right to have more than the -strictest necessary for a hand-to-mouth existence. - -I am convinced that to acquiesce in regard to these “associations of -worship” will be to fall into the Government’s trap as the Congregations -did when they applied for authorization in 1902. It will only mean -retreating before the enemy, and postponing the hour of violent -persecution and combat, which must come before the Jacobin-Freemason -yoke can be broken. - - - - -THE INVENTORIES - - -_12th February, 1906._ - -Year by year, I have foreshadowed and characterized the programme of -persecution, spoliation, and arbitrary tyranny which is that of the -Judeo-Masonic coterie which governs France, by means of the Socialist -vote. We have now reached the second part of this programme. - -In 1901 the Associations Bill was, according to Waldeck Rousseau, -intended to give legal standing and liberty to the unauthorized as well -as to the authorized Congregations. We all know, to-day, how -twenty-seven thousand of their schools have been closed, and how the -Congregations, simple enough to fall into the Government’s trap by -asking for authorization and furnishing inventories of their property, -have been robbed of everything and turned adrift. - -The inventories now being made in the churches, amid scenes of violence -and bloodshed, with the cooperation of the regular army, represent the -first step on the road to wholesale spoliation and strangulation. If -only the victims would be docile and resigned there would be no trouble -whatever. Resistance will compel the operators to be drastic, when they -would rather go slowly and surely. The French voters should be -consistent. After giving themselves such law-makers, they ought at least -not to wince when the laws made by them are put into execution. But this -is an incurable idiosyncrasy of the French; they are clear-sighted, -energetic, and practical in the administration of their private affairs, -but when it comes to politics and government, they are absolutely -apathetic and purblind. Any pothouse politician can wheedle them out of -their votes, who would find it difficult to coax a sou out of their -pockets. All they ask is to be left in peace to attend to their business -and pleasures. It is only when the unpleasant practical sides of laws -like those of 1902, 1904, and 1905 are brought home to them that the -peasant seizes his pitchfork, and the bourgeois his cane, and bloody -manifestations occur all over France, as in 1902, 1904, and to-day -(1906). - -Generally speaking, inventories are made only when property is about to -change hands, as in cases of death and bankruptcy. Now the adherents of -the Catholic Church in France are numerous and very much alive, and they -cannot see why their ecclesiastical furniture and property should be -inventoried, quite forgetting that they gave carte blanche to the “bloc” -of Briands, Brissons, Combes, etc., who made the law they are now -resisting. - -If _Associations cultuelles_ are formed, a consummation most devoutly to -be deprecated by every friend of Catholic France, evidently they will -be composed by bishops, curés, and their present _conseils de fabrique_, -and there will not be any transmission of property. - -If there were no _animus furtandi_, no malevolent projects of -strangulation in the background, the Government would have contented -itself with denouncing the Concordat, and repudiating that portion of -the National Debt represented by the _Budget of cults_, instituted by -the Jacobins themselves, in 1790, when they appropriated Church property -and assumed the charge of maintaining Catholic worship in France. -Neither Protestant nor Jewish worship was included, originally, in the -_Budget de Cults_, seeing that their Church property had not been -touched, and they had no part in the Concordat. - -When the Anglican Church was disestablished or separated from the State -in Ireland, it surely never occurred to Mr. Gladstone and his Government -to order inventories to be made in the churches. - -To understand this revolt of the French people just now, we must recall -their past experience with inventories. In 1790 a decree obliged all -cathedral chapters and titulars of benefices to furnish complete -inventories of all their holdings, and in March, 1791, about four -hundred millions of Church property was seized and sold by the State. In -1901 the Congregations were invited to furnish ample inventories with -their demands for authorization; no authorizations were given, but the -inventories were very useful for the wholesale spoliations which -followed, spoliations which still masquerade under the pseudonym of -“liquidations.” - -Moreover, the State makes these inventories to-day as proprietor, though -by no sleight of language can its ownership be proven, even as regards -churches existing before the Revolution, while many costly structures -have been erected and endowed since then by private initiative.[15] - -Fierce riots occurred over one of these churches built on private -grounds. The proprietor produced his title deeds, proving that the -commune had not contributed one cent and that he was absolute owner, but -this made no difference. - -The law Mirabeau of 1789 distinctly recognized that all ecclesiastical -property then existing had been “irrevocably given to the Roman Catholic -Church for public worship and charity.” The Jacobins of to-day -apparently base their claims (Art. 12 de Separation) on this loi -Mirabeau, which declares, forthwith, that all this Church property is -“placed at the disposal of the nation,” (“_mise à la disposition de la -nation_”). But Art. 12 of the Concordat uses exactly the same words in -speaking of what was left, in 1801, of Church property, edifices, -etc.--“_sont mises à la disposition des évêques_”--all was “placed at -the disposal of the bishops”; and the faithful, moreover, were invited -to reconstitute the stolen patrimony by gifts and legacies, which are -now to be confiscated. - -Church edifices and everything pertaining thereto, as well as pious -legacies (_fondations_), are to confiscated, if _Associations -cultuelles_ are not formed before 6th December, 1906, or if said -associations are dissolved for any of the five cases foreseen by the law -ironically called of “Separation.” Lineal descendants may claim -_fondations_ made by ancestors, but this liberal provision is illusory, -as all important bequests are made by people who are childless. Thus the -dead are despoiled as well as the living. - -The recitals which fill the daily papers of churches besieged and -assaulted by _gens d’armes_ and the regular army are very sickening, -coming so soon after a similar campaign against convents. There are -places where no workmen will break down doors or pick locks for the -fiscal agents, and they are obliged to carry operators, or official -_crocheteurs_, around with them. - -Recently two thousand soldiers were mobilized against a village church. -In many places the regular army have occupied the churches, -unexpectedly, before daylight, and thus the people were outwitted and -the inventories were made quietly. Though, if we may believe a -functionary interviewed by a reporter of the _Journal de Génève_, not -one inventory has been made thoroughly, as the Government is very -anxious to have it over. The probability is that the odious work will -soon be suspended entirely, so that all may be forgotten before the -elections of May.[16] - -Yesterday two superior officers of the Engineering Corps at Cherbourg -had their swords broken by the Government, because they manifested their -disgust too openly. Many others are under arrest, because they refused -to lead the assault on Church edifices, and their careers may be -considered at an end.[17] - -The first article of this Law of alleged Separation declares that “the -Republic assures liberty of conscience.” Yet surely it is a violation of -liberty of conscience to command a Catholic officer to batter down the -doors of his parish church. Moreover, when this article of the law was -being discussed in the Senate, the Minister of Cults (M. Briand), -speaking for the Government (as M. Rouvier was never present!), gave it -to be clearly understood that functionaries would never be allowed to -send their children to any but government schools! Yet surely it must be -a matter of conscience with any Catholic to send his children to -schools, which are frankly and aggressively materialistic and atheist. - -Article II declares that “the Republic recognizes, salaries, and -subventions no religion.” This too must not be taken literally. For, as -I anticipated last year (May 29th), this law, made against thirty-five -million French Catholics, is not applicable to six million Mohammedans -of Algeria. Their mosques, their ulemas, their schools and congregations -will continue to be supported by the Republic which neither recognizes -nor supports any religion. This is just, seeing that the Third Republic -took all their ecclesiastical property, promising annual subsidies -instead, just as the Jacobins of 1790 did with regard to the Catholics, -only in the latter case the capital appropriated is retained, while the -charge is repudiated. - -Meanwhile Islamism is the state religion of France, _ipso facto_; the -only one whose ceremonies and mosques are honoured by government -officials on solemn occasions. Shades of Godfrey de Bouillon and St. -Louis! - -Spoliation and poverty would be endurable if only the Church were truly -separated from the State. But the latter presumes to dictate to the -Church a new organization of its parishes (_Associations cultuelles_), -to limit its financial resources, and decide how these are to be -obtained, how they must be invested, and what use may be made of them. - - - - -DUC IN ALTUM - - -_20th August, 1906._ - -“And the Lord said to Peter, Launch out into the deep,” _Duc in altum_. -To-day again the successor of Peter has heard the word of command, _Duc -in altum_. He has exercised that _potentiorem principalitatem_ or -eminent leadership ascribed to the Roman See by St. Irenæus in the -second century, and the whole leash of anti-clericals are transported -with rage and surprise at this grand act of Pius X, the one contingency -for which they were not prepared. The previous encyclical (_Vehementer_) -had left them indifferent. They treated it as a mere rhetorical -manœuvre destined to cover a retreat, and as a covert acquiescence in -their law of tyranny and spoliation. - -The whole venom of this law is, as I wrote a year ago (August 19th, -1905), contained in the numerous articles that regard _Associations -cultuelles_--which are aimed at the very life of the Church, by the -destruction of her hierarchy, which is the basis of her constitution. In -the English and American Press it is sought, disingenuously, to -make-believe that these associations were merely “boards of trustees” -to administer Church property, and that similar associations exist in -the United States, England, Germany, etc., with the approbation of the -Holy See. This is not so; French parishes already have _fabriques_ and -_conseils de fabriques_, that correspond to boards of trustees. They are -abolished by the Law of Separation, and for them are substituted these -_Associations cultuelles_, in which the bishops have no standing and no -authority whatever. Any seven, twelve, or twenty-five persons, calling -themselves Catholics, because they happen to be baptized, can form one -of these associations, claim a church and all its revenues, and run the -parish to suit themselves. - -Even after one association has been legally formed “according to the -general rules of worship” (Art. 4), a most ambiguous expression, which -the lawmakers deliberately refused to make explicit, it is anticipated -that scissions may occur, and that rival associations may claim the same -Church property. In all these contentions the bishop has no voice except -incidentally. The Conseil d’Etat, an administrative tribunal composed -exclusively of Freemasons, is the supreme judge of the orthodoxy of -these associations. The phrase “formed according to the general rules of -worship” was supposed to offer ample guarantee to Catholics. Yet -recently the _Journal Officiel_ has officially registered four or five -schismatic associations, formed by already interdicted priests. They are -in insignificant hamlets, it is true, one of them being a parish of -only 175 members, but they are test cases, and show how foolish it would -have been to trust to the illusory guarantee offered by Article 4, -“according to the general rules of organization of worship.” - -The discussion raised by M. Combes with the Vatican, regarding the words -_nobis nominavit_ in the canonical investiture of French bishops -presented by the Government as candidates, and then the affair of the -deposition of the Bishops of Dijon and Laval, 1894, convinced them that -a national schismatic church was impossible, so they fell back on this -alternative scheme of _Associations cultuelles_, destined to set in -motion a process of slow disintegration and gradual decomposition. A -noted Freemason said recently, “Twenty years of secular schools have -made us the masters of France; with twenty years of _Associations -cultuelles_ every trace of the Catholic religion in France will be -effaced.” - -In the Senate M. Berger, a Protestant Freemason, made the following -interesting statement (_Journal Officiel_, p. 1380): “The law,” he said, -“had been slumbering in the Republican programme for the past fifty -years ... but how can a law be perfect that has had only one -deliberation?... Instead of this a voice cries to us, ‘Vote, vote.’ Here -are articles in disagreement with each other--Vote. They are in -contradiction with the spirit of the law--Vote. They violate existing -rights--Vote, vote. Do your duty as a Republican.... Well, yes, I will -vote this law from a sense of duty.”[18] - -This same senator described the true character of the _Associations -cultuelles_ when he said, “They are free associations destined to take -the place of the ancient Church.” - -Not less clear was the statement of M. Briand, Minister of Public -Worship: “Dissensions may arise, not in matters of dogma only, but in -questions of administration. We must allow those, who do not wish to -submit, to form independent autonomous associations if they wish to use -the same church.” - -If Christians anywhere wonder at the severity of the papal encyclical -rejecting these associations, it is because they have not even scanned -the text of the law, and accept, unchallenged, the misrepresentations of -a Press which seems to derive all its information from organs like _La -Lanterne_, _L’Action_, _Le Siècle_, _Le Temps_, etc. This Law of alleged -Separation presumes to dictate to the Catholic Church, an organization -in which episcopal authority, the basis of her divinely given -constitution, is completely set at naught. The Roman Pontiff, her -supreme head, was not once consulted, and in order to make it impossible -to do so, they began by severing all connexion with the Vatican in 1904. -It is very much as if, after suppressing all their schools and -colleges, the English Government were to pass a law declaring that -Quakers and Presbyterians are to be deprived of all their ecclesiastical -property unless they consent to adopt episcopacy and the Book of Common -Prayer. Would any one under these circumstances hesitate to say that -Quakers and Presbyterians were persecuted? I trow not. - -When Henry VIII had resolved to reduce the Church of England to the -condition of a department of State, his first step was to undermine her -constitution by removing the keystone of the arch. To do this it was -necessary to detach the clergy from Rome, the See of Peter on whom the -Church is founded. In 1530 he compelled them “to acknowledge the king to -be the singular protector and only supreme lord, and, so far as the law -of Christ will allow, supreme head of the English Church and clergy.” In -1532 Convocation further abdicated by the elimination of the saving -clause, “as far as the law of Christ will allow.” They also consented to -have their canon law revised by a Royal Commission, “with a view to the -elimination of all canons contrary to the laws of God and of the realm.” -Their abdication and submission were recorded in an Act of Parliament, -and “henceforth,” writes Wakeman, the Anglican author of a history of -the English Church, “the Church of England will be at the mercy of -Parliament.” We all know how the schism and apostasy of this great -province of the Church were consummated by Elizabeth. The fate of -Moscow, and that of Constantinople five centuries before, was the same. -Detached from Rome, they fell beneath the tyranny of the State. - -It is this condition that the Judeo-Masonic coterie would fain have -brought about in France. The seventy-six Organic Articles added -surreptitiously to the Concordat of 1801 had no other object in view. -But, as M. Combes admitted in the Chambers, the Papacy never accepted -them, and no government had ever succeeded in enforcing them. The -question of _nobis nominavit_ and that of the Bishops of Dijon and Laval -were the last abortive efforts to bring about a schism. Failing this, -they resolved to reduce the Church in France to the condition of a -Polish Diet, in which the Conseil d’Etat, i.e. the Grand Orient, would -have enjoyed an unlimited _liberum veto_. - -Even legally speaking, these _Associations cultuelles_ could not -function normally, because their situation was anomalous. They were -neither owners, _usufruitiers_, nor simple tenants of the Church -property of which they had the charge and the responsibility. The law -is, as I said before, full of antinomies and obscurities. Senators of -the Right pointed them out one by one. All in vain. Decrees of Conseil -d’Etat will settle every question as it arises was always the -Government’s reply. - -The trap was smartly constructed, and neatly baited with the greater -portion of the present patrimony of the Church, some two million -pounds, it is said, and all Church edifices, etc. Everything is to be -confiscated if _Associations cultuelles_ are not formed by December -11th, 1906. - -Considering the disastrous consequences of not forming associations, it -is not surprising that some Catholics, and even some priests, were -disposed, once more, to retreat before the enemy by forming some kind of -Janus-faced association, canonical on one side, and in conformity with -the law on the other. But it is absolutely false that a majority, or -even a minority, of the bishops at the Assembly were in favour of the -acceptation of the Law, _telle quelle_. - -The clergy and the Catholics of France have been retreating before the -enemy for twenty years and more, quite forgetting the “Resist the devil -and he will flee from you.” - -Leo XIII, in his profound attachment to France, loyally lent his aid to -the Third Republic when implored by M. Grevy. He begged the clergy and -the Catholics to rally to the new regime in the interest of peace. - -He even discountenanced the formation of a Catholic party in France at -that time, because Catholics being divided, politically, into three -camps--Royalists, Republicans, and Imperialists or Bonapartists--he -feared strife, and did not wish the Catholic religion to be identified -with any form of government. - -At the time of Leo’s death the _Journal de Genève_ (Protestant) declared -that “this Pontiff had at least one miracle to his credit, in that to -the end he had maintained kindly relations with an ungrateful Republic -that repaid his condescendence and friendly aid by reiterated -provocations.” This is quite true. The scholar laws of 1886, when this -campaign against religion was begun by irreligious instruction, given -under a mask of _neutralité_, now completely laid aside; unjust fiscal -laws against the Congregations; and finally the laws of 1901, 1902 and -1904 which embittered Leo’s last hours, were so many acts of hostility, -leading up to the final assault, all foreseen and prepared in the -Judeo-Masonic lodges since a century we may say. “Il faut sérier les -questions,” said Gambetta, whose maxim was _Le clericalism c’est -l’ennemi_; and “clericalism,” it seems now, means simply _God_. To-day, -they openly proclaim that God is the enemy. - -After destroying the outposts and the ramparts by the destruction of all -her religious orders engaged in teaching, preaching, and ministering to -the poor and the halt, it was resolved to storm the citadel, the Church -of France herself, and the Law of alleged Separation was sprung upon the -nation. - -If any confirmation were needed as to the great hopes the Masonic -coterie had founded on the _Associations cultuelles_, we find it in the -unanimous outburst of surprise and fury which some of their more -moderate Press organs sought in vain to dissimulate. Billingsgate cannot -furnish the _Lanterne_ with terms adequate to the occasion; all the more -so, that from the beginning it has affirmed, in most scurrilous -language, that never, never would the Church refuse the “liberalities” -of the law, by which is meant the permission to keep some of her -property. Three editorials of _La Lanterne_--November 25th, 1905, “Ils -capitulent!”; August 16th, 1906, “C’est la guerre”; and “La folie -suprême,” of August 20th--are most interesting revelations of the -contemporary Jacobin mind.[19] Even the millions represented by the -confiscation of the _menses episcopales_, etc., which the law had -assigned to the _Associations cultuelles_, cannot console these -sectarian Jacobins, whose budget shows a deficit of hundreds of -millions. They loudly proclaim that the law must be enforced -_integrally_, forgetting that the numerous articles regarding -_Associations cultuelles_ are already null and void, and that they -themselves propose to annul those regarding pensions to aged priests. If -they had the courage to enforce Article 35 of the law (_police des -cultes_) every French bishop would be in prison for reading the -encyclical of August 15th in the churches. Other articles of the _police -des cultes_ also fall to the ground, as they were aimed at -_Associations cultuelles_, who were to be held responsible if a preacher -used seditious language in the pulpit. - -No _Associations cultuelles_ will be formed except by Freemasons -masquerading as Catholics; but at least there will be no confusion, no -disorganization of the Church, which was the main purpose of the law. -Thus has Pius X unmasked their batteries and spiked their guns. They -will have to resort to other arms, those of undisguised persecution, the -very thing they wished, above all, to avoid. - -Little is left standing of the Law of Separation but the articles of -spoliation and confiscation. If these Jacobins have the courage to -enforce them “integrally,” as they say, even to the confiscation of -Church edifices, it will mean, for the present, the most threadbare -poverty. Whether they will dare to do so remains to be seen. - -M. Clemenceau stopped the inventories, because, he said, “it was not -worth while to have riots and bloodshed for the pleasure of counting a -few candelabras.” He and his employers may find that it is not worth -while to risk the Republic for the sake of some Church edifices, for -which they have no use. - -They may content themselves for the present with seizing all the -available cash, which will go the way of the “billions” of the -Congregations, and the exchequer will grow poorer and poorer, till the -vanishing point of national bankruptcy is reached as in 1793.[20] - -Referring to the critical condition in which the Church was placed under -the feudal system owing to the abusive practice of investiture by laymen -of ecclesiastical dignitaries, Guizot writes: “There was but one force -adequate to save the Church from anarchy and dissolution, this was the -Papacy” (_History of Civilization_). - -To-day also, the Papacy, alone, could rally the clergy and the faithful -in complete unity, to offer a solid and compact resistance to these -associations of a law of anarchy and dissolution. “That they all may be -one that the world may believe” (John XVI). - -By a stroke of his pen Pius X, whom these anti-clericals affect to -despise as an ignorant peasant, has broken up their cunningly contrived -trap. To reject the associations seemed fraught with dire consequences -and a perilous launching into deep waters. Happily the French episcopate -are worthy and equal to the emergency. My “First Impressions” regarding -them (p. 5) were correct. - -Their addresses to Pius X and to their flocks, form, with the -encyclicals “Vehementer” and “Gravissimo” (15th August), one of the -grandest pages of the annals of the Church. “Satan hath desired to sift -you as wheat”; to sift you in sore persecutions; to sift you by poverty -and by riches; to sift you in the flux and reflux of barbarian -invasions; to sift you in the ruins of crumbling empires, that you, like -them, might become as “dust which the wind scattereth,” the dust of -sects and schisms and national churches. “But I have prayed for thee, -Peter, and thou, confirm thy brethren.” _Duc in altum._ - - - - -SEPARATION - - -_24th November, 1906._ - -Disguise the fact as they may, there is religious persecution in France. -Never since the days of Julian the Apostate has any war been waged -against Christianity more malign, more insidious. The ancient Faith was -crushed out, by sheer force, in England and in many parts of the -Continent, in the sixteenth century. In France, too, it seemed, in the -eighteenth century, as though Christianity had received its quietus by -the same brutal means. But methods have greatly altered. Masonic -Jacobins, to-day, shudder at the mere suggestion of blood. A senator of -the Right warned the Government that the Separation might lead to -bloodshed. Thereupon the minister Briand made a gesture of deprecation. -“Pray do not speak of blood,” he cried. One man was killed during the -inventories; and immediately they were stopped, and the Rouvier Ministry -fell. Yesterday again in the Chambers M. Briand exclaimed, “Du sang, -quelle parole atroce!” (“Blood, what an atrocious word!”). - -They have pondered the words of the Divine Master, “Fear not them that -kill the body”; and they are determined that there shall be no more -martyrs in the usual sense, no more guillotines, no more _noyades_ as in -1790. But they mean to choke out every germ of Christianity by casting -the minds of the rising generation in a mould of atheism, and to quench -every divine spark in the adult by degrading him in his own eyes to the -level of a mere animal, that must seize every fleeting advantage, by -fair means or foul, because there is no hereafter. - -“We have combated the religious chimera, and by a magnificent gesture we -have put out all the lights in heaven, which will never more be -rekindled.... But what then shall we say to the man whose religious -beliefs we have destroyed?” Thus spoke on November 8th, 1906, M. -Viviani, Socialist Minister of Labour. At the same tribune, the very -next day, M. Briand declared that his Government was not anti-religious, -but only irreligious, or neutral. Meanwhile both this Minister of Public -Instruction and M. Clemenceau, in public speeches all over the country, -have been reviling and calumniating the religion of the nation, and -congratulating public instructors on their zeal in emancipating the -minds of their pupils from all religious superstition, thus training up -“true men whose brains are not obstructed by mystery and dogma,” whose -“consciences and reason are emancipated.” - -In December 1905, this same M. Briand declared that the Government would -never suffer that its hundreds of thousands of public functionaries -send their children to any but state schools, and to make assurance -doubly sure, a law is deposed, and will soon be passed, establishing a -state monopoly of instruction. Disconcerted by the attitude of the -Papacy and the splendid unity of the clergy and their flocks, the one -contingency for which they were not prepared, the French atheocracy has -decided to content itself with spoliation for the present. A receiver is -to be appointed for all the holdings of the Church, _menses -episcopales_, pious and charitable foundations, libraries, etc. The Left -clamoured for the immediate attribution of the property to the communes, -as the law requires. But M. Briand declared that it would be for them “a -nest of vipers” and “poison their budgets”! - -M. Lassies summed up M. Briand’s discourse by these unparliamentary -words: “Vous avez du toupet, vous----” (“You have brass enough, -you----”). - -Not daring to close the churches at present, they have resorted to a -subterfuge (_cousu de blanc_) in order to avoid doing so. The Republic -having promised religious liberty, they say the faithful and their -priests may come together “accidentally” and “individually” in the -churches. Now the text of the law is formal. Art. I says: “The Republic -guarantees the free exercise of public worship, under _the following -restrictions_.” Then follow the restrictions, i.e. articles regarding -the associations; in other words, the constitution of the new -_by-law-established_ churches, which were to inherit all the patrimony -of the ancient Church and take its place. - -M. Briand himself, before the encyclical, had openly proclaimed that -there could be no public worship without these associations. The efforts -made by M. des Houx of the _Matin_ (alias “Mirambeau”), M. Decker David -(a deputy mayor), and other agents of the lodges or of the Republic, to -form these associations have been ludicrously pathetic. Failing these, -the Government has decided to leave the churches open for another year, -nevertheless. To storm them, and hold them after they had been stormed, -would be too perilous an enterprise, judging by the troubles caused by -the inventories. Therefore they have resolved to reduce the clergy by -famine, by military conscription, the suppression of seminaries, and -other vexatory measures. Moreover, the closing of the churches is the -one measure that would convince the masses that something had happened, -and that their religion was really persecuted. To the extreme Left, -clamouring for the immediate confiscation of Church edifices and -property, M. Briand said, “You want to strangle the Catholics right -away; we do not wish to do so” (November 9th, 1906). Precisely. What -they do wish is to empty the churches by every means, then close them, -one by one. - -On December 11th, 1906, state receivers are to be appointed for all -Church property, movable and immovable. The very sacred vessels and -ornaments, chasubles, etc., are all appropriated, and merely lent to the -Catholics, temporarily, at the Government’s good pleasure. There has -been of late years a dearth of treasures of ancient religious art in the -Salles Drouots of Paris, Frankfort, Munich, etc. But soon Jew -_brocanteurs_ will be in clover. All that escaped the revolutionists of -1790 will be scattered to the four winds ere long. This is one of the -by-products, duly discounted, of this “law of liberty” called -“Separation.” - -But they still have a latent hope that the inextricable difficulties -will force Catholics to capitulate and form associations. M. Briand’s -circular, 31st August, 1906, ordered his prefects to report to him any -_subreptice_ associations not in conformity with the law of 1905. -Cardinal Lecot’s society for the support of aged priests (their old age -pension fund being taken like everything else) is certainly of this -category. It conforms to none of the requirements of the law of 1905, -nevertheless M. Briand gives it a clean bill of health (November 9th). -His speech in the Chambers is a complete repudiation of his circular of -August 31st, and is a tissue of misrepresentation and tergiversation. He -harps upon Article 4 (“the associations must be formed according to the -general rules of worship”), which he declares “places all the -associations under the control of the bishops and of the Holy See.” -Article 8 of the law provides, it is true, for endless schisms, all -subject to the decisions of the Conseil d’Etat, alone competent to judge -if an association is or is not orthodox, i.e. “formed according to the -general rules of worship.” In this Article 8, also, he finds a guarantee -which should satisfy all reasonable Catholics! - -Now this same M. Briand, as Minister and reporter of the law, combated -(April 6th, 1905) in the Chambers a proposed amendment tending to -safeguard ecclesiastical authority in this matter. “You wish to turn -over to the Pope, by means of the bishops (_la haute discipline_), the -government of these associations. We cannot subject the faithful to this -discipline.” - -In the Senate, too, this same minister declared “that even after one -association had been legally formed, dissensions might arise, not only -in matters of dogma, but also of administration; we must allow those, -who do not wish to submit, to form another independent association if -they wish to use the same church.”[21] - -If the intentions of the Government were so benevolent as M. Briand -pretends, why did they not accept the insertion of the word “bishop” in -Article 4? It would have rendered the associations tolerable; but this -they strenuously opposed, and the keystone of their law was demolished -by the _non possumus_ of Pius X, August 15th. In the Chambers (November -9th) M. Briand admitted that “the law had been made in view of the -organization of _Associations cultuelles_.” This I have affirmed since -nearly two years, and it is in vain that, elsewhere, M. Briand seeks to -make-believe that the law has accomplished its purpose, which, in -reality, it has just missed. - -Even to-day, if the intentions of the Government are as candid and -benignant as M. Briand pretends, why do they not insert one little -amendment in the text of the law which would make it possible for the -Church to form these associations? No, not so. They wish the Holy See to -accept the word of some irresponsible minister, or some declaration of -the Conseil d’Etat, equally valueless. - -In 1901 Waldeck Rousseau solemnly declared in the Chambers that Article -13 of the Associations Bill in no wise affected the parochial schools, -and two days after the law was voted three thousand of these schools -were summarily closed. He had also assured the Vatican that authorized -Congregations had nothing to fear. Even M. Delcassé and the Ambassador -at Rome had given similar assurances to the Vatican before the law of -1901 was deposed in the Chambers. With these and similar precedents it -would be idle indeed to attach any faith to M. Briand’s dulcet, fair, -feline, fallacious utterances in the Chambers (November 9th). They are -merely “words, words,” and _verba volant_. Moreover, how long will M. -Briand and the Clemenceau Cabinet be able to resist the Socialist impact -of the advance guard? - -More than a year ago, I wrote that any interpretation could be given to -some of the ambiguous terms in which the law was couched, and that this -ambiguity was deliberate and intentional. - -By his own authority. M. Briand (Chambers, November 12th, 1906) has -offered the Catholics one year more in which to form associations under -the Separation Bill. Thereupon M. Puech, a deputy of the Left, flung -these biting words at the Government: “The law without the associations -is void ... it has fallen to pieces.... And you have no associations. In -1907 you will not have them any more than in 1906.... Void, nothingness, -chaos, behold your law.” “In 1790,” said the same deputy, “as to-day, -the struggle was engaged between two principles, between dogma and -science.... The Constituante was not firm. Camille Desmoulins spoke like -M. le Ministre Briand.... Three succeeding assemblies were forced -logically to extreme measures--death and transportation.” - -The astute guile that characterizes M. Briand’s declarations in the -Chambers can only be compared to that of Julian the Apostate, who began -his reign by a grand edict of toleration. Or rather it recalls those -deliberations of that council in Pandemonium (Book II, _Paradise Lost_): -“Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood, the fiercest spirit, now -fiercer by despair, spoke thus: My sentence is for open war of wiles I -boast not.” But he was overruled by Beelzebub, who “pleaded devilish -counsel first devised by Satan,” and which consisted in “seducing the -puny habitants of Paradise to our party” by guile and fraud. - -These associations of the law of 1905, which ignorant or malevolent -writers continue to represent as being the same as those of Prussia and -other half-Protestant countries, were a most ingenious device for -inducing the Church to commit suicide by the repudiation of her divinely -given constitution. - -The point, that essentially differentiates associations for public -worship in Prussia and elsewhere from those of the law of 1905, is that, -in the former, the Catholic hierarchy was respected. In them the curate -is by right president, episcopal authority is paramount, and the State -cannot intervene if dissensions arise. Now Articles 8, 9, etc., of the -French law are the very antipodes of all this.[22] - -The fact is that there can be no real accord between the Church and the -French atheocracy, whose openly avowed object is the radical destruction -of the religious idea, even of natural religion. - -Never perhaps, in the history of humanity, has there been such a -monstrosity as a distinctly atheistic state. Pagan antiquity, even the -Grecian Republics, had a cult of some kind. The First Republic, under -Robespierre, having decreed the abolition of Christianity, immediately -substituted theo-philanthropy. But the Third Republic proclaims itself -atheist, and insists that the nation shall be made atheist by means of -public schools. - -Hitherto the words lay, layman, meant in French as in English, simply, -not of the clergy; to-day, _laïque_ in France means atheist. _L’école -laïque_ means, not a school taught by laymen, but a school of -infidelity. Catholic lay or secular schools are still holding their own -against the state schools, which are nearly empty in some communes. - -Not satisfied with having suppressed twenty-seven thousand religious or -congregational schools, the annual September convent of the Grand Orient -has decided that all these Christian lay schools, primary and secondary, -must disappear. It also finds that the State _lycées de filles_ “are not -sufficiently laicized,” meaning of course not sufficiently atheized and -depraved. Yet the work seems to be well under way, if we are to judge by -the following extracts from the discourse pronounced on the grave of a -child of twelve by one of her companions of an _école laïque_ near -Allevard, in presence of the whole school. “For thee infinite -nothingness has begun, as it will begin for all of us. Thy death, or -rather the supposed Being who caused it, must be very wicked or very -stupid.... He made thee the victim of a society refractory to society -solidarity.... We really cannot excuse this celestial iniquity.” I -transcribe from the anti-clerical _Dépêche Dauphinoise_. The spectacle -of this free-thought funeral, and of a little schoolgirl blaspheming -over the grave of a playmate, is simply hideous. Poor hapless victims of -a pagan state, that nevertheless enlists the sympathies of Christians -who spend millions on missions to the heathen Chinese! - -This Masonic convent has also decided “that the means of production and -exchange must be restituted to the collectivity.” Therefore we know in -advance what the new Chambers will accomplish: State monopoly of -instruction, and State Socialism prepared and accomplished as rapidly -as possible. - -Under these circumstances it really does not matter very much if the -churches remain open or not, for the present. As an English ecclesiastic -recently observed, “We can do without our churches, but we cannot do -without our schools.” - -It is by means of Christian schools that Europe was redeemed from -barbarism, and preserved from relapsing into its first estate. Each -generation, in turn, must be redeemed from barbarism, as were our -forefathers, by the Christian upbringing of the young, otherwise -retrogression must inevitably ensue. Every gardener understands this. It -is natural law in the spiritual world. To descend and retrograde is so -much easier than to ascend. - -To-day, the eternal enemy of God and man seeks to wrest from the Church -the great fulcrum by which Christendom was upraised from barbarism, and -to use her own arms against the Church, by converting schools into -nurseries of infidelity and immorality. - -In vain secularists would tell us that history, geography, and grammar -are neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Mohammedan. The venom of -infidelity and vice can be conveyed by the conjugation of a verb. -Physical geography may be used as a catapult against the very notion of -right and wrong. As to the misuse of history, its possibilities are -unlimited. Moreover, the Church, that has received the divine -commission to “teach all nations,” needs the aid of all the arts and -sciences to accomplish this mission. The Catholic Church, that is -essentially, and _jure divino_, _Ecclesia docens_, will never forego her -right to teach them all, as she has been doing for two thousand years. -In the sixteenth century China seemed hopelessly closed against -Christian missionaries. But where apostles failed to penetrate, a man of -science, who was also a saint, succeeded. Mathew Ricci, the Jesuit -savant, was welcomed by mandarin _literati_, and founded the first -Christian mission in China in 1581. - -All the old universities of Europe were founded by the Church. The arts -and sciences grouped themselves around the Chair of Theology, as -hand-maidens around their mistress. Religion is, indeed, the aromat -which alone preserves them from becoming corrupt and corrupting. -Already, society is beginning to discover the evil effects of separating -religion from learning. The knowledge and uses of fire form one of the -main lines of demarcation that separate us from animals. Monkeys -appreciate the kindly blaze, but the smartest of them has never -attempted to light a fire. - -When men, with this distinctive and dangerous knowledge of fire, shall -have degraded their mentality to that of the simian by atheism or -secularism, and its concomitant materialism, the social order will no -longer be possible. A few rudely constructed, diminutive bombs can lay -the proudest city in ruins. - -To-day, as in 1790, France is the field on which another great battle is -to be fought between Christianity and paganism, and its results will be -far-reaching. The French atheocracy has “said unto God, Depart from us; -for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways” (Job XXI. 14). Churches, -here and there, have already been profaned by Masonic revelry, the cross -has been demolished on every highway, and removed from every school and -hospital. The State, disposing of all the power and all the riches of -the nation, is at the command of a secret society that is the sworn and -avowed enemy of religion. If the Church again come forth victorious from -the struggle, stronger and purer through poverty and persecution, “if -the Christian Hercules uplift Antæus, son of the earth, into the air and -stifle him there, then--_patuit Deus_.” - - - - -LIBERTY AND CHRISTIANITY - - -Liberty is, pre-eminently and indisputably, a product of Christianity -and must diminish with every diminution of the faith. “Other -influences,” writes Lecky, “could produce the manumission of many -slaves, but Christianity alone could effect that profound change of -character that rendered the abolition of slavery possible, and there -are,” he says, “few subjects more interesting than the history of that -great transition” (_History of Rationalism_, II, 258). - -There is, indeed, no grander spectacle than that of the Catholic Church -proclaiming, in ages of barbarism, a divine “Thou shalt not” to masters, -whose power over their slaves was unlimited by any law, and even -assuming jurisdiction over them in virtue of a moral law, above all -human laws. - -Ecclesiastical jurisprudence enacted penalties against “masters who took -from their theows (Saxon slaves) the money they had earned; against -those who slew their theows without just cause; against mistresses who -beat their theows so that they died within three days.... Above all, the -whole machinery of ecclesiastical discipline was set in motion to -shelter the otherwise unprotected chastity of the female slaves” -(Wright’s _Political Condition of the English Peasantry in the Middle -Ages_). “That Church which seemed so haughty and so overbearing in its -dealings with kings and nobles,” writes Lecky, “never failed to listen -to the poor and the oppressed, and for many centuries their protection -was the foremost of all the objects of its policy” (_History of -Rationalism_, II, 260). Simultaneously with the gradual abolition of -slavery, we find the elevation of woman, and her redemption from -polygamy, a natural concomitant of slavery. “No ideal,” writes Lecky, -“has exercised a more salutary influence than the mediæval conception of -the Virgin [he means devotion to]. For the first time, woman was -elevated to her rightful position and the sanctity of weakness was -recognized. No longer the slave, the toy of man, no longer associated -only with ideas of degradation and sensuality, woman rose, in the person -of the Virgin Mother, into a new sphere, and became the object of a -reverential homage of which antiquity had no conception. Love was -idealized. The moral character and beauty of female excellence was for -the first time felt ... a new kind of admiration was fostered. Into a -harsh, and ignorant, and benighted age this ideal type infused a -conception of gentleness and purity, unknown to the proudest -civilizations of the past.... In the millions who have sought with no -barren desire to mould their characters into her image ... in the new -sense of honour, in the softening of manners in all walks of society, in -this, and in many ways, we detect its influence. All that was best in -Europe clustered around it [the devotion to Mary], and it is the origin -of many of the purest elements of our civilization” (_History of -Rationalism_, I, 231). - -These are striking words from the pen of a rationalist, and would that -all women understood that the laws of divorce, the first-fruits of the -weakening of the Christian principle, and the pagan renaissance in -Europe, mark also the first steps of their retrogression to the -condition, from which they were uplifted by Christianity. - -After centuries of judicious preparation, the emancipation of all -Christians was proclaimed by Pope Alexander III. “This law alone,” -writes Voltaire, “should render his memory precious to all, as his -efforts on behalf of Italian liberty should endear him to Italians” -(_Essai sur les mœurs_). - -Mr. Hallam has satirically remarked in his _History of the Middle Ages_, -page 221, that “though several popes and the clergy enforced manumission -as a duty on laymen, the villeins on church lands were the last to be -emancipated.” But he well knows, for he has told us himself on page 217 -of the same work, that “the mildness of ecclesiastical rule and the -desire to obtain the prayers of the monks induced many to attach -themselves as serfs to monasteries.” An old German proverb, too, says: -“It is good to live under the crozier.” When the monasteries were -suppressed by Henry VIII, we know by Strype’s _Chronicles_, that misery -and vagrancy reached terrible proportions. - -But while freely admitting that “in the transition from slavery to -serfdom, and from serfdom to liberty, the Catholic Church was the most -zealous and the most efficient agent” (II, 234), Lecky is loath to admit -that her action in the sphere of political liberty was equally -efficacious, and that this second emancipation could have been -accomplished slowly, and judiciously, as was the first, without the -upheavals, the violence, and the excesses of the sixteenth and the -eighteenth centuries. Yet on page 158, vol. II, he reminds us that “St. -Thomas Aquinas, the ablest theologian of the Middle Ages, distinctly -asserts the right of subjects to withhold obedience from rulers who were -usurpers or unjust.” “To the scholastics of those days also,” he says, -“we chiefly owe the doctrine of the mediate rights of kings, which is -very remarkable as the embryo of the principles of Locke and Rousseau.” -Authority considered in the abstract is of divine origin; but still the -direct and immediate source of regal power is the nation, according to -Suarez. Apparently, the noisy standard-bearers of civil liberties and -political rights, in the eighteenth century, were not exactly pioneers, -but mere plagiarists. - -“As long,” continues Lecky, “as the object was not so much to produce -freedom, as to mitigate servitude, the Church was still the champion of -the people.... The balance of power created by the numerous corporations -she created or sanctioned, the reverence for tradition, which created a -network of unwritten customs with the force of public law, the -dependence of the civil on the ecclesiastical power, and the right of -excommunication and deposition, had all contributed to lighten the -pressure of despotism” (II, 235). - -We must array Mr. Lecky against himself, and conclude that the Church -did more than “mitigate servitude”; she also produced freedom by the -institution of these numerous guilds and unwritten laws, many of which -still existed until they were swept away by the Revolution of 1790, -which left nothing standing but an omnipotent tyrant, called the State, -and a defenceless people, _corvéable_, _taillable_, and guillotinable, -at mercy. These “unwritten customs with the force of public law” made -Spain the freest country in Europe, until the seventeenth century. To -suppress these _fueros_ of the commons, or unwritten constitutional -liberties, was one of the chief objects of the Spanish Inquisition, -established by royal authority, and aimed chiefly at the bishops, as -champions of popular rights. One of its first victims was the saintly -Archbishop of Toledo. The Basque provinces retain their _fueros_ intact -to this day. - -In France too liberty succumbed with the Public Law of Europe (1648). - -In 1314 Philippe le Bel, in order to obtain subsidies, convoked the -States General (Les Trois Etats). From that time to 1359, they were -convoked seven times. In the first half of the fifteenth century there -were fourteen convocations. From 1506 to 1558 there was an interruption -of fifty-two years. From Henry II to the minority of Louis XIII, the -States met six times. In 1614 was held the last convocation of the Trois -Etats, until 1789. - -Under the despotic Louis XI (1401-83), Philippe de Commines still dared -to write with impunity: “Il n’y a roi ni seigneur qui ait pouvoir, outre -son domaine, de mettre un denier sur ses sujets sans octroi et -consentement, sinon par tyrannie et violence.” (“It would be tyranny and -violence for any king or lord to raise a penny of taxation on his -subjects, without their leave and consent.”)[23] - -“Nevertheless,” writes de Tocqueville, “the elections were not abolished -till 1692 ... the cities still preserved the right to govern themselves. -Until the end of the seventeenth century we find some which were small -republics, in which the magistrates were freely elected by the citizens -and answerable to them, and in which public spirit was active and proud -of its independence” (_Ancien Régime_, p. 83). - -Mr. Lecky is pleased to attribute to the papal power “some of the worst -calamities--the Crusades, religious persecutions, the worst features of -the semi-religious struggle that convulsed Italy.... It is not -necessary,” he continues, “to follow in detail the history of [what he -is pleased to call] the encroachments of the spiritual on the civil -power” (II, 155), though it would be more correct to say the -encroachments of the civil on the religious power. - -But it is very necessary to do so, because though the main object of -these struggles of the spiritual power with despotic kings was the -independence of the Church, it cannot be gainsaid that personal and -civil liberty were thereby enhanced, as Lecky himself admits (p. 235). - -It would be too long to discuss here the Crusades, which merely saved us -from the fate now enjoyed by Islamic countries, or the alleged -persecution of the Manichæans, who, under the name of Albigenses, -menaced to disrupt the incipient civilization of Europe by their -subversive tenets of anarchy and collectivism, equally opposed as they -were to ecclesiastical and to civil government. - -The “semi-religious wars,” or the so-called “wars of investiture,” which -both he and Montesquieu disingenuously confound with the wars of Italian -independence, eminently contributed to the cause of civil liberty in -England, not less than in Italy, and elsewhere. Anselm, Becket, and -Stephen Langton were worthy coadjutors of the policy of St. Gregory VII -and the pioneers of political liberty. No one understands this better -than Mr. Wakeman, the Anglican author of a recent History of the English -Church. - -“It is true,” he says, “that Anselm could not have maintained the -struggle [against clerical investiture by laymen] at all if he had not -had the power of Rome at his back. Englishmen quickly saw that the -question between Anselm and Henry was part of a far wider question. They -felt that bound up with the resistance of the archbishop was the sacred -cause of their own liberty. The Church was the one power in England not -yet reduced under the iron heel of the Norman kings. The clergy was the -one body which still dared to dispute their will. To them belonged the -task of handing on the torch of liberty amid the gloom of a tyrannical -age. The despotism of the crown was the special danger to England in the -eleventh and twelfth centuries. It was the Church that, in that time of -crisis, rescued England from slavery. Had there been no Becket, Stephen -Langton, Archbishop of York, would have failed to inspire the barons to -wrest the Charter from John” (p. 105). And on page 108 he continues: -“From the Conquest to the time of Simon de Montfort two great dangers -threatened England, the uncontrolled will of unjust, wicked kings and -the grinding administrative despotism of the government. From both she -was saved by the Church. In her own canon law she opposed to the king’s -laws a system which claimed a higher sanction, was based on principles -not less scientific, and was already invested with the halo of -tradition.” - -It is this same canon law that the Church in France is, to-day, opposing -to the tyranny of an omnipotent State or parliamentary majority, _alias_ -Grand Orient, which has, since four years, crushed out two of the most -sacred liberties--the right to live in community and the right to -educate one’s children in the Christian faith, the faith of our fathers, -“once delivered to the saints.” - -The long struggle, between the Popes and the German rulers, who sought -to establish their despotic rule in Italy and enslave the whole Church -by making the bishops of Rome their domestic chaplains, resulted in the -glorious Congress of Venice, 1177, confirmed by the Peace of Constance, -which is the first instance in history of peoples wresting political -liberties from regal tyrants. The Magna Charta is the second in point of -time. - -After a long and seemingly hopeless struggle with Frederick Barbarossa, -Alexander III, to whom this Hohenstaufen had opposed a series of servile -anti-popes, triumphed, and with him triumphed the League of the Italian -Cities, of which he was the unarmed chief. Milan, Brescia, Pavia, and -other cities, which had been razed to the ground by the tyrant, thanked -the Pope for having rendered them their liberty. Alexandria, an -important city of the Piedmont, bears the name of this peaceful -liberator. Voltaire refers to these events in the following terms: -“Barbarossa finished the quarrel by recognizing Pope Alexandria III, -kissing his feet, and holding his stirrup.” (Le maître du monde se fit -le palefrenier du fils d’un gueux qui avait vécu d’aumônes.) “God has -permitted,” exclaimed the Pope, “that an old man and a priest should -triumph, without fighting, over a terrible and powerful emperor” (_Essai -sur les mœurs_, II, 82).[24] - -In the Eastern or Byzantine Empire, the clergy, at an early date, and -long before the schism of 1054, began to succumb to Cæsaro-papism, a -revival of the ancient pagan system, in which the temporal ruler was -also the high-priest of his realm, and we well know that neither -personal nor civil liberty ever found foothold in this _Bas Empire_. - -“While the ecclesiastical monarchy of the West,” writes a Protestant -historian, “could lead onward the mental development of the nations to -the age of majority, could permit and even promote freedom and variety -within certain limits, the brute force of the Byzantine despotism -stifled and checked every free movement” (Neander, _History of the -Church_, VIII, 244). - -The French kings, even more than the English before Henry VIII, strove -hard to establish the same system, and above all to exempt themselves -from the Christian law of monogamy, which, with personal freedom, -constitutes the great line of demarcation between Eastern, and Western -or Latin civilization. Montesquieu assures us that a neighbour’s wife, -unlawfully taken, or their own unjustly repudiated, caused all, or -nearly all, the troubles between the Papacy and the French kings. - -On the whole, however, civil liberty in Europe had reached an advanced -stage in the fifteenth century. Cities and provinces really had more -self-government then, than during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and -eighteenth centuries, more than they have now in some countries, notably -in France. - -The neo-paganism of the Renaissance was one of those periodical revolts -of what St. Paul calls the “carnal mind, which is enmity with God.” -“Sapientia carnis inimica est Deo” (Rom. VIII). It was a conjuration -against Christianity and culminated in the Protestant revolt, which for -ever destroyed the unity of Christendom, and set in motion a progressive -scepticism or rationalism, which is Protestantism in its last analysis. - -For more than three centuries English writers have repeated that the -Protestant revolt was a struggle for liberty of conscience, -notwithstanding the incontrovertible fact that all its foremost leaders -were bitterly opposed to religious toleration, and that the sects -relentlessly persecuted each other, as well as the adherents of the -ancient faith. - -Protestantism being, intrinsically, the nursery of rationalism, was -necessarily a diminution of Christianity, and produced a corresponding -diminution of liberty, both personal and civil. At the Congress of -Westphalia, 1648, where, as Macaulay states, “Protestantism reached its -highest point, a point it soon lost and never regained” (_Essay on -Ranke_), was formulated the monstrous axiom _Cujus regio ejus religio_, -which became the common law of Europe in lieu of the hitherto prevailing -rule of One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism. Henceforth, as in pagan days, -each ruler assumed the right to dictate the religious beliefs of his -subjects in the new system of national churches. The “territorial -system” it was called, and represented the net result of a century of -Protestantism. - -There were, indeed, no fiercer despots over men’s consciences than the -so-called “reformers.” If any doubt let him read their lives. Let him -read of the bloody strife that rent the Netherlands after they had -shaken off the Spanish yoke; how the great Barneveldt fell a victim to -miserable oppression of Gomarists by followers of Arminius, and vice -versa; how Remonstrants persecuted contra-Remonstrants, all on account -of some metaphysico-religico distinctions neither understood clearly. - -Then let us consider the embarkation of the Pilgrim Fathers from -Holland, where they had sought asylum from the rigid conformity enforced -by reformed England. Finding themselves no better off in the republic, -which had emancipated itself, simultaneously, from Spain and Rome, the -Pilgrim Fathers shook the dust of the old world from their feet and -sought a new hemisphere. Surely in the primeval forests men might hope -to interpret Scripture and serve God each according to his own lights. -Not so. No sooner were the camp fires lighted, and the barest -necessities of life provided for, than we find a theocracy of the most -hard and fast type established by the Argonauts of the Golden Fleece of -religious toleration. A veritable office of the Holy Inquisition was -instituted “to search out and deliver to the law” all who “dared to set -up any other exercises than what authority hath set up.” While it was -gravely affirmed that “these cases were not a matter of conscience, but -of a civil nature,” Sir John Saltonstall wrote from England to the first -Puritan Grand Inquisitors, Wilson and Cotton, remonstrating “at the -things reported daily of your tyranny, as that you fine, whip, and -imprison men for their consciences.” - -The acts of the Inquisition dwindle into insignificance if we place in -the other balance the excesses committed, and the penal laws enacted -from 1530 to 1829 against Dissenters and against English Roman Catholics -in England. The Toleration Act of William and Mary, 1701, relieved -Protestant “Recusants,” but the penal laws against Catholics were -maintained till 1829, though many had fallen into desuetude. The -principal were: For hearing Mass a fine of 66 pounds and one year’s -imprisonment; they were debarred from inheriting or purchasing lands; -they could hold no office nor bring any action in law; they could not -teach under pain of perpetual imprisonment; they could not travel five -miles without a licence, nor appear within ten miles of London under -penalty of 100 pounds; while the universities were closed against them -by test acts. Catholics having been thus deprived of all means of -obtaining a liberal education and raising their voice on behalf of the -truth, Protestant writers, since three hundred years, have been able to -travesty and misrepresent, unchallenged, all the facts connected with -the Reformation. - -In France Louis XIV persecuted the Huguenots in virtue of the _Cujus -regio ejus religio_ (Whose the kingdom his the religion), and in spite -of the protests of Innocent XI, who instructed his legate d’Adda to beg -James II to intercede for them, declaring that “men must be led, not -dragged to the altar.” - -The German, Swiss, and Scandinavian rulers made, modified, and changed -the religion of their subjects at will. Of the intolerance of the -Calvanistic Republic of Geneva less said the better. Oppenheim, often -pawned by its needy electors, is said to have changed its form of -Protestantism fifteen times in twenty-one years. In Denmark, where -Lutheranism was paramount and unadulterated, we find, writes Dollinger, -“that the nobility made use of the Reformation to appropriate not only -the Church lands, but that owned by the peasants.” “A dog-like servitude -weighs down the Danish peasants, and the citizens, deprived of all -representative power, groan under oppressive burdens” (_Geshicte von -Rugen_, p. 294, quoted by Dollinger). - -“The dwellers on the great estates of the Church were now obliged to -exchange the mild rule of the clergy for the oppressive rule of the -nobility,” writes Allen, page 313. “By these laws and enforced compacts -the spoliation and the degradation of once free peasants were -accomplished.” In 1702 Frederick IX abolished slavery, but glebe -serfdom, as in Russia, continued till 1804. Until 1766 the education of -the people stood at the lowest grade, and it was not till 1804 that -freedom was conferred on 20,000 families who had been in a state of -serfdom since the Reformation. - -In Sweden we find the great Protestant hero, Gustavus Vasa, -appropriating all the commonage lands of the villages, and even the -weirs, the mines, and all uncultivated lands. Gustavus was, of course, -obliged to share the spoils with his henchmen, whose rule was even more -oppressive, and the peasants became wholly impoverished and degraded. - -In Germany we find the same record of spoliation and oppression of the -peasantry, whose rights there was none to defend since bishops no longer -sat in the Diet. In 1663, 1646, 1654, the personal liberty of the -peasants was progressively annihilated. “Then was forged that slave -chain,” writes Boll, “which our peasantry have had to drag within a few -decades of the present day” (_Mecklenburg Geschichte_). In 1820 this -glebe serfdom was abolished by the Grand Duke. - -In Pomerania, united with Brandenburg since the Reformation, -Protestantism was paramount already in 1534, and the fate of the -peasantry was the same. The oppression was so intolerable that even -those whose farms had not been appropriated or turned into grazing -grounds, as in Ireland, fled the country. In the peasant ordinance of -1616 they were declared “serfs without any civil rights,” and preachers -were compelled to denounce fugitives from the pulpit. - -The Elector of Brandenburg, it will be recalled, was the first to abjure -Catholicism, and founded what became in 1701 the Prussian monarchy. - -There was no general Diet since 1656. The Estates no longer met, and the -rulers imposed taxes at their will. Peasants fled to Poland, or became -mendicant vagrants or brigands. - -The Lutheran clergy were mere puppets in the hands of their tyrannical -rulers, who even dictated or revised their sermons at times. Prussian -despotism reached high-water mark under Frederick the Great, but he -being a frank and consistent rationalist, who believed “in letting every -man be blessed in his own way,” religious persecution ceased. - -In Brunswick and Hanover the spoils of the Church appeased for a time -the greed of reformation princes, but habits of luxury were engendered -by their ill-gotten wealth, and they soon resorted to “money clipping.” -The towns lost all their inherited independence. For the decisions of -municipal councils were substituted governmental decrees and circulars, -as in France to-day, and ere long all trace of the ancient freedom of -the Estates was lost. “The clergy,” writes Havemann, “had long since -sunk into dependence.... The cities were languishing from lack of public -spirit.... The power of modern states was unfolding itself over the sad -remains of the ancient life and liberty of the Estates.” - -In Saxony there was a nip-and-tuck struggle between Lutheranism and -Calvinism in which the rack and the scaffold were freely used by -Lutheran princes, who enforced their form of Protestantism according to -the axiom _Cujus regio ejus religio_. - -On the Church lands in England had lived a dense population of tenant -farmers. When these lands were confiscated by Henry VIII, thousands of -these peasantry became helpless paupers under the new regime. Vagrancy -and mendicancy reached alarming proportions. It was enacted that vagrant -beggars should be enslaved. If they tried to escape they were to be -killed. - -It appeared to Burnet (_History of Reformation_) that the intention of -the nobility was to restore slavery. According to Lecky there were -72,000 executions in the reign of Henry VIII; vagrant beggars furnishing -a large contingent. - -Under Elizabeth charity by taxation or poor rates was resorted to for -the first time in the history of Christendom. - -I think we must admit that liberty, both civil and religious, made -shipwreck at the Reformation, and that the champions of the Protestant -revolt were not exactly actuated by a desire for the well-being and -freedom of conscience of their fellow-men. - -In England all was laboriously reconquered till 1829, when Catholics -were _emancipated_ on their native soil.[25] - -Some Catholic countries, Spain and Italy, were saved from the horrors of -religious wars, but all felt the effects of the new rationalistic -spirit, which, being a diminution of Christianity, was also a diminution -of liberty. They lost many civil liberties, and despotism strengthened -its bands, till the great upheaval of 1790 destroyed the whole fabric of -Europe and inaugurated a system of constitutional representative -government. - -Representative government, our modern fetish, was not unjustly rated by -J. J. Rousseau, when he said “that a people with a representative -government were slaves except during the period of elections, when they -were sovereigns.” France to-day is a striking illustration.[26] - -An amusing incident is related by Leroy Beaulieu of a Neapolitan who -hired donkeys to tourists. He was an eager advocate of representative -government in 1869. Questioned as to his reasons, he said that since -twenty-one years he had been hiring donkeys to English, French, and -American tourists, who enjoyed representative governments and were all -rich. Some years later the eminent economist met him again, and -congratulated him on Italy’s having acquired a representative -constitution. The disabused peasant bitterly denounced the new regime in -that the burden of taxation had trebled, and that the very donkey he -hired out was taxed. - -If the laws, or at least all important ones, were submitted to -untrammelled public vote, then only might we say that the government was -truly representative. - -In many cases universal suffrage means the tyranny of ignorant, -unprincipled majorities, while nowhere can it oppose an effective -barrier against the accumulation of immense wealth in a few hands, and -the creation of all-powerful oligarchies. When the majorities and the -oligarchies come into collision, liberty will succumb. There will be -more than one Bridge of Sighs. - -It is in vain that false philosophers would persuade us that altruism, -some vague “moral element of Christianism,” will combine with -rationalism and perpetuate our Christian civilization in some -transcendent form. - -Christian civilization and morality are intimately and indissolubly -connected with Christian dogma. The Fatherhood of God, Jupiter Optimus, -was not unknown to the ancients, but the brotherhood of man, involving -personal liberty and also civil liberty by extension, is essentially a -Christian predicate, and is based on the dogma of the Incarnation. - -The lofty contempt our modern rationalists express for the fierce -controversy waged over two Greek vowels by the partisans of _Homoousion_ -and _Homoiousion_ merely betrays their ignorance of its vital -importance. On that dogma, so nobly maintained by the See of Peter and -Athanasius, rests our whole fabric of Christian civilization, the -brotherhood of man, and its logical sequence, freedom from slavery. - -It is as absurd to suppose that the “moral element of Christianity” will -continue to exist after the erosion of Christian dogma, as to expect -that a tree we have hewn down will continue to bear fruit. It may indeed -for a time remain verdant, and even put forth new shoots, just as we -often see the loveliest flowers and fruits of Christianity in the lives -and characters of individuals with whom the Christian faith has almost -ceased to exist. But let us not be deceived. The lingering sap will -cease to flow, and the last semblance of life will fade away. “The -elements of dissolution have been multiplying all around us,” writes -Lecky. And when rationalism or secularism, or neo-paganism in other -words, which has already corroded Christendom to so great an extent, -shall have accomplished its work of disintegration with the aid of -godless schools and gross literature, society will, I repeat, be -compelled to restore Christianity, or slavery, or perish. - - - - -CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION - - -“At the end of the fourth century,” writes Guizot, “the Church saved -Christianity ... resisted the internal dissolution of the Empire and the -barbarians, and became the bond, the medium, and the principle of -civilization.... Had the Church not existed the whole world must have -been abandoned to purely material force” (_History of Civilization_, I, -38).... “When all was chaos, when every great social combination was -vanishing, the Church proclaimed the unity of her doctrine and the -universality of her right; this is a great and powerful fact which has -rendered immense service to humanity” (_ibid._, II, 19). - -This unity was indeed the great factor in European civilization. On it -the new civil societies, like wild olive branches, were grafted, so to -speak. It became the bond of political unity, a kind of centripetal -force, we may say, and the redemption from that inordinate love of -independence which characterized the barbarians. - -Consequently the new civil societies made the maintenance of religious -unity the foremost object of their policy. It became the public law of -all Europe and the common law of each state. To impugn this unity was -considered a most heinous offence not against God only, but against the -nation and against all Christendom. - -“Thus,” writes another great Protestant, “Christianity became -crystallized into a single bond embracing all nations, and giving to all -life, civilization, and all the riches of the mind” (Hurter, _Life of -Innocent III_, I, 38). - -A corollary of this system of an universal Christian society was the -recognition of a supreme tribunal. “One of the most elevated principles -of the age,” writes the same eminent German, “was that, in the struggles -between the peoples and their rulers, there should be a superior -authority charged to recall laws not made by men, though their -interpreter were himself a man.” Referring to the fiercely contested -election of Othon, he continues: “Othon was the first to have recourse -to Rome, the tribunal with whom rested the decision in these matters, -when the parties did not wish to resort to the arbitrament of war.” - -In France we find the great Suger, Abbot of St. Denis, remonstrating -with the Bishop of the free chartered city of Beauvais, brother of the -King, with whom he was often at odds. - -“I beseech you not to raise a guilty hand against the King ... for you -must see the consequences of armed insurrection against the King, -especially if it be without consulting the Sovereign Pontiff.... If the -King, drawn aside by evil counsellors, has not acted rightly, it was -proper to have informed him by the bishops and notables, or rather by -our Holy Father the Pope, who is at the head of the whole Church, and -could easily have reconciled all differences.” - -In England we have many instances of both laymen and clergy appealing to -the arbitrament of the Papacy. - -“The recognition of some principle of right, powerful enough to form a -bond of lasting concord, has always been the dream of statesmen and -philosophers,” writes Lecky. “Hildebrand sought it in the supremacy of -the spiritual power, and in the consequent ascendency of moral law” -(_History of Rationalism_, 245). - -Voltaire pays homage to this public policy of the Middle Ages. “The -interests of the human race required a controlling power to restrain -sovereigns and protect the lives of peoples. This controlling power of -religion could well be placed in the hands of the Papacy. The Sovereign -Pontiffs warning princes and people of their duties, appeasing quarrels, -rebuking crimes, might always have been regarded as the images of God on -earth. But men, alas, are reduced to the protection of laws without -force” (_Essai sur les mœurs_, II). - -He describes what really did exist for centuries, though, of course, -papal arbitration was not always efficacious. Every great institution -needs time to develop and mature. It would not be great were it -otherwise. Moreover there were, unfortunately, many troublous times -between the sixth and the fifteenth century, in which the Papacy itself -was captive, buffeted, demeaned, and exiled by the struggles and -ambitions of turbulent political factions in Rome itself. The very day -on which Gregory VII excommunicated the German Emperor, he was seized -and imprisoned by a noble Roman bandit, until his people were able to -deliver him by main force. - -“Another corollary of this universal Christian Society was that right -found a protector in the common Father of the faithful; in the grand -idea of a supreme chief who without employing material force judged in -last resort.... What great misfortunes would France and all Europe have -been spared if, in the reign of Louis XVI, an Innocent III had been -Pope. His rôle would have been to save the lives of the people” -(Hurter’s _Innocent III_, II, 200-23). To German Protestant writers like -Hurter, Voigt, Neander, etc., is due the honour of vindicating the true -rôle of the Papacy in the Middle Ages. - -The rights of suzerainty exercised by the Papacy also formed part of the -public law of Europe. In those wild, lawless days, when robber barons -enjoyed the privilege of being highwaymen on their own estates, and -often extended their depredations to those of their neighbours, property -rights had no sanction, and the weaker succumbed to the stronger in -virtue of the “fist right,” which we now translate variously by “the -right of the strongest,” political “majorities,” and the “survival of -the fittest.” - -The practice then arose among weak owners of dedicating their lands to -the Church, in order to obtain spiritual or moral protection against the -brute force of stronger neighbours. What private owners did in a small -way was done by princes on a larger scale. - -Referring to the peculiar incidents when roving Norman pirates, in -possession of Sicily and Naples, seized the person of the Pope and -insisted on becoming his vassal, Voltaire writes as follows:--“Robert -Guiscard, wishing to be independent of the German Emperor, resorted to a -precaution which private owners took in those days of trouble and -rapine. The latter gave their property to the Church under the name of -Oblata, and, paying a slight tax, continued to enjoy the use of it. The -Normans resorted to this custom, placing under the protection of the -Church in the hands of Nicholas II (1059) not only what they held, but -also their future conquests (on the Saracens). This homage was an act of -political piety like Peter’s Pence; the two pence of gold paid by the -Kings of Portugal; like the voluntary submission of so many kingdoms” -(_Essai sur les mœurs_, II, 44). - -It was thus that England became a fief of the Holy See, a most -unfortunate circumstance, as the temporal pecuniary obligations arising -therefrom were exploited to estrange the English from the See of Peter, -in the following centuries. - -“In 1329,” continues Voltaire, “the King of Sweden, who wished to -conquer Denmark, addressed the Pope as follows: ‘Your Holiness knows -that Denmark depends on the Roman See and not on the German Emperor.’ -... I only wish to show,” Voltaire adds, “how every prince who wished to -recover or usurp a domain appealed to the Pope.... In this case the Pope -defended Denmark, and said he could only decide on the justice of the -case when the parties had appeared before his tribunal, according to the -ancient usage.” - -Nor did Christians alone appeal to this spiritual tribunal. The bull of -Innocent III, cited by Hurter, is an excellent exponent of the mind of -the Church in all times. “As they (the Jews) claim our succour against -their persecutors, we take them under our special protection, following -in this the example of our predecessors, Calixtus, Eugenius, Alexander, -Clement, and Celestin. We forbid every one to force a Jew to be -baptized, for he who is compelled cannot be said to have the faith. No -Christian must dare commit any violence against them, nor seize their -property, without a legal judgment. Let no one trouble them on their -feast days by striking or throwing stones at them,” etc. - -It will be objected that the fulcrum of Western civilization was a -spiritual despotism. But these terms exclude each other. Can we call an -authority despotic which had no material force, and rested only on a -divine commission and the common sense of prince and people, recognizing -its credentials--on public opinion in fact? - -It was a fundamental law of every state that any one, no matter what his -rank, who impugned the Unity of the Faith, or committed offences so -heinous as to justify the supposition that he was no longer a Christian, -fell under the ban of the Church and became outlawed, if at the end of a -year he had not been absolved. In his _Historia Imperatorum_ Schafnaburg -explains the wintry flight of Henry IV across the Alps to Canossa by his -eagerness to be absolved before the year had revolved, because otherwise -he would have forfeited his crown. _Ut ante hanc diem non absolveretur, -deinceps juxta Palatinas leges indignus regio honore habeatur._ - -Three causes were generally admitted as sufficient for the -excommunication of a sovereign. First, if he fell from the faith. -Second, if he ravaged or seized ecclesiastical lands or desecrated -churches. Third, if he repudiated his own wife or appropriated his -neighbour’s. This latter point, as Voltaire and Montesquieu have pointed -out, was the cause of nearly all the quarrels between the French kings -and the Papacy, a fact which our Jacobins, in the Chambers and -elsewhere, deliberately ignore, when they mendaciously misrepresent the -Church as having constantly encroached on the civil power. The case of -Philippe Augustus and the hapless Ingleburge of Denmark was a test case, -so to speak. - -“It was not,” writes Hurter, “a question of contested claims of the -Papacy, but of this great question, Is the sovereign subject to the laws -of Christianity? It had to be decided whether the royal will should -triumph or not over the force regarded as constituting the unity of -Christendom” (_Life of Innocent III_). Montesquieu’s testimony is -unimpeachable when he testifies that this Public Law of Europe was -universally recognized. “All the sovereigns,” he writes, “with -inconceivable blindness, themselves accredited and sanctioned, in public -opinion, which had no force except by it.” - -If the laws against heretics, who were to our forefathers what the -anarchists are to us, were oppressive, some of the blame should surely -be apportioned to the laymen who sat in the mixed assemblies in which -they were made. “Almost all Europe, for many centuries, was deluged in -bloodshed at the direct instigation or with the full approval of the -ecclesiastical authorities.” It is in this disingenuous way that Lecky -refers to the operations of the Public Law of Europe against the -Albigenses or Manichæans of Provence, and probably to the wars of -Italian independence and the Thirty Years War. Until the thirteenth -century he assures us that practically no persecutions (prosecutions) -against heretics occurred. It was then that the Public Law of Europe -began to be trampled on by sectarians who adopted and propagated -Gnostic, Paulician, Manichæan, and other subversive theories, imported -from the East by Semitic-Islamic settlers in the fair lands of Provence. -Spain and Italy, the countries in which the Public Law of Europe was -maintained, were the only ones who were spared the horrors of civil -religious wars. They were saved by inquisitions, it will be retorted. - -Without seeking to defend the system, we may be permitted to inquire -whether it were not preferable, at that time, to execute some -ringleaders of religious revolt (30,000 in three centuries is a fair -estimate), than to deluge whole countries in blood for many decades, -about controversies which not one in a million could possibly grasp? -Lecky the rationalist assures us that “the overwhelming majority of the -human race, necessarily, accept their opinions from authority. Avowedly -like Catholics, or unconsciously like Protestants. They have neither -time nor opportunity (nor capacity) to examine for themselves” (_History -of Rationalism_, I, 101). - -Does any one seriously believe that the Camisards were fighting for -predestination and infant damnation, which have been shelved recently by -Presbyterians in the United States? - -In England, France, Germany, everywhere, greed and political ambition -were the incentives; the passions of ignorant masses were merely used as -a means. Back of both, and behind all, we descry secret societies, the -true pandemoniums, where these revolts are organized, and whence Mammon, -“the least-erected spirit that fell,” Moloch, “horrid king besmeared -with blood,” Belial, and all that crew, described by Milton, are sent -forth to execute the behests of the eternal enmity between “the -serpent’s seed and the seed of the woman.” - -In this unholy struggle “all the bonds of cohesion on which political -organization depended were weakened or destroyed,” writes Lecky. “The -spirit of private judgment had descended to those totally incapable of -self-government, and lashed their passions into the wildest fury” -(_History of Rationalism_, p. 239). Voltaire is even less complimentary. -He describes the Hussites as “wild beasts whom the severity of the -emperor had roused to furor.” - -In Germany, apostate ecclesiastical and secular electors were seeking -their own aggrandizement. Bishoprics with their manses were converted -into hereditary principalities. As to their Swedish ally, Gustavus -Adolphus, I refer my readers to the judgment of a Protestant admirer of -this doughty champion of the Reformation. On page 329 of _Thirty Years -War_ Schiller writes as follows:-- - -“The last, the greatest service, Gustavus Adolphus could render to -religious and civil liberty was to die (1632, at battle of Lutzen).... -It was no longer possible to doubt that he was seeking to establish -himself in Germany, not as a protector, but as a conqueror. Already -Augsburg boasted that it had been chosen as the capital of the new -monarchy. The Protestant princes, his allies, made claims which could -only be satisfied by despoiling the Catholics. It is then permitted to -conclude that like the barbarian hordes of yore, he intended to divide -the conquered provinces of Germany among the Swedish chiefs of his army. -His conduct towards the unfortunate Elector Palatine, Frederick V, is -unworthy of a hero. The Palatinate was in his hands, justice and honour -required that he return it to the legitimate sovereign. But to avoid -doing so he had recourse to subtleties which make us blush for him.” - -It is only fair to add that Gustavus did finally restore the Palatinate -to Frederick, but as a fief of the Swedish crown. - -What, I ask, has been gained by the overthrow of the Public Law of -Europe? For this was waged the Thirty Years War, one of the most cruel -the world has known. Atrocities were committed on both sides, and the -_tu quoque_ argument is very foolish. But if it be admitted that -defensive war is always just and righteous, we must allow that the -Catholics were justified in fighting for their public law. They were in -possession since more than twelve centuries, and were resisting -assailants who showed no quarter, and who robbed them of their churches -and persecuted them, relentlessly, whenever they gained the upper hand, -just as the Puritans did in Maryland. And what was the net result of the -Thirty Years War? The loss of liberty both civil and religious. The -German electors, ecclesiastical as well as secular, had been but -administrators of free citizens, who now became subjects with little or -no voice in the government. As to religious liberty, the new axiom -_Cujus regio ejus religio_ was substituted for One Lord One Faith. The -ruler of each realm became the infallible Pontiff of his subjects. “If -any gratitude from this scandalous and accursed world were to be gained, -and I, Martin Luther, had taught and done nothing else than this, that I -have enlightened and adorned the temporal authority, for this alone -should it be thankful to me, since even my worst enemies know that a -like understanding as to the temporal authority was completely concealed -under the Papacy” (Walch’s _Augs._, XIV, p. 520). - -In this same connexion Schiller makes the following statement. “No -country changed religion oftener than the Palatinate. Unhappy -weathercock of the political and religious versatility of its -sovereigns, it had twice been forced to embrace the doctrines of Luther -and then to abandon them for those of Calvin. Frederick III deserted the -Confession of Augsburg, but his son re-established it by most violent -and unjust measures. After closing all the Calvinist temples and exiling -the ministers and school teachers, he ordered by his will that his son -should be brought up by Lutherans; his brother, however, annulled this -will and became regent under the young Frederick IV, who was confided to -Calvinists with strict orders to destroy in his mind the “heretical -doctrines of Luther by all means, by beating and whipping even.” It is -easy to guess how subjects were treated when the heir to the throne was -thus tyrannized over” (_Thirty Years War_, p. 40). - -What, I ask, has Europe gained by the overthrow of its public law? -Strife, anarchy, nihilism in religion as in philosophy. After centuries -of dabbling, floundering, and blundering, we are again seeking to devise -some principle of unity, some Amphictyonic Council to supplement the -illusory balance of power; to set up a Court of Arbitration to replace -the one that really did exist in the Middle Ages and functioned as well -as could be expected in those days of liquescence. - -All in vain. The grand Peace Congress from which the Papacy was excluded -was followed, almost immediately, by two most cruel wars which were -pre-eminently subjects for arbitration. Men will submit to this court -questions about which they do not care enough to fight about them, but -these subjects only will they submit to arbitration. Unless the Lord -build the house, in vain they labour who build. - -There is only one tribunal that can ever arbitrate efficaciously, and -this is the one which presided at the Genesis of Christendom.[27] - -Socialists and anarchists, without having pondered the passage from -Guizot I quoted in beginning this chapter, understand perfectly that our -Western or Christian civilization is grounded on the unity of one Holy -Catholic Church, and the destruction of the social structure being the -object of their ambition, they very logically direct all their efforts -to destroying this foundation. - -The work of disintegration was begun in the sixteenth century. -“Socinius, the most iconoclastic of Protestants, predicted that the -seditious doctrines by which Protestants supported their cause would -lead to the disintegration of society” (_History of Rationalism_, II, -239). - -This work of disintegration has made rapid progress since the eighteenth -century in virtue of the law of accelerated movement. The French -Revolution, like the Protestant revolt, was essentially a work of -disintegration. The successors of the Masonic Jacobins of 1790 openly -proclaim their set purpose of completing the work begun by the _grands -ancêtres_ of bloody memory. - -“The Revolution,” wrote Renan (in the preface to _Questions -contemporaines_), “has disintegrated everything, broken up all -organizations, excepting only the Catholic Church. The clergy alone -have remained organized outside the State. As the cities, in the days of -the ruin of the Roman Empire, chose bishops for their representatives, -so in our provinces the bishops will soon be the only leaders left in a -dismantled society.” - -The object of the Separation Law was to accomplish the disintegration of -the Church, the only organized body, outside the State, which the -Revolution failed to disintegrate, because Pius VI rejected, _in toto_, -the civil constitution of the clergy. These noble French priests were -drowned, guillotined, proscribed, and imprisoned by tens of thousands, -but the Church in France maintained the principle of life strong within -her, and on the third day she rose again. - -What violence failed to accomplish a century ago, the Third Republic -hoped to compass by guile and fraud, labelled liberty and legality. - -The true purpose of the Law of Separation was to break up the Church -into an ever-increasing number of viviparous _Associations cultuelles_, -independent of all ecclesiastical control. - -The successor of Pius VI, Ithuriel-like, has pierced the thin disguise -of the toad lurking in the purlieus of Eden.[28] Instead of a divided -demoralized clergy, the Masonic Jacobins are confronted by the serried -ranks of an invincible phalanx. - -“At the end of the fourth century,” writes Guizot, “it was the Church -with its magistrates, its institutions, and its power that vigorously -resisted the internal dissolution of the empire and of the barbarians, -and became the bond, the medium, and the principle of civilization -between the Roman and the barbarian worlds” (_History of Civilization_). - -Now, as in the fourth century, we are menaced with social dissolution. -The barbarians are at our gates, nay, in our midst, and not in France -alone, by any means. A ferocious, self-seeking atheistic materialism is -disrupting Christendom. And let us not be deceived. Societies are never -saved and regenerated except by their generating principle; and the -generating principle of Western civilization is Christianity. - -Therefore, I repeat, that society will be compelled, in self-defence, to -restore Christianity or slavery, in some form; State Socialism -perhaps--or perish. - -_21st November, 1906._ - - - - -APPENDIX - - -PAGE 29 - -SÉANCE DU 28 DECEMBRE, 1906. - -Au _Sénat Journal Officiel_, page 1236. - -M. DELAHAYE: “M. Briand’s law is older than himself. We find traces of -it in all the Masonic convents.... Gentlemen, why are we going to vote -this additional law, as we did the first Separation Law, without -changing an iota?... Because the lodges have so decided. - -“The Convent, the public should be told, is the general assembly of the -lodges.... The Convent, called during the Revolution _La Convention_, is -the source of all our evils. On 12 November, 1904, brother Lafferre (a -senator), thirty-third degree, read the following _ordre du jour_: ‘The -general assembly of the Grand Orient addresses to M. Combes warm -assurances of sympathy and confidence, and begs him to persevere -courageously in the struggle to defend the Republic against clericalism, -and accomplish social, military, and fiscal reforms. The Assembly -demands that at the session of January, 1905, Separation and the -_retraites ouvrières_ be discussed simultaneously.’” - -M. Lafferre and the reporter of the new Separation Law here applauded -ironically. - -M. Delahaye continued: “Let us pass to the Convent of 1905, séance 23 -September, 1905. - -“Le Frère Roret, reporter (of the Masonic Commission): ... A wish more -important, and which will be adopted without discussion, emanates from -the Congress of the region of Paris. It regards the Separation and has -been slightly modified by the (Masonic) Commission (of political and -social studies). The Congress demands that the Separation Law voted in -the Chambers be amended by the Senate. Your Commission judges that it is -most important that this law be voted immediately and promulgated before -the legislative elections (May, 1906), so that the country may see that -it is a liberal law and not at all vexatious.... Your Commission -proposes the following vote: ‘The Convent emits the wish that the law, -imperfect but perfectible, be adopted by the Senate as rapidly as -possible and promulgated before the elections, but that it be amended -later by the Republican Parliament and rendered more distinctly -_laïque_.’” - -M. Delahaye continued: “It is well to notice that laic has two meanings. -For us it means not ecclesiastic; for Freemasons it means atheistic, -anti-Catholic.... I have proved, incontestably, that M. Briand is here -as the mouthpiece of Freemasonry, to which he says he does not -belong.... There is a privileged Congregation in France which holds -property as a _société immobilière_ of the Grand Orient by ‘interposed -persons.’ This Congregation is about to sell its real estate of the Rue -Cadet (Paris). It received an offer of 1,250,000 francs. The State -offers to buy it for 1,300,000 francs, to be used as a telephone -office.... I wish to know why the State does not simply expropriate this -Congregation, seeing that it is illegal, because this _société -immobilière_ is simply a _personne interposée_?... Gentlemen, the book -just published by one of your former friends, M. Flourens (ex-minister), -_La France Conquise Edward VII and Clemenceau_, is going to enlighten -rulers deaf to the voice of the Pope (who had condemned Masonry since -1728). The Bourbons and the French nobility, whom Freemasonry had doomed -to death, were dancing on the first floor of the lodges, while overhead -sentence was being passed on them.... In spite of many changes of -government since a century, we are descending steadily, because your -principles, destructive of family, country, and private property, have -entered into our legislation.... We have a fine army, but at your touch -it becomes no more than a national guard. We have many vessels, but no -navy.... Ere long kings and emperors, who now utilize Freemasonry, will -end by saying, ‘This instrument is very dangerous.’” - -There were cries of “_Clôture, clôture_.” The discussion was closed. No -one replied to M. Delahaye. - - - PAGES 113-125 - -Commenting on the annual Convent of the Grand Orient, September, 1906, -the _Journal de Génève_, the leading Swiss Protestant daily, made the -following statements:-- - - - “LE RÔLE DE LA MAÇONNERIE - -“_Septembre, 1906._ - - “Il ne faut pas se dissimuler que la franc-maçonnerie tient entre - ses mains les destinées du pays (la France). Quoiqu’elle ne compte - que vingt-six mille adhérents, elle dirige à sa guise la politique - française. Toutes les lois dont le catholicisme se plaint si - amèrement ont été d’abord élaborées dans ses convents. Elle les a - imposées au gouvernement et aux Chambres. Elle dictera toutes les - mesures qui seront destinées à en assurer l’application. Nul n’en - doute, et personne, non pas même les plus indépendants, n’oserait - heurter de front sa volonté souveraine. Il serait aussitôt brisé, - celui qui se permettrait seulement de la méconnaître. - - “Jamais, depuis l’époque où Rome commandait aux rois et aux - princes, on ne vit pareille puissance. Et cette puissance est - d’autant plus forte, à cette heure, qu’elle vient de subir - victorieusement une crise redoutable. Après l’affaire des fiches, - on croyait la maçonnerie morte, tout au moins bien malade; mais, à - force d’audace, elle a triomphé de ses ennemis, qui déjà sonnaient - joyeusement l’hallali. Les deux tiers des membres de la Chambre - actuelle sont francs-maçons. - - “La volonté de la franc maçonnerie, nul ne l’ignore plus, c’est de - détruire le catholicisme en France. Elle se dresse comme une Eglise - contre l’Eglise de Rome. Elle n’aura ni cesse ni répit, qu’elle ne - l’ait jetée bas, qu’elle n’en ait semé les poussières au vent. Tous - ses ressorts sont uniquement tendus vers ce but. Les autres - religions, si même elle ne les ignore momentanément, elle paraît - les ménager. Elle se dit sans doute que, le catholicisme ayant - rendu l‘âme sous son étreinte, l’anéantissement des autres - confessions ne serait pour elle que jeu d’enfant. - - “Mais l’adversaire n’est pas encore terrassé, auquel elle s’était - attaquée. Il est comme Antée, qui, toutes les fois qu’il touchait - le sol, retrouvait de nouvelles forces. Elle s’en rend bien compte. - C’est pourquoi, crainte que d’un tour de reins désespéré il ne se - dresse dans toute sa vigueur, elle n’a point poussé jusqu’ici la - lutte à fond. Parfois même elle semble accorder une trêve; elle - rentre dans ses quartiers. Mais, dès que la vigilance des - catholiques lui paraît suffisamment endormie, elle se jette de - nouveau sur sa proie. Elle continuera cette tactique jusqu’au - triomphe définitif. - - “Ce triomphe est-il prochain ou lointain? Pour le moment, la - défiance de Rome est bien éveillée, et Pie X n’est peut-être pas de - ces hommes qui se laissent prendre aux feints désarmements. - - “Quelques-uns se demanderont comment il peut se faire qu’une - minorité si faible gouverne ainsi tout un pays. C’est pourtant très - simple. D’abord les maçons sont étroitement unis; et l’union fit - toujours la force. Ensuite, appartenant tous aux classes moyennes, - ils exercent par leur situation personnelle, par leurs - fonctions--tous les gros bonnets de l’administration sont affiliés - à la franc-maçonnerie--une influence très grande. L’on peut dire - qu’ils disposent de toutes les faveurs gouvernementales; et ces - faveurs, ils ne les distribuent qu’à bon escient. Non seulement - donc ils tiennent à leur discrétion tous ceux qui occupent un poste - quelconque de l’Etat, mais encore tous ceux qui aspirent à en - occuper un, et ils sont légion. Ça leur fait une armée formidable, - disciplinée par l’intérêt. - - “On comprend que, dans ces conditions, la franc-maçonnerie n’ait - qu’à faire un signe aux pouvoirs publics pour qu’elle soit - immédiatement obéie. Quoi qu’elle décide, ce sera exécuté sur - l’heure. - - “La franc-maçonnerie, dit-il, sait mieux que le gouvernement - lui-même, quelle somme de résistance, en ce moment, le catholicisme - peut opposer à un assault décisif. Elle n’ignore pas que, quoiqu’il - soit très ébranlé, il serait très hasardeux de le vouloir abattre - d’un dernier coup. Elle craint surtout que, si elle ne parvenait - pas à lui faire exhaler le soupir suprême, il ne retrouvât une - nouvelle vie, la volonté et l’énergie de vaincre à son tour. - - “La franc-maçonnerie se gardera de compromettre, dans une lutte - chanceuse, les fruits de longs efforts. Elle a emprunté sa devise à - Rome: ‘Patiens quia æterna,’ et elle attendra qu’elle puisse - frapper à coup sûr. Les probabilités sont donc pour que, tout en - s’opposant à ce que des relations soient renouées avec le - Saint-Siège, elle ne chassera pas les catholiques de leurs derniers - retranchements, c’est-à-dire de leurs églises; elle les y laissera - tranquilles, jusqu’au jour où, par un nouveau coup d’audace, elle - s’en emparera. - - “Un de ses orateurs a prophétisè qu’avant peu on entendrait des - ‘batteries d’allégresse’ sous les voûtes de Notre-Dame; et les - prophéties maçonniques ne se sontelles pas souvent réalisées?” - - - PAGE 204 - - On November 9th, 1906, M. Briand described the Status of the Church - in France as follows (_Officiel_, 2459): “The churches are affected - to public worship and must remain so indefinitely.... It is our - duty to leave them open.... Reunions are possible, you may have - them. The priest may live in direct communication with the people, - he may receive manual gifts. Perhaps the Catholic hierarchy about - which you are so much concerned will suffer. Perhaps this faculty - left to the faithful to live with their priest haphazard (_au - hasard de la rencontre_) will soon dry up the revenues of the - priests; it will certainly dry up those of the bishops.” - - It is well also to recall here the words pronounced by M. Briand, - October 17th, 1905 (_Journal Officiel_, 1223), regarding the - _Associations cultuelles_: “They will be hardly born on the 11th - December, 1906. They will not have had time to obtain funds. If we - deprive them of the patrimony of the _fabriques_ and _menses - episcopales_ it will be impossible for them to maintain public - worship, and the faithful will be unable to practise their - religion.” - - Yet the Government impudently declares to-day that the Catholics - are hard to please! - - On December 1st, 1906, M. Briand sent forth an ukase commanding - every priest to consider public worship assimilated to public - meetings, and to make a declaration to the mayor according to the - law of 1881. - - Now the law of 1905 says that public worship cannot be regulated by - the law of 1881. Moreover, this law requires the constitution of a - bureau, and that a declaration be made before each meeting - twenty-four hours in advance. M. Briand took upon himself to modify - the law (_l’assouplir_) and to say no bureau was necessary, and - that one declaration would do for a year! The clergy made no - declarations. A few were made by Anarchists and Freemasons. - - From the 12th to the 20th December the police were kept busy making - thousands of _procès verbaux_ all over France. This idea of making - 65,000 prosecutions every day was soon found to be grotesque and - impracticable. Moreover, under the law of 1881 it is the owner of - the public hall or the café or cabaret who is prosecuted for not - making the required declaration. The State and the communes being - now the alleged owners of the churches since December 11th, 1906, - _they_ should have been prosecuted and not the priests. This same - M. Briand, who thus modified the law of 1881, had declared in the - Chambers: “Common right no longer exists if you interpret it - otherwise than the law” (November 9th, _Journal Officiel_, p. - 2438). - - Since December 11th, 1906, the Church in France is very much in the - condition of the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. - - On December 29th, 1906, a new Law of Separation was passed. It - confers on 36,000 mayors the right to invest 36,000 priests with a - precarious use of Church edifices, _sauf désaffection_. The - time-limit is to be decided, _à l’amiable_, between the mayors and - their nominees. Truly this is the _reductio ad absurdum_ of - separation. - - M. Briand assures us “that the mayor will accord the church to the - _curé_ most capable of keeping it in good condition” (_Journal - Officiel_, p. 3398, December 21st, 1906). This is lay orthodoxy. - “As to the period of enjoyment, it is impossible to fix it by law,” - says M. Briand, “to one, two, or three years” (_Officiel_, p. - 3407), “‘ce sont des questions d’espèce qui seront tranchées selon - les communes’; it will vary in each commune.” - - To this M. Ribot replied: “‘C’est l’anarchie dans 36,000 communes.’ - At every election this question will be raised, Shall we leave the - church to the _curé_ or not? You are making of this question, - eminently a governmental one, a municipal question, given over to - dissensions, competitions, and coteries” (_Officiel_, p. 3407). - - The new Law of Separation (December 29th) abolishes the - sequestration ordered on December 11th of all Church revenues, - etc., till December, 1907. It turns over immediately to the - communes and to lay institutions all the property of the Church. - Yet on November 9th (_Journal Officiel_, p. 2461) M. Briand stoutly - resisted the Left, clamouring for this very thing. “We must not - raise illusory hopes,” he said. - - “No,” cried a deputy, “it will be like the milliard of the - Congregations.” - - “There are fourteen millions of revenue,” continued M. Briand,” -...but are they ‘liquid,’ free of charges? The communes are - stretching out their hands to receive. You will give them what? - Nests of lawsuits. Yes, nests of vipers that will poison the - communes with their venom.” - - To explain this change of policy M. Briand said: “We have acquired - the certitude that the situation is without issue. It was - impossible to expect that during the next year regular associations - (of 1905) will be constituted to claim this property of the - _fabriques_. We cannot remain another whole year in this - uncertainty” (_Journal Officiel_, p. 3396, December 21st). A French - proverb says: “Souvent femme varie bien fou qui s’y fie.” - - And in the same session M. Briand, to explain why it was not - possible to lend the churches to _curés_ under the new law for any - definite time, said: “In fixing no term the Government is logical. - Having a law to execute (that of 1905), and having the conviction - that the Church will end by accepting it, we could not give to - uncontrolled associations under the law of 1901, which are a - concession to the Church, the same advantages as to _Associations - cultuelles_” (1905) (_Journal Officiel_, p. 3407, December 21st, - 1906). - - The new law of December 28th, 1906, says the use of the churches - can be obtained by the declaration of the _curé_ individually, or - of an association formed according to the law of 1901, or rather - according to _certain_ articles of this law _only_. The Church may - not avail herself of the articles which permit the formation of - associations called “of public utility”--like the S.P.A., for - instance. - - This is what these Jacobins understand by combating the Church. A - _coup de liberté_ by dint of liberty! They speak of giving _droit - commun_, common right. But they never do so. The Church is excluded - from the right of forming _Associations d’utilité publique_ - conferred by the law of 1901, though placed under this law since - December 28th, 1906. The new law is only a makeshift. M. Briand - said (21st December, p. 3398, _Journal Officiel_): “Evidently this - legislation is not definitive. Turn the pages of history up to the - Revolution; you will see that the Convention had the same - difficulties as we to-day. See the number of laws voted in the year - 1795 alone” (there were eleven Laws of Separation). Just so. France - stands where she did in 1795. - - PAGE 228 - - RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN CATHOLIC MARYLAND - -Confirmed by the Lord -Proprietary by an instrument -under his hand & seale. - -PHILLIP CALVERT. -26th August 1650. - -Enacted & made at a -Geñall Session held 1 & -20 day of Aprill Anno Dm͠ -1649 as followeth viz. - -An act concerning Religion. - -fforasmuch as in a well - - governed & Xpian Com͠on Wealth matters concerning Religion and - the honor of God ought in the first place to bee taken into serious - consideracon & endeavoured to bee settled. Be it therefore ordered - and enacted by the Right Hoble Cecilius Lord Baron of Baltemore - absolute Lord Proprietary of this Province with the advice & - consent of this Generall Assembly. That whatsoever ‘pson or ‘psons - within this province & the Islands thereunto belonging shall from - henceforth blaspheme God that is curse him or deny our Saviour - Jesus Christ to be the sonne of God, or shall deny the holy Trinity - or the unity of the Godhead, or shall use or utter any reproachfull - speeches concerning the said Holy Trinity shal be punished with - death & confiscation to the lord Proprietary and his heirs.... - - And bee it also further enacted by the same authority advise and - assent that whatsoever ‘pson or ‘psons shall from henceforth uppon - any occasion of offense or otherwise in a reproachful manner or way - declare call or denominate any ‘pson or ‘psons whatsoever, - inhabiting residing or traffiqueing or commerceing within this - Province or within any of the Ports Harbors Creeks or Havens to the - same belonging, an heritik, Scismatick Idolater, puritan, - Independent, Calvenist, Anabaptist Brownist Antimmoniam, Barrowist - Roundhead, Sepatist Presbiterian, popish prest, Jesuite, Jesuited - papist or any other name or terme in a reproachful manner relating - to matter of Religion shall for every such offense, forfeit and - loose the some of tenne shillings one half thereof to be paid unto - the person of whom such reproachfull words are or shall be spoken - and the other half thereof to the Lord Proprietary.... And whereas - the inforceing of the Conscience in matters of religion hath - frequently fallen out to be of dangerous Consequence in these - Commonwealths where it hath been practised. And for the more quiet - and peacable govt of this Province & the better to pserve - mutuall Love & Amity amongst the inhabitants thereof. Be it - therefore also by the L[-o] Proprietary with the advice and consent - of this Assembly Ordeynd & enacted that noe persons whatsoever - within this province or the Islands Ports Harbors Creeks thereunto - belonging professing to believe in Jesus Christ shall from - henceforth bee any waies troubled Molested or discountenanced for - or in respect of his or her religion nor in the free exercise - thereof within this province ... nor any way compelled to the - beliefe or exercise of any other Religion against his or her - consent soe as they be not unfaithfull to the Lord Proprietary or - molest or conspire against the Civill Govt established.... And - that all & every person that shall presume contrary to this act - directly or indirectly either in person or Estate wilfully to wrong - disturb or molest any person ... in respect to his or her Religion - shall be compelled to pay trebble damages to the party soe wronged - or molested & for every such offence shall also forfeit 20s - sterling ... or if the ptie soe offending as aforesaid shall refuse - or be unable to recompense the party soe wronged ... then such - offender shall be severely punished by publick whipping & - imprisonmt without baile or maineprise.... - -The ffreemen have assented. - - - - -BY THE SAME AUTHOR - - -_SLAV AND MOSLEM_ - -SOME OPINIONS - -“_Slav and Moslem_ does you the greatest honour, for I quite understand -how difficult it is for foreigners to comprehend so correctly as you do -the origin, the value, and the destinies of our institutions. - -PRINCE CANTACUZENE. - -“_Russian Imperial Legation, Washington._” - -“The perusal of your valuable and interesting book on the historical -relations of Slav and Moslem has afforded the keenest pleasure. - -A. ISWOLZY. - -“_Légation Impériale de Russe près le Saint Siège._” - -“We are separated from the Western world by difference of race, culture, -and history, and the Western mind is very hard in understanding us. -Therefore the testimony of a just and unprejudiced mind is always -gratefully appreciated in Russia. - -C. POBEDONOSTZEFF, - -“_Petersburg._ _Président du Saint Synod_.” - -“I was not only pleased with _Slav and Moslem_, but acknowledge a large -accretion to my knowledge of the subject. - -Your friend, -LEW WALLACE, -_Author of ‘Ben Hur,’ and formerly Ambassador -of U.S. to Constantinople_.” - -“I consider _Slav and Moslem_ the clearest exposition on the Eastern -Question I have ever met with. - -J. HUGHES, -_Author of the “Dictionary of Islam_.” - -“I regard _Slav and Moslem_ as a very valuable contribution to the -history of Russia. You are entitled to great credit for your -comprehensive view of the Russian Government and people. - -JOHN SHERMAN, - -“_Washington._ _Senator and Diplomat, U.S._” - -“Your development of the historical relations of Russia and Turkey is -admirable and full of interest. In vigorous and picturesque language you -have presented the other side. - -JOHN A. KASSON, - -“_Washington._ _Senator and Diplomat_.” - -“I find no words to express the historic breadth of your political -summary, and the deep and genuine philosophy and truth of your treatment -of this great drama. - -CASSIUS MARCELLUS CLAY, -_Ten years Minister of the U.S. at St. Petersburg_.” - -“I have read _Slav and Moslem_ with much interest, as it contains many -suggestions to fruitful thought regarding this great empire. - -ANDREW D. WHITE. - -_Legation of the U.S., St. Petersburg._” - -“_Slav and Moslem_ is written with justice, clairvoyance, and talent. - -JULIETTE ADAM.” - -“I have read many books on Russia, but none met with my approval to such -an extent as _Slav and Moslem_.... The statements and descriptions of -the Russians are so correct.... During the years of my official stay I -studied the people, their history and language, and know what I am -talking about. - -JOHN KAREL, -_U.S. Consul at St. Petersburg_.” - -“For the chapter on the Crimea alone your book deserves the thanks of -all who would study the present century. - -GEO. J. LEMMON, -_Lecturer and Publicist_.” - -SOME PRESS NOTICES - -“Vivid historical sketches.... Eminently worthy of careful -perusal.”--_The Press_ (Philadelphia). - -“The author shows an intelligent mastery of his subject.” - -_Herald_ (Boston). - -“Its every sentence is clear-cut and positive.... The subjects are all -treated with a vigour and boldness that rivet the attention from first -to last.” - -_The American_ (Baltimore). - -“The author has a surprisingly firm grasp on his subject.... Vivid, -thorough, original.” - -_The Tribune_ (Salt Lake City, Utah). - -“Intensely readable.... It is one of the notable books of the -day.”--_Commercial Gazette_ (Cincinnati). - -“From first to last the book is one of unusual interest.” - -_The Chronicle_ (Augusta, Ga.). - -“A sober and trenchant defence of Russia.” - -_Times Star_ (Cincinnati) - -“Mr. Brodhead writes lucidly and discriminatingly.... Interesting and -suggestive throughout.” - -_The Churchman_ (New York). - -“J. Brodhead’s work on the Eastern is creating a more and more favorable -impression throughout the country.” - -_The Press_ (New York). - -PLYMOUTH -WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS - - * * * * * - - -FOOTNOTES: - -[1] I transcribe the following from _Le Lyon Republicain_ (ministerial -anti-clerical), 1905:--“The criminality of youths from sixteen to -twenty-five is increasing in shameful and overwhelming proportions. This -collection of beardless scoundrels, cynically vicious, murderers, -thieves, _souteneurs_, is the curse of our large cities.... It is only -since fifteen or eighteen years at most that criminalists notice this -remarkable depravation of youths almost children.... May we not ask if -the State that has done the most for instruction has not done the least -for education? Truly this frightful development of youthful criminality, -of alcoholism, and anti-socialism must make us reflect.” - -“_Fifteen years or eighteen at most._” The scholar anti-Christian laws -of Jules Ferry, Goblet, Paul Bert, date from 1882 to 1895, and by their -fruits they are judged. - -[2] In January, 1906, M. Poincaré, minister of finance, in reply to M. -Grousseau, admitted that up to February, 1905, the State had advanced -the sum of 4,551,319 frs. to the liquidators of the Congregations. - -[3] “Vel Judam non videtis, quomodo non dormit, sed festinat tradere me -Judæis?” (Feria V in Cœna Domini--“See ye not Judas, how he sleeps not, -but makes haste to betray me into the hands of the Jews?”) - -[4] According to a recent article in the _Figaro_, 8th October, 1906, -among the conscripts sent this month to the army by Paris, ninety could -neither read nor write; seventy-nine could read only. - -[5] It was only at the annual September Convent of the Grand Orient, -1904, that it was decided to rush the assault on the Church itself by -the law of alleged separation. “Il nous reste un rude coup de collier à -donner ... la separation figurera en Janvier prochain a l’ordre du jour -de la chambre.” - -[6] At the Free-Thought Congress. - -[7] His native city recently hoisted the French flag and proclaimed its -annexation to the Third Republic, 1906. Of course it was only a platonic -demonstration on the part of Sicilian Freemasons. - -[8] M. Rouvier had obtained a law obliging every one without exception -who distilled anything to pay the usual tax on alcohol. This law was -made and repealed by the same Parliament, so that now every one who has -a peach or a plum tree can manufacture any kind of alcohol of poor -quality, and retail it in the _buvettes_ or drink-stands which are found -at every step almost; in every little vegetable and grocery shop, even -in Government tobacco stores where stamps are sold. These _buvettes_ are -the curse of France to-day. They have caused far greater ravages than -the Franco-Prussian war. - -[9] “We do not wish to see the secular arm placed at the service of -free-thought,” said a deputy of the “bloc” not long since. “Meanwhile -the secular arm in the service of free-thought has closed all our -schools and colleges,” retorted a deputy of the Right. - -[10] On November 17th, 1906, the Bishop of Nancy wrote as follows to M. -Briand, Minister of Cults, regarding the sad plight of the Sisters du -Saint Cœur de Marie at Nancy: “In 1902, 56 of them were huddled together -in a small house situated at the extremity of their grounds.... Their -spacious chapel was razed to the ground and in its place three private -houses have been built. The property was sold for 527,000 francs. The -liquidator promised that in conformity with the law the sisters should -receive pensions. Out of the 56 there remain to-day but 44. Of these 10 -are over seventy, and 22 of them are over sixty.... In these last four -years they have received out of the 527,000 francs only 12,000 in three -instalments.... They owe 17,800 to their baker, butcher, etc., and are -threatened with starvation if further credit be denied them.... Are -these aged women, who have devoted their lives to the instruction of the -poor, to die of cold and hunger, M. le Ministre?” And these things -happen in the twentieth century under a Government that proclaims the -rights of man and of the poor! - -[11] There is no such thing as proportional representation in France, -and the whole electoral machinery is manipulated to give the Government -a majority. - -[12] Recently in the Chambers (November 13th, 1906), M. Lassies -criticized that part of M. Clemenceau’s declaration in which he referred -to the Holy See “as a foreigner subject to foreign influences.” “Foreign -influences,” said M. Lassies, turning pointedly to M. Delcassé, “we find -them here in the person of the ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs, who fell -from power without our knowing why. Whence came the gust which caused -his fall? From which frontier?” - -[13] The Bill was adopted by the French Senate early in December. - -[14] Everything except the _encyclique_ of August 15th, 1906. - -[15] M. Lefas, deputy of the Right, maintained in the Chambers (Nov. -9th, 1906, _Journal Officiel_, p. 2448) that “the churches could not -form part of the Communal domain when Communes did not exist in France. -Communal domain only began with the existence of the Communes; that is -to say, a hundred years ago.” Therefore these Church edifices cannot be -said to belong to the Communes to-day. Formerly France was divided into -parishes, and each parish had its parish church. - -As to the cathedrals, if kings and nobles, like other Catholics, -contributed to their embellishment or construction, they did so as -Catholics. All the guilds and corporations, too, contributed, not only -money, but personal labour. Would this entitle the syndicates of masons, -goldsmiths, etc., of to-day to claim these cathedrals? But the chief -factor in the construction of these noble edifices were the freely given -toil and humble labours of the multitudes of Catholics who raised these -monuments of faith. It is well known that a Catholic church cannot be -dedicated as long as any one has a lien on it, that is, not until the -Church’s proprietorship of the building is undisputed. Therefore the -assumption that these edifices belong to the State and the Communes can -only be justified on the theory of the men who, seeing a trunk lying in -the hall of a hotel, said, “This trunk belongs to no one; let us say it -belongs to us.” - -The recent judgment of the highest court of England in the case of the -“wees and the frees” of the Scotch Presbyterian Kirk is eminently -applicable in this question of Jacobin appropriations and spoliations. - -[16] These inventories, left incomplete after the fall of the Rouvier -Ministry (February), are being completed now (November, 1906). - -[17] When the daily Press is constantly recording the exploits of -_cambrioleurs_ picking locks and bursting open _coffres forts_ with -dynamite, it is very piquant to see the Government doing the same thing, -flanked by _gens d’armes_ and the regular army. Yesterday at Nantes 1500 -soldiers, with two generals and one colonel, surrounded the cathedral at -5 a.m. Forty locks were picked before noon! In _cambrioleur_ slang this -would be called a “record haul.” Thanks to the injunctions of Pius X, -there was no bloodshed, and M. Clemenceau and his friends proclaim that -these inventories are made _sans incident_. - -[18] This Protestant senator seems to have been inspired by an eloquent -passage in Bossuet, “Une voix nous crie, _Marche, Marche_.” - -[19] The founder and owner of _La Lanterne_ is said to be a Frankfort -Jew, and it is an open secret that all the advanced Socialist and -anti-clerical dailies are owned or controlled by the princes of Israel. -And it is from these that English and American papers seem to derive all -their information regarding the Church in France. - -[20] LES CAISSES D’ÉPARGNE. - -Voici le relevé des opérations des Caisses d’épargne ordinaires avec la -Caisse des dépôts et consignations du 1er au 10 octobre, 1906:-- - -Dépôts de fonds 2.830.949 fr. 72. Retraits de fonds 6.576.856 fr. 30. -Excédent des retraits 3.745.906 fr. 58. - -Excédent des retraits du 1er janvier au 10 octobre, 1906, 26.784.318 -fr. 60. - -[21] Thus Notre Dame might witness a Catholic Mass in the morning, a -theosophical reunion at noon, and a positivist conference in the -evening. The Swiss Catholics, 1872-6, had some such experiences: a -venerable priest died recently at Berne who had refused to give up the -keys of his church for other uses, and was imprisoned for many years; -while the last prisoner of Chillon was the Catholic Bishop of Fribourg, -another victim of the Swiss Kulturkampf. - -[22] When public men and editors in France and elsewhere descant on -German _Associations cultuelles_ accepted by the Holy See that rejects -them in France, they stand accused of ignorance or malevolence. M. -Briand basely insinuated (Chambers, 9th November) that the Church in -Germany was being ransomed by France: “Notre situation à nous est-elle -la rançon de la situation d’un pays voisin? Je me borne à poser la -question.” The fact is there is no such thing as _German Associations -cultuelles_, each State of the Confederation has its own regulations. -Bavaria has a concordat and a papal nuncio at Munich. The Governments of -Würtemberg and the Grand Duchy of Baden made special conventions with -the Holy See, 1857 and 1859. Alsace-Lorraine is still under the French -Concordat of 1801 between Pius VII and the First Republic. Prussia and -Hesse in 1873 and 1875 made special conventions with the Vatican. -Prussia has a Legation to the Holy See at Rome. Moreover, in none of the -German states is there separation of Church and State. They all -recognize and subsidize the Catholic Church and one form of -Protestantism. In Prussia several bishops are appointed senators by the -King. In Alsace-Lorraine the Bishop of Strasburg is member of the -Council of State. In Bavaria, Baden, Würtemberg, the prelates are -members of the Upper House. - -[23] What would Philippe de Commines have said had he heard of the -little _coup de main_ (November 20th, 1906), by which deputies and -senators in _quasi huis clos_ voted themselves an increase of 6000 -francs without any “_octroi or consentement_” of the sovereign people, -delivered from tyranny and servitude by the Revolution? - -[24] There is in the Palace of the Doges at Venice an immense picture -commemorating this Congress, where the Peace of Constance was prepared. - -[25] In refreshing contrast with this record of persecution is the -proclamation of religious liberty in Maryland, 1650. “The Catholics took -quiet possession [of Maryland], and religious liberty obtained a home, -its only home in the wide world ... every other country had persecuting -laws.... Protestants were sheltered against Protestant intolerance. The -disfranchized friends of Prelacy in Massachusetts and the Puritans from -Virginia were welcomed to equal liberty of conscience and political -rights as Roman Catholics in the province of Maryland.... In 1649 the -General Assembly of Maryland passed an Act to this effect, yet five -years later, when the Puritans obtained the ascendency there, they -rewarded their benefactors by passing an Act forbidding that liberty of -conscience be extended to ‘popery,’ ‘prelacy,’ and ‘licentiousness of -opinion’” (Bancroft’s _History of the United States_, I, VII.). - -Lecky corroborates this statement: “Hôpital and Lord Baltimore were the -two first legislators who uniformly maintained liberty of conscience, -and Maryland continues the one solitary home for the oppressed of every -sect till Puritans succeeded in subverting Catholic rule, when they -basely enacted the whole penal code against those who had so nobly and -so generously received them” (_History of Rationalism_, II, 58). - -An abridged copy of the Act of 1650, the first Act of religious -toleration, will be found in the Appendix. The original from which I -copied is in the archives of the Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore. - -[26] On November 9th, 1906, the Socialist minister Viviani, after -“putting out the lights in heaven,” exclaimed, “What shall we say to -these sovereigns who are slaves economically speaking, to these men who -enjoy universal suffrage yet suffer in servitude? How shall we appease -them?” - -[27] Hall Caine, explaining the title of his book, _The Eternal City_, -expressed himself as follows: “In the new methods of settling -international disputes, the old mother of the Pagan and the Christian -worlds will have her rightful rank.... Her religious and historical -interest, her artistic charm, above all the mystery of eternal life seem -to point to Rome as the seat of the great court of appeal which the -future will see established.” - -[28] _Paradise Lost_, Book IV. - - * * * * * - -Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: - -their precedessors=> their predecessors {pg 97} - -evacute Rome=> evacuate Rome {pg 111} - -public shools=> public schools {pg 206} - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Religious Persecution in France -1900-1906, by Jane Milliken Napier Brodhead - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION *** - -***** This file should be named 42434-0.txt or 42434-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/4/3/42434/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: The Religious Persecution in France 1900-1906 - -Author: Jane Milliken Napier Brodhead - -Release Date: March 29, 2013 [EBook #42434] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - THE - RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION - IN FRANCE - - 1900-1906 - - - _Nihil Obstat_: - JOSEPH WILHELM, S. T. D., - CENSOR DEPUTATUS. - - _Imprimi potest_ - + GULIELMUS, - EPISCOPUS ARINDELENSIS, - VICARIUS GENERALIS. - - WESTMONASTERII, - _Die 6 Aprilis, 1907_. - - - - - THE RELIGIOUS - PERSECUTION - IN FRANCE - - 1900-1906 - - BY - - J. NAPIER BRODHEAD - AUTHOR OF "SLAV AND MOSLEM" - - _LONDON_ - KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRBNER & CO., LTD. - 43 GERRARD STREET, SOHO, W. - 1907 - - - - -PREFACE - - -These Considerations, written during the last six years' residence in -France, have already appeared in the Press of the United States. They -were written from year to year without any thought of republication, -which seems justified to-day by the acuity of the conflict between the -Church and the French atheocracy, a conflict which cannot but interest -Christians everywhere. - -J. N. B. - - - - -CONTENTS - - - PAGE - -FIRST IMPRESSIONS 1 - -THE TWO CAMPS 7 - -THE ASSOCIATIONS BILL 13 - -THE ASSOCIATIONS BILL 18 - -ARBITRARY INCONSISTENCY 29 - -A PAGAN RENAISSANCE 33 - -INCONSISTENT JACOBINISM 40 - -UNAUTHORISED CONGREGATIONS 46 - -A COMBES _COUP DE MAIN_ 50 - -LEGALIZED DESPOTISM 57 - -DESPOTISM PLUS GUILE 63 - -UNCHANGING JACOBINISM 71 - -DEATH OF WALDECK ROUSSEAU 78 - -LIBERTY AND STATE SERVITUDE 82 - -THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 91 - -A PAPAL NOTE 105 - -FREEMASONRY 112 - -FREEMASONRY 118 - -PART SECOND 125 - -ALCOHOLISM IN FRANCE 131 - -THE LAW OF SEPARATION 135 - -CATHOLICISM IN GERMANY 144 - -PSEUDO-SEPARATION 147 - -THE PROGRESS OF ANARCHY 160 - -THE ABOLITION OF THE CONCORDAT 170 - -THE INVENTORIES 177 - -DUC IN ALTUM 185 - -THE LATEST PHASE OF SEPARATION 197 - -LIBERTY AND CHRISTIANITY 211 - -CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION 233 - -APPENDIX 249 - - - - -THE RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION IN FRANCE - - - - -FIRST IMPRESSIONS - - -LYON, _March 17th, 1900_. - -There seems to be considerable misapprehension in the United States as -to the status of the Catholic Church in France. "One iniquitous -arrangement in France," writes the _Central Baptist_, "is the support of -the priesthood out of public funds." In receiving stipends from the -State the French clergy, however, are no more its debtors, nor its -functionaries, than holders of French 3 per cents who receive the -interest of their bonds. When that essentially satanic movement, known -as the French Revolution, swept over this fair land, deluging it in -blood, the wealth of the Church, the accumulation of centuries, was all -confiscated by the hordes who pillaged and devastated, and killed in the -name of Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality, until Napoleon restored order -with an iron hand. A born ruler of men, this Corsican understood that -the principal feature of the work of restoration must be the -reorganization of the Catholic Church in France. Accordingly he -concluded with the Pope the convention known as the Concordat. It was -not possible in the dilapidated state of the country to restore the -millions that had been stolen by those "champions of liberty who," -according to Macaulay, "compressed into twelve months more crimes than -the kings of France had committed in twelve centuries." Still less was -it possible to rebuild many noble structures, and recover works of art -sold by sordid harpies or destroyed by impious vandals. It was -accordingly agreed (Arts. 13 and 14, Concordat) that in lieu of this -restitution the State should henceforth pay to the Church, annually, the -stipends of so many archbishops, bishops, curates, etc. - -The Concordat constitutes an organic law of the State. The clergy -receive their stipends, not as a salary, but as the payment of a debt -due to them by the State. It is in vain, therefore, that efforts are -made now to represent the Catholic clergy as salaried functionaries of -the State. The act by which Waldeck Rousseau recently decreed the -suppression of the stipends of certain bishops was wholly arbitrary, -and, moreover, the violation of an organic law. It was the partial -repudiation of a public debt, quite as dishonourable as if the payment -of interest of three per cent bonds were withheld from certain -bondholders. - -The position of Protestant and Jewish ministers in France is entirely -different. They do receive salaries which are purely gratuitous. The -Revolutionists did not trouble them, and they had no part in the -Concordat of 1801. We may say that the French Revolution was appeased, -but it is not over by any means. No nation less well founded and -grounded could have withstood as France has done the shocks and -upheavals of a century. - -To this day France is still profoundly Catholic, in spite of the -millions of public money expended in so-called non-sectarian primary -schools and colleges. Travellers stroll into French churches, in summer, -at High Mass on Sundays at 9.30 or 10.30 generally, and because they -find a very small congregation at this service they report that the -churches are deserted and religion fast dying out. They ignore the fact -that in these churches low masses have been said hourly since 5 a.m., so -that people may comply with their duty, and then go off on their outing. -Lyon has many large beautiful old churches, and many handsome new ones. -Yet not one of them could contain all their parishioners if they wished -to attend the same service. - -For nearly twenty-five years the Government has been running its -educational machine at immense cost, compelling the French to support -schools they will not patronize, as well as those of their own choice. -Nevertheless, State colleges and primary schools are so neglected that -laws are being devised to compel parents to send their children to them. -If all other means fail, the congregations of both sexes occupied in -teaching will be suppressed. This is the Government's programme. There -is nothing so bad as the corruption of that which is best. France is -still profoundly Catholic, and it is only natural that the struggle -between good and evil should be sharp here. The forces of reaction and -action are always proportionate. Hence it is that France has always been -"the centre of Masonic history," and of the Goddess Reason's supreme -efforts against Christianity. Her temperament, too, makes her a choice -field for experiments. - -We can therefore understand M. Waldeck Rousseau's indignation when so -many bishops openly expressed their sympathy with and admiration for the -Assumptionist Fathers who were condemned recently--and condemned for -what crime? For being an unauthorized association of more than twenty -persons, when there are hundreds of other similar associations at the -present moment. - -Briefly stated, the present phase of the Church in France is simply the -nineteenth-century phase of the struggles of Investiture in the Middle -Ages; the secular power seeking to have and to dominate a national -Church, whose ministers are to be nothing but state functionaries, -bound to serve and to support the Government. This was the old pagan -ideal, and every portion of the Church that has renounced allegiance to -Rome has fallen into this condition. In England, in Russia, in the -Byzantine Empire, in Turkey, in Africa--wherever there is a national -Church--it is little better than a department of State. The Gallican -Church narrowly escaped a similar fate in the days of Louis XIV. The -Civil Constitution of the Clergy was another desperate and abortive -attempt to nationalize and secularize the Church in France. Gloriously, -too, her clergy expiated their momentary Gallican insubordination. All -over France they were guillotined, drowned, and exiled, and imprisoned, -_en masse_, rather than submit to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. -There is nothing more admirable in the history of Christianity than the -conduct of the victims massacred in the convent of the Carmelites, -converted into a prison by the Jacobins. Martyrs and confessors were as -numerous as in the first centuries of the Church, and from their ashes -arose a new French Church purified by poverty and suffering. - -Never have institutions of learning and charity under religious -direction been so numerous. No country has a clergy more zealous, more -learned, more united with the Holy See than that of France to-day. No -wonder then that the powers of darkness are devising means to destroy -the new structure, so zealously and so laboriously raised on the ruins -accumulated by the Revolution of 1790. - -"Not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar among the people." -Violent measures would rouse French Catholics from their political -apathy. The Government cannot afford to do this. Religious liberty must -be destroyed by degrees--and herein lies the danger. - - - - -THE TWO CAMPS - - -_May 25th, 1900._ - -To the thoughtful and sympathetic observer, France presents a singular -spectacle of duality--two camps and two standards are confronting each -other, neo-paganism and Christianity. By Christianity I mean, of course, -Catholicism, for though there may be good Protestants, who adhere to -some of the truths of revealed religion, such a thing as a good pervert -French Protestant is a _lusus natur_, practically non-existent. It is a -notorious fact that Protestants in France as elsewhere in Europe are, as -a rule, absolutely indifferent in religious matters since they have -ceased to be persecuted, and in many cases they have become the enemies -of revealed religion. - -All civilization, all redemption from barbarism, is fostered and -developed around a sanctuary. Consecrated hands have, in every instance, -laid the corner stone of the social edifice. The Church, the -school-house, the university, the courts of justice--these are the -normal steps by which societies, cities, and nations have advanced in -the Old World out of barbarism and chaos since the overthrow of the -Roman Empire. Of France this is pre-eminently true. Hundreds of -villages and towns bear the names of holy missionary monks who built -first a cell, and then a monastery around a chapel, which became the -centre of a village, that grew in time to be a city. We see the same -thing all over Europe and in the British Isles. Gibbon says that the -French bishops made the French monarchy as bees construct a honeycomb. -Like every institution that bears a religious imprint, this monarchy was -long-lived. Those who descant so volubly on the flightiness of the -French people, always overturning their government and never satisfied -with the one they have, would do well to reflect that the French -monarchy lasted some fourteen centuries. When this monarchy was -overthrown by the assassination of Louis XVI there was formed a vortex -in which were engulfed millions of human lives. Not that I consider a -monarchical or any special form of government indispensable to France's -prosperity. There is, however, one essential condition. The generating -principle of the French nation was the Catholic Faith. Without it, -France would no longer be herself. She would disintegrate interiorly, -and dismemberment and decadence would follow. France is still profoundly -Catholic, in spite of the prodigious efforts made since the days of -Voltaire and Tom Paine by numerous native and alien religious vandals, -whose prostituted intellects were garnished from the storehouse of -centuries of Christian culture. She will always be this or nothing. For -any one who knows France, historically and psychologically, it is -preposterous to think of a substitute creed, corresponding to any of the -various shreds of Christianity, which do duty for religion under the -name of some one or other of the multitudinous Protestant sects. - -France, I repeat, will always be Catholic or nothing. But the Government -is on the verge of apostasy. For the first time in French history the -usual religious observances on Good Friday were suppressed in all the -naval ports. "What thou doest do quickly," and on this occasion the -order was sent by telegraph on Thursday evening. As I stated in my last -letter, irreligious education is doing its work, and the increase of -juvenile criminals is appalling.[1] - -If the projected law regarding religious associations is voted, it will -be tantamount to the abolition of all religious teaching, as the -existence of these congregations will be rendered impracticable. England -and the United States will be the gainers, as they were when the -Revolution dispersed the priesthood in 1790. - -The French Government is on the verge of apostasy, as I have said. Is -this a cause, a presage, or a symptom of national decadence? All three, -I fear. Nations stand or fall with their governments. They have the -government they merit and they are punished for the evil doings of their -rulers. "I gave them a king in my wrath," it was written. Is there -sufficient vitality left in the French constitution to reject the poison -that is undermining it, and of which alcoholism, unknown in France fifty -years ago, is but the outward and visible sign? The assertion I make -that the greatness of the French people and their very national -existence is bound up with the Christian Faith is unquestioned by every -thinker in France, even by those who, for diverse reasons, do not -practise their religion, though they all bank on the last sacraments and -would be very sorry to see their wives and children neglect their -religious duties. - -The governments which have succeeded each other since 1880 have -flattered themselves that they could govern without the Church and -against the Church. Bismarck tried it and failed. The Catholic party -triumphed. It still holds the balance of power in Germany, and the -nation is growing daily more powerful and prosperous. In France, alas! -it is quite the contrary. In order to crush what they are pleased to -call the "clerical" party, the Government has allied itself with -Socialists of the reddest streak. Indeed, we may say that anarchy and -socialism, or collectivism as it is called, are sitting in high places. - -Any president or minister who dared to stem the tide would fall. They -must temporize, resign, or die. Carnot was assassinated. Casimir-Perier -resigned; Faure, who steadily opposed the revision of the Dreyfus case, -was poisoned, I am told--at any rate, it is said that he died almost -immediately after swallowing a cup of tea at a soire. Though the public -has no means of forming a correct judgment regarding the guilt of the -notorious Dreyfus, the most important evidence having been secret, I -have never doubted that he was justly condemned. At any rate, he -accepted the Presidential pardon, and withdrew his appeal, a strange -thing for an innocent man to do. This alone, it would seem, ought to -estop him from a new trial. But unfortunately the whole thing is to be -gone over again, though it is a perfect nightmare for four-fifths of the -French nation. - -I know France intimately since thirty years, and it is with infinite -sorrow that I diagnose her present condition and its perils. - -According to custom, the Imperial Court of Russia retired to Moscow for -Holy Week, and while the Czar, laying aside court etiquette, was -kneeling humbly on the bare floor among his peasant subjects, holding -his lighted candle like them, his allies, the rulers of France, were -desecrating Easter Vigil by inaugurating the Paris Exhibition with -speeches, which seemed to have been compiled from those made by -Robespierre and his companions on that very Champs de Mars a century -ago, when they inaugurated their theo-philanthropy and the worship of -the Goddess of Reason. - -I presume Holy Saturday was selected because it is a high festival among -the Jews; otherwise Easter Monday would surely have been more -appropriate in a country where there are thirty-five million Catholics. -This was on the 9th April, and the Exposition they were in such a hurry -to inaugurate on that particular day is far from ready even now. - - - - -THE ASSOCIATIONS BILL - - -_May 4th, 1901._ - -A year ago I wrote in these columns as follows: "For twenty years the -Government has been running its educational machine at immense loss, -compelling the French to support their own schools as well as those they -will not patronize. Nevertheless, State schools and colleges are so -neglected that laws are being devised to compel parents to send their -children to them. If all other means fail, the congregations of both -sexes occupied in teaching will be suppressed." - -Now this is the true object of the Associations Bill; all the rest is -merely padding. Liberty of association for Freemasons, Socialists, and -all friends of the Third Republic will be untrammelled as heretofore. -The blow aimed at religious teachers is of peculiar interest at this -hour, when Christians, all over the world, are recognizing the immense -importance of the religious education of the young, if we would preserve -the structure of Western civilization, so laboriously built up during -2000 years, and save its deep foundations from being sapped by the -returning tide of barbarism and paganism. For the revolutionary spirit -of to-day is simply another version of that renaissance of paganism -which culminated in the Protestant revolt. As in the past, it will be -met by a great Catholic revival like that of the sixteenth century, -which Macaulay has so eloquently described in his Essay on Ranke's -_Papacy_. This is the counter-revolution against which the self-styled -government of "Dfense Republicaine" is dressing its batteries. Already -the effects of this revival are felt and, as Macaulay has pointed out, -revivals of the religious spirit, this everlasting factor in the history -of humanity which our pseudo-scientists so unscientifically ignore, -always redound to the benefit of Catholicism. When men like Brunetire, -Bourget, Lematre, Franois Coppe, become standard-bearers of truth, we -are consoled for the vociferations of any number of Vivianis, -Trouillots, etc., in and outside the French Chambers, for whom "the -eternal decalogue" is but an antiquated superstition that must be swept -away. - -The law against the Congregations has been opposed in the Chambers by -many Republicans who have no religious scruples, and one may safely -affirm that there is not a respectable Frenchman, outside the coterie in -power, who does not condemn the Bill. - -A few days before its passage, a mass meeting of many trade unions, -presided over by Leroy Beaulieu, was held in Paris to protest against -the projected suppression of the Congregations. The eminent economist -declared that the proposed legislation was one of "national suicide." -If the law is so repugnant to the French in general, how is it that the -Government always obtains a majority? it may be asked. - -The explanation lies in the fact that while honest Frenchmen have been -attending to their business and leaving politics strictly alone, this -anti-religious campaign has been carefully prepared since many years by -the enemies of Christianity. Like all notable persecutions, it is the -work of secret societies. The Boxers of China are a congeries of these -societies. In the days of Julian the chief instigators and abettors of -persecution were the secret societies of Mithra, whom Renan declared to -have been "veritable Masonic lodges with their initiations, passwords," -etc. - -Since 1875 the "Grand Orient," in which the Jewish element predominates, -has gradually been gathering into its hands all the reins of government; -not a very difficult task, seeing that as a rule respectable, -industrious Frenchmen will not touch politics, while the emissaries of -the lodges go out into the slums of mining and industrial centres, and -organize primaries and Socialist clubs that defeat any respectable -candidate who dares to enter the lists against the candidate of the -Government. Jules Lematre, in the _Echo de Paris_, states that there -are 400 deputies and 10 ministers who are Freemasons. As these latter -number about 25,000 in France, it follows that there is one -representative in Parliament for every 50 Freemason electors, whereas -there is only one representative for every 1800 votes who are not -affiliated to the "Grand Orient." With a house packed in this way, any -legislation is possible. Madame Sorgues, lately sub-editor of Jaurs' -Socialist organ, _La Petite Republique_, has published some interesting -revelations, showing how the Judeo Freemasons have made tools of the -Socialists in order to seize the reins of government. "In combating the -combats of Dreyfus," she writes, "Jaurs and his friends brought about a -singular _rapprochement_ of the two most irreconcilable camps ... the -presents of the kings of capital were accepted. The first service -rendered was to restore the tottering Socialist Press.... All the -advanced [meaning anti-clerical Socialist] dailies have passed into the -hands of the great barons of finance; they are _their_ journals now, not -the journals of the workers.... Then they cast their eyes on Waldeck -Rousseau, the clever rescuer of the Panamists.... The agent of the -Dreyfus politics had the happy thought of introducing into the Cabinet, -Millerand, the Socialist leader, with the consent of his party. -Socialism become ministerial would be _domestiqu_, and rendered -inoffensive against capital," etc. Last fall, the President, Loubet, -when at Lyons, dared to be the guest of the Chamber of Commerce, in -spite of the Socialist mayor, Augagneur, and his gang. Immediately, the -_Aurore_, a Socialist organ of Paris, clamoured for his suppression in -these terms: "As he is not subject to the same accidents as Felix -Faure, we must defend ourselves without waiting for the good offices of -Judith." M. Faure, M. Loubet's predecessor, it will be remembered, is -said to have died suddenly after a cup of tea at a soire given by a -rich Jewess, and the present ministry of the Dreyfus revision, to which -he had been steadfastly opposed, came into power almost before the -country knew what had happened, bringing in their political wallet -another Dreyfus trial and this notorious Associations Bill. - -If I insist, it is because I wish that it may be clearly understood that -the French people are not guilty of the criminal legislation of which -they are the victims, owing to their incurable reluctance to touch the -mire of politics, left, as a rule, to the most unworthy and -unscrupulous. - -M. Waldeck Rousseau is a smart, wily politician; so was Camille -Desmoulins, an obscure, ambitious lawyer, who saw in the Revolution of -1790 a grand opportunity of reaching a proud eminence. This -accomplished, he had no further use for Revolutionists. "The Revolution -is over," he said; but it went on and on, until his own head rolled into -the fatal basket. - -How long will all this last? How long will the mad dogs of Socialist -anarchy be held in leash? - - - - -THE ASSOCIATIONS BILL - - -_3rd April,_ 1901. - -Few persons in the United States have the leisure or the means of -following the debates of the French Chambers, and appreciating the Law -on Associations, of which many garbled and falsified versions appear in -metropolitan and other dailies. - -It is pre-eminently a project of tyranny and religious persecution. The -sympathy of sectarian antagonism with anti-Catholic measures, in any -part of the world, is always a foregone conclusion. It does not concern -itself with the arbitrary tyranny involved, alleging, perhaps, that now -the tables are turned, and thirty-five millions of Catholics are being -treated as were the Huguenots from 1685 to 1790. But when former -governments strove to maintain national unity, founded on "One Lord, one -Faith, one Baptism," their position was that of a man defending his own -house against assailants, while the position of this Government is that -of a small armed band who have taken forcible possession, and mean to -coerce and outlaw the owners by imprescriptible right. But neither -Elizabeth nor Louis XIV ever invoked liberty to palliate their coercive -policy in order to establish, or maintain unity or uniformity. - -As Bodley says in his excellent work on France (1898): "The intolerant -system under the Third Republic differs from all persecutions known to -history in that it is not only practised in the name of liberty, but is -aimed against an established religion"--in possession since fifteen -centuries. - -It is a curious fact that the Huguenots, so clamorous for toleration and -the rights of conscience in the past, have during a century of absolute -liberty and equality, 1793-1900, dwindled from 2,000,000 in a population -of 27,000,000 to 600,000 in a population of 38,000,000. They have -evolved, in the usual process of Protestant disintegration, into the -deistical and atheistical minority who, with the Jews, are now so -determined to restore national unity in national infidelity. For it is a -notorious fact that France is ruled and oppressed by a small coalition -of Freemasons, chiefly Protestants and Jews, who are using the -Socialists as cats' paws. - -Waldeck Rousseau clearly stated the Government's programme in his -political speech at Toulouse, and its scope is unmistakable, no matter -what affectation of tolerance and amity for the secular clergy may -accompany it. He is an astute lawyer, and his unruly band of Socialist -henchmen in the Chambers often try his patience sorely by calling a -spade a spade. - -The suppression of religious orders and the confiscation of their -property is no new thing. St. Paul reminds the Hebrews of their -neophyte fervour, and how they accepted being despoiled with joy. -_Rapinam_ is the word used in the Vulgate; modern euphemism eschews the -unsavoury word robbery, and says "_secularization_," "_liquidation_." -Julian the Apostate, like the Rousseaus and the Trouillots of to-day, -was also of opinion that the "Clericals" must be impoverished and -discredited in order to crush out Christianity. Henry VIII robbed and -suppressed English monasteries simply because he saw no other means of -replenishing the empty treasury he had inherited. Moreover the religious -orders were not likely to sustain him in his new character of supreme -head of the Anglican Church. Suffering, crime, and ignorance reached -unprecedented proportions in the century that followed, as we learn from -Strype's _Chronicles_. Lecky asserts that 75,000 vagrant beggars were -hanged in Henry's reign. - -Suppressions and confiscations have always been a prominent feature in -all revolutions, and they have been numerous in the nineteenth century. -The reason is twofold. Everything that has a religious stamp is -essentially and very properly conservative. It requires infinite pains, -patience, and wisdom to build up or to reconstruct. Any fool or madman -can tear down. _Quieta non movere._ The religious congregations, -therefore, were always the last to abandon the mother country or the -regime under which they had existed for centuries. On the other hand, -revolutionists always have a crying need for money to furnish the -sinews of rebellion, and also, incidentally, to feather the nests of -patriots. What can be more handy, too, than church property, and the -untold wealth of the religious orders! It is true that these gold mines -are sometimes found to be 'salted,' as they are in the fantastical -statistics put forth by the Rousseau ministry.[2] They seldom justify -the brilliant expectations of the populace lured by the perspective of -rich spoils, as they are to-day--pensions for the veterans of toil, etc. - -These spoliations have always been followed by an immense recrudescence -of popular misery. It was so in France, in Italy, in Spain--everywhere. - -The twofold motive that instigated these spoliations does not excuse -them, but it explains and perhaps palliates to some extent. In France, -to-day, there is no extenuating circumstance. The Holy See loyally lent -its support to the Third Republic when the second president, M. Grvy, -humbly solicited it at a precarious moment. Leo XIII distinctly -requested the clergy and the faithful to rally to the Republic in the -interest of peace. With very few exceptions the regular and the secular -clergy have strictly abstained from politics. The inquisition of which -the Assumption Fathers were recently the object only succeeded in -incriminating two or three members of the order. - -Of course the regular and secular clergy cannot urge their flocks and -their pupils to embrace the atheistical and pagan ideals of the -coalition in power. If this be disloyalty they are all disloyal. - -Considering that since 1888 not less than 20,000,000 have been added -every year to the public expenditure, one might suppose that the -Government would think twice before depriving itself of this army of -some 180,000 self-sacrificing men and women who minister to the poor, -the sick, the maimed, the blind, the insane, the orphan, and the -outcast. Recently the Prefect of the Department of Bouches du Rhone was -summoned by the anti-clericals to secularize all the hospitals. He -refused to accede to their request, alleging that the budget of charity -was totally inadequate already, and that many indigent sufferers were -turned away from lack of accommodation. This is only one item; what will -it be when the Government has to pay an army of hirelings to minister to -the poor all over the land? But the Congregations do not concern -themselves with bodily wants only. Many of them are devoted to the -education of all classes. This is the head and front of their offending, -and the true reason of their taking off. Every one knows that the -godless scholastic institutions devised by Paul Bert, Ferry, and Jules -Simon are repugnant to the nation, and have been a complete failure. In -spite of the millions of public money lavished upon them, they have -never been able to hold their own against the religious schools of the -Congregations, which are supported entirely by private initiative, and -at the cost of great pecuniary sacrifices on the part of Catholic -parents, who support two sets of schools--those they patronize and those -for which they have no use. Not content with imposing these sacrifices, -as in the United States, the Third Republic now proposes to crush out -all competition by suppressing the teaching congregations, and indeed -all congregations, with the proviso of retaining for the present such as -shall be deemed of public utility--meaning, of course, those who bring -surcease to the straining budget by rendering gratuitous service to -thousands, who would be a burden to the State, in a country already -taxed to its utmost capacity. The tyrannical and arbitrary character of -a measure which declares all conventual institutions "against public -order" on account of their vows, which are likened to "personal -servitude," and yet utilizing some of them, does not trouble these -modern Dracos. Still less are they concerned with the iniquity of -depriving thousands of citizens of the right to dispose of their lives -as they see fit, and of preventing millions of parents from educating -their children as they choose. - -About the middle of the last century, representative men like -Montalembert, Lacordaire, Berryer, Dupanloup, entered the political -arena to fight the battle of free education against the tyranny of the -State University. They won the day, and freedom in educational matters -seemed henceforth the inalienable appanage of France and of all -communities boasting of Western civilization. - -The aim of the projected Law of Associations is to crush out this -liberty. It is no question of Church and State, but of Christianity and -liberty against atheism and tyranny. All the rest is mere padding. It is -a reversion to Lacedmonian state tyranny and an odious anachronism. No -wonder, then, that the present Dreyfus-Rousseau ministry should seek to -throw dust in the eyes of the public, even subsidizing press syndicates -to mislead public opinion abroad. - -In a nutshell, the Trouillot Bill amounts to just this: No association -can exist without government authorization, which will never be given to -any religious congregation formed for educational purposes. None need -apply but those who work with the Government. "We will give our money -only to those who please us," said the Socialist mayor of Lyons -recently. "Our money," forsooth--considering that the taxpaying portion -of the community of Lyons is strongly Catholic and Conservative. Yet -this municipal autocrat declared that destitute children, who went to -any but state schools, should not be assisted by civic funds. - -It is the true Jacobin spirit that permeates this Republican organism. -The stamping out of religious education is itself but a means to an end. -That arch-traitor Renan declared "that religion would die hard; primary -education and the substitution of scientific for literary studies were -the only means of killing it." - -The final purpose of this Republic is to establish national unity in -national atheism, with perhaps a creedless church administered by -servile state functionaries--a modified form of the worship of the -Goddess of Reason. In saying this I do not calumniate the Republic, as -Waldeck Rousseau himself clearly stated the governmental programme at -Toulouse. A small coalition of Jews, Protestants, and other Freemasons -have gained control of the country by capturing the Socialist vote. The -latter do not yet see that they are being used as cats' paws. For what -fellowship can there be between Jew capitalists and collectivists? All -honest, industrious Frenchmen despise politics as a rule. The great -mining and industrial centres and the slums of large cities furnish -practically all the voters, and this proletariat is lured on by -brilliant prospects of the collectivist Utopia that is coming, when the -Congregations and the Church have been abolished. Respectable Frenchmen, -who do try to serve their country by taking a hand in politics, usually -withdraw in disgust, and thus the scum comes to the top and is utilized -by unscrupulous ambition. If any one wants to enjoy a clever, graphic -pen-picture of French politics, let him read _Les morts qui parlent_, by -M. de Vogu. - -The purpose of those in power is, I repeat, to break away completely and -for ever from the Catholic religion, with which the French nation is so -bound up that its fibres can only be torn out with the last palpitating -remnants of national life. "Few greater calamities can befall a nation," -wrote Lecky, "than to cut herself off as France has done from her own -past in her great Revolution." To consummate this calamity is the avowed -purpose of this Government. A hue and cry is raised by its Socialist -henchmen at papal _ingrence_ in French affairs, though the Concordat -surely gives the Pope a right to protest against the ostracism and -proposed suppression of the Congregations, as being a violation of -Article I of the Concordat, which guarantees the "free exercise of the -Catholic religion in France." - -Meanwhile "_The Jewish Alliance_" and the "_Internationale_" operate -freely and openly, causing strikes in every direction, and disorganizing -the industrial conditions here for the benefit of other countries. -During the last few months immense sums are being taken out of the -country, not by the Congregations only by any means. The boom in the New -York Stock Market, which redounds to the credit of the McKinley -administration, may be connected with this migration of personal -property from France. - -It has been France's glory and misfortune to be a great purveyor of -ideas, ideals, and fashions. She is essentially missionary, and was in -the vanguard of Christianity from the beginning. In the early centuries -of the Church, her monastic missionaries peopled the islands that lie -around this beautiful Riviera. St. Vincent de Lerins, St. Tropez, St. -Aygulf, St. Maxim, have left indelible footprints in these regions. In -her terrible Revolution France was an object-lesson to the nations, -whose intervention saved her from self-extermination. Foreign war was a -boon and a safety-valve. The Commune of 1870 was another warning to the -nations. Again to-day she is being made a spectacle to men and -angels--to men who are, with secret rejoicing, applauding the Waldeck -Rousseau ministry, and all for which it stands. They known full well -that decadence and doom are near. There will be another Sedan, another -Commune. The colonies, Indo-China in particular, will be the first to -fall away in the general dismemberment. - -I know France intimately since more than thirty years, and it is with -infinite sorrow that I diagnose her condition. Her recuperative powers -are very great. I fear, however, that they will prove inadequate after -the next great shock. - -But France's admirable gift of apostleship, her lofty idealism, which no -number of Voltaires could abase or abate, will not perish with her -territorial integrity, nor even with her national life. Like the -deathless masterpieces of Greece and Rome, her immortal genius will -inform and inspire countless unborn generations, long after France -herself shall have become a mere geographical reminiscence. "I will move -thy candlestick," it is written--not extinguish. - - - - -ARBITRARY INCONSISTENCY - - -_16th February, 1901._ - -The attitude of the Jacobin government in France towards the religion -professed by nine-tenths of the inhabitants is truly instructive. After -prating about liberty, fraternity, and equality, and the rights of man -for a hundred years, the successors of the revolutionary _Constituante_ -are preparing to deal a deathblow at the most sacred rights of the -individual, to overstep the most arbitrary acts of any regime, nay of -the Inquisition itself. These, at least, only concerned themselves with -outward manifestations of personal idiosyncrasies tending to disturb the -social order. But the successors of the Jacobins of the _Constituante_, -so proud of their blood-stained origin, direct their attacks, to-day, -against that most intangible thing the Vow, which has no existence -except in the inner conscience of the individual, seeing that monastic -vows which involved "civil death" were abolished by law in 1790, and all -religious are, to-day, free to exercise the rights of citizens--to buy, -sell, contract, or vote. The vow cannot even be considered a convention -or a contract binding together the members of a religious association. - -The ground on which it is proposed to declare religious congregations -illegal without interfering with Masonic and other associations is, said -Waldeck Rousseau, that "our public right [_droit public_] and that of -other States proscribes all that constitutes an abdication of the rights -of the individual, right to marry, to possess, all, in fact, that -resembles personal servitude." - -Thus in the name of liberty and the famous rights of man, I am denied -the right to exercise my freewill by electing to remain single, because -not to marry would be an abdication of one of the rights of the -individual, and resemble "personal servitude." Anything more grotesquely -inconsistent cannot well be imagined, and this project of law has been -in process of elaboration in the lodges since twenty years! In 1880, -when the decree against the Jesuits and all congregations of men was -promulgated, it was declared illicit and unconstitutional by 1500 -jurists, and 400 of the higher magistrates, who refused their -connivence, were removed from office. One of my best friends was among -these victims. The decree was enforced _manu militari_, but the current -of public opinion was so strong that, ere long, these establishments -were reopened and continued their good works unmolested. - -It was next proposed to crush out the Congregations by fiscal measures. -This also has proved inadequate, and the present project of law is the -supreme effort of a most paternal and absolute Republic to secure the -liberty of thousands of unappreciative subjects, by preventing them from -exercising it in the choice of a mode of life. Truly a strange -aberration of liberty, equality, and fraternity! - -Of course it is an open secret that what is aimed at is the destruction -of the Catholic Church in France, and the establishment, if possible, of -a national church with a "civil constitution of the clergy" as was -attempted in 1792. - -Before attacking the citadel it is proposed to demolish the two great -ramparts of the Church, Christian education and Christian charity, by -disbanding the noble men and women who man these ramparts. - -It is a notorious fact, well established by Taine, that the French -Revolution, with all its saturnalia of carnage and nameless tyranny, was -the work of a handful, some ten thousand in all, and even many of these -were foreigners. They carried all before them, and I fear that history -will repeat itself. - -The moral unity of France was destroyed for ever by the Huguenots in the -seventeenth century. Louis XIV sought in vain to restore it by the -Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The Revolution also tried to -enforce moral unity by the unlimited practice of the "_Sois mon frre ou -je te tue_." It is in the name of this lost moral unity that the -coalition in power now propose to crush out all educational and -religious liberty. French Protestantism can hardly be said to exist any -longer. In 1799, when their religious and civil liberties were restored, -Rabaut de St. Etienne, then president of the _Constituante_, stated -their number to be 2,000,000 in a population of 26,000,000. After a -century of complete liberty and equality, the _Agenda Protestant_ of -Lyons states their number to be 650,000 in a population of 37,000,000. -In the usual process of Protestant disintegration, the Huguenots, -erstwhile so zealous for Calvinistic purity of doctrine, have evolved -into the freethinking materialists, who form an important contingent in -the anti-religious Masonic coalition I referred to some months ago. - -The situation in France painfully recalls that of Constantinople some -forty years before the fall of the Eastern Empire. A house divided -against itself cannot stand. - - - - -A PAGAN RENAISSANCE - - -_10th August, 1901._ - -In a previous article I asserted that the revolutionary spirit so -rampant to-day is a new version of that renaissance of Paganism in the -fourteenth century which culminated in the Protestant revolt. I find the -same view expressed in Goldwin Smith's recently published work on the -United Kingdom. In a chapter on the Renaissance he writes as follows: -"Our generation may look upon this period with interest, since it is -itself threatened with an interregnum between Christian morality and the -morality of science." - -"Much learning maketh thee mad" might be said to our generation, that -seems to be science mad and blissfully unconscious of the paradoxes of -its programme. We are promised a scientific religion or a religion of -science, meaning probably a religion worthy of men of science, unmindful -of the fact that men of the highest attainments have been nurtured in -the Church in every century, and that the supernatural must always be an -indispensable element of religion. - -Now Mr. Goldwin Smith raises our expectations to a future era in which -"the morality of science" is to succeed to the hiatus or interregnum -with which we are threatened to-day, as in the fifteenth century, when -the Church was "drugged," he says. - -In his excellent work on _Social Evolution_, Kidd accentuates the fact -that our Western civilization, the highest yet attained, has been wholly -religious and not scientific; that in intellectual capacity and -attainments we are, even now, far below the average Greek mind of -centuries ago. This civilization of ours, marvellous in spite of all its -shortcomings and blots, is founded on abnegation and self-sacrifice -which are wholly irrational, scientifically speaking. It is indeed -scientifically impossible for science to have any other morality than -the law of brute force and the survival of the strongest, whether it be -on the battlefield, the mart, or on 'change. The law of supply and -demand is a corollary of this law. - -Complacency for the weak and the lowly, that characterized Christianity -from the beginning, and found expression in the legend of the Holy -Grail, is all folly, the sublime folly of the Cross. The equality and -brotherhood of man is also part of this "foolishness," so repulsive to -the cultured Greek mind. Nay, all our much-vaunted "free institutions" -have grown out of this mustard seed, to which our Lord compared His -kingdom on earth. "When the tree falls the shadow will depart," as -Tennyson wrote in another connexion. Nothing will be left to our poor -science-ridden humanity but the cruel glare of human egoisms, passions, -and ambitions. - -In one of those sonorous paradoxes which his soul loved, J. J. Rousseau -assures us that "all men are born free, and everywhere they are in -chains." That all men are born free is as false as that all men are born -upright and virtuous. History and experience give the lie to both -assertions. It is an incontrovertible fact that before Christ slavery -was the normal status of the masses in every age and clime, and Lucanus -only expressed an universally accepted axiom when he cynically declared -that the human race only existed for a few: _Humanum paucis vivit -genus_. - -The doom of slavery was sealed when Peter began his memorable discourse, -saying "Men and brethren" to circumcised and uncircumcised alike. On -that day the Church began her mission of liberation by subjugation to -the Christian law. - -But so ancient and deeply-rooted an institution as slavery could not -wisely nor safely be felled suddenly. It was not till 1167 that Pope -Alexander III published the charter of Christian liberty. "This law -alone," writes Voltaire (_Essai sur les moeurs_, chap. LXXXIII), -"should render his memory precious to all people, as his efforts on -behalf of liberty for Italy should endear him to Italians." - -Wherever Christianity permeates, even in an emaciated form, slavery must -disappear, and wherever Christianity has not penetrated slavery is and -always will be a standing institution, with its concomitant degradation -of women. - -Another proposition, a corollary of the first, is equally true. If, and -when, and where Christianity disappears, liberty, which is bound up with -and inseparable from the Christian law, will also diminish and -disappear, _tantum quantum_. - -The world, in my opinion, has never adequately laid to heart the -terrible lessons taught by the French Revolution. They are not laid bare -in their naked hideousness. The glamour of those much-violated -principles of 1789, and the catchwords of liberty, equality, and -fraternity are used to cover up the dire significance of that event. In -a moment of wild delirium, the most illustrious of nations allowed its -government to pass into the hands of a band of atheists prepared by -Voltaire and his ilk. Christianity was solemnly abjured in the name of -the whole nation, and the worship of Reason inaugurated with all the -paraphernalia of ritual and the pomp of worship. What was the immediate -result? In the twinkling of an eye all liberty vanished. Terror reigned -supreme. The most sacred rights of the individual were proscribed. Men -could no longer call their lives their own under the law of _Suspects_. -From my window at Lyons, I could see the monument to the victims of -1793. This city had at first submitted to the Revolutionary government, -but the Lyonnais revolted when they found themselves deprived of civil -and municipal liberties they had enjoyed under the most despotic kings. -Lyons was besieged by those singular champions of liberty who, according -to Macaulay, "crowded into a few months more crimes than had been -committed by the French kings in as many centuries." - -Lyons succumbed after a gallant resistance of ten months. This quarter, -where stands the monument to the victims, was then swampy ground, and it -was literally soaked that year, not with the overflow of the Rhne, but -with human gore. On the beautiful Place Bellecour two guillotines -functioned day and night, but they were inadequate to the bloody task, -and the citizens were mown down in batches on the Place des Jacobins. -The successors of these Freemason Jacobins control the destinies of -France to-day, by means of a Socialist parliamentary majority, obtained -by the means I described in a previous article. They lost no time in -ostracising tens of thousands of France's noblest sons and daughters, -who may not live as they see fit, nor exercise a profession which is -open to all by law. The law Falloux of 1852 confers on all citizens duly -qualified the right to teach or open schools, and it is still -unrepealed. Millions of parents are deprived of the right to educate -their children as they see fit in their native land. Exile is the price -of liberty. This is the beginning of that diminution of liberty which -must always accompany the elimination of the Christian principle on -which our civilization reposes. - -With stupendous cynicism Waldeck Rousseau calls the Associations Bill a -"law of liberty and of appeasement." One or two passages will exemplify -the character of this infamous Act. - - ART. I - - All associations can be formed freely and without authorization. - - ART. XIII - - No religious association can be formed without authorization given - by a law which will determine how it is to function. - -One of M. Waldeck Rousseau's henchmen stated the truth squarely, a few -days ago, when he said "the enemy is God," improving on Gambetta's -maxim, "Le clericalisme voil l'ennemi." - -Already there are symptoms that the Premier is being carried away by his -Socialist advance guard. When they now demand the suppression of the -Concordat he no longer protests as earnestly as he did, affirming his -devotion to the secular clergy, whose interests, he used to declare, -were the main object of the Trouillot or Associations Bill. - -The trial of Comte Lur Saluce by a so-called "High Court," composed of -senators, was a most peculiar episode. Accused of plotting to restore -the monarchy, his defence was one long, incisive, itemized arraignment -of the Third Republic and all its works and ways. His judges listened -with much interest, fascinated, no doubt, by the truth of his -statements, after which they found him guilty with extenuating -circumstances--a tacit admission apparently that his enmity to the Third -Republic was justified. Meanwhile, poor France is threatened with all -the horrors of another revolution, if the same elements compose the next -parliament, as they most certainly will, if opposition candidates are -not even allowed to hold meetings unmolested, as at Toulouse and Lyons -recently. - -Religious liberty has however found a new home in a most unexpected -quarter, none other than the realm of the Grand Llama of Tibet, who is -sending a special embassy to the Czar. The latter may follow the good -example and proclaim religious liberty in all the Russias, at the same -time as the Calendar reforms which are being prepared. The two questions -are not as irrelevant to each other as one might suppose at first -sight. - - - - -INCONSISTENT JACOBINISM - - -_11th November, 1901._ - -In 1894, 1895, and 1896 I contributed several papers on the Eastern -Question to the _Progress_. At that time public opinion was much excited -and indignant over the massacres in Armenia, but none of the Powers who -signed the Berlin Treaty thought fit to interfere. Massacres on a small -scale were renewed from time to time, and a few months ago they reached -considerable proportions; but nothing was done to punish the culprits, -or to protect the victims of Turkish barbarity. - -This week a mild surprise has been caused by the sending of the French -fleet to Turkish waters. The callous lethargy, which a sense of duty, a -chivalrous sympathy with the weak and the oppressed, could not dispel, -has yielded to a financial exigency. Two naturalized citizens are -creditors of the Sultan for a large sum. It is true they have been -receiving most usurious interest these last fifteen years, but now -Lorando and Turbini wish to recover their capital; and lo! the might of -France is put forth on their behalf! It is said that M. Waldeck -Rousseau, the Premier, is professionally interested in the matter, and -will receive a fee even bigger than the one he earned when he saved his -clients in the Panama scandal, who are now in the seats of the mighty. -The long-suffering French taxpayer will grudgingly pay the expenses of -this naval demonstration, and the Porte will promptly pay up in order to -be rid of his unwelcome visitors. But France does not mean to be a -simple collector for MM. Lorando and Turbini. - -The elections of 1902 are at hand, and the semi-Jacobins in power are -anxious to obtain the suffrages of the better element, and not be -entirely carried away captive by their Socialist and ultra-Jacobin -supporters, through whom they have seized the reins of government. - -The Crimean war, as I have shown in _Slav and Moslem_, was partly -brought about by a similar preoccupation on the part of Napoleon III, -who had just made himself emperor by an infamous _coup d'tat_. -Voltairean France had allowed her protectorate over the Eastern -Christians to fall into desuetude, and Russia supplanted her. But when -the latter exercised her treaty-acquired rights, France and England -combined against her. - -To-day with impudent inconsistency the Third Republic, which has done -its utmost, these thirty years, to dechristianize France, sees fit to -exact from the Porte that French religious schools be allowed to -multiply freely, and that its protectorate over Eastern Christians be -distinctly recognized. - -What is more, the Republic demands that the Catholic University of -Beyruth deliver diplomas entitling the recipients to practise medicine -in all parts of the Turkish empire. Now, considering that the Third -Republic has just made a most iniquitous law against religious -congregations, depriving French parents of the means of educating their -children in accordance with their faith, it is a grotesque incongruity -that the Turks should be compelled to harbour these congregations and -their schools, which are being closed in France with a latent view to -establishing a Government monopoly of education. - -This university of Beirut, and practically all the French schools and -hospitals in Turkey, are under the direction of Jesuits, Dominicans, -Assumptionists, etc., and they are of great importance to French -influence, as they implant this language and the love of a nation that -has such admirable sons and daughters. - -I have no doubt that railroad concessions will also be demanded, and -that all details were discussed during the Czar's recent visit to Paris. -Russia is using France to checkmate Germany in her Bagdad railway -scheme, and to undermine her influence with the Sultan. - -The deaths of Abdul Hamid and the Emperor of Austria may at any moment -precipitate the European crisis which all expect and fear. - -Meanwhile, neither China nor the Moslems have said their last word. In -the heart of China, Tung-fu-Siang and Prince Tuan may, even now, be -engaged in founding a new Mohammedan power. A China galvanized by that -dangerous vitality of Islam would mean the extinction of Europe in -China. And if any great Moslem chief should succeed in combining the -interests of the faithful in Africa and Turkey, the European nations may -all look to their laurels. - -The self-conceit and self-complacency of the white races are simply -immense. This self-complacency is unparalleled, except perhaps by that -which distinguished the Jewish people. Because Providence had chosen -them for the accomplishment of certain designs which were to embrace the -whole human race in their ultimate scope, the Hebrews flattered -themselves that the Gentiles only existed for their benefit, as the -yellows, browns, and blacks do for us to-day. When the chosen people had -filled their cup of iniquity, heedless of that last pathetic appeal, -"Jerusalem, Jerusalem," etc., there came that terrible siege (A.D. 70) -which made them henceforth a people without an altar, without a country. - -Another proud empire arose, intoxicated with material and military -greatness, and we all know how the barbarians, our forefathers, -overthrew the mighty empire of the Csars. - -We, their descendants, flatter ourselves that because we wield the -sceptre of civilization and science, we do so in virtue of some inherent -race-qualities, and that our candlestick can never be moved, whatever -may have happened to the rushlights of antiquity. But if we have been -in the vanguard of civilization and science since many centuries, it is -merely because we were Christendom. To-day Protestantism has devoured, -one by one, all the vital truths of Christianity, till it is strictly -true to say of many so-called Christian peoples and individuals, "Thou -hast a name"--for Christian beliefs with their practical sides have been -almost eliminated. - -When the apostasy of the governments of Christian peoples shall have -been consummated, when unlimited divorce, which is successive polygamy, -shall be generalized; when monogamy shall vanish from our codes, which -forms, with freedom from slavery, the line of demarcation between -Western and Eastern civilization--then indeed shall we be ready for the -burning. - -The modern barbarians are at our gates, nay, in our midst. Godless -education and the peculiar political methods of unscrupulous, educated -proletariat are rapidly preparing what may be termed government by -anarchy. - -Yesterday I spent a few hours at Nice, and was waiting for a tramway to -return home, when a youth of about fifteen, with a candid, ingenuous -countenance, waved his newspapers just out with the cry: "Voil la lutte -sociale. Buy _La lutte sociale_." I took the extended copy, asking the -youth if he believed in the _lutte sociale_. - -"Oh yes, of course I do," he replied with a most convinced air. - -"What is this _lutte sociale_?" I inquired. This he "did not know." - -Glancing through the leading article, I read a virulent denunciation of -the clergy, and a most contemptuous diatribe against the masses, _ la -Voltaire_. "They [the masses] are formed of vicious, ignorant, covetous -individuals.... What writers call 'the soul' of the multitude is in -general nothing but an immense horrible cry of wild beasts, an -accumulation of the lowest instincts of the human brute ... they do not -reason, they howl and they strike." - -It is these masses that unscrupulous politicians and secret societies -are preparing to hurl against organized society as in 1789, after having -destroyed in them from infancy all reverence for God or man: _Ni Dieu ni -matre_--neither God nor master. - -In self-defence, society will be compelled to restore Christianity, or -slavery--or perish. - - - - -UNAUTHORIZED CONGREGATIONS - - -_25th April, 1902._ - -I hesitate to write anything more on religious conditions at the present -time, because I shall have to repeat what I have written in these -columns since two years. My worst previsions have been realized. The -Budget of Cults which I had hoped would be thrown as another sop to -Cerberus, has been voted by a compact Ministerial majority. - -If the clergy of France, with the Holy See, do not themselves reject all -connexion with a distinctly pagan government, and hold their own as the -Church did in the first three centuries, I fear this fair land may -revive the experiences of the Byzantine or Bas Empire, as it is aptly -called, for there is a distinct determination to enslave or to destroy -the Church. - -The French are an optimistic people. From year to year they keep -repeating that matters will soon improve, that the next elections will -make everything right and restore liberty. - -France's great misfortune is, I repeat, that respectable people will -not, as a rule, touch politics, or soon give them up in disgust, while -denaturalized Frenchmen and naturalized foreigners do nothing else for a -living. - -In 418 the Emperor Honorius wished to establish a representative -government in Southern Gaul. "But," writes Guizot, "no one would send -representatives, no one would go to Arles." This same state of mind is -working the ruin of France to-day. - -On March 17th, 1900, I wrote: "Thus the bad element captures the votes -of the labouring masses by the circulation of vile newspapers and -brilliant promises of the Social Utopia that is coming. Consequently -both Houses are packed with this element, whose war cry is _Vive la -Sociale_, and whose emblem is the red flag of anarchy which was waved -under the very nose of President Loubet at a recent Republican fte. -With a parliament and a ministry like this any legislation is possible. -If other means fail, all the Congregations engaged in teaching will be -suppressed.... But Waldeck Rousseau is no fool," I added. "He and his -Freemason employers know that there are some thirty odd millions of -French Catholics.... The Government cannot afford to rouse them from -their political lethargy by violent measures.... Religious liberty must -be destroyed by degrees." - -Two years have elapsed since the notorious Associations or Trouillot -Bill has been passed; and the law Falloux (1850), which guarantees -liberty of teaching, may already be considered as abrogated in favour of -a state monopoly of education. - -Never since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), strongly -reproved by Pope Innocent, has so great a blow been dealt at liberty of -conscience and the rights of free citizens. The pendulum of progress has -been set back at least two hundred years; nay, we witness an odious -reversion to Lacedmonian state tyranny. And this crime against liberty, -this liberticide, is committed in the twentieth century, amid the -plaudits of all sectarian haters of the Catholic Church, and in a -country which unceasingly flaunts its catchwords of "Liberty, Equality, -Fraternity." - -The general elections of May, 1902, will not, I fear, modify the -situation. I doubt, indeed, if any efforts, however earnest and -well-concerted, could now retrieve the political situation. - -Waldeck Rousseau, whose wily effrontery is something more than human, -knows this, and begins to throw off his mask of Liberalism. - -His recent political speech in the mining centres near Lyons was bold -enough, judging by a stenographic report, for the _Officiel_ and _Havas_ -toned it down somewhat. - -He gave it to be understood that only those congregations who relieved -the State in caring for the maimed, the halt, the blind, and the insane -were to be tolerated. In other words, the souls of her children are to -become the prey of a pagan State, but their diseased bodies are to be -left to the care of the Church! - -Eight Jesuits are being prosecuted for preaching Advent sermons, though -they have closed their establishments and dispersed. The proper course, -apparently, would be to arraign the bishops and curs who had invited -these Jesuits to occupy their pulpits. Waldeck Rousseau is too wily for -that. His policy is to make a fine distinction between the secular and -regular clergy--to divide and conquer. - -Three other Jesuits, who profess theology at the Institut Catholique, -obtained from Rome dispensation of their vows, in order to be able to -retain their chairs at the Institut. They, too, are being prosecuted for -alleged violation of the Associations Bill. - -I think the situation is clear, and that if any Catholics here or -elsewhere still misapprehend the true purport and scope of this law of -1901, their purblindness is no longer admissible. - - - - -A COMBES COUP _DE MAIN_ - - -_23rd August, 1902._ - -The elections of May, 1902, have not improved the situation in France. -No efforts, as I said, however earnest, could now retrieve the political -situation. For twenty-five years the "Grand Orient" has been gathering -into its hands all the threads of power; ministers, presidents, cabinets -are made, unmade, remade, as it suits the well-conceived plans of this -band of sectarian Jacobins, who differ from other Freemasons in that -with them God is both non-existent and _l'ennemi_ to be vanquished, -while at the same time they are strictly a political organization, whose -object is to control the country and conform it to their own image. - -The Associations Bill, or to speak more accurately, the law against all -Christian education, was decreed by the lodges in 1877. An abortive -attempt was made to carry it through in 1880. That attempt was -premature, because the "Grand Orient" had not yet gained complete -control over the judiciary. To-day very nearly every part of the -administration is in their power. - -People wondered why Waldeck Rousseau resigned immediately after the -elections, which seemed a tribute to the success of his administration. -The reason of this shuffling of the cards is evident. It had been -resolved, as soon as the elections were assured, to make a _coup de -main_, and close, summarily, 3000 primary schools, frequented by -hundreds of thousands of children of the poorer classes, and this a few -weeks before the holidays, without the slightest regard to the fact that -state lay schools were already inadequate, while in many places there -were none but congregational schools. - -Now Waldeck Rousseau, speaking for the Government, had most formally -declared that these schools were in no wise affected by the law of 1901 -(Associations Bill), and continued to be regulated by the law of 1885 on -primary education. It was by making this solemn declaration that Waldeck -Rousseau obtained votes enough to carry Art. XIII of the Associations -Bill, which is now being flagrantly violated by the closing of these -3000 primary schools. - -Many of these schools were conducted by a few Sisters in buildings owned -by private individuals, and the sealing up of these premises was a -distinct violation of property rights. In one instance, the proprietor -resorted to the use of a ladder to go in and out of his house; in -another the local tribunal removed the seals and restored the house to -the owner; but the Government had the premises sealed again. I cannot -say who had the last word, but it is certain that there is open -conflict between the judiciary and the executive. The tribunals have not -yet been sufficiently _purs_, nor the magistrates sufficiently -_domestiqus_. It is consoling to think that there are still a few -magistrates in France who have not "bowed the kneel to Baal, nor kissed -his image." - -But a complete _puration_ of the army and of the judiciary is going on. -All the "suspects" are being displaced, from the humblest _garde -champtre_ to the highest prefect and magistrate. It will then be smooth -sailing for the coalition in power. - -The _coup de main_ against the primary schools having been resolved -upon, it is easy to understand how desirable it was that Waldeck -Rousseau should not be on the Ministerial bench to undergo -interpellations and eat his own words. A quondam Seminarist was put in -his place, and bore the brunt of the interpellations. He contented -himself with saying that "M. Waldeck Rousseau had made a -mistake"--_voil tout!_ The Left meanwhile came to his assistance by -banging their desks and vociferating against the deputies of the Right -and Centre. A free fight was taking place in the hemicycle, when M. -Combes produced the decree, closing the session, and so ended this -disgraceful scene at two o'clock in the morning. - -Of course it is pretended by Ministerialists that all these primary -schools of the poor were closed in virtue of Art. XIII of the law of -1901. This is absolutely false. Jules Laroche, a Liberal who cannot -even be suspected of "clericalism," in his public letter, announcing to -M. Combes an interpellation, expressed himself as follows, quoting M. -Waldeck Rousseau's own words, consigned in the _Officiel_ of March 19th, -1901:-- - -"As to the right to open private schools, the Chamber knows that this is -regulated by a special law; a simple declaration is enough, the school -is then under the State Inspector. Art. XIII [Associations Bill] has -absolutely nothing to do with the legislation on education, and the new -law does not touch it at all." - -"Thus spoke Waldeck Rousseau," continues M. Laroche. "It was on this -formal, categoric, and solemn declaration that we voted Art. XIII. You, -M. le President [Combes], are not applying Art. XIII. You are violating -it, you are transforming the law of 1901 into a trap, and the loyal and -categorical declaration of M. Waldeck Rousseau into the act of a -traitor" (_en oeuvre de trahison_). - -This is enough for any one who cares to know the truth. It is thus that -the French people are fooled and led on, step by step, to their -destruction. - -Nevertheless, many admirers of these sectarian persecutors prefer to -believe that all these primary schools and infant asylums were closed -because they refused to comply with the Associations Bill! Many of these -teachers belonged to amply authorized Congregations. Those of Savoy and -the county of Nice had letters patent from the King of Savoy and -Piedmont, and the treaty of annexation to France, 1860, distinctly -stipulated that the religious congregations and ecclesiastical -properties should never be molested; it was one of the conditions on -which the inhabitants consented to be annexed. Of all this the Third -Republic makes litter. - -The amusing part of M. Combes' _coup de main_ is that his minions even -went around expelling small groups of three to five sisters employed by -the Government in the infirmaries of State Lyceums! In these instances, -however, they neglected to seal up the premises, as they did in the case -of private owners--a fine Jacobin distinction between _mine_ and -_thine_. - -The Socialist Mayor of Reims recently took upon himself to laicize the -civil hospital, which, strange to say, had been served uninterruptedly -for two hundred years by a congregation called "Soeurs de l'hpital," -whom even the Revolutionists of 1793 had spared. - -Ministerial organs like the _Matin_ are now busy assuring the public -that the sick, the blind, the insane, are not all to be cast into the -streets like the children of the poor, until the Government finds time -and money to build schools for them. - -If the Congregations devoted to the sick, the maimed, and the blind -could make common cause with the teaching Congregations, if all refused -to demand authorization, which is merely a trap and a noose, the -Government, I think, would be checkmated. But, of course, Christian -charity will not allow them all to go on strike and throw their poor and -sick and halt upon the hands of the Government. It will be their turn -soon, and meanwhile they are holding the clothes of those who stone -Stephen. No concessions, no pliancy on the part of the persecuted, will -disarm or arrest the Government--the "Grand Orient," I mean. - -The final purpose of these Freemasons is to crush out Christianity by -means of anti-religious education of all classes, and have, if possible, -a national, Republican institution, to be known as the Church of France. -It is said that M. Combes is preparing a formula of the oath to be taken -by the clergy of this institution; it is a revival of the Civil -Constitution of the Clergy of 1793, and we may also look for a renewal -of the persecution of the _non-asserments_ or non-jurors of that epoch. - -Decidedly these modern Jacobins have no imagination; all their -proceedings have a twang of ancient history. Read in Taine's _Ancien -Rgime_, "_La conqute Jacobine_," and it will seem like current -history. You will read how prefects and maires and gens d'armes often -knocked in the dead of night at the doors of peaceful sisters and -ordered them to disperse. At Avignon, recently, the police had to -barricade the streets to prevent thousands of indignant men and women -from manifesting before the Prefecture. Lyons is preparing to resist. -The speech pronounced by the Socialist mayor, M. Augagneur, at the -political banquet on 14th July, would certainly warrant retaliation. - -After the usual stereotyped glorification of that disgraceful -performance known as _La Prise de la Bastille_, M. Augagneur said: "The -new Bastille we must take to-day is that power, far more dangerous, of -the spirit of the past incarnated in the Church, acting by its priests, -its preachers, its monks, its professors, by all its lay accomplices. It -is this Bastille we must destroy, if we do not wish to see wasted the -immense efforts of 113 years ... thus, gentlemen, I invite you to drink -to the success of the campaign being waged by the Government." This is -clear speaking. "No greater misfortune can befall a nation," wrote -Lecky, "than to cut itself away from its own past as France has done." -It is this misfortune that these blinded sectarians are seeking to -consummate in hatred of the Catholic Faith, which is so bound up with -the fibres of the nation that they can only be torn out with the last -palpitating remnants of national life. - - - - -LEGALIZED DESPOTISM - - -_15th February, 1903._ - -A curious feature in the case of the doomed Congregations in France is -that more than nine hundred awards were made to them for educational -work during the Paris Exhibition of 1900. Leroy Beaulieu, who presided -over this international jury, has written several articles, and a most -scathing letter to M. Combes, on the subject of his malicious official -calumnies. He, Brunetire, Paul Bourget, and many other distinguished -Frenchmen have countersigned a Defence, presented by the Salesian -Fathers, in which not less than thirty-four misstatements made by M. -Combes are rectified. In general, it may said that all these official -statements are as unreliable as those made by the Commissioners of Henry -VIII. The Chambers were supposed by the law of 1901 to decide what -Congregations were to be granted authorization. They really were allowed -no voice in the matter. M. Combes presented only the names of four or -five, Les frres de St. Jean de Dieu and some others, who are to be -spared for the present. The remaining sixty-four were condemned without -a hearing. - -Parents of the richer classes will soon be compelled, like the poor, to -send their children to government schools, keep them at home, or send -them to foreign lands to be educated. - -The true character of the Jacobin policy is becoming every day more -apparent. - -The social body, like our own, has its periods of adolescence and -senility, its maladies and critical periods, while the axiom that -nations have the government they deserve is attested by the fact that -governments correspond to the national pathology. - -The individuals too who dominate in turbulent times are like straws on -an impetuous stream. They merely serve to show the direction of the -current and its force. - -Danton and Robespierre did not make the Revolution. It made them. A -popular fallacy exists that the Revolution ended with the fall of -Robespierre, or at any rate when Napoleon planted his artillery before -the doors of the National Assembly. It is not over yet, and the men in -power to-day are but straws on the surface. - -The French Revolution was an avatar of the revolution of the sixteenth -century, or rather one of the periodical renaissances or revolts of -Paganism against Christianity. No doubt many economical causes were at -work in 1789 and there was an urgent need for readjustment. - -The _corvable_, or what we call to-day the taxpayer, then as now, -groaned and repined against the excessive burdens laid upon him. -Proportion guarded, it is even true to say to-day that all tradesmen, -agriculturists, and shopkeepers, all _except_ the _vendors of alcohol_, -are as much crushed by taxes now as the _corvables_ were in 1789. - -The moving spirit, the genius and soul of the Revolution were the -Jacobin Clubs. There were organized the Civil Constitution of the -Clergy, theo-philanthropy, the worship of the prostitute as Goddess of -Reason, the _noyades_ and the _fusillades_ which made France a vast -charnel-house. - -To-day the Jacobin Clubs have changed their signboards, they are now -Lodges of the Grand Orient. But the spirit is unchanged. The ideal is -always the same--the destruction of all revealed religion, and with it -the noblest fruit of Christianity, Liberty. - -The Jacobin mind, served by organs of political administration, is to -constitute the Omnipotent and Infallible State, the golden image before -which all must bow down and worship and sacrifice--for is not sacrifice -the soul of worship? They must sacrifice all preconceived, congenital, -and inherited notions of honour, morality, and religion, and acquiesce -humbly in those edicted by the Omnipotent Infallible State; for _de -facto_ infallibility is always a concomitant of supremacy. A necessary -corollary of moral unity, established by an omnipotent State, is an -evening up of social and financial conditions. No man may possess more -learning, more wealth, or more prestige than his neighbour. Thus after -having preluded by the assault on personal liberty, depriving thousands -of men and women of the right to live in communities, the Jacobin -Omnipotent State is itself to constitute one vast Congregation in which -all, _nolens volens_, must live and practise _Poverty_ by submitting to -fiscal confiscations for the laudable purpose of equalizing fortunes, -_Chastity_ or unchastity according to new Government formul regarding -divorce and free love, etc., with a view to procreation under -governmental supervision, and above all _Obedience perinde ut -cadaver_--Obedience to the Omnipotent Infallible State, henceforth the -only regulator of their own and their children's morality. - -Since twenty-five years every law, every constitutional and electoral -manipulation, has been elaborated at the lodges. To-day sixteen -Commissions composed of their most trusted members are masticating the -execution of the Associations Bill, or rather the wholesale executions -of this _guillotine sche_ which are imminent. No congregation of men -engaged in preaching or teaching is to be tolerated, or its members -allowed to exercise these functions even individually. The same rule -will be applied to the congregations of women. Those engaged in primary -schools have nearly all been dispersed by decree, and in violation of -the law, as I have shown. The suppression of those who teach the -children of the rich is only a question of a short lapse of time. - -The rulings of these Commissions will be presented to the Chambers, and -the "bloc" will vote as one man. It is an admirable means of eliminating -all useless discussion on the part of the opposition minority, which -every day grows lesser, and still more less, and will soon reach the -vanishing point. Thus after being governed by decrees and ministerial -circulars, France will be governed by Commissions as under the -Constituante, and the ideal of the Omnipotent State, universal teacher, -preacher, and general purveyor, may be realized ere long. Surely a -strange outcome of a century of Liberalism! - -From whatever point of view we consider the suppression of all religious -Congregations and of educational liberty, we must admit that a grave -violation of personal and civil liberty has been committed and will soon -be consummated. - -The Moslems for a long time levied on the Spaniards and the Venetians a -tax of so many boys and girls a year, but no Government of a free people -has yet called on all parents to stand and deliver, not their purse, but -the souls of their children, that it may sow therein the tares of a -hideous state materialism. The right free citizens have to follow their -inclination and conscience by living in community and practising the -counsels of evangelical perfection to which they feel called is a most -sacred part of personal liberty. - -"Liberalism," writes Taine, "is the respect of others. If the State -exists, it is to prevent all intrusion into the private life, the -beliefs, the conscience, the property of the individual. When the State -does this, it is the greatest of benefactors. When it commits these -intrusions itself, it is the greatest of malefactors." - -Curiously similar was the judgment of an old Spanish peasant with whom -Montalembert conversed during his travels in Spain after one of its -nineteenth-century anti-clerical revolutions and the usual -accompaniment, the suppression of religious Congregations. Pointing with -her bare and scraggy arm to some deserted monastery buildings, she -pronounced these two eloquent words, "_Suma tyrania_," acme of tyranny! - - - - -DESPOTISM PLUS GUILE - - -_6th June, 1903._ - -The true character and scope of the Associations Bill can no longer be -dissimulated. It should have been labelled "An Act for the suppression -of religious congregations and Christian education preparatory to the -suppression of Catholicism in France." - -Nor is this all. It looks as if this Trouillot or Associations Bill, -with its numerous articles, was merely a vulgar trap set by the -Government to extract from the doomed unauthorized Congregations -accurate information regarding their property and members, in order to -seize the former and see to it that the latter are for ever debarred -from teaching. These inventories were a necessary part of all demands -for authorization, without which no Congregation could henceforth exist. -I say "seize," for every one knows that "liquidation" means purely and -simply spoliation and confiscation. - -I have in previous articles dwelt on the bad faith of the Combes -ministry in closing by simple decree some three thousand free parochial -schools, in spite of the solemn assurance given by M. Waldeck Rousseau, -on behalf of the State, that these schools were in no wise affected by -the new law of 1901 (Associations Bill). At the last session of the -Chambers a more monstrous illegality was committed. - -"Both the letter and the spirit of the law of 1901 were violated." These -are the words pronounced at Bordeaux recently by M. Decrais, an -ex-minister, who was thereupon elected senator by an imposing majority. - -The law distinctly provided that the demand for authorization of each -religious order be submitted to the vote of the Chambers, but M. Combes -just bunched them all into three categories--preaching, teaching, -contemplative--and they were sent to execution by cartloads, like the -victims of 1793. - -In vain the Right protested against the illegality of this proceeding. -"What do we care for legality? We have the majority," were some of the -cynical utterances of the Left, who banged their desks, stamped their -feet, and vociferated to drown the voices of speakers of the Right. -Worst of all, M. Combes produced, and used with much effect, a document -purporting to bear the signature of many Superiors of Congregations, -urging all to sell out their government bonds. - -In vain the Right demanded that the authenticity of this document be -proven before taking the final vote. This act of M. Combes speaks for -itself. - -The wholesale suppression of all preaching and teaching orders is, -moreover, a distinct violation of Art. I of the Concordat, which is an -organic law of the French State. This article provides, "that the -Catholic religion shall be freely exercised in France." - -The allegation that this Concordat does not mention religious -Congregations is a mere quibble. - -"No church," declares Guizot, "is free that may not develop according to -its genius and history," and every one knows that preaching and teaching -Congregations have always formed an integral part of the Catholic -Church, her most important organs of expansion in fact. - -This wholesale suppression of preaching and teaching Congregations is a -violation not only of the law of 1901 and of the Concordat, but also of -the law Falloux, 1850, which entitles all persons duly qualified to -teach and open schools. It was then that the great preacher and teacher, -the Dominican Lacordaire, speaking in the Chambers as deputy, pointed to -his white robe, exclaiming, "I am a liberty." - -The Charter of 1830 (under the _Monarchie de Juillet_, as the reign of -Louis Philippe of Orleans was called) conferred this liberty, in theory; -but it remained ineffective until the law Falloux finally abolished the -state monopoly of education, which Napoleon had centred in the -University of Paris. - -But the Third Republic brushes aside Art. I of the Concordat, the loi -Falloux, 1850, the scholar laws of 1885, and its own new-fledged law of -1901, all with the utmost unconcern. - -"What do we care for liberty," as the Left cynically exclaimed. Quite as -little as they care for the wishes of the whole country, expressed by -innumerable petitions, and the votes of 1500 Municipal Councils of -Communes, whom the Government condescended to consult. One thousand and -seventy-five of these voted for the Congregations; about four hundred -voted against them; the others abstained. The attitude of the people in -every place where Congregations were dispersed, with the aid of the -regular army and the police, leaves not the slightest doubt that if a -referendum had been taken as in Switzerland, more than two-thirds of the -nation would have voted for Liberty and the Congregations. - -With the astute hypocrisy that characterizes him, Waldeck Rousseau -professed intense devotion to the secular clergy and declared that the -law of 1901 (Associations Bill) was devised to protect them from the -encroachments of the regular clergy or monks. He thought to divide and -conquer. Now that seventy-two bishops have sent a combined petition to -Parliament on behalf of the Congregations, and the whole secular clergy -have openly identified their cause with that of the Congregations, this -ministerial fiction can no longer be upheld. - -The Left or "bloc" are clamouring already for the suppression of the -secular or parochial clergy, who they say "are all in connivance with -the Congrganists." - -M. Combes has sent a circular to the bishops requiring that all churches -and chapels _non concordataires_ be closed, and threatening to close -even the parish churches which existed already in 1808, if any member of -a dispersed Congregation preached in it. - -Only four bishops, I am happy to say, "had the courage to submit," to -use the words of a ministerial organ. - -The language in which the French prelates have expressed their _non -possumus_ is worthy of the best traditions of the Church, and when these -sectarian persecutors shall have completely thrown off the mask, another -glorious page will be added to her history, I trust. - -Jealous, no doubt, of M. Trouillot's laurels, M. de Pressens, son of a -Protestant pastor, and some others have attached their names to projects -of law for what is mendaciously and hypocritically called "the -Separation of Church and State," meaning a law for the complete -shackling of the Church in France in view to its suppression. - -I think it is very desirable that the lodges should do their worst here -and now. But it is just possible that Waldeck Rousseau may return and a -halt be called. - -M. Combes and _his employers_ the "Grand Orient" must see that they -have gone a little too far. Civil war on a small scale has been raging -on many points of France for two or three weeks; and they would be -running blood if French Catholics carried concealed weapons as people do -in South Carolina and Kentucky. As it is, there have only been -innumerable broken limbs and heads and no end of arrests. M. de Dion, a -deputy wearing his insignia of office, which offered him no immunity, -appeared handcuffed before the police court, and was there and then -condemned to three days' imprisonment for "manifesting." A young lady of -twenty was condemned to eight days' imprisonment for having cried -"Capon" to a justice of the peace, who beat a hasty retreat when he -found himself confronted by a few hundred men in the hall of a convent -into which he had forced an entrance with the aid of state locksmiths, -or _crocheteurs_. Here on my boulevard, Cimiez Nice, two squadrons of -cavalry and numerous infantry were called out to aid the police at 4 -a.m. in beating back the crowds who were "manifesting" against the -expulsion of the Franciscans. At Marseilles, Avignon, etc., the main -streets had to be barricaded, and cavalry charged the crowds, wounding -great numbers. Of course all these grand manifestations of popular -indignation are carefully belittled or suppressed by foreign -correspondents of English and American papers. In the _Evening Post_, -August 25th, M. Othon Guerlac, with lofty affectation of impartiality, -echoes all the commonplaces of ministerial calumnies against the -Congregations, but he has not one word to say about the monstrous -illegalities committed by the Government from first to last. - -The indignant protestations of the foreign colony have suspended for a -time the closing of churches and convents on this Riviera. - -The Ministerials have not even the courage to do evil logically and -consistently, with equal injustice to all. - -Two years ago Waldeck Rousseau, in his famous political speech at -Toulouse, declared religious vows to be contrary to public law; and in -the same breath he introduced the law of 1901, inviting all -Congregations to apply for authorization. His colleague, M. Brisson, at -the session in which fifty-four Congregations of men were executed _in -globo_, loftily declared "that the Republic would never put its -signature to an act alienating human liberty." And at that very moment, -three or four of these Congregations were nestling, securely, under the -protecting wing of M. Combes. That of St. Jean de Dieu has a first-rate -establishment for men in need of surgical treatment, similar to the one -conducted by Augustine nuns, at which Madame Waldeck Rousseau was -operated on recently. None of these will be interfered with, no matter -how heinous their vows may be. - -It would be foolish, I repeat, for Catholics to rejoice at the possible -return of Waldeck Rousseau, or at any _machine en arrire_ policy. - -M. Combes has been hired to do an odious job, when it is done he, too, -will retire or fall. But the well-matured plans of the Grand Orient will -be carried out with long-drawn, unrelenting, satanic astuteness. This is -the peril I noted in my first article from France, March 17th, 1900. - - - - -UNCHANGING JACOBINISM - - -_6th May, 1903._ - -Last August I described the true spirit and scope of the Associations -Bill, as it is called, and which many supposed was a mere matter of -domestic economy. It should have been called an act for the suppression -of all religious associations preparatory to the elimination of -Christianity in France. _L'ennemi c'est Dieu._ It is evident to-day that -the law of 1901 was a mere trap set by the Government to obtain from the -Congregations accurate information regarding their pecuniary resources, -in order to seize their property (for the term "liquidation" is only an -euphemism); and regarding their members, so that they may be marked men -and women, for ever debarred from preaching or teaching. The law -required that demands for authorization of each religious order or -association be submitted to the Chambers. M. Combes just bunched them -all into three categories: preaching, teaching, and contemplative. At -the request of the Government, the majority or "bloc" then sent them to -execution by cartloads, as in 1793. Then the categories were labelled -royalists, _emigrs_, and Catholic priests. - -It is much to the credit of these fifty-four Congregations of men that -their lives were so free from reproach that _three_ times the Government -had recourse to the same incident of a certain Superior, said to have -been condemned to hard labour in the year 1868! As another instance, the -case of the Frre Duvain was alleged. Like the Frre Flamidien, the -former had been recently arrested and imprisoned on false charges. For -since then, only a week or so ago, Frre Duvain too was acquitted as -wholly innocent! - -These wholesale executions have been committed not only illegally, but -in spite of the fact that out of 1600 municipal councils consulted on -the subject, 1200 voted for the maintenance of the Congregations. About -100 abstained, and the others voted against. The prefects, being mere -satraps of the Government, were nearly all opposed to the Congregations. - -The Government has been profuse in its protestations that its object in -suppressing the religious Congregations was to protect the secular -clergy against their encroachments. But since seventy-two bishops signed -a petition to the Chambers on behalf of the Congregations, and are daily -raising their voices to denounce the tyranny which has ostracized them, -this mask also falls. The right to preach and to teach are corollaries -of the right of free speech and free thinking. All liberties, indeed, -are inseparably connected, and must stand or fall together. - -Meanwhile the loi Falloux, 1850, is still extant; nevertheless -thousands of citizens are placed _hors la loi_, because they live and -dress in a certain way. - -The Concordat, a solemn pact and contract between the Holy See and the -French Government in 1801, is still supposed to be in vigour, and one of -its most important clauses provides for the "free exercise of the -Catholic religion in France," and Guizot affirms that no Church is free -that may not develop and function according to its genius and -traditions. Teaching and preaching religious associations have, from the -beginning, formed an integral part of the Catholic Church. The -suppression of her schools was one of the first means resorted to by -Julian the Apostate when he undertook to restore paganism. The Third -Republic invents nothing. Its next step will be to attack the secular -clergy and establish a department of State known as the National Church, -ministered to by servile state functionaries, recruited among apostate -excommunicated priests, of whom there are always a few lying around. It -is erroneously supposed that the Catholic Church in France is an -established or state Church; that the clergy receive a salary and are -functionaries. This is absolutely false. Two decisions of the Court of -Cassation have decided that they are not functionaries. - -To understand their position we must recall that the Convention -confiscated all Church property and lands, the pious donations of kings -and people which had accumulated during fifteen centuries of national -progress and prosperity. Not satisfied with this act of spoliation, they -threw these lands on the market with the precipitation and greed that -characterize all revolutionary iconoclasts, fondly believing that the -whole nation had sloughed off Christian superstitions regarding _ipso -facto_ excommunications of all, who seized or even acquired Church -lands. They were mistaken. These holdings became a drug on the market. -From common prudence and honesty, if not from higher motives, few could -be found willing to traffic in the pious gifts and foundations of their -ancestors. Ten years of massacres, of civil and foreign wars, and -anarchy, did not improve matters. Two classes of landed proprietors, two -standards of valuation were created, and civil and religious discord was -perpetuated in this material form. When Napoleon undertook the work of -reconstruction, his first care was to restore normal conditions in the -real estate market by obtaining a clear title to the confiscated lands -of the Church. There was but one person who could give this clear title. -To him Napoleon appealed, and the Concordat was signed. - -Pius VII could not, however, relinquish all claims to the confiscated -lands without compensation. Hence the engagement entered into by the -French Government to pay in perpetuity adequate subsidies for the -maintenance of an adequate number of bishops and parochial clergy. This -was the consideration [the _do ut des_] for which the Pope, as supreme -chief of the Catholic Church, gave a clear title to the confiscated -lands. The payment of these subsidies became henceforth a charge on the -public treasury, a portion of the national debt, just like the payment -of interest on state bonds. - -The suppression, at the present moment, of these subsidies in the case -of the Bishop of Nice and many other bishops and hundreds of parish -priests is a partial repudiation of this part of the public debt. And -there is nothing to prevent the repudiation of the whole. "What do we -care for legality?" "We have the majority," were utterances which passed -unrebuked in the Chambers recently. They can imprison and kill the Roman -Catholic clergy. The First Republic did both most freely. So did Nero -and Bismarck. It also tried the experiment of a national schismatic -Church and failed. The Third Republic openly proclaims its intention of -renewing the experiment in which Abb Gregoire, with _carte blanche_ -from the Republic, so signally failed a hundred years ago. - -To understand the abnormal conditions prevailing in France, we must -remember that France is in revolution since a century or more. The -Revolution of 1793 was essentially a religious movement, born of the -monstrous alliance of the French ruling classes with the spirit of -libertinage and infidelity. It destroyed the monarchy and all the -institutions of the ancient regime, merely because they were associated -with the Catholic Church, whose destruction was their main object--a -means to an end. The final purpose was the destruction of Christianity -and its noblest fruit, liberty. The ideal, then as now, is the -omnipotent State, sole purveyor, teacher, and preacher. This may seem -exaggerated, but it is strictly the spirit and the tendency of the -Revolution since 1789. Napoleon was the offspring and the incarnation of -the Revolution. After Austerlitz, he threw off the mask, and clearly -showed his intention of establishing state despotism on the ruins of all -civil and religious liberty. There was but one will in Europe that -resisted him. Alone of all the sovereigns of Europe, the aged, -defenceless Sovereign Pontiff refused to enter into his continental -_blocus_ against England, declaring that all Christians were his -children, and we know the story of his long martyrdom at Fontainebleau. -Capefigue, in the third of his ten volumes on the Consulate and the -Empire, comments on the singular fact that the First Republic always -bitterly antagonized the United States, and he explains this "singular -phenomenon" by the reason that the former was a government of tyranny -and anarchy, whereas the Republic of Washington was one of law and -liberty. - -What was true then is equally so to-day. The United States owe their -independence to his most Christian Majesty, the murdered Louis XVI, and -not to any pagan French Republic. Louisiana was ceded by the Emperor -Napoleon, and not by any French Republic, first, second, or third. There -can be no sympathy between the two republics other than that of -sectarian sympathy with persecutors of the Catholic Church. I speak of -the Government, not of the French people, whose genius and high -qualities we must always admire. - -Methods have greatly altered in all departments, but the generating -principle, the inner mind of Jacobinism, is unchanged. We hear no more -about the worship of the Goddess of Reason and theo-philanthropy. -Jacobin clubs have changed their signboards; they are now called Lodges -of the "Grand Orient," but they rule France with an iron hand by means -of the Socialist vote. When the day of reckoning comes with the -Socialist masses, who are now being used as cats' paws, the Revolution -will again enter into one of its acute phases. Millerand and Jaurs are -merely politicians who fall into line with the Government quite -gracefully. But, as Lincoln said, you cannot fool all the people all the -time. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church will reap the benefits of -persecution. The Congregations will carry on their work elsewhere, and -she will more than recuperate her losses on this little point of earth -called France. Unhappy country that is committing "national suicide," to -use the expression of Leroy Beaulieu. - - - - -DEATH OF WALDECK ROUSSEAU - - -_August, 1904._ - -I refer my readers to what I wrote on May 4th, 1901, regarding the -advent of the Waldeck Rousseau Cabinet, and its policy after the sudden -and suspicious death of M. Felix Faure, rapidly replaced by M. Loubet. I -then related how Socialist revolutionists were skilfully used to obtain -a majority with which both Houses were packed to carry through the -odious legislation of the last few years. - -The laws of 1901 (Associations Bill), and of July 7th, 1904, suppressing -all teaching religious orders, are measures which represent the closing -of some twenty-seven thousand Christian schools! - -Two days after the law was voted some 3000 _authorized_ institutions -were ordered to close their doors, and almost immediately was -inaugurated the long series of _liquidations_, a genteel euphemism for -wholesale spoliation of the victims, deprived of their homes, and of -their only means of earning a living, as they may no longer teach. - -There is nothing more tragically pathetic than the last appearance in -the Senate of M. Wallon. This veteran republican, called the "Father of -the Constitution," and now a hoary octogenarian, raised his quavering -voice in one last eloquent denunciation of the laws of 1901, 1902, and -1904. Condemning the shameless violation of property rights, he boldly -applied to the Government the Article of the Code which debars the -assassin of the testator from inheriting his property. "Messieurs," he -cried, "on n'hrite pas de ceux qu'on a assassins." "Gentlemen, it is -not permitted to inherit from those we have destroyed." - -Equally tragical was the last appearance in the Senate of M. Waldeck -Rousseau, so near his last hour. - -He had risen from his bed of sickness to unburden his conscience by -protesting against the anti-clerical fury of his ci-devant supporters -and instruments. In vain he denounced the violations of his law of 1901, -travestied by that of 1904 suppressing even authorized Congregations. -The verve of the great tribune had abandoned him. His speech was but a -hollow echo of its former eloquence. Twice he reeled and was forced to -steady himself by clinging to the railing. When he rose for the second -time, to reply to the sarcasms of M. Combes, he suddenly lost the thread -of his discourse, and before he had ended, many benches were vacated; -the forum, where his words had so often been greeted with wild applause, -was almost empty. - -"He threw down the thirty pieces of silver, saying, I have sinned. And -they said, What is that to us? See thou to it. And he went forth." - -It is needless to inquire whether the story of attempted suicide be true -or not; to-day he is no more. The last two years of his life were a long -agony, of which the last two hours were passed on the operating table. -While he was dying under the surgeon's knife the minions of his -successor, M. Combes, were invading a convent of Notre Dame Sisters. -They even insisted on going into the infirmary to inventory beds and -blankets. A sick nun was so shaken by the emotion caused by this -unwonted intrusion, that she had a seizure and died before the minions -of the law had left the convent. - -And thus persecutor and persecuted met on the threshold of eternity. - -This sister is only one of the many hundreds of infirm and aged who have -been literally killed by this infamous legislation of 1901 and 1904, and -only one of the thousands who are dying of hardships and privations. -Many of them are living on four sous a day. - -The Government wanted to give M. Waldeck Rousseau a national funeral, -strictly pagan and masonic of course; but he had left instructions to -the contrary, and is to be buried from his parish church, Ste. -Clothilde. Whether he received the last Sacraments of the Church or not -is still a matter of conjecture. The death of Waldeck Rousseau will not -in any way affect the trend of politics. The recent municipal elections -are proclaimed a victory for the Government. As usual not one-third of -those inscribed voted. _A quoi bon?_ Before the law of 1901 was voted, -the immense majority of the municipalities consulted pronounced in -favour of the Congregations. This made no difference. - -Before the law of 1904 suppressing authorized Congregations was voted, -the Right demanded that the municipal councils be consulted again. The -Government peremptorily refused. As I have said before, nothing can -restrain Jacobin tyranny but a national cataclysm which would bring -about a violent reaction. "We have the majority, what do we care for -legality?" as the Left proclaimed recently at the Palais Bourbon. - -They have no other rule of conduct but the "fist right," now known as -"the majority." - - - - -LIBERTY AND STATE SERVITUDE - - -_July, 1904._ - -Modern democracy, which flatters itself that it has shaken off all the -shackles of authority, is itself but an evolution of what it so loftily -contemns. If we are free to-day, it is because our fathers have borne -the yoke of Christ. - -In one of his sonorous paradoxes, Rousseau declared that "men are born -free and everywhere they are in chains." - -That all men are born free is as false a statement as that all men are -born upright and virtuous. History and experience give the lie to both -assertions. Men are not born free. Our rights and liberties are secured -by laws which are a circumscription of the sphere of individual -independence for the benefit of the community, and this in virtue of a -divine "thou shalt not," written on the tablets of the heart, or on -tables of stone. Human laws have no sanction except in divine law, and -no man has a right to command his fellow-men, except within the limits -of natural and of divine law. - -The sum of liberty in every community is the sum of its amenity to law, -both divine and natural. Hence Plato's remark that "republics cannot -exist without virtue in the people," and Montesquieu's assertion that -"the vital principle of democratic government is virtue." All human laws -deriving their sanction from divine and natural laws, it follows that -liberty must diminish when these laws are violated with impunity. - -Plutarch, referring to the Golden Age, which, according to all writers, -even Voltaire, came first, writes that "in the days of Saturn all men -were free." Our data regarding this period are not numerous, -unfortunately; but we learn from the traditions of all peoples, as well -as by revelation, that something momentous happened, which abolished the -Golden Age. Prometheus stole fire from heaven and was chained to a rock. -Sisyphus was compelled to roll a stone uphill all his days. Adam was -condemned to labour in the sweat of his brow, etc. The myths are -various, but the central idea is always the same--a crime punished by a -penalty involving the loss of liberty. - -What the nature of the act of disobedience committed by Adam when he ate -the forbidden fruit we do not know. Probably we should not understand -even if we were told; for the magnitude of a crime is always -commensurate with the intellect of the criminal, and knowledge has -considerably diminished among the sons of men. To name anything as Adam, -or whoever is thereby designated, named all the creatures in the Garden -implies that his knowledge of them was adequate, while the great trouble -with all our up-to-date science is, that back of every phenomenon, of -every fact, stands an inexorable X, an unknown quantity that baffles -research. - -If we could wrest her secret from the Sphinx in any one instance, it is -probable that the whole book of nature would stand revealed. But the -angel with the flaming sword guards the portal. - -With the passing away of the Golden Age, or "the days of Saturn, in -which all men were free," there came a diminution of light, and above -all of liberty. What justice does in individual cases, when malefactors -are incarcerated, seems to have been accomplished on a large scale, when -the masses of a race, nay of the whole species, were reduced to slavery. -For though our data regarding the "days of Saturn when all men were -free" are scant, we do know, beyond a peradventure, that before Christ -slavery was the normal condition of the masses in every age, in every -clime; not alone among barbarous and predatory tribes, who reduced their -captives to this condition, but also among the most stable and cultured -communities--in Assyria, in Babylon, Egypt, Idumea, Rome, Greece, -everywhere. Nor was there found one sage, one legislator, to raise his -voice against an inveterate institution, which one and all deemed a -_sine qu non_ of any society, of any government. Lucanus only expressed -an universally accepted axiom when he wrote that "the human race only -existed for a few"--_Humanum paucis vivit genus._ Towards the end of the -Republic, when Rome numbered a million and a half inhabitants, there -were only some 20,000 proprietors; all the rest were slaves. - -Sages and legislators of antiquity who considered slavery a _sine qu -non_ of government were not wrong. Vast numbers of human wills cannot be -left in freedom without a restraint of some kind. "Christianity alone," -writes the Rationalist Lecky, "could affect the profound change of -character which rendered the abolition of slavery possible" (_History of -Rationalism_, II, 258). - -When Peter the Fisherman proclaimed the brotherhood of man, saying "Men, -brethren" to all alike, the Church began her perennial mission of -liberty by sanctification. Individually, men must be delivered from the -yoke of evil passions by Christianity, so that the masses might be -delivered from servitude. - -The powers of darkness, that are now waging fierce warfare on the -Christian Church, understand perfectly what the legislators of antiquity -understood and practised. Being resolved to uproot Christianity and its -moral teaching, which alone have rendered freedom and government -compatible, they are casting about for some new kind of slavery, which -apparently is to take the form of State Socialism. A coterie is to -concentrate in its hands all the power, all the wealth, all the natural -resources of the country. This coterie will be named the State; the -others, the cringing, crouching millions yclept the Sovereign People, -will have nothing left but to obey the edicts of the Omnipotent -Infallible State, only teacher, preacher, and general purveyor. _Humanum -paucis vivit genus._ - -This reversion to the pagan regime from which Christianity delivered us -will be the just penalty of apostasy from Christianity. - -If, and when, and where Christianity is crushed out, liberty both civil -and personal, which are bound up with and inseparable from it, will -disappear in exact proportion _tantum quantum_. - -We need only turn a few pages of contemporary history and read the -lessons taught by the French Revolution. The most illustrious of -nations, in the zenith of its civilization, allowed the government to -pass into the hands of a band of neo-pagans prepared by Voltaire and his -ilk. Christianity was solemnly abjured; its temples were desecrated; at -Notre Dame a prostitute, posing as the Goddess of Reason, was -worshipped; on the Champ de Mars the new religion of theo-philanthropy -was inaugurated. - -What was the immediate consequence? In the twinkling of an eye all -liberty vanished. The most sacred rights of the individual were -proscribed. Men could no longer call their lives their own under the Law -of Suspects, a time to which Camille Pelletan, _ministre de la marine_, -actually referred, yesterday, as "an hour when under the influence -necessary, but somewhat enervating, of Thermidor, the Republic was in -danger." - -Without going so far back as 1793, we have but to read the records of -the Commune in 1870, which was a phase of the Revolution that is still -marching on. One of the moving spirits of this time was Raul Ripault. M. -Clemenceau was only Mayor of Montmartre, and M. Barrre, now ambassador -at Rome, was an active member. - -To Monseigneur Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, one of the hostages taken -and shot by the Commune, Raul Ripault said, "Ta libert n'est pas ma -libert, aussi je te fait fusiller" ("Thy liberty is not my liberty, so -I have you shot"). - -Liberty, I repeat, is bound up with and inseparable from Christianity. -To-day, as in 1793, a coterie of atheists or neo-pagans have captured -all the avenues of power by means of godless schools and the Socialist -vote, and even by hobnobbing with the red flag of anarchy, which waved -unrebuked around M. Loubet at that famous fte called Triomphe de la -Rpublique. - -They have worked, steadily and intelligently, to this end since -twenty-five years, while two-thirds of the country have been absolutely -indifferent to politics. Some even affect to ignore the name of the -President. Laborious, honest Frenchmen as a rule despise politics, and -cannot be induced to take part in them or be candidates for office. One -has but to consult the electoral returns to see how many hundreds of -thousands abstain from voting. Thus the Government has passed into the -hands of the Judeo-Masonic coterie.[3] - -As in 1793, the first result is the diminution of liberty. It was long -sought to represent the Associations Bill (1901) as a mere measure of -domestic economy. It was the entering wedge of tyranny. The object to be -attained is the suppression of all Christian education, by the -suppression of all religious teachers, preparatory to a state monopoly -of education. - -The indignant protestations and the tumultuous manifestations of men and -women who fill the streets with cries of "Vive la libert!" "Vivent les -soeurs!" are wholesome signs; but I think it is just as well that the -Jacobins should go on and do their worst. Overvaulting tyranny, like -ambition, doth overleap itself. At the Gare St. Lazare, recently, some -ten thousand people accompanied the expulsed sisters of St. Vincent to -the train with cries of "Liberty! Liberty!" The police were powerless. - -In another place the population unharnessed the horses of the omnibus -that was taking some other sisters to the station. They dragged the -conveyance back and broke down the doors of the convent which had been -sealed by the Government. - -In Paris at least 50,000 children of the poor have been thrown into the -streets; for the state schools were already inadequate, and 30,000 or -more children were waiting for a chance to comply with the law of -compulsory education.[4] In a mining town, a _crche_, or infant asylum, -where 150 babies from six months to four years of age were cared for -while their mothers worked, was closed suddenly. - -When we think of all the suffering and inconvenience caused by these -executions, we are amazed that more blood has not flowed. - -The right parents have to educate their children as they see fit, and -the right all citizens have to live as they see fit, and teach when duly -qualified, are primordial, inalienable rights that cannot be violated -without crime, and a crime which must find its repercussion in all -civilized countries. In general it may be said that every Government has -a right to administer its own affairs as it sees fit. This is precisely -what the Turks assumed when they were massacring the Bulgarians and the -Armenians. But Europe thought differently in 1877. The Jacobins of 1793, -who had conquered France then, as to-day, by cleverly combined -manoeuvres in which fear played a large part, also thought it was -nobody's business, if they saw fit to drown, proscribe, and guillotine -by tens of thousands, in order to enforce their peculiar views of -liberty. But every act of tyranny, every crime against liberty, offends -all Christendom. It cannot be circumscribed by national frontiers. Soon -all Europe was weltering in blood. The First Consul marched rough-shod -over Europe, imposing French liberty on unappreciative nations. And we -all know how the allied armies occupied Paris in 1815 and curbed the -Revolution for a season. History repeats itself. - - - - -THE FRENCH REVOLUTION - - -_27th June, 1904._ - -The Associations Bill, pre-eminently an act of oppression and religious -persecution, has been rendered doubly odious by the many illegalities by -which it has been surrounded, some of which I enumerated in my letter in -the _Evening Post_ of May 6th. Not long since, M. Decrais, ex-Minister -of the Waldeck-Rousseau Cabinet, was elected by a large majority at -Bordeaux, after he had branded the wholesale execution of the religious -orders as "a violation of the spirit and the letter of the law of 1901," -and assured his electors that he had not voted with the Government on -that occasion. Indeed, these Jacobins seem to revel in illegality for -its own sake, and cannot even respect their own enactments. - -Civil war on a small scale has been raging since nearly two months in -various parts of France. It became quite monotonous to read the recital -of all these expulsions _manu militari_ which filled the columns of the -daily Press. The programme was almost the same in every case. The crowds -varied from three hundred to many thousands, according to the locality, -and were more or less violent in their denunciations of the Government; -the police and the regular army, employed to surround the convents and -disperse the crowds of manifestants, were also more or less numerous, -and acted more or less brutally. The troops as a rule left their -barracks at night, arrived on the scene at 2 or 3 a.m., and awaited -daybreak before surrounding the house. Then, the Commissaires ringing in -vain, the doors are battered down, police and soldiers enter the breach -and find a few old monks in the chapel, for as a rule the communities -had dispersed. The delinquents are marched off between two rows of -soldiers, the crowds break out in seditious cries of "Vive la libert, -bas les tyrans," numerous arrests of both sexes are made, and the -country is informed that, fanaticized by the monks, men and women have -assailed the representatives of the law. - -It was on one of these occasions that Mlle. de Lambert cried "Capon" to -a justice of the peace because he had beaten a hasty retreat when he -found, in a cloister, two or three hundred angry men instead of a few -old monks. She was condemned to be imprisoned for eight days. On the -expiration of her term some five thousand persons went to the prison to -give her an ovation, but found that she had been removed. - -At Nice there was a small community of Franciscans on the Boulevard -Carabacel. Their chapel was very popular with the humbler classes of -Niois, as well as with visitors, and manifestations like those that -occurred at the church of La Croix de Marbre, much frequented by -American sailors, were expected. Several companies of infantry and -cavalry were sent to surround the building at 3 a.m.; but hundreds of -persons had spent all night on the premises, and the usual -manifestations and arrests occurred. Even after the premises had been -sealed up, police agents were detailed to guard them night and day. This -was very amusing, considering that policemen are so scarce in Nice that -people are robbed in broad daylight in the most-frequented quarters. - -All these grotesque executions _manu militari_ represent one of the most -recent violations of the law, wholly gratuitous in this instance, seeing -that the Government had itself traced the method of procedure. On -November 28th, 1902, M. Valle, Minister of Justice, said:-- - - "We have to examine if, after refusal of authorization and a decree - closing an establishment, we should continue to have recourse to - armed force, or whether it is not preferable to have recourse to - the tribunals. M. Chamaillard himself recognizes that it is better - to substitute judicial sanction to the sanction of force, always - brutal. It is this substitution we ask you to vote" (_Officiel_, - November 29th). - -Again, December 2nd, the Minister said:-- - - "The Government abandons the right to have recourse to force, and - asks you to substitute judicial for administrative sanction. This - is the object of the proposed law" (_Officiel_, December 3rd, p. - 1221, col. 2). - -On December 4th this law was passed. Therefore all these executions -_manu militari_, before the tribunals had pronounced, were another -flagrant violation of law. But, as I said, these Jacobins seem to revel -in illegality for its own sake. Meanwhile the tribunals, civil and -military, have been kept busy condemning officers who refused to take -part in these degrading, unsoldierlike expeditions, as well as men and -women guilty of manifesting in favour of liberty. - -The fate of the Congregations of women engaged in teaching is a foregone -conclusion. Nay, M. Combes is closing many of these establishments even -before the demands for authorization have been submitted to the Chambers -to be refused _in globo_. I was in Lyons recently when two -establishments of the Society of the Sacred Heart were dispersed in the -middle of the school year, without the slightest regard to the -convenience of the pupils or their teachers. More than three thousand -persons invaded the railway station at 7 a.m. for the departure of the -first group of exiles. An enthusiastic ovation was given them, in which -all the passengers took part, and the bouquets were so numerous that -they had to be piled into a vacant car. In the afternoon there was a -second departure for Turin. This time the police took timely -precautions. The avenues leading to the vast square were barricaded -against all but travellers. These ladies have educated several -generations of Lyonnaises, and were greatly esteemed. - -It would be too long to relate the exploits of the Government's -henchmen, who have distinguished themselves at Paris and elsewhere. It -is simply astounding that such things should happen in any civilized -country and in a century so proud of its progress, liberty, and -enlightenment. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was an offence -against liberty and justice, but it occurred two hundred and fifty years -ago--almost in the Dark Ages. Some time ago, Mr. Bodley, in his -excellent work on France, commented on the extraordinary phenomenon of a -republic persecuting, in the name of liberty, a religion professed by -more than two-thirds of the nation and officially represented in the -State as the dominant religion of the country. To understand this -phenomenon we must bear in mind that French republicanism is not a form -of government, but merely the _modus operandi_ of a secret society. The -Grand Orient has openly proclaimed that there would be no republic but -for them. And all the laws have been elaborated at their convents since -two decades. - -Above all we must remember that France is in revolution since a hundred -years and more. There have been intervals of calm which resembled -convalescence, but these have been followed by new paroxysms, as in -1830, 1848, 1870, and to-day. Madame de Stal's clever saying that -Napoleon was "Robespierre cheval" is by no means as flippant as might -appear. The genius of the Jacobin Revolution was embodied in the -Convention and the Comits de Salut Public, and the representative of -this dictatorial tyranny was Robespierre. When Napoleon substituted -himself for the Convention and the Directory he abated none of the -pretensions of the Revolution. On the contrary, he consolidated them and -enlarged immensely their field of operation by riding rough-shod, not -over France alone, but over all Europe; hence the happy expression of -Madame de Stal, "Robespierre cheval." - -Unlike the upheaval known as the Reformation, the French Revolution was -essentially a religious movement, a vast renaissance of paganism -prepared by the atheistic philosophy of the eighteenth century, with -which the ruling classes became so largely imbued. It is a great mistake -to suppose that these philosophers were seeking the welfare of the -masses or the reign of the people, whom no one so thoroughly despised as -did Voltaire. The true object of the Revolution, prepared by the -encyclopedists, was the destruction of Christianity and its noblest -fruit, freedom, in order to establish on the ruins of both the reign of -the Omnipotent Infallible State, the statue of gold before which all -must fall down and worship or perish. "Sois mon frre, ou je te tue." -For it has always been a peculiarity of French free-thinkers that they -could never tolerate any free-thinking but their own. If the -revolutionists of 1793 inflamed the passions of the masses against the -clergy and the nobles, it was merely to use the arms of this Briareus to -batter down the monarchy and all the institutions of the ancient regime, -just as the Jacobin Republicans of to-day are using the Socialists to -accomplish the work begun by their predecessors a century ago. The final -purpose of all is the destruction of Christianity. - -We have but to turn the pages of any reputable French history (Taine, -Capefigue, Guizot) to see that liberty was the last preoccupation of the -Jacobin conquerors. One of the worst Roman emperors is said to have -wished that the people had but one head that he might cut it off. This -also seems to have been the idea of the Revolution, for by abolishing -all social hierarchy, all intermediate classes, all guilds and -associations, provincial parliaments, and local institutions, nothing -was left standing but a defenceless people and the omnipotent State, -which was a coterie composed sometimes of five hundred, sometimes of -four, and finally of one, the first Consul and Emperor. - -Never had the tyranny of the omnipotent State been more completely -realized than by the Jacobins, and their heir-at-law, Napoleon. In the -heyday of his power this great despot found but one opponent. There was -but one force that measured itself with him and vanquished. When -Holland, Prussia, Denmark, all Europe in fact, became tributary to -Napoleon and entered into his continental scheme, in the blockade of all -European seaports, Pius VII alone refused to close Ancona, Ostia, and -Civita Vecchia against British commerce, and to prevent any Englishman -from entering the Papal States. When cabinets and rulers all succumbed -to "Robespierre on horseback," and the inhabitants of every land became -the prey of the victor, the Spanish people alone found, in their -religious faith, the nobility and the energy of a free people, that rose -in their weakness to shake off the octopus that was fastening itself on -their vitals. Napoleon had seized, by guile and treachery, the persons -of the Royal Family of Spain, and had nominated a new tributary king, -his brother Joseph, to the throne of Spain, when the monks, the clergy, -and the peasantry organized that wonderful guerilla war, which is so -little known, and is, nevertheless, one of the most glorious episodes in -the history of liberty. Two signal defeats of the French army destroyed -the prestige of Napoleon and his motley armies, composed of conscripts -from many vassal nations, who now began to ask themselves why they could -not do what Spanish peasants had done in spite of Manuel Godin, the -Prime Minister, who had sold them to the enemy. - -After the restoration of the Bourbons in 1815 it seemed as if the -Revolution were over, but in 1830 it broke out anew. Charles X barely -escaped with his life. The "Monarchy of July," as the reign of Philippe -d'Orlans is called, was merely a phase of the Revolution. In 1848 the -revolutionary fever again seized the nation in an acute form and was not -limited to France. - -It was at this time, strange to say, that a group of resolute Catholics -entered the political arena and fought the battle of liberty in -educational matters against the monopoly of the University. -Montalembert, Dupanloup, Berryer, Lacordaire conquered, inch by inch, a -liberty inscribed in the Charter of 1830, but ineffective so far. La loi -Falloux was not passed till 1850 but long before, Guizot, with unerring -statesmanship, had proclaimed "liberty in teaching to be the only wise -solution," and declared that "the State must accept the free competition -of its rivals, both lay and religious, individuals and corporations" -(_Memoirs_, t. III, 102). St. Marc Girardin, reporter of the Educational -Commission (1847), expressed himself thus:-- - - "Even before the Charter, experience and the interest of studies - required and obtained liberty in teaching. Here certainly we may - say that liberty was ancient and arbitrary despotism new. I do not - need to defend the principle of this liberty, for it is in the - Charter. I only wish to show that it has always existed in some - form. Emulation is good for studies. Formerly the emulation was - between the University and the Congregations, and studies were - benefited. In 1763 Voltaire himself deplored the dispersion of the - Jesuits because of the beneficial rivalry that existed between them - and the University.... A monopoly of education given to priests - would be an anachronism in our day. But to exclude them would be a - not less deplorable anachronism." - -Thus spoke a representative Liberal fifty years ago. Napoleon had -established a state monopoly of education in the hands of the University -of Paris. Villemain and Cousin were educational Jacobins. There was a -state rhetoric, a state history, and a state philosophy, which was, of -course, Cousin's eclecticism. Any professor with leanings to Kant or -Comte was sent to Coventry. This state monopoly was abolished by the loi -Falloux (1850), and its reestablishment is the true purpose of the law -of 1901. During the last fifty years congregational schools multiplied -in proportion to the great demand, i.e. to such an extent that -government schools could not compete with them successfully. Hence the -Trouillot Bill (Associations). - -In 1870 the Revolution again triumphed. This time it was not -"Robespierre on horseback," but Robespierre draped in toga and ermine; -the reign of despotism in the name of law and liberty; prtors and -qustors dilapidating public funds, and giving and promising largesses. -At one time it seemed as if the Republic would be overthrown. It was -then that M. Grvy appealed to Rome, and Leo XIII, while reproving -certain laws, advised the clergy and the Catholics to rally to the -Republic in the interest of peace. They did so. But no sooner did the -Republic feel secure than it began to enact a series of laws offensive -to Catholics. I refer to the divorce and scholar laws, and unjust fiscal -laws against Congregations. - -Foreigners wonder why thirty million French Catholics allow themselves -to be thus tyrannized over by a handful of Freemasons. I fear it is a -hopeless case of atavism, which will prove the undoing of France, under -the representative system. In 418 the Emperor Honorius wished to -establish this system of government in Southern Gaul, but, writes -Guizot, "the provinces and towns refused the benefit; no one would -nominate representatives, no one would go to Arles" (_History of -Civilization_). This same tendency is operating the ruin of France -to-day. Honest, laborious Frenchmen have an invincible repugnance to -politics and this periodical electioneering scramble. Moreover, it would -mean ruin and famine for hundreds of thousands of functionaries if they -dared to vote against the Government. - -Meanwhile the anti-clericals or lodges of the Grand Orient, largely -composed of Jews, Protestants, and naturalized foreigners, have been -hard at work these twenty years preparing the election of their -candidates and abusing the minds of the working classes by immoral, -irreligious printed stuff, and above all by the multiplication of -drinking-places where adulterated strong drinks are sold for the merest -trifle. The number of these licensed places is simply appalling. Nearly -every grocery, every little vegetable store, and even many tobacco -stores where stamps are sold, have a drinking stand. It is needless to -say that neither Chartreuse nor any decent liqueur is ever sold at such -places. These drink stands supplement the innumerable cabarets and -cafs, in town and country, where elections are engineered. - -Leroy Beaulieu recently related the following incident of his encounter -with one of the habitus of these political institutions. - -In Easter week I was coming out of the chapel of the Barnabites one -morning when I met a workman somewhat the worse for liquor, shaking his -fist against the grated convent window. "Ah! you haven't skedaddled yet, -you dirty skunks." - -And when I asked him why he was so anxious to see them expelled, he drew -himself up proudly and replied: "Because they are not up to the level of -our century!" ("Ils ne sont pas la hauteur de notre sicle!") - -Meanwhile a crime has been committed against liberty, humanity, and -justice, and it seems to move the world no more than the passing of a -summer cloud, because no blood has been shed. The right which men and -women have to dress and dispose of their lives as they choose is a most -sacred part of personal freedom. - -"Liberalism," says Taine, "is the respect of others. If the State exists -it is to prevent all intrusions into private life, the beliefs, the -conscience, the property.... When the State does this it is the greatest -of benefactors. When it commits these intrusions itself it is the -greatest of malefactors." The young and the strong can begin life anew -elsewhere, in the cloister or out of it, but what shall we say of those -tens of thousands aged and infirm, who, after having passed thirty to -fifty years in teaching or in other good works, find themselves suddenly -thrown into the streets, homeless and penniless? The Associations Bill -entitles them "to apply" for indemnity. But this is merely illusory. -Years will elapse before "the liquidation" is accomplished, and there -will be no assets except for the Government and its friends. Public -subscriptions are being opened all over France for these victims of -Jacobin tyranny. - -Moreover, the right which parents have to give their children teachers -of their own choice is also an inalienable right. The Lacedmonian State -imposed physical training on all its sons. The Turks for centuries -levied a tax of so many boys and girls a year on the Spaniards and the -Venetians, but no Government has yet called on every parent to "stand -and deliver," not the purse, but the souls of their children, that it -may sow therein, from tenderest infancy, the tares of a hideous state -materialism. With cynical hypocrisy this Government protests that -liberty of teaching is intact, while parents see all the teachers of -their own choice proscribed. The rich can send their sons to be educated -across the border, but the law of _stage scolaire_ is intended to meet -this alternative. Those who have not frequented state schools are to be -made pariahs, ineligible for the army, the navy, or any civil -function--truly a singular application of the words "Compel them to come -in," which should be inscribed on all the scholar institutions of France -to-day. - - - - -A PAPAL NOTE - - -_13th June, 1904._ - -The storm of words aroused the world over by a Papal diplomatic Note is -another proof that the Papacy has lost none of its power and prestige, -and is still, on this threshold of the twentieth century, the -incarnation of moral power opposed to mere brute force, the right of the -strongest. In reading the many silly comments on this Note in different -parts of the globe, we are reminded of the brick thrown into the -frog-pond and the emotion it caused. - -Long before M. Loubet went to Rome it was well known that he would not -be received by the Vatican, and the Papal Note is practically the same -as the one drawn up by Leo XIII on a previous occasion, when it was -sought to obtain a deviation from the policy of the Vatican in favour of -a predecessor of M. Loubet. The protest itself contained nothing new, -and was merely a reiteration of Papal claims to sovereignty in Rome, and -a notice to rulers of other Catholic countries that there was no change -in the policy of the Vatican, that declined to receive the visit of any -such ruler who came to Rome as the guest of Victor Emmanuel. - -The long session devoted to the discussion of the incident was merely a -little anti-clerical diversion to kill time; otherwise the Papal Note -would have remained pigeon-holed in M. Delcass's desk, where it had -lain unheeded for weeks, when suddenly, at the psychical moment, M. -Jaurs' new Ministerial organ, _l'Humanit_ (_commandite_ by the Jews), -published the copy of the Note which had been addressed, it is said, to -the King of Portugal. Then the little comedy was enacted at the Palais -Bourbon, and the whole Socialist Ministerial Press clamoured, -hysterically, for condign punishment of the Vatican and the vindication -of the national honour. But nothing was done. M. Delcass declined to -state clearly if the ambassador to the Vatican, M. Nisard, had really -been recalled, while M. Combes loftily sneered at "the superannuated -claims of a sovereignty dispossessed since thirty-five years." Yet he -must have learned at the Seminary that the Papacy was exiled from Rome -for eighty years once upon a time.[5] But all these ferocious Radicals -declined to take advantage of this opportunity to denounce the -Concordat, and M. Combes' best friend, _The Lantern_, is now denouncing -him as a traitor and a fraud. History is repeating itself: _La -Montagne_ (the Extreme Left of 1793) is getting ready to execute the -_Girondins_ called Radicals to-day. No efforts of opportunism will save -them from the _guillotine sche_ which awaits them. - -The silly talk of some of the great dailies who represent the Pope as -"greatly worried" and confronted with the necessity of making an -apology, can only be excused on the ground of ignorance of the whole -situation. Personally I desire to see the Concordat denounced. The -letter and the spirit of its first and most important article, which -provided for liberty and the free exercise of the Catholic religion, -have been flagrantly violated by the laws of 1901 and 1904, and by the -illegalities committed by the executors of these laws. - -All that remains of the Concordat is the indemnity paid yearly to the -Catholic Church, as a very slight compensation for the millions stolen -by the revolutionary government of 1792, known as the First Republic. -Though it must be said to the credit of those Jacobins that when they -instituted the budget of cults they recognized that they had taken the -property of the Church, and that the payment of these yearly subsidies -was part of the National Debt. - -The Jacobins of to-day, less scrupulous than their forefathers of 1790, -are craving for the repudiation of this portion of the National Debt. - -The untold wealth of the Congregations, the billions held out as a -glittering lure by Waldeck Rousseau in 1900 as a nest-egg for _retrates -ouvrires_, having melted into thin air "the bloc" or Ministerial -majority must be held together by the prospect of some new quarry. -Those, who for years past made a fine distinction between the secular -clergy and the regular or _congrganist_ clergy are now convinced that -there is no distinction to be made between them. When New York dailies -kindly advise the French clergy and Catholics to give up what their -editors are pleased to call "their salaries" and adopt the American -system, they merely proclaim their ignorance of the situation. - -The French would gladly sacrifice everything, even to the noble church -edifices built and endowed by their ancestors during long centuries, if -thereby they could secure liberty and separation from the State, as they -are understood in the United States. But all the alleged projects of -"Separation" are merely projects of strangulation. The articles of all -these projects of law are as unacceptable as were those of the Trouillot -Associations Bill, even if it had not been superseded by the _table -rase_ of the law of 1904 suppressing all teaching orders whatsoever. - -The carrying into execution of any of these projects of "Separation," -even the least Jacobin, would render the normal existence of the -Catholic Church in France impossible. This has been the aim and purpose -of the Third Republic ever since its advent. For, once again, I repeat -that Republicanism in France is not a form of government; it is the -_modus operandi_ of a secret society, of the same secret society which -established a monarchy in Italy, in order to have a pretext for seizing -Rome and destroying, if possible, the prestige of the Papacy. In both -cases the object was the same, the weakening and the destruction of the -Church. - -The Freemasons in France openly proclaim that they founded the Republic. -The scholar and anti-clerical laws since twenty-five years, all the -laws, in fact, have been prepared in the lodges. Of this, too, they make -no secret. To suppose that the Chambers in any way represent the French -nation is an egregious mistake. The lodges prepare the elections; their -candidates people both Houses. In my first letter to the _Review_ in -1900 I showed how the abstention of honest laborious Frenchmen from -politics had thrown the power into the hands of the Freemasons, who are -chiefly Jews, Protestants, and infidels. To-day this coterie of about -twenty-five thousand reigns supreme. - -A few resolute, capable, bigoted Freemasons are the master minds of the -coterie; the others, "the bloc," just follow suit. If a current of -reaction set in to-morrow they would glide with it most gracefully. - -It is simply impossible to retrieve the situation in France to-day by -any ordinary legal means. To suppose that the people are in sympathy -with the Government because they do not overthrow it implies total -ignorance of the situation. The voting machinery of the country is -falsified, and can no more be relied on than a clock out of gear, which -rings out the hours haphazard. Even if every Frenchman inscribed as a -voter did his duty and went to the polls, which they do not, it would -make no difference to-day. - -If death had not cut short Waldeck Rousseau's career we might witness a -_machine en arrire_ policy. It is even possible, now, that a moderate -Rouvier-Ribot ministry may succeed the Combes despotism. - -But I have no confidence in any palliatives. The evil is too -deep-seated. Only by blood and anguish can France be redeemed, and the -sooner the crisis comes the better; a few years later it may be too -late. This is why I desire the denunciation of the Concordat, for with -Gambetta, and all his anti-clerical successors, I think it may be the -ruin of the Third Republic. - -Excommunications and interdicts are no longer published as in former -days, but they operate nevertheless. And, as in the past, there is -always some ruler ready to execute the mandate; though this, too, is not -done in the same way. There is not, necessarily, any invasion of -territory. - -Germany and Italy (yes, and England too) are keenly awaiting the moment -when they may seize France's birthright. Both are assiduous in their -marks of deference to the Holy See. Victor Emmanuel would gladly -evacuate Rome to-morrow if he dared. Thirty-five years are the mere -twinkling of an eye in the lives of nations. Yet there are simple-minded -people who look upon the Piedmontese occupation of Rome as an immutable -fact. - - - - -FREEMASONRY - - -_December, 1904._ - -We cannot adequately appreciate the religious and politico-social -conditions of countries like Italy, France, Spain, Austria, Belgium, -unless we take into account the action of Freemasonry in all its -ramifications--Carbonari, Grand Orient, Mafia, etc. - -There is eternal enmity between them and Christianity. It was said in -the beginning: "I will put enmity between thy seed and the seed of the -Woman," etc. The Catholic Church being the largest, strongest, most -accredited and influential Christian Society, it is against her, -naturally, that all attacks are directed. In Protestant countries people -shrug their shoulders and sneer at the idea of Freemasons militating -against Christianity, or any political order. This is not surprising. A -distinguished atheist of the eighteenth century used to say that -"England was the country where Christianity did the least harm because -it was divided into so many rivulets." Here we have the explanation of -the different attitude of Freemasons in Protestant countries, split up -into innumerable sects, and in Catholic countries, where "One holy -Catholic Church" still holds sway over the whole nation practically. - -The great purpose of the French Revolution in 1792 was to break up the -Church in France. For this purpose the throne and all the institutions -of the ancient regime, some of them very excellent, were all overthrown. - -The revolutions of Italy in the nineteenth century had no other purpose. -The destruction of the Papacy was considered a means of disrupting the -Catholic Church, not in Italy only. Mazzini, Garibaldi, Crispi, Cavour, -etc., were all fierce republican anarchists; the last thing they wanted -was an Italian monarchy. But they were Freemasons, and the "Order" -imposed its will. An Italian monarchy demanded Rome as its capital, -whereas a republican system would, no doubt, have left the Papacy in its -ancient city. "A schism," wrote Renan in 1870, "seems to me more than -probable, or rather it already exists; from latent it will become -effective.... It seems to me inevitable that there will soon be two -Popes, and even three.... The schism being made in the papal person, the -decomposition of Catholicism will follow; a quantity of reforms will -then be possible." - -Napoleon III, a dignitary of the order, entered into the plot, and -received Savoy and the county of Nice. Rome was seized 20 September, and -the Franco-Prussian war brought swift and condign punishment on Napoleon -for his complicity. - -Simultaneously with the establishment of a monarchy in Italy, the Grand -Orient established a republic in France, always with the same purpose, -the disruption of the Church. During the last four years of residence in -Europe I have repeated in the Press of the United States that -Republicanism is not a form of government here, but the _modus operandi_ -of a secret society. The manifesto issued by the Grand Orient (3 -November, 1904) is an irrefutable proof of my allegation. It is the most -astounding document ever made public. They evidently consider that -France is a conquered country which can never shake off their -domination. "Without the Freemasons," says the document, "the Republic -would not exist." The elaborate spy system they had established at the -Ministry of War is defended on the ground that "the head partner, or -_commanditaire_, of a great industrial enterprise in which he has placed -his capital has the right to denounce to the manager the peculations of -his employees." - -Thus France is an industrial company; the ministers are managers -appointed by the head partner, the Grand Orient! But the most revolting -part of this manifesto is the manner in which the deputies of the "bloc" -are whipped into line like a pack of disorderly hounds under the lash of -their keeper. "We denounce to our lodges and to all masons present and -future the votes of fear, defaillance, cowardice, of a certain -number.... We shall have our eyes on them ... and they will find -themselves treated as they would have treated those to whom they were -bound by interest if not by loyalty." - -The revolutions which have convulsed Spain during the last century, down -to the recent Republican riots in Madrid and Brussels, are all traceable -to the "Order" which issued this manifesto. Among the rioters killed -were Frenchmen. The visit of M. Chaumi, Minister of Public Instruction, -to Italy, and the famous Congrs de Libre Pense, are all manifestations -of the Grand Orient, which will never rest until it has destroyed the -stability and peace of other Catholic countries, as it has done in -France. When I arrived at Innsbruck in July last, I saw many students -with bandaged heads and arms. An Italian student had knocked the book -out of the German professor's hand with his cane. This was the origin of -that last riot. What has occurred recently at Innsbruck is far more -serious, and was undoubtedly prepared at Rome in September.[6] A band of -Italian anarchist students were sent to the University of Innsbruck to -cause trouble. One hundred and thirty-eight of them were arrested, -yesterday, with revolvers and other weapons on their persons. - -Two years ago I was in Venice when there was a monster international -gathering of students. The Marseillaise and the Hymn of Garibaldi were -vociferated by these thousands on the Place of St. Mark. Why the -national anthems of other nations were not given is clear. The whole was -a Freemason demonstration of the Grand Orient like the Congrs de Libre -Pense at Rome, presided over by M. Brisson, the President of the French -Chambers. - -The revolutionary strikes at Milan, Genoa, Venice, etc., which were made -to coincide with the birth of the heir of the House of Savoy, are -symptomatic. The Grand Orient undoubtedly find that they have been -marking time long enough in Italy. They have not been able to carry -their divorce law there yet. - -There is a Socialist party in Italy which is not anarchist and Freemason -as in France, but sincerely desires the good of Italy. One of its -leaders declared, recently, that they would lend their aid even to the -Papacy for the common weal. Between this party and the secret societies -and their henchmen, the position of Victor Emmanuel is not enviable. Ere -long, therefore, we may see the aid of the Pope and of the Catholic -vote, now in abeyance to a great extent, solicited both by the monarchy -and the reforming Socialists. - -There is really no insuperable difficulty in reconciling the -independence of the Papacy and the integrity of the Italian kingdom. The -Principality of Monaco has surely never been considered an obstacle to -the integrity of France, nor the Republic of San Marino to that of -Italy. Why should not the Pope be left in peaceful possession of the -Trastevere and the port of Ostia, for instance? There is no difficulty -except with the Grand Orient, this _imperium in imperio_. - -All through the centuries, "the Papacy has had to negotiate, -simultaneously, with each of the republican cities of Italy, with -Naples, Germany, France, England, and Spain. They all had contests -(_dmls_) with the Popes, and these latter always had the advantage" -(Voltaire, _Essai sur les moeurs_, II, 87). - -In the same work, page 81, Voltaire relates the Congress held at Venice, -where Barbarossa made his submission. "The Holy Father," he says, -"exclaimed: 'God has willed that an aged man and priest triumph without -fighting over a terrible and powerful emperor.'" The triumph over the -machinations of the Grand Orient will be no less striking. - - - - -FREEMASONRY - - -_21st January, 1905._ - -In these columns (_The Progress_, December 10th, 1904), I referred to -the recently published Manifesto of the Grand Orient of France (November -4th, 1904), defending its attitude with regard to the elaborate spy -system, a veritable _rgime des suspects_ which they had established, -not in the War Office only, but in every Department of State. The Press, -both in England and in the United Sates, has been singularly reticent -regarding this most remarkable document, whose authenticity cannot be -gainsaid. - -It is, however, the key to the whole politico-religious situation in -France, and more or less in other Catholic countries. - -Republicanism in Catholic countries will always be the _modus operandi_ -of this secret society in some one or other of its ramifications. The -Carbonari, who engineered all the Italian revolutions in the nineteenth -century, sent their emissary, Orsini, to remind Napoleon III of his -obligations and duties. The gentle reminder was a bomb, and Orsini paid -the death penalty, but not without leaving a letter with certain behests -which were soon complied with. The Italian campaign against Austria was -undertaken ere long. - -In the _Evening Post_, November 8th, 1904, I find in a review of Count -Hubner's _Memoirs_ the following extract: "The Emperor of the French, -placed at the summit of greatness, had forgotten the pledges made in his -youth to those who dispose of the unknown dark powers. Orsini's bomb -came to remind him. A ray of light suddenly struck his mind. He must -have understood that his former associates never forgot or forgave, and -that their implacable hatred would be appeased only when the renegade -returned to the bosom of the sect." - -An example of the power wielded by these secret societies is the case of -the ex-Minister of Public Instruction in Italy. Prosecuted for -misdemeanour and extensive peculations while in office, the Freemasons -compassed his escape to Geneva. He was condemned by default, when, lo -and behold, he quietly returns to Italy in triumph and is elected -deputy.[7] - -Since eight weeks the French papers (non-Ministerial of course) are -daily printing _fiches_ or spy documents stolen from the Grand Orient. -No end of duels and prosecutions for slander have been the result. Nor -were army officers the only victims. Even Monsieur and Madame Loubet -have come in for their share! In some cases the spies of the Grand -Orient have denied the authenticity of these documents. Thereupon M. de -Villeneuve has printed photographed copies of the letters in question. - -Brother Bedderide, an advocate of the bar at Marseilles, an active spy -on magistrates and other civil functionaries, has been expelled from the -Order of Advocates. The Grand Orient will no doubt amply compensate him, -for they are as generous to their friends as they are implacable to -their foes. - -Read this passage from the Manifesto of the Grand Orient, 4th November, -1904: "All our workshops know the campaign waged against us by the -reaction, nationalist, monarchical, and clerical. They seek to travesty -acts in which we justly glory and thanks to which, we have saved the -Republic. A traitor, a felon, bribed by the Congregations [poor -congregations recently shorn of all] lived in our midst since ten -years.... As sub-secretary he gained the confidence of our very dear -brother Vadecard [Secretary of G. O.] and became the confidant of all -our secrets. He projected to steal from our archives documents confided -to us ... new Judas, he sold them to the irreconcilable enemies of our -brethren. Brother Bidegain is in flight like a malefactor. We signal him -to Masons all over the world. In waiting the just punishment of his -crime, the Council of the Order summons him before masonic justice, and -until the final sentence is rendered, we suspend all his titles and -prerogatives.... And now we declare to the whole Freemason body that in -furnishing these documents [spy denunciations] the Grand Orient has -accomplished only a strict duty. We have dearly conquered the Republic -and claim the honour of having procured its triumph.... Without the -Freemasons the Republic would not be in existence.... Pius X would be -reigning in France." - -Then follows the menace quoted in my last to the tricky, cowardly -deputies who voted against the Government, which was saved by two votes -more than once. The memorable slap administered by M. Syveton to General -Andr compelled M. Combes to throw the Minister of War overboard, though -the latter protested to the last, "They want my skin, but they shall not -have it." The Minister of Public Instruction also nearly succumbed. He -declared that if a certain _ordre de jour_ were not voted he would throw -down his portfolio there and then. The votes were not forthcoming but he -clung to his portfolio and contented himself with another _ordre de -jour_. - -All the performances at the Palais Bourbon are indeed a most amazing -comedy. - -Meanwhile M. Syveton, who negotiated the purchase of the purloined -documents from the Grand Orient, and slapped General Andr on the -ministers' bench, got his quietus in a very mysterious way on the very -day on which he was to have retaken his seat in the Chambers (after his -thirty days' punitive exclusion), and on the eve of his appearance -before the Cours d'Assise for that famous slap. His defence, carefully -prepared by himself, was published in the papers next day. It is a long -incisive arraignment of the Government in imitation of Cicero's -_Catalina_. All the witnesses, who were to have appeared in his defence, -were also witnesses against the Government. In fact the trial was to -have been a great political manifestation, and the Government had every -interest in its not taking place. Since two weeks public opinion is on -tenter-hooks regarding the death of M. Syveton. It was declared at first -to be a vulgar accident by the Ministerial organs. While M. Jaurs, -strange to say, published in _Humanity_ a most remarkable brief, -establishing clearly the guilt of Madame Syveton, and, still more -strange, the latter did not prosecute him for it. Then the suicide -theory was adopted, and the most odious, baseless, and unproven -calumnies were launched against the memory of the dead man. His widow -even accused him of having stolen funds of the Nationalist party. All -this in order to explain his suicide on the eve of what was expected to -be a great political triumph of the Nationalists, and for which M. -Syveton was preparing with the ardour of a fighter by temperament, just -forty years old. - -The autopsy, made before the twenty-four legal hours had elapsed, -revealed seventeen per cent of oxide of carbon in the blood. The lungs, -brain, and viscera, strange to say, were not examined at all, but -placed under seals for eleven days! They are now to be examined. -Meanwhile the last person who must have seen M. Syveton alive, must have -been the emissary of the Government, who, according to custom, served -the writ on the dead man, commanding his presence in court in -twenty-four hours. Who was he, and why was he never heard of again? - -No one believes seriously that M. Syveton committed suicide. His father -and brother-in-law have begun a prosecution for murder against X, in -which the Mutual Life is also interested. - -As to Brother Bidegain, the traitor, he was at Salonica when last heard -of. His sudden death there was announced; but I think the rumour is -false. It would be very imprudent, coming so soon after the other. But -he will have to make his peace with the G. O. or beware. He cannot be -prosecuted for stealing these documents, as they represent no monetary -value, and, moreover, the Grand Orient has no legal existence or civil -personality. They are said to have millions of _main morte_, but they -simply ignore the Associations Bill. - -In conclusion, I hope it will be understood that I do not accuse many -honest Freemasons of England and the United States of being _particeps -criminis_ in all or any of the doings of the Grand Orient, Carbonari, -Mafia, Cimorra, Senuisi, or the secret societies of Islam or in China. - -Freemasonry assumes different aspects in different circumstances, but it -is the eternal enemy of militant organized Christianity. It does not -trouble itself with Christianity "divided into many rivulets," and -consequently harmless, according to the saying of Lord Shaftesbury, who -was of opinion that "England was the country in which Christianity did -the least harm because it was divided into so many rivulets." - -The Catholic Church alone is an enemy worthy of its steel, and wherever -these two foes meet there must be war--latent or overt. - -This war is on in France, and must be fought to the finish. - - - - -PART SECOND - - -_October, 1904._ - -M. Combes, who proclaimed at the Chambers two years ago that he had -taken office only to wage war on Clericalism, enumerated his deeds of -prowess recently in a political speech at Auxerre. Fifteen thousand -scholar establishments, strongholds of the ghostly enemy, had been -demolished! "Gentlemen, you will grant that this is a great deal for a -ministry obliged to fight at every instant for its own existence," he -exclaimed. - -We are now coming to the second part of the Jacobin programme. As I -wrote last year in the _Evening Post_ (June 27th), the true object of -the Revolution in 1790, as to-day, is the destruction of Christianity -and its offspring, Liberty, in order to establish on the ruins of both, -the reign of the Omnipotent Infallible State, before which all must fall -down and worship or disappear. To-day the State is M. Combes and his -"bloc," a very poor avatar of the Titanic Corsican who measured himself -with all Europe. There was but one force that resisted him, and against -this obstacle M. Combes stumbled when he demanded, peremptorily, that -the Vatican withdraw letters addressed to two bishops needing to be -disciplined. The Holy See was acting in the plenitude of its spiritual -jurisdiction. M. Combes curtly demanded that Pius X send in his -resignation, as "the political system of the Republic consists in the -subordination of all institutions, whatever they may be, to the -supremacy of the State." - -This is the latest phase of a very old struggle which began in the days -of the Apostles. In the history of all the nations of antiquity, the -problem of Church and State and their correlations existed, and was -solved, easily and summarily, by the system proclaimed by M. Combes. The -ruler of each nation was the Pontifex Maximus of his realm. This system, -with its necessary concomitant of national religions, reached its -culminating point in the worship of the "divine Csars," the acme of -human servitude. - -Now Christianity was a profound and radical innovation. Never had the -supremacy of the ruler or the State been questioned before the Apostles -proclaimed the Creed in "One Holy Catholic Church," destined to -transcend all natural and political boundaries, without distinction of -class or colour. Not less radical was the second innovation, a necessary -corollary of the first, viz. the ecclesiastical autonomy and -independence of the new spiritual society or Church, one, Catholic. -"Never," writes J. B. Martineau, "until the Church arose did faith -undertake the conquest alone, and triumph over diversities of speech and -antipathies of race." - -But Paganism, with its system of state absolutism in spiritual as well -as in temporal matters, has never accepted its defeat by the Catholic -Church, a spiritual, autonomous society, distinct from the State. The -tale of Byzantine heresies, from the fourth to the eighth century, were -all efforts of each successive Emperor of Constantinople to shake off -the spiritual supremacy of Rome, and be again the Pontifex Maximus of -his dominions. The long struggle of the Investitures, the Constitutions -of Clarendon, statutes of Prmunire, State Gallicanism, the Civil -Constitution of the Clergy, 1792, Josephism in Austria, the Kultur-Kampf -laws in Germany and Switzerland, 1870-76 were all episodes of this -struggle, between the new dispensation and the ancient system of -national religions under state supremacy. In the sixteenth century there -was a vast renaissance of this latter system in a new dress called -Erastianism. Lord Clarendon declared that this spiritual supremacy of -rulers was "the better moiety of their sovereignty." The old pagan, or -Erastian system, triumphed in the eastern empire with the Schism of -Photius, in Russia under Peter the Great, in England under Elizabeth, in -all the Protestant States of northern Europe. - -The well-defined purpose of the Revolution and of Napoleon, its -heir-at-law, was to establish this system in France. After long and -arduous negotiations the Concordat of 1801 was concluded with Pius VII. -It was a bilateral contract between two sovereignties, the French -Republic, as party of the first part, and the Holy See as party of the -second part. It contains seventeen articles. To these, Napoleon, without -the knowledge of the Pope, added seventy-six articles, and published -both documents, in conjunction, as the law of Germinal l'an X. Great was -the indignation, and loud were the protestations of the party of the -second part, as we may well suppose. Nor is this surprising when we -consider that one of these "organic articles" (24th) requires that all -professors in ecclesiastical seminaries shall "submit to teach the -doctrine of the Declaration of 1682, and the bishops shall send act of -this submission to the Council of State." In other words, the Catholic -Church in France was to turn Protestant. Even Louis XIV, who had had -this famous Declaration drawn up to spite Pope Innocent, who alone in -Europe had dared to oppose him, never exacted that it should be taught, -and had practically suppressed it before he died. Since the Council of -the Vatican the subscribing to and teaching the Declaration of 1682 -would be an act of formal heresy and apostasy. The fifty-sixth of the -organic articles renders obligatory the use of the Republican calendar -to the exclusion of the Gregorian. There are other articles equally -absurd, which have never been observed. - -Now M. Combes declares that "in deliberately separating the diplomatic -convention (Concordat) from the organic articles, Pius VII and his -successors have destroyed its efficacy." Napoleon himself understood -this and, for seven years, he held Pius VII a close prisoner, hoping to -break his spirit and wring from him another Concordat which would be an -abdication. Fortunately, the tide of war turned against Napoleon, and -the new Concordat was never ratified. M. Combes recognizes that no -Government since a century has been able to enforce the "organic -articles," and that the only course left is "divorce," and by this -unstatesmanlike term he means the repudiation of thirty or forty million -francs of the national debt. The payment in perpetuity of suitable -subsidies to the Catholic clergy is stipulated for by Article 14 of the -Concordat. It is a _quid pro quo_ of Article 13, by which the Holy See -consented to give a clear title to all the Church property confiscated -by the Revolution. The payment of these subsidies was inscribed on the -national debt by the spoliators themselves, the Conventionals of 1792, -and it was solemnly recognized as part of this debt in 1816, 1828, 1830, -and 1848. The salaries paid to Jewish and Protestant clergymen are -purely gratuitous. Their property was not stolen by the Revolution in -1792. They had no part in the Concordat. - -But the projected spoliation of the Catholic clergy is a mere detail, -and would be an insignificant ransom, if at this price the French -Catholics could have liberty such as we enjoy in England and the United -States. "Separation" means strangulation in Jacobin parlance. They would -infinitely prefer Erastianism. But the defection of the Bishops of Dijon -and Laval, on whom they counted, and the spontaneous and unanimous -adhesion of the episcopate to the Holy See, which provoked the thunders -of M. Combes against the Vatican in July, have shown the impossibility -of a schism. It was tried for four years a century ago and failed. The -"Separation" plan was also tried in 1795 for two or three years, and was -an epoch of virulent persecution. History will repeat itself, though not -exactly in the same words. - - - - -ALCOHOLISM IN FRANCE - - -_July 10th, 1905._ - -The Chambers continue the discussion of the Bill of alleged separation -in a perfunctory, apathetic way, and it is curious that M. Rouvier, the -successor of M. Combes, has never once condescended to speak or even to -be present at these sessions. - -The utter lack of interest in these debates is misinterpreted to mean -indifference on the part of the French public. This is not correct. It -is, as I have often repeated, the great misfortune of France that people -will not concern themselves with politics, and they only begin to -interest themselves in a law when it is applied. - -Even I, who have followed the phases of the religious persecution with -keen interest since four or five years, can hardly wade through these -tedious, irksome columns, in which ambiguity reigns supreme. Even M. -Briand, the reporter of the law and spokesman of the Government, being -questioned closely as to the sense of certain passages, replied "It is" -and "It is not" in the same breath. He is evidently of the opinion that -language is a convenient means of disguising thought. - -This Bill is, I repeat, a law of guile, spoliation, and tyranny from -first to last. There is a general impression that it will never be -executed entirely. They will content themselves with spoliation, for the -present at least. It is hard to persuade a people who have had religious -worship gratis for fifteen centuries, that they must now pay for the -privilege of attending Mass, while their Government subsidizes opera -dancers and singers, of whose services not one in a million ever avails -himself. - -While the Socialist majority, or _bloc_, are revelling over perspective -spoliation and sacrilegious confiscations, the handwriting on the wall -is dimly perceived. The enemy is at the gates--nay, within the -walls--while legislators are discussing "with what sauce they will eat -the curs," though they have not yet digested their copious repast of -congregations. - -Yesterday the reports of the Chambers on Separation were unusually -tedious, and the _rendu compte_ ended with this phrase: "To-morrow -amnesty for the _bouilleurs de cru_ and wine frauders." This heartless -Government, that flings aged and infirm _congrganists_ out of their -homes without mercy for age or sex, has, at least, one tender spot in -its make-up. It is for the liquor traffic in all its forms. -Falsification of wine is carried on to such an extent that it is -impossible for grape growers to make a living. I dilated recently in -these columns on the anti-clerical propaganda by means of an immoral, -irreligious Press, and the multiplication of these drink-stands to an -extent which is simply appalling.[8] - -New York, with three millions, has 10,000 liquor saloons. Paris, with -two-and-a-half millions, has 30,000 _debits de boissons_. - -The _Gaulois_ recently published some figures which I think are -accurate. - -Fifty years ago 735 hectolitres of absinthe were consumed in France; -to-day 133,000 are consumed. - -Fifty years ago 600,000 hectolitres of alcohol were consumed; to-day -2,000,000 hectolitres are consumed. - -The intermediate figures show that the increase has been in almost -geometric progression in recent years. - -In 1880 the consumption had increased from 735 hectolitres of absinthe -to 13,000. In 1885 it was still only 112,000. - -In 1905 it was 133,000. - -Sixty years ago there were only 10,000 demented in France. To-day there -are more than 80,000. - -Belgium has just made a law prohibiting not only the manufacture, but -all traffic in absinthe, which cannot even be transported through the -country. In this admirably governed commonwealth there is, it is said, -but one saloon _brasserie_ to every two thousand inhabitants. Formerly -the number of drinking-places was limited and restricted in France; -to-day the highest of high licence prevails. - -Recently I counted not less than fourteen places where alcoholic drinks -were sold in a charming little seaside village of four or five hundred -inhabitants. - - - - -THE LAW OF SEPARATION - - -_June 3rd, 1905._ - -There is still a persistent tendency in the Press to believe or -make-believe that the Bill of alleged Separation, still pending in the -French Chambers, means Separation as it is understood in England and the -United States, and that the whole question is only one of dollars and -cents, or of the suppression of the Budget of Cults. It is true that -there is to be a partial repudiation of the National Debt by the -suppression of the few paltry millions paid yearly to the French clergy -as a slight indemnity for the vast amount of property confiscated by the -Jacobins of 1792, but this is a mere detail, and would be considered but -a small ransom, if, thereby, the Church could enjoy the same liberty as -in the United States. - -The Associations Bill was proclaimed to be a "law of liberty," and we -know to-day that it was only a vulgar trap set by the Government to -betray the Congregations into furnishing exact inventories of all their -property so that it might be more easily confiscated. - -The Separation Bill is also a law of perfidious tyranny aimed at the -very existence of the Church in France. M. Briand caused great hilarity -in the Chambers when, by a slip of the tongue, he declared that in every -part of it "could be seen the hand of our spirit of Liberalism."[9] What -is evident throughout is the hand of the secret society which has -governed France since twenty-five years, and in whose lodges and -convents all the anti-religious laws have been elaborated. - -The Chambers are merely its _bureaux d'enregistrement_, and not even -that. Under the _ancien rgime_ the Parliament could and often did -refuse to enregister royal acts and decrees. - -It was two years before the Parliament of Paris consented to enregister -the Concordat of 1516. But the Chambers to-day are merely the executive -of the Grand Orient. This is the plain unvarnished truth, which is -corroborated by all who have any knowledge of French politics. - -I have repeated many times in the Press of the United States that -Republicanism in France is not a form of government, but the _modus -operandi_ of a secret society. Before me are _verbatim_ reports of their -assemblies and the speeches made at their political banquets in 1902. At -that time only unauthorized Congregations had been suppressed. This, it -was declared, "was not enough.... The Congregations must be operated on -with a vigorous scalpel, and all this suppuration must be thrown out of -the country; only thus will the social body, still very sick with acute -clericalism, be cured." In July, 1904, all the authorized Congregations, -too, were suppressed, as we know. Even this was not enough. - -At the general "convent" of the Grand Orient, January, 1904, it was -said: "We have yet a great effort to make.... The separation of Church -and State will be in the order of the day in the Chambers in January, -1905.... The Cabinet and the Republican Parliament will end the conflict -between the two contracting parties of the Concordat. The destruction of -the Church will open a new era of justice and goodness." - -M. Combes, then in power, was notified of the wishes of the Grand -Orient, and he telegraphed back that he would conform thereto. - -The sensation caused by the publication of the spy documents, or -_fiches_, stolen from the Grand Orient by M. Syveton and de Villeneuve -nearly overthrew the Republic last November. The assassination of M. -Syveton saved the Government and struck terror into the Nationalist -camp. The publication of the spy documents ceased, and the lodges -continued their work with a new figure-head, M. Rouvier instead of M. -Combes. - -On 4th November, 1904, the Grand Orient published a political manifesto -which is a most important document from an historical and sociological -standpoint. - -It is simply amazing that the government of a once great nation should -have passed into the hands of a secret society which, though it has no -legal standing, treats France as if it were a great business concern of -which the Freemasons are the _commanditaires_, the ministers "the -managers," and the deputies and functionaries the employees. - -Already in 1902, at the closing banquet of the "convent," Brother -Blatin, a "venerable," had declared: - -"The Government must not forget that Masonry is its most solid -support.... - -"But for our Order neither the Combes Cabinet nor the Republic itself -would exist. M. and Mme. Loubet would still be simple little bourgeois -in the little town of Montlimar.... But the Government must remember -that we are only at the opening of hostilities. Until we have destroyed -every congregation, denounced the Concordat, and broken with Rome, -nothing is done." In conclusion, these remarkable words were pronounced, -of which the manifesto of 4th November, 1904, is only an echo: "In -drinking to French Freemasonry I really drink to the Republic, because -the Republic is Freemasonry operating outside its temples; and -Freemasonry is the Republic under cover of our traditions and symbols." -Is this clear enough? - -The Revolution of 1790 was undoubtedly due to Freemasonry, which about -that time began to appear openly for the first time, and almost -simultaneously, in France, Great Britain and America, etc. The Palladian -Rite, established in France in 1769, found a congenial field of -operation in the corrupt society of the _Rgence_ and Louis XV. - -Its aim then, as to-day, is the same--the destruction of Christianity. -The Jacobin Clubs of 1792 were simply Masonic lodges. M. Waite, an -eloquent apologist of the fraternity, makes the following statement in -_Devil Worship in France_, page 322: "There is no doubt that it -[Masonry] exercised an immense influence upon France during the century -of quakings which gave birth to the great Revolution. Without being a -political society, it was an instrument eminently adaptable to the -subsurface determination of political movements.... At a later period it -contributed to the formation of Germany, as it did to the creation of -Italy. But the point and centre of masonic history is France in the -eighteenth century." - -This explains the outbreak of _Kulturkampf_ in Germany and Switzerland -soon after 1870, and the wave of anti-religious furor which swept over -Italy at the same period. To-day Catholicism has repulsed Freemasonry in -Germany, and the victory is not far distant in Italy. The Liberal -Socialist party is waning, and it is always with these elements of -socialistic anarchy that Freemasonry operates under a guise of liberty. - -The efforts being made to break up the Austro-Hungarian and the Russian -Empire are undoubtedly traceable to these Judeo-Masonic secret -societies. But France remains the great battlefield. Christianity and -Freemasonry are about to fight a decisive duel. One or the other must -perish. "Si nous ne tuons pas l'Eglise, elle nous tuera," said a -prominent Mason recently. The suppression of the Congregations and their -27,000 schools was, as they said, "only the opening of hostilities." The -battle must be fought to the finish. I have repeatedly affirmed that -France was held firmly in the coils of the Grand Orient, which has -packed both Houses with its creatures, thanks to the political apathy of -respectable Frenchmen. - -The Separation Bill is merely a blind, a slip-knot which can be drawn at -any moment to strangle the victim around whose neck it is cast. When his -Socialist accomplices of the Left reproached M. Briand with being too -liberal, he replied, "If necessary we can always amend the law or make -another." Only two short years ago M. Combes openly pronounced against -any project of separation. M. Rouvier was of the same opinion, but the -masters of France have spoken! - -In vain it was pleaded that the country be consulted before taking so -important a step. The perfidious feature of the Bill is just this--that -nothing will be changed until two years (1907) hence, when the "bloc" -will probably have gained a new lease of life by this manoeuvre; for -in May, 1906 they will be able to say to their electors, "You see the -law is voted, and nothing is changed." - -Article I sounds sweetly liberal: "The Republic assures liberty of -conscience and guarantees the free exercise of worship under the -following restrictions" (contained in some forty more articles). In my -opinion these numerous little "_restrictions_" will render the normal -existence of the Church in France impracticable. Of course she will -continue to exist, as she existed during the Terror, and under the -_Directoire_ and Diocletian. - -Another article, not yet voted, provides for the final disposition of -church buildings twelve years hence. That, apparently, is the allotted -span of life meted out to us by Masonic Jacobins. - -Article II with sweet inconsistency declares that "the Republic neither -recognizes nor subsidizes any cult," and immediately after it inscribes -on the Public Budget the service of _aumniers_ of state lyceums and -colleges. - -Peasants and poor struggling tradesmen and artisans must pay for the -luxury of religious worship or go without, but the sons of the rich, who -frequent these state schools, are to be provided for, gratis, by this -liberal Republic, which neither "recognizes nor subsidizes any -worship," except, of course, Islamism in Algeria, which is now, _ipso -facto_, the religion of the State. - -It is very pitiful to see so momentous a question treated with such -flippancy and indecent haste. - -All their utterances in the Chambers and in their Press show that the -Freemasons are convinced that they would be defeated if the next -elections were made on this issue. Therefore they must "do quickly." - -Alone of all the nations of Christendom, France totally disregarded Good -Friday this year. The Stock Exchange remained open and the Chambers met -as usual. The apostasy of the State will soon be complete. - -In Spain, where I spent Holy Week, the young king has taken a decided -stand against the Revolution. He has caused vehement enthusiasm by -reviving Christian customs fallen into desuetude during a century of -revolutions. On Holy Thursday he washed and kissed the feet of twelve -poor men whom he afterwards served at table, aided by the grandees of -Spain. On Friday he returned from church alone and on foot, and was -wildly acclaimed. We are so accustomed to see the menus of the banquets -of the rich, that it was refreshing to read, for once in the daily -papers, the menu of a banquet of some poor old men served by a king. - -This is the counter-revolution, and M. Salmeron and his Republican -Socialist Freemasons, French and Spanish, who recently caused riots in -many cities, might as well suspend operations. Only the assassination of -Alphonse XIII can prevent Spain from recuperating steadily. In Italy, -too, the counter-revolution is setting in. The Socialists, _alias_ -Freemasons, are succumbing to the Conservative or clerical party. The -Quirinal is steering for Canossa. France must bear the brunt till she, -too, can have her counter-revolution. - - - - -CATHOLICISM IN GERMANY - - -GERMANY, _August, 1905_. - -While Freemasonry in France seems on the point of triumphing over -Christianity by the destruction of all religious education and a law of -alleged Separation of Church and State, it is interesting to recall that -only thirty-five years ago Catholicism in Germany was as much menaced as -it is in France to-day. Churches were closed, prisons were full of -priests, bishops, and archbishops, and Bismarck, like M. Briand of -France, swore he would never, never go to Canossa. - -In 1871 there were only fifty-eight Catholics in the Reichstag, -representing 720,000 electors; in 1903 there were more than a hundred, -representing 1,800,000 electors; and to-day this Catholic Centre forms -the ruling majority in the country. The Emperor understands this -perfectly, and hence his amenities towards the Church and the Holy See. - -I have no doubt that the great Catholic Congress was held recently at -Strasburg with his knowledge and approval, not to say at his suggestion. -The event is significant coming so soon after his own investiture, at -Metz, with the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, conferred upon him by the -papal legate in the presence of the German cardinals and archbishops, -and the highest military dignitaries of the empire. - -At this Catholic Congress of Strasburg, forty thousand delegates of the -federated societies of Germany paraded the streets with banners and -music. The whole city was decorated, papal colours being most -conspicuous. These popular federated societies count half a million -members, grouped in nine hundred associations, that have 350 press -organs of their own. - -What makes the strength of these Catholic organizations in Germany is -that they represent all classes of society--princes, peasants, artisans, -nobles, and bourgeois--whereas Socialism finds its recruits almost -exclusively, amongst the proletariat, cultured and uncultured, chiefly -the latter. - -At the Congress, Prince d'Arenberg renewed the usual protestations -against the Piedmontese occupation of Rome, and the Bishop of Strasburg -rejoiced that, "in spite of the devastations of the French Revolution, -the ancient faith was still flourishing in Alsace, whence he hoped it -_might soon extend its salutary influence_." - -These events are significant following the diplomatic humiliation -inflicted on France when M. Delcass, Minister of Foreign Affairs, was -peremptorily dismissed at the behest of Germany. - -Not long since the Socialist Bebel saucily told M. Jaurs the French -would never have a pension for old age until the Germans gave it to -them. Nothing, too, would please William more than to play the rle of a -paladin of religious liberty to the oppressed French Catholics. - -Nor is there anything to prevent the resuscitation of the Germanic -Confederation as it existed in the Middle Ages. The Habsburgs and the -Austrian Empire might never have arisen, and the Hohenstauffens might -still be reigning, if they had had sense enough to keep their hands off -the Papacy. Napoleon, too, might have founded a dynasty as long-lived as -that of the Bourbons, had he not also fallen into the same evil ways, -and sought to dominate the whole Church by enslaving the Sovereign -Pontiff. His nephew, the third Napoleon, in his youth, unfortunately -became the bondsman of secret societies, whom he aided and abetted in -the spoliations of 1870 which preluded his fall. - -The Third Republic, too, will be shattered on the same rock, though not -before having caused irretrievable wrong to France, I fear. - - - - -PSEUDO-SEPARATION - - -_19th August, 1905._ - -In the past, marauding kings and robber barons bound to themselves their -fighting lieges by investing them with vast tracts of stolen lands which -they, in turn, distributed among their leal followers. - -The Third Republic has found a better way. To say nothing of the -extensive network of electoral strongholds that they have established -all over the country by unlimited and most abusive high licence, the -masters of France have enlisted the enthusiastic support of myriads of -pettifogging lawyers and all the nondescript red-tapers of law by the -unlimited supply of lucrative jobs, pickings, and perquisites, furnished -by the notorious laws of 1901 and of 1904, and their bandit operations -called "liquidation." - -They do not all pocket a few hundred thousands, like the millionaire -Socialist, M. Millerand, appointed by M. Waldeck Rousseau, but all have -a share in the carving up of the quarry. Not content with devoting to -this novel kind of graft all the holdings of the hapless Congregations, -who fell into its trap and asked for authorization, the Government has -kindly put up more than four millions and a half of public money, thus -far, to cover the cost of innumerable lawsuits, expropriations, etc., -going on all over the country since four years. The mobilizing of the -regular army for the expropriations was in itself an important item. All -this reckless, thriftless expenditure, joined to the continuous drain of -millions from the _Caisses d'Epargne_ and the exodus of capital, will -lead up to national bankruptcy as in 1795. - -To throw dust in the eyes of the public, domestic and foreign, a most -elaborate document has been published regarding pensions and retreats -for aged _congrganists_ ruthlessly thrown into the streets. - -This document is a huge farce, seeing that these pensions are only -conditional to there being funds enough, and there will be no assets -left. The Chartreux of Grenoble had some hundreds of their aged workmen -on their pension list. These were, in common justice, creditors of the -order, and should have received compensation from the _liquidateur_. But -the latter repudiated their claims absolutely.[10] - -What a fall was there from the billions of the Congregations, held out -as a glittering lure by Waldeck Rousseau in 1900, to bait his Socialist -majority with promises of pensions for workmen, etc. - -The Bill of alleged Separation, eminently calculated to bring Church and -State into constant contact and collision, holds out another golden -perspective. To use an expressive slang term, there is in it unlimited -_poil gratter_, fur to scratch, for years to come--nay, as long as the -Republic lasts. - -A few days after it was voted, 200 "venerables" of the Grand Orient -offered a banquet to M. Briand, the reporter of the Law of Separation, -while at a Socialist Congress presided over by M. Combes, the President -of the Commission of Separation, referring to this law, declared "that -the war against the Church must be carried on without intermission." - -Commenting thereon, the _Temps_ sarcastically wrote: "If the clerical -spectre is still to haunt us, was it worth while to be turning like -squirrels in a cage for the past five years?" - -The gist of the law is in the articles that regard "_Associations -cultuelles_," which are aimed at the destruction of Catholic hierarchy -and unity. M. Ribot sought, in vain, to obtain that religious edifices -and property should be attributed only to associations approved by the -bishop in each diocese. The words _bishop_ and _diocese_ are most -carefully eschewed throughout the law. The attribution of property is to -be made to "associations formed in conformity with the rules of general -organization of the cult whose exercise they are to assure" (Art. 4). -The formula is most perfidious, and intentionally so, whereas the -amendment of M. Ribot and the one little word bishop might have rendered -the law supportable. - -What are "the rules of general organization"? The seventy-six Organic -Articles, perfidiously added by Napoleon to the Concordat, purported to -be "rules of general organization of Catholic worship." Some of these -are rankly heretical, and have of course never been observed. These -Organic Articles are abrogated together with the Concordat by the new -law (Art. 37), but what is to prevent the Conseil d'Etat, composed -exclusively of Freemasons, from deciding that these articles are still a -criterion, being the _statu quo ante_? - -By similar means all their church property was taken from the Catholics -of Geneva (1872-5) and turned over to apostate French priests, Loyson, -Carrre, etc. - -A like contingency is foreseen by Art 8. It is anticipated that rival -associations may claim the same church property, and that scissions may -arise in associations, regularly formed and invested. - -Now in these cases the decision does not lie with the bishop, nor even -with the ordinary civil courts. Decrees of Conseil d'Etat are suspended -everywhere like swords of Damocles, or rather like the blades of the -_guillotine sche_, which has replaced the bloody guillotine of "the -grand ancestors of 1793," whom these up-to-date Jacobins invoke so -complacently. We must not forget, too, that Conseil d'Etat means Conseil -du Grand Orient. It is said that the Masons are secretly organizing -_Associations cultuelles_, so-called Catholic. Human nature has not -changed since 1790, and it would be strange, if they could not pick up -another Abb Gregoire or two, and a Talleyrand to boot. They can always -import some of that ilk from Geneva if necessary. - -Moreover, these _Associations cultuelles_ can be dissolved for so many -reasons (five), at a moment's notice, by a decree of Conseil d'Etat, -that it does not seem worth while to form them. - -The paltry reserve fund the _Associations cultuelles_ are allowed to -have must, like the rest of their funds, be deposited in the -Government's strong-box, and can only be used "for building, repairing, -embellishing church edifices." - -Evidently, it is not intended that there shall be any further -ecclesiastical recruitment. Seminaries are eliminated, _ipso facto_, as -they cannot exist on thin air. - -I do not enter into the details regarding pensions of aged priests, as -it is all too contemptible, the sums accorded being just enough to -starve on. But we may note a few violations of liberty and justice. - -1. All church property, movable or immovable, to which are attached -_fondations_ not directly regarding public worship, which are, in other -words, charitable or educational, are to be turned over to civic -institutions. Thus testators who left money for Christian parochial -schools and charities see it applied to the paganizing of the rising -generation and the poor. - -2. All churches and chapels arbitrarily closed by M. Combes are to -remain disaffected, i.e. confiscated. - -3. Ecclesiastical archives and libraries of episcopal sees and grand -seminaries that are claimed by the State are to be immediately -transferred to the State. This reveals the whole Jacobin mind. The -Church is to be deprived of all social action, by education and charity, -which she has exercised since two thousand years, and she must be -mummified like the Photian and Coptic and Nestorian Churches. - -The confiscation of these archives and libraries by a pagan state is, to -my mind, the most serious loss. Money can always be found again, but -when impious vandals have destroyed or dispersed these libraries and -archives, they can never be replaced. All English students deplore the -irreparable loss, caused by the cynical and base uses made of invaluable -manuscripts by reforming vandals in the sixteenth century. - -4. The Law of Separation deprives communes of the right to give any -subventions for religious worship--though the State inscribes on its own -budget the stipends to chaplains of lyceums frequented by children of -the rich, notwithstanding Art. II. - -5. A whole class of citizens are placed _hors la loi_, in that they are -deprived of the right of trial by jury for offences amenable to this -procedure. They (priests) are placed on the same footing as convicted -anarchists. - -6. Divine service is assimilated to any public meeting. A band of -Socialists may fill the church and render prayer impossible by their -irreverent attitude but they cannot be expelled unless they resort to -violence. - -7. The same class of individuals can invade any cathedral at any hour -and insist on inspecting, gratis, all its treasures (_objets mobiliers -classs_). In other words, these venerable edifices, the church of Brou, -Notre Dame, etc., are treated already like public museums, less well in -fact. And all this, we are told seriously, is "Separation." - -Meanwhile the two parties most nearly concerned in this question, the -Holy See and the French people, thirty-five million Catholics, have -never been consulted. - -M. Briand with remarkable impudence asserted that, since thirty-five -years, the country had sighed after "Separation," though he well knows -that no one thought about it but the Grand Orient. He himself admitted, -in the same session, that the question did not exist (_n'tait pas -pose_) at the beginning of this legislature (1902), and was only raised -by the Pope's violations of the Concordat. This lie, which tends to -become historic, was amply exploded, when M. Combes was convicted in the -Chambers of having suppressed a document, which amply justified Pius X's -action in the case of the Bishops of Dijon and Laval, which the lodges -used as a _casus belli_. Moreover, we must remember that the current -Jacobin thesis is that the Seventeen Articles of the Concordat, which -alone were signed by Pius VII, and the Seventy-six Organic Articles, -added _ex parte_ by Napoleon, in violation of every code of honour and -equity, form an intangible whole. Nevertheless, the Seventeen Articles -of the Convention which were alone signed by Pius VII and Napoleon, in -Messidor l'an IX, took effect as soon as the ratifications were -exchanged. The churches, seminaries, etc., were immediately "placed at -the disposal of the Bishops," and the stipulated indemnities were -forthcoming. - -It was not till Germinal l'an X that the Seventy-six Organic Articles -were promulgated, together with the Convention. - -Now no one surely can be accused of violating articles regarding which -he has never been consulted. Yet this is precisely the ground taken by -the Jacobins. - -A senator of the Right alleged, in defence of the Concordat, Art. 1134 -of the Code Civil: "Conventions legally formed are a law to those who -make them. They can only be revoked, by mutual consent, by those who -make them, and for causes which the law recognizes." - -Thereupon the reporter replied: "There was a Convention between Pius VII -and Napoleon; this Convention formed a whole (_un ensemble_) with the -Seventy-six Organic Articles." And as no Government has ever been able -to enforce these articles, some of which are rankly heretical, the -reporter alleged Art. 1184 of the Code against Art. 1134 to defend the -Government's _ex-parte_ denunciation of the Concordat. This Art. 1184 -declares that "a Convention is rescinded when one of the parties does -not keep his engagements." - -In other words, they say Pius VII and his successors have always -protested against the Seventy-six Organic Articles which the former did -not sign, therefore we are justified in denouncing, _ex parte_, the -Convention or Concordat of Seventeen Articles signed by Pius VII and -Napoleon. - -It is by this sophism that the Third Republic justifies the repudiation -of a portion of the National Debt; for the payment of annual indemnities -to the Catholic clergy was undoubtedly placed on the "Grand Livre" of -France by the Constituante, and recognized as part of the National Debt -by succeeding legislatures, before and since 1801. - -Recently, when it was proposed to suppress, without indemnity, the -_Majorats_ of the _ancien rgime_, M. Rouvier, Prsident de Conseil, -indignantly rejected the motion, saying, "Il ne faut jamais que la -signature de la France soit proteste." But when it is a question of -mere Catholics, the sense of national honour becomes blunted. They are -_hors la loi_. This form of jurisprudence has been familiar to -highwaymen from time immemorial--for them, the unarmed are always _hors -la loi_. - -M. Raiberti, a deputy from Nice, eloquently protested against the vote -of urgency, declaring that the country had never been consulted. "No -law," he said, "can be just and stable which does not express the wishes -of the people." All in vain. The Socialist voting machine worked -automatically at every turn towards the end. - -It is an incontestable fact that Separation has never appeared on any -programme these thirty-four years, except on that of 181 deputies at the -elections of 1902. Nevertheless, 341 (against 249) have just voted for -this law of Separation that is the negation of fifteen centuries of -national history.[11] - -The _Gazette de France_ calculates the number of electors represented by -these 341 deputies who carried the Separation Bill in the Chambers in -July:-- - - "On a total of 11,219,992 French electors only 2,997,063 pronounced - yesterday by their deputies in favour of the denunciation of the - Concordat and the spoliation of the Church, voted by a so-called - majority. - - "We must bear in mind that at the elections of 1902 the majority - only vanquished by 200,000 votes out of 8,000,000 voters inscribed, - and there are 400,000 functionaries. Thus spoke a senator (de - Cuverville), and he further quoted the declarations of M. Deschanel - in a public speech, July, 1905. - - "A minority, he declared, governs the country, and a law voted by a - certain majority represents 25 to 30 per cent. One deputy is - elected by 22,000, another by 1000. The Department du Nord has - 500,000 more inhabitants than six departments of the south-east, - yet it has five deputies less. Roubaix, with 125,000 inhabitants, - has one deputy, while the Department of Basses Alpes, with 115,000 - inhabitants, has five deputies." - -It is easy to see how a little judicious electoral geometry and -arithmetic will always give the Government a majority. Each -_arrondissement_ having a deputy, it is only necessary to cut up a given -district, notably anti-clerical, into a great many _arrondissements_, in -order to secure an increased number of deputies, _blocards_; and vice -versa the process need only be reversed in districts suspected of -"clericalism." We must also remember that at least one-third of the -electors never vote, and so the Government can always have a majority. - -This Separation Law is, as M. Briand said, only "transitory." It is, I -repeat, eminently perfidious. There is no form of tyranny, vexation, and -spoliation which cannot be legalized by its equivocal articles. It -contains all that is necessary to eliminate Catholicism from France as -far as public worship is concerned. - -On June 3rd I wrote, "What these Jacobins want is to have the law voted -before the elections of May, 1906, and then say to the people, 'You see -the law is voted, and nothing is changed.'" At the final session after -the vote, M. Briand, in a speech now pasted up all over the country, -said, "Our work is done. What have you to say? You tried to trouble the -conscience of the French Catholics, but can you find anything in the -Bill to warrant your grievances? Dare now to tell the people the -churches are to be closed, the priests proscribed." Yet all this, alas! -arrived almost immediately after the first Separation Law made in 1795. - -"No one," echoed M. Deschanel, a smooth-tongued, dainty politician like -M. Rousseau, "can maintain that this law is the work of hatred and -persecution, unless it is travestied by some profoundly dishonest -Government." - -"Like that of M. Combes, who travestied Waldeck Rousseau's Associations -Bill," rejoined a deputy of the Right. - -This Law of Separation bears the same imprint as that of 1901; both -emanated from the same quarter. It is, I repeat, a masterpiece of guile -and arbitrary tyranny. Any sense can be given to the ambiguous language -in which the most important articles are couched, and their -interpretation is not to be left to ordinary civil tribunals. The _jus -et norma_ in all doubtful questions is to be the Conseil d'Etat. In -other words, the Grand Conseil of the Grand Orient is to be the supreme -court of first and last appeal. - -The Church in France might just as well descend into the catacombs here -and now. It will come to this, unless some cataclysm rouse the French to -a violent uprising, in which the Third Republic and all its works and -ways will be swept away. - -The Senatorial Commission is composed of fourteen Jacobin Freemasons. -Their rulings are a foregone conclusion. The Separation Bill may be -considered already voted in the Senate. - -Great crimes against liberty, justice, and humanity cannot be -circumscribed by national frontiers. They offend all Christendom, and -though nations may, supinely, say "Am I my brother's keeper?" they pay -the penalty sooner or later. France in acute revolution will mean Europe -in flames, as in 1792. - - - - -THE PROGRESS OF ANARCHY - - -_12th October, 1905._ - -The stories that are going the rounds of the whole European Press leave -little doubt as to the fact, that a once great, free nation had her -Foreign Minister, M. Delcass, kept in office by the King of England -while he was in Paris this spring, and that two months later, he was -dismissed at the behest of Germany, who tore up the Anglo-French -Convention regarding Morocco and inaugurated the Congress of Algeciras. -No nation can act as France has done with impunity.[12] - -This is curious too when we consider that France is so sensitive about -the _ingrence_ of even a spiritual sovereign, that the denunciation of -a Concordat and the rupture with the Holy See were ascribed to the fact -that Pius X had taken the liberty of suspending two French bishops! - -It is also interesting to recall that the Bill of alleged Separation -was first voted at the Congress of Free-Thought held at Rome, in -September, 1904. The motion was made by Professor Haeckel, of the -University of Jena, Prussia, that: "We congratulate M. Combes in his -struggle for free-thought against theocratical oppression, and for the -radical separation of Church and State." Allemane, a French Socialist -deputy, exclaimed: "This is not enough. We want the abolition of the -Church." Robin, another French deputy, rejoined: "We are equally opposed -to both. We demand the abolition of Church and State." - -I have already stated how the annual convent of the Grand Orient of -France notified M. Combes (September, 1904) of their wishes regarding -the passage without delay of the Separation Bill. This Bill was voted, -or rather enregistered, by the Chamber of Deputies in July, as it will -be done shortly by the Senate.[13] - -Yesterday in Paris, the bureau of the "Federation of International -Free-Thought" actually intimated to the French Senate its behest that -the Law of Separation of Church and State be voted, without discussion -or amendment, before December 31st. When we consider that this bureau is -composed of one French Socialist Freemason deputy, the others being -German, Belgian, and Italian, it seems preposterous! It would be so, -even if all were Frenchmen, seeing that the Senate is supposed to be a -free deliberative body, having the responsibility of accepting or -rejecting what is done in the lower House. - -The London _Saturday Review_ is almost the only organ in the English -language which seems adequately to appreciate the enormity of the -religious persecution in France. - -"The extraordinary conspiracy of silence on this momentous matter, in -the English Press," writes the _Saturday Review_, London (July 8th, -1905), "is doubtless due to the fact that English Christians and -gentlemen are usually considered unfit to represent English newspapers -on the Continent. The Paris correspondents of our leading journals, -being nearly all men of oriental extraction, cannot, however honourable -and enlightened, be expected to entertain any interest in the fate of -the Christian religion. We are invariably led by these gentlemen to -believe that all is for the best in the best of republics. When, a -fortnight ago, France suddenly realized that she was within sight of a -war with her ancient foe on the other side of the Rhine, a thrill of -terror passed over the land at the mere thought that while engrossed in -the work of dechristianizing France, and hustling monks and nuns up and -down the country, the politicians in power had demoralized the army, -neglected the navy, and left the frontiers almost entirely unprotected. -Things have quieted down since then, but none the less there is a -feeling of unrest which makes people dread the passage of a law that -may lead to internal divisions and disorders even more serious than -those which agitate France at the present time." - -Referring to the Bill of alleged Separation, the _Saturday Review_ -continues: "_La Lanterne_ (the organ of the 'bloc') intimates that 'it -only accepts the Bill as it stands as a preliminary; we must silence the -priests and prevent them from infusing any more of the virus of religion -into the minds of the people.' ... To a thinking foreigner, the -spectacle presented by contemporary France is an amazing one. Here is a -great nation, which for sixteen centuries has proclaimed herself 'eldest -daughter of the Church,' renouncing her great position as protector of -the Catholics in the east and breaking off her connexion with the -Vatican, at a time when Germany is menacing her and proclaiming at Metz, -of all places in the world, her imperial wish to become more friendly -with the Church." - -This is an allusion to the Emperor William's having himself invested by -the papal legate with the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, surrounded by -German cardinals and prelates, as well as the highest military -dignitaries of Alsace-Lorraine. For me, the dismissal of M. Delcass and -the whole Moroccan incident are the handwriting on the wall which the -French are slow to read. On the Feast of St. Michael, September 29th, -the Minister of Public Worship held high revelry at a banquet of five -hundred Freemasons in the church of the recently expropriated convent of -the Ursuline nuns at Ave-ranche, just opposite that wonderful pile known -as the Mount St. Michel, a medival monastery and church. It is not -stated whether--like Balthazar--he sent for the vessels of the temple. - -The crimes against justice, liberty, and humanity committed in France, -since four years, are without a parallel in Europe since the Revolution -of 1790, if we except, of course, the atrocities in the Turkish Empire. -But most dire racial and religious antagonism may be alleged on behalf -of the Turk. In Spain, too, similar violations of liberty, justice, and -humanity have been committed during the nineteenth century, but this was -done in the heat and turmoil of revolutionary and anarchist upheavals. -In France they were committed in cold blood, under cover of law. Nearly -27,000 Catholic schools, freely patronized by Catholic parents, have -been suppressed, thousands of aged men and women have been dragged out -of their homes and cast into the street, _vi et armis_, the regular army -being employed in a great many cases. Their homes, built up by years of -patient labour, have been confiscated and sold for a trifle. Yet many of -them were authorized and had contracts with the Government. Recently, -convent and school buildings, estimated at 200,000 francs, were sold for -2200 francs. - -Two days ago, forty-three nuns of the Benedictine Order were expelled -from their homes; eleven of them were over seventy, and quite infirm. -The Congregations who were wary enough not to ask for authorization, and -realized what they could before going into exile, are not to be pitied -so much. Unfortunately, the majority fell into the Government's trap and -asked for authorization, which obliged them to declare all their assets, -that have been confiscated, and of which they will never see one cent. -Not only have all the assets been consumed in the process called -"liquidation," but the Government has been obliged to put up over -4,000,000 of the public money to cover the expenses of the -"liquidators." So ends the myth of the "billions of the Congregations," -held out as a glittering lure by Waldeck Rousseau in 1900 to his -Socialist henchmen. - -The terrible inroads, made by anti-patriotism and anarchical Socialism -by means of public-school teachers, are seriously alarming the creators -of this modern Frankenstein. Domiciliary perquisitions are being made -just now, in many cities, to seize the leaders of a conspiracy to -debauch the young conscripts who begin their two years' military service -now. A brochure, called _Crosse en l'air_ (meaning military revolt), has -reached, it is said, the million mark of circulation, in spite of the -Government. - -The conclusion of the Russo-Japanese war is an illustration of what I -wrote in _Slav and Moslem_ ten years ago, page 170: "Henceforth -commerce, not ideas, will rule in the council chambers of the world. -Politics will be forged in counting-houses and warehouses, 'where only -the ledger lives,' in whose dusty atmosphere none but merchantable ideas -are current. Wars will be declared, peace be made, alliances formed or -repudiated, according to their probable effect on the pulse of the -market." - -Without wishing to derogate from the merit of Mr. Roosevelt's good -offices, I am convinced he could not have succeeded if the financial -consideration had not rendered the belligerents docile. Japan was -absolutely at the end of her financial resources; the Russian coffers -were not far from empty. By the intermediary of the President, both -parties were given to understand that not a yen or kopeck more could -they borrow if peace were not concluded there and then. Any prolongation -of that war would have meant financial panic in many countries, chiefly -in France. Israel, by its bankers, has its hand on the throttle in -Christendom, and can make for peace and war more than all the peace -congresses. When we reflect on the three cruel, uncalled-for wars which -followed the Hague Conference in 1898, we can only tremble for the -future, if there is to be a new peace congress. In spite of conferences -and Jew bankers, guns will continue to "go off by themselves." These -Delcass revelations are not calculated to render the Germans more -friendly to France or England, and the knowledge they have acquired of -France's inability and unwillingness to fight must be a strong -temptation to a nation whose population is increasing at a formidable -rate, in spite of emigration, while that of France is stationary, not to -say steadily decreasing. - -Belgium, that great country in a very small compass, has doubled hers -since 1830. With 7,000,000 inhabitants, the figure of her business -operations is now the same as that of France with 38,000,000. This last -statement was made by M. Leygnes, ex-minister, in a recent political -speech, regarding the steady decadence of France under Jacobin rule -since twenty years. - -No country wants war, but all fear it. The causes of unrest are manifold -and legion. - -In an important political speech made by Lord Beaconsfield (Disraeli) at -Aylesbury, September 20th, 1873, he expressed himself as follows: "I can -assure you, gentlemen, that those who govern must count with new -elements. We have to deal not with emperors and cabinets only. We must -take into consideration secret societies, who can disconcert all -measures at the last moment, who have agents everywhere determined men -encouraging assassinations, and capable of bringing about a massacre at -any given moment." - -The passage is quoted in an article in the _Nineteenth Century_ (1876), -"A History of the 'Internationale.'" The "Internationale," by the way, -is fast superseding the "Marseillaise." The verse of blasphemy against -Christ and His mother is followed by one which ends with these words: -"Our balls are for our generals." A short time ago there were prolonged -riotous strikes on the eastern frontier. A striker was killed -accidentally. Thereupon M. Berteaux, the Minister of War, retired a -general and imprisoned a captain and a lieutenant for the crime of -having allowed the lancer regiments to carry lances when they were sent -out against the strikers! - -To propitiate these rioters the Minister of War went to Longwy, and the -strikers marched past singing the "Internationale," and the Minister of -War actually saluted the red flag! He afterwards protested in the -newspapers that he did not salute the red flag, but the men and women -who were escorting it! This Minister of War began life as dry-goods -commercial traveller. He is to-day a millionaire _agent de change_ at -the Paris Bourse, and is said to ambition the presidential chair. - -Shakespeare wrote: "Motley is the only wear." In France, everything -seems to be running to red. I have witnessed here two "free-thought" -funerals, one last April and another yesterday, in which pall and -banners were red, and even the coffin was draped in flaming red. Red "is -the only wear," though it is not easy to understand why "free-thought" -should necessarily blush--for itself. At the "Free-Thought" convention -held, recently, at Paris, under government patronage, anarchy dominated, -just as it did at Rome last September. Red was the keynote. - - - - -THE ABOLITION OF THE CONCORDAT - - -_February 3rd, 1906._ - -On August 19th, 1905, I described some of the odious features of the -alleged Separation Bill voted by the House of Deputies on July 7th, at -"midnight, the hour of crime." It may truly be ranked in that category -to which Cicero referred when he said, "There are laws which are merely -conventions among thieves." "The vote of the Senate is a foregone -conclusion," I wrote. The order had been given; every amendment (there -were about a hundred) was rejected automatically, and the law was voted, -December 6th, 1905, by a majority of 180 to 101. "The French -Government," I wrote (June 30th, 1900), "is on the verse of apostasy. Is -this a cause, a presage, or a symptom of national decadence? All three I -fear. Nations stand or fall with their governments. They have the -government they deserve, and are punished for the evil doings of their -rulers! 'I gave them a king in my wrath,' was once written of the Jews. -Is there sufficient vitality left in the French national constitution to -reject the poison which is undermining it, and of which alcoholism, -unknown in France fifty years ago, is but the outward and visible sign?" -To-day this apostasy, not of the nation, but of the French State, is -complete. It is the latest, though by no means the last act of a series -of anti-religious laws, elaborated by the Grand Orient and voted by -majorities and cabinets formed by them. I dealt with this subject on -March 17th, 1900, and said, then, that "with a Parliament and Ministry -like this any legislation is possible." - -The pseudo-Separation Bill is the most important legislation -accomplished in France since a century at least, and it has been done in -a manner which would not be tolerated in any free, civilized country. An -Act, which is the repudiation of fifteen centuries of national life, and -is fraught with the gravest consequences both political and religious, -interior and exterior, has been rushed through both Houses with most -unseemly, "scandalous haste." "You are treating it," said a senator, "as -if it were a question of a fourth-rate railroad." There was only one -deliberation in the Chamber of Deputies, and not one in the Senate we -may say. Senators of the Right were allowed to soliloquize eloquently. -Their speeches were admirable from every point of view and might well -have given pause to the Left. But these were dumb, by order. With few -exceptions, the reporter and President of the Separation Commission and -the Minister of Worship alone spoke, to curtly and peremptorily repulse -the proposed amendments. M. Rouvier, Prime Minister and Minister of -Foreign Affairs, who did not speak at all in the House of Deputies, -made but one appearance, on November 9th, at the first session of the -Senate, to declare that "the question was essentially a political one," -and that there was "a primordial and dominant interest for the -Government that this reform should be completed before the Senate went -before the electoral body." He further declared "that the Senate had -given its adhesion in advance ... if it were otherwise the Government -would resign." Surely a singular speech to make to a deliberative -assembly, on a matter that transcends in importance anything that has -been transacted in the French Parliament since 1793. - -If the law were not what Cicero calls "a convention among thieves," how -did M. Rouvier know "that the Senate had given its adhesion in advance"? -Indignant at the systematic refusal of the Left to enter into any -discussion, a senator exclaimed: "You are a deliberative assembly; try -at least to keep up appearances." MM. Monis and Clemenceau spoke on the -Left, not to refute the arguments of the Right, but to travesty history, -to malign and misrepresent, and to discuss subjects wholly irrelevant. -M. Monis entered into a long digression on the Franco-Prussian war in -order to incriminate a French cardinal and Pius IX. He was ably refuted -by M. de Lamarzalle. - -Whence this unseemly haste to vote a measure so important on the ragged -edge of a legislature? Next month one-third of the Senate is to be -renewed, the presidential term expires, and in May general elections are -to take place. In vain the Right, in learned and eloquent speeches, -adjured the Senate to postpone the final vote: (1) till one-third of the -Senators had been replaced; (2) till the Municipal Councils had been -consulted; (3) till the country had been consulted; (4) until after the -general elections of May, 1906. All in vain. "_Motions prjudicielles_" -and a hundred odd amendments all had the same fate. - -The explanation of this "scandalous haste" is very simple. The reporter -of the Commission said: "If you do not vote this liberal law now, you -can say good-bye to it, for you will never see it again." - -The country has never been consulted, and the Government wishes to -confront the people with the _accomplished_ fact, and above all to be -able to say, as I pointed out in my last: "You see the law is voted and -nothing is changed." If this law had been passed two years ago, it would -have gone into operation a year before the general elections and the -people might have been roused. On the other hand, if it hung fire now, -it would certainly have to be placed in all the electoral programmes. -Everything has been planned and foreseen by the lodges since twenty -years.[14] - -Several senators of the Right convincingly established that there was no -adequate reason for this unseemly haste--that no organic law had ever -been passed without a second reading; and they adjured the Senate not to -abdicate. M. de Chamaillard even offered to withdraw all the proposed -amendments (about a hundred) if the Senate would not vote the "urgency" -and give the law a second reading. All in vain. - -No one ignores or denies that the true purpose of the law is to -dechristianize France; even the spokesmen of the Government could not -dissimulate the truth. The coterie of Freemason Jacobins who have ruled -France for the past twenty years have not renounced their scheme of -national schismatic churches; only, instead of having one, which was -seen to be impossible, they propose to establish dozens of them by means -of associations of worship. Articles 4, 6, 8, 19 dealing with these -associations contain the whole venom of the law. In vain the -obscurities, the anomalies, the legal antinomies were pointed out, and -explanations demanded. _Rglements d'organization and Conseil d'Etat_, -it was said, would settle everything later on! In this _Review_, August -19th, I commented on the text of the law--and not one word, not one -comma, has been changed by the Senate! - -To-day, Islamism is, _ipso facto_, the only religion recognized by the -French Government; its ministers and mosques and schools are provided -for, and its ceremonies are often honoured by the presence of state -officials. This, in spite of Article 2, "the Republic recognizes and -subventions no worship." - -Another point worth noticing is that while discussing Article 1, "The -Republic assures liberty of conscience," the Minister of Public Worship, -speaking for the Government, clearly indicated that state functionaries -would never be permitted to send their children to any but government -schools. - -There are three points on which I insist in conclusion: (1) That the -country has not been consulted. At the general elections, 1902, not one -senator, and only 130 deputies out of 580 had "Separation" in their -programmes, and the Budget of Worship was voted in 1902, 1903, 1904 by a -compact majority who would then have been indignant had it been said -that they were acting against the wishes of the country. On January -27th, 1903, M. Combes himself repelled a suggestion of denunciation of -the Concordat thus: "If you do this by an improvised vote ... you will -throw the country into the greatest difficulties, trouble consciences, -and cause a veritable peril to the Republic." Now the country has not -been heard from since 1902. Yet the law was rushed through, on the eve -of a new election, for reasons I have indicated. - -(2) We must remember that when continual violations of the Concordat are -alleged as an excuse for the rupture, the Jacobins constantly confound -the seventy-five Organic Articles with the seventeen articles of the -Convention called Concordat, 1801, which alone was signed by Pius VII. - -(3) The suppression of the indemnity _Concordataire_ is, as far as the -Catholic clergy are concerned, a partial repudiation of the National -Debt. It was recognized as such by laws of 1789, 1790, 1791, 1793, 1801, -etc. - -This law of pseudo-Separation is not only a law of spoliation, but also -of supreme tyranny, in that in the name of Separation, it pretends to -regulate minutely the mode of existence of its victims, in future, by -special codes, and deprives them of the right to have more than the -strictest necessary for a hand-to-mouth existence. - -I am convinced that to acquiesce in regard to these "associations of -worship" will be to fall into the Government's trap as the Congregations -did when they applied for authorization in 1902. It will only mean -retreating before the enemy, and postponing the hour of violent -persecution and combat, which must come before the Jacobin-Freemason -yoke can be broken. - - - - -THE INVENTORIES - - -_12th February, 1906._ - -Year by year, I have foreshadowed and characterized the programme of -persecution, spoliation, and arbitrary tyranny which is that of the -Judeo-Masonic coterie which governs France, by means of the Socialist -vote. We have now reached the second part of this programme. - -In 1901 the Associations Bill was, according to Waldeck Rousseau, -intended to give legal standing and liberty to the unauthorized as well -as to the authorized Congregations. We all know, to-day, how -twenty-seven thousand of their schools have been closed, and how the -Congregations, simple enough to fall into the Government's trap by -asking for authorization and furnishing inventories of their property, -have been robbed of everything and turned adrift. - -The inventories now being made in the churches, amid scenes of violence -and bloodshed, with the cooperation of the regular army, represent the -first step on the road to wholesale spoliation and strangulation. If -only the victims would be docile and resigned there would be no trouble -whatever. Resistance will compel the operators to be drastic, when they -would rather go slowly and surely. The French voters should be -consistent. After giving themselves such law-makers, they ought at least -not to wince when the laws made by them are put into execution. But this -is an incurable idiosyncrasy of the French; they are clear-sighted, -energetic, and practical in the administration of their private affairs, -but when it comes to politics and government, they are absolutely -apathetic and purblind. Any pothouse politician can wheedle them out of -their votes, who would find it difficult to coax a sou out of their -pockets. All they ask is to be left in peace to attend to their business -and pleasures. It is only when the unpleasant practical sides of laws -like those of 1902, 1904, and 1905 are brought home to them that the -peasant seizes his pitchfork, and the bourgeois his cane, and bloody -manifestations occur all over France, as in 1902, 1904, and to-day -(1906). - -Generally speaking, inventories are made only when property is about to -change hands, as in cases of death and bankruptcy. Now the adherents of -the Catholic Church in France are numerous and very much alive, and they -cannot see why their ecclesiastical furniture and property should be -inventoried, quite forgetting that they gave carte blanche to the "bloc" -of Briands, Brissons, Combes, etc., who made the law they are now -resisting. - -If _Associations cultuelles_ are formed, a consummation most devoutly to -be deprecated by every friend of Catholic France, evidently they will -be composed by bishops, curs, and their present _conseils de fabrique_, -and there will not be any transmission of property. - -If there were no _animus furtandi_, no malevolent projects of -strangulation in the background, the Government would have contented -itself with denouncing the Concordat, and repudiating that portion of -the National Debt represented by the _Budget of cults_, instituted by -the Jacobins themselves, in 1790, when they appropriated Church property -and assumed the charge of maintaining Catholic worship in France. -Neither Protestant nor Jewish worship was included, originally, in the -_Budget de Cults_, seeing that their Church property had not been -touched, and they had no part in the Concordat. - -When the Anglican Church was disestablished or separated from the State -in Ireland, it surely never occurred to Mr. Gladstone and his Government -to order inventories to be made in the churches. - -To understand this revolt of the French people just now, we must recall -their past experience with inventories. In 1790 a decree obliged all -cathedral chapters and titulars of benefices to furnish complete -inventories of all their holdings, and in March, 1791, about four -hundred millions of Church property was seized and sold by the State. In -1901 the Congregations were invited to furnish ample inventories with -their demands for authorization; no authorizations were given, but the -inventories were very useful for the wholesale spoliations which -followed, spoliations which still masquerade under the pseudonym of -"liquidations." - -Moreover, the State makes these inventories to-day as proprietor, though -by no sleight of language can its ownership be proven, even as regards -churches existing before the Revolution, while many costly structures -have been erected and endowed since then by private initiative.[15] - -Fierce riots occurred over one of these churches built on private -grounds. The proprietor produced his title deeds, proving that the -commune had not contributed one cent and that he was absolute owner, but -this made no difference. - -The law Mirabeau of 1789 distinctly recognized that all ecclesiastical -property then existing had been "irrevocably given to the Roman Catholic -Church for public worship and charity." The Jacobins of to-day -apparently base their claims (Art. 12 de Separation) on this loi -Mirabeau, which declares, forthwith, that all this Church property is -"placed at the disposal of the nation," ("_mise la disposition de la -nation_"). But Art. 12 of the Concordat uses exactly the same words in -speaking of what was left, in 1801, of Church property, edifices, -etc.--"_sont mises la disposition des vques_"--all was "placed at -the disposal of the bishops"; and the faithful, moreover, were invited -to reconstitute the stolen patrimony by gifts and legacies, which are -now to be confiscated. - -Church edifices and everything pertaining thereto, as well as pious -legacies (_fondations_), are to confiscated, if _Associations -cultuelles_ are not formed before 6th December, 1906, or if said -associations are dissolved for any of the five cases foreseen by the law -ironically called of "Separation." Lineal descendants may claim -_fondations_ made by ancestors, but this liberal provision is illusory, -as all important bequests are made by people who are childless. Thus the -dead are despoiled as well as the living. - -The recitals which fill the daily papers of churches besieged and -assaulted by _gens d'armes_ and the regular army are very sickening, -coming so soon after a similar campaign against convents. There are -places where no workmen will break down doors or pick locks for the -fiscal agents, and they are obliged to carry operators, or official -_crocheteurs_, around with them. - -Recently two thousand soldiers were mobilized against a village church. -In many places the regular army have occupied the churches, -unexpectedly, before daylight, and thus the people were outwitted and -the inventories were made quietly. Though, if we may believe a -functionary interviewed by a reporter of the _Journal de Gnve_, not -one inventory has been made thoroughly, as the Government is very -anxious to have it over. The probability is that the odious work will -soon be suspended entirely, so that all may be forgotten before the -elections of May.[16] - -Yesterday two superior officers of the Engineering Corps at Cherbourg -had their swords broken by the Government, because they manifested their -disgust too openly. Many others are under arrest, because they refused -to lead the assault on Church edifices, and their careers may be -considered at an end.[17] - -The first article of this Law of alleged Separation declares that "the -Republic assures liberty of conscience." Yet surely it is a violation of -liberty of conscience to command a Catholic officer to batter down the -doors of his parish church. Moreover, when this article of the law was -being discussed in the Senate, the Minister of Cults (M. Briand), -speaking for the Government (as M. Rouvier was never present!), gave it -to be clearly understood that functionaries would never be allowed to -send their children to any but government schools! Yet surely it must be -a matter of conscience with any Catholic to send his children to -schools, which are frankly and aggressively materialistic and atheist. - -Article II declares that "the Republic recognizes, salaries, and -subventions no religion." This too must not be taken literally. For, as -I anticipated last year (May 29th), this law, made against thirty-five -million French Catholics, is not applicable to six million Mohammedans -of Algeria. Their mosques, their ulemas, their schools and congregations -will continue to be supported by the Republic which neither recognizes -nor supports any religion. This is just, seeing that the Third Republic -took all their ecclesiastical property, promising annual subsidies -instead, just as the Jacobins of 1790 did with regard to the Catholics, -only in the latter case the capital appropriated is retained, while the -charge is repudiated. - -Meanwhile Islamism is the state religion of France, _ipso facto_; the -only one whose ceremonies and mosques are honoured by government -officials on solemn occasions. Shades of Godfrey de Bouillon and St. -Louis! - -Spoliation and poverty would be endurable if only the Church were truly -separated from the State. But the latter presumes to dictate to the -Church a new organization of its parishes (_Associations cultuelles_), -to limit its financial resources, and decide how these are to be -obtained, how they must be invested, and what use may be made of them. - - - - -DUC IN ALTUM - - -_20th August, 1906._ - -"And the Lord said to Peter, Launch out into the deep," _Duc in altum_. -To-day again the successor of Peter has heard the word of command, _Duc -in altum_. He has exercised that _potentiorem principalitatem_ or -eminent leadership ascribed to the Roman See by St. Irenus in the -second century, and the whole leash of anti-clericals are transported -with rage and surprise at this grand act of Pius X, the one contingency -for which they were not prepared. The previous encyclical (_Vehementer_) -had left them indifferent. They treated it as a mere rhetorical -manoeuvre destined to cover a retreat, and as a covert acquiescence in -their law of tyranny and spoliation. - -The whole venom of this law is, as I wrote a year ago (August 19th, -1905), contained in the numerous articles that regard _Associations -cultuelles_--which are aimed at the very life of the Church, by the -destruction of her hierarchy, which is the basis of her constitution. In -the English and American Press it is sought, disingenuously, to -make-believe that these associations were merely "boards of trustees" -to administer Church property, and that similar associations exist in -the United States, England, Germany, etc., with the approbation of the -Holy See. This is not so; French parishes already have _fabriques_ and -_conseils de fabriques_, that correspond to boards of trustees. They are -abolished by the Law of Separation, and for them are substituted these -_Associations cultuelles_, in which the bishops have no standing and no -authority whatever. Any seven, twelve, or twenty-five persons, calling -themselves Catholics, because they happen to be baptized, can form one -of these associations, claim a church and all its revenues, and run the -parish to suit themselves. - -Even after one association has been legally formed "according to the -general rules of worship" (Art. 4), a most ambiguous expression, which -the lawmakers deliberately refused to make explicit, it is anticipated -that scissions may occur, and that rival associations may claim the same -Church property. In all these contentions the bishop has no voice except -incidentally. The Conseil d'Etat, an administrative tribunal composed -exclusively of Freemasons, is the supreme judge of the orthodoxy of -these associations. The phrase "formed according to the general rules of -worship" was supposed to offer ample guarantee to Catholics. Yet -recently the _Journal Officiel_ has officially registered four or five -schismatic associations, formed by already interdicted priests. They are -in insignificant hamlets, it is true, one of them being a parish of -only 175 members, but they are test cases, and show how foolish it would -have been to trust to the illusory guarantee offered by Article 4, -"according to the general rules of organization of worship." - -The discussion raised by M. Combes with the Vatican, regarding the words -_nobis nominavit_ in the canonical investiture of French bishops -presented by the Government as candidates, and then the affair of the -deposition of the Bishops of Dijon and Laval, 1894, convinced them that -a national schismatic church was impossible, so they fell back on this -alternative scheme of _Associations cultuelles_, destined to set in -motion a process of slow disintegration and gradual decomposition. A -noted Freemason said recently, "Twenty years of secular schools have -made us the masters of France; with twenty years of _Associations -cultuelles_ every trace of the Catholic religion in France will be -effaced." - -In the Senate M. Berger, a Protestant Freemason, made the following -interesting statement (_Journal Officiel_, p. 1380): "The law," he said, -"had been slumbering in the Republican programme for the past fifty -years ... but how can a law be perfect that has had only one -deliberation?... Instead of this a voice cries to us, 'Vote, vote.' Here -are articles in disagreement with each other--Vote. They are in -contradiction with the spirit of the law--Vote. They violate existing -rights--Vote, vote. Do your duty as a Republican.... Well, yes, I will -vote this law from a sense of duty."[18] - -This same senator described the true character of the _Associations -cultuelles_ when he said, "They are free associations destined to take -the place of the ancient Church." - -Not less clear was the statement of M. Briand, Minister of Public -Worship: "Dissensions may arise, not in matters of dogma only, but in -questions of administration. We must allow those, who do not wish to -submit, to form independent autonomous associations if they wish to use -the same church." - -If Christians anywhere wonder at the severity of the papal encyclical -rejecting these associations, it is because they have not even scanned -the text of the law, and accept, unchallenged, the misrepresentations of -a Press which seems to derive all its information from organs like _La -Lanterne_, _L'Action_, _Le Sicle_, _Le Temps_, etc. This Law of alleged -Separation presumes to dictate to the Catholic Church, an organization -in which episcopal authority, the basis of her divinely given -constitution, is completely set at naught. The Roman Pontiff, her -supreme head, was not once consulted, and in order to make it impossible -to do so, they began by severing all connexion with the Vatican in 1904. -It is very much as if, after suppressing all their schools and -colleges, the English Government were to pass a law declaring that -Quakers and Presbyterians are to be deprived of all their ecclesiastical -property unless they consent to adopt episcopacy and the Book of Common -Prayer. Would any one under these circumstances hesitate to say that -Quakers and Presbyterians were persecuted? I trow not. - -When Henry VIII had resolved to reduce the Church of England to the -condition of a department of State, his first step was to undermine her -constitution by removing the keystone of the arch. To do this it was -necessary to detach the clergy from Rome, the See of Peter on whom the -Church is founded. In 1530 he compelled them "to acknowledge the king to -be the singular protector and only supreme lord, and, so far as the law -of Christ will allow, supreme head of the English Church and clergy." In -1532 Convocation further abdicated by the elimination of the saving -clause, "as far as the law of Christ will allow." They also consented to -have their canon law revised by a Royal Commission, "with a view to the -elimination of all canons contrary to the laws of God and of the realm." -Their abdication and submission were recorded in an Act of Parliament, -and "henceforth," writes Wakeman, the Anglican author of a history of -the English Church, "the Church of England will be at the mercy of -Parliament." We all know how the schism and apostasy of this great -province of the Church were consummated by Elizabeth. The fate of -Moscow, and that of Constantinople five centuries before, was the same. -Detached from Rome, they fell beneath the tyranny of the State. - -It is this condition that the Judeo-Masonic coterie would fain have -brought about in France. The seventy-six Organic Articles added -surreptitiously to the Concordat of 1801 had no other object in view. -But, as M. Combes admitted in the Chambers, the Papacy never accepted -them, and no government had ever succeeded in enforcing them. The -question of _nobis nominavit_ and that of the Bishops of Dijon and Laval -were the last abortive efforts to bring about a schism. Failing this, -they resolved to reduce the Church in France to the condition of a -Polish Diet, in which the Conseil d'Etat, i.e. the Grand Orient, would -have enjoyed an unlimited _liberum veto_. - -Even legally speaking, these _Associations cultuelles_ could not -function normally, because their situation was anomalous. They were -neither owners, _usufruitiers_, nor simple tenants of the Church -property of which they had the charge and the responsibility. The law -is, as I said before, full of antinomies and obscurities. Senators of -the Right pointed them out one by one. All in vain. Decrees of Conseil -d'Etat will settle every question as it arises was always the -Government's reply. - -The trap was smartly constructed, and neatly baited with the greater -portion of the present patrimony of the Church, some two million -pounds, it is said, and all Church edifices, etc. Everything is to be -confiscated if _Associations cultuelles_ are not formed by December -11th, 1906. - -Considering the disastrous consequences of not forming associations, it -is not surprising that some Catholics, and even some priests, were -disposed, once more, to retreat before the enemy by forming some kind of -Janus-faced association, canonical on one side, and in conformity with -the law on the other. But it is absolutely false that a majority, or -even a minority, of the bishops at the Assembly were in favour of the -acceptation of the Law, _telle quelle_. - -The clergy and the Catholics of France have been retreating before the -enemy for twenty years and more, quite forgetting the "Resist the devil -and he will flee from you." - -Leo XIII, in his profound attachment to France, loyally lent his aid to -the Third Republic when implored by M. Grevy. He begged the clergy and -the Catholics to rally to the new regime in the interest of peace. - -He even discountenanced the formation of a Catholic party in France at -that time, because Catholics being divided, politically, into three -camps--Royalists, Republicans, and Imperialists or Bonapartists--he -feared strife, and did not wish the Catholic religion to be identified -with any form of government. - -At the time of Leo's death the _Journal de Genve_ (Protestant) declared -that "this Pontiff had at least one miracle to his credit, in that to -the end he had maintained kindly relations with an ungrateful Republic -that repaid his condescendence and friendly aid by reiterated -provocations." This is quite true. The scholar laws of 1886, when this -campaign against religion was begun by irreligious instruction, given -under a mask of _neutralit_, now completely laid aside; unjust fiscal -laws against the Congregations; and finally the laws of 1901, 1902 and -1904 which embittered Leo's last hours, were so many acts of hostility, -leading up to the final assault, all foreseen and prepared in the -Judeo-Masonic lodges since a century we may say. "Il faut srier les -questions," said Gambetta, whose maxim was _Le clericalism c'est -l'ennemi_; and "clericalism," it seems now, means simply _God_. To-day, -they openly proclaim that God is the enemy. - -After destroying the outposts and the ramparts by the destruction of all -her religious orders engaged in teaching, preaching, and ministering to -the poor and the halt, it was resolved to storm the citadel, the Church -of France herself, and the Law of alleged Separation was sprung upon the -nation. - -If any confirmation were needed as to the great hopes the Masonic -coterie had founded on the _Associations cultuelles_, we find it in the -unanimous outburst of surprise and fury which some of their more -moderate Press organs sought in vain to dissimulate. Billingsgate cannot -furnish the _Lanterne_ with terms adequate to the occasion; all the more -so, that from the beginning it has affirmed, in most scurrilous -language, that never, never would the Church refuse the "liberalities" -of the law, by which is meant the permission to keep some of her -property. Three editorials of _La Lanterne_--November 25th, 1905, "Ils -capitulent!"; August 16th, 1906, "C'est la guerre"; and "La folie -suprme," of August 20th--are most interesting revelations of the -contemporary Jacobin mind.[19] Even the millions represented by the -confiscation of the _menses episcopales_, etc., which the law had -assigned to the _Associations cultuelles_, cannot console these -sectarian Jacobins, whose budget shows a deficit of hundreds of -millions. They loudly proclaim that the law must be enforced -_integrally_, forgetting that the numerous articles regarding -_Associations cultuelles_ are already null and void, and that they -themselves propose to annul those regarding pensions to aged priests. If -they had the courage to enforce Article 35 of the law (_police des -cultes_) every French bishop would be in prison for reading the -encyclical of August 15th in the churches. Other articles of the _police -des cultes_ also fall to the ground, as they were aimed at -_Associations cultuelles_, who were to be held responsible if a preacher -used seditious language in the pulpit. - -No _Associations cultuelles_ will be formed except by Freemasons -masquerading as Catholics; but at least there will be no confusion, no -disorganization of the Church, which was the main purpose of the law. -Thus has Pius X unmasked their batteries and spiked their guns. They -will have to resort to other arms, those of undisguised persecution, the -very thing they wished, above all, to avoid. - -Little is left standing of the Law of Separation but the articles of -spoliation and confiscation. If these Jacobins have the courage to -enforce them "integrally," as they say, even to the confiscation of -Church edifices, it will mean, for the present, the most threadbare -poverty. Whether they will dare to do so remains to be seen. - -M. Clemenceau stopped the inventories, because, he said, "it was not -worth while to have riots and bloodshed for the pleasure of counting a -few candelabras." He and his employers may find that it is not worth -while to risk the Republic for the sake of some Church edifices, for -which they have no use. - -They may content themselves for the present with seizing all the -available cash, which will go the way of the "billions" of the -Congregations, and the exchequer will grow poorer and poorer, till the -vanishing point of national bankruptcy is reached as in 1793.[20] - -Referring to the critical condition in which the Church was placed under -the feudal system owing to the abusive practice of investiture by laymen -of ecclesiastical dignitaries, Guizot writes: "There was but one force -adequate to save the Church from anarchy and dissolution, this was the -Papacy" (_History of Civilization_). - -To-day also, the Papacy, alone, could rally the clergy and the faithful -in complete unity, to offer a solid and compact resistance to these -associations of a law of anarchy and dissolution. "That they all may be -one that the world may believe" (John XVI). - -By a stroke of his pen Pius X, whom these anti-clericals affect to -despise as an ignorant peasant, has broken up their cunningly contrived -trap. To reject the associations seemed fraught with dire consequences -and a perilous launching into deep waters. Happily the French episcopate -are worthy and equal to the emergency. My "First Impressions" regarding -them (p. 5) were correct. - -Their addresses to Pius X and to their flocks, form, with the -encyclicals "Vehementer" and "Gravissimo" (15th August), one of the -grandest pages of the annals of the Church. "Satan hath desired to sift -you as wheat"; to sift you in sore persecutions; to sift you by poverty -and by riches; to sift you in the flux and reflux of barbarian -invasions; to sift you in the ruins of crumbling empires, that you, like -them, might become as "dust which the wind scattereth," the dust of -sects and schisms and national churches. "But I have prayed for thee, -Peter, and thou, confirm thy brethren." _Duc in altum._ - - - - -SEPARATION - - -_24th November, 1906._ - -Disguise the fact as they may, there is religious persecution in France. -Never since the days of Julian the Apostate has any war been waged -against Christianity more malign, more insidious. The ancient Faith was -crushed out, by sheer force, in England and in many parts of the -Continent, in the sixteenth century. In France, too, it seemed, in the -eighteenth century, as though Christianity had received its quietus by -the same brutal means. But methods have greatly altered. Masonic -Jacobins, to-day, shudder at the mere suggestion of blood. A senator of -the Right warned the Government that the Separation might lead to -bloodshed. Thereupon the minister Briand made a gesture of deprecation. -"Pray do not speak of blood," he cried. One man was killed during the -inventories; and immediately they were stopped, and the Rouvier Ministry -fell. Yesterday again in the Chambers M. Briand exclaimed, "Du sang, -quelle parole atroce!" ("Blood, what an atrocious word!"). - -They have pondered the words of the Divine Master, "Fear not them that -kill the body"; and they are determined that there shall be no more -martyrs in the usual sense, no more guillotines, no more _noyades_ as in -1790. But they mean to choke out every germ of Christianity by casting -the minds of the rising generation in a mould of atheism, and to quench -every divine spark in the adult by degrading him in his own eyes to the -level of a mere animal, that must seize every fleeting advantage, by -fair means or foul, because there is no hereafter. - -"We have combated the religious chimera, and by a magnificent gesture we -have put out all the lights in heaven, which will never more be -rekindled.... But what then shall we say to the man whose religious -beliefs we have destroyed?" Thus spoke on November 8th, 1906, M. -Viviani, Socialist Minister of Labour. At the same tribune, the very -next day, M. Briand declared that his Government was not anti-religious, -but only irreligious, or neutral. Meanwhile both this Minister of Public -Instruction and M. Clemenceau, in public speeches all over the country, -have been reviling and calumniating the religion of the nation, and -congratulating public instructors on their zeal in emancipating the -minds of their pupils from all religious superstition, thus training up -"true men whose brains are not obstructed by mystery and dogma," whose -"consciences and reason are emancipated." - -In December 1905, this same M. Briand declared that the Government would -never suffer that its hundreds of thousands of public functionaries -send their children to any but state schools, and to make assurance -doubly sure, a law is deposed, and will soon be passed, establishing a -state monopoly of instruction. Disconcerted by the attitude of the -Papacy and the splendid unity of the clergy and their flocks, the one -contingency for which they were not prepared, the French atheocracy has -decided to content itself with spoliation for the present. A receiver is -to be appointed for all the holdings of the Church, _menses -episcopales_, pious and charitable foundations, libraries, etc. The Left -clamoured for the immediate attribution of the property to the communes, -as the law requires. But M. Briand declared that it would be for them "a -nest of vipers" and "poison their budgets"! - -M. Lassies summed up M. Briand's discourse by these unparliamentary -words: "Vous avez du toupet, vous----" ("You have brass enough, -you----"). - -Not daring to close the churches at present, they have resorted to a -subterfuge (_cousu de blanc_) in order to avoid doing so. The Republic -having promised religious liberty, they say the faithful and their -priests may come together "accidentally" and "individually" in the -churches. Now the text of the law is formal. Art. I says: "The Republic -guarantees the free exercise of public worship, under _the following -restrictions_." Then follow the restrictions, i.e. articles regarding -the associations; in other words, the constitution of the new -_by-law-established_ churches, which were to inherit all the patrimony -of the ancient Church and take its place. - -M. Briand himself, before the encyclical, had openly proclaimed that -there could be no public worship without these associations. The efforts -made by M. des Houx of the _Matin_ (alias "Mirambeau"), M. Decker David -(a deputy mayor), and other agents of the lodges or of the Republic, to -form these associations have been ludicrously pathetic. Failing these, -the Government has decided to leave the churches open for another year, -nevertheless. To storm them, and hold them after they had been stormed, -would be too perilous an enterprise, judging by the troubles caused by -the inventories. Therefore they have resolved to reduce the clergy by -famine, by military conscription, the suppression of seminaries, and -other vexatory measures. Moreover, the closing of the churches is the -one measure that would convince the masses that something had happened, -and that their religion was really persecuted. To the extreme Left, -clamouring for the immediate confiscation of Church edifices and -property, M. Briand said, "You want to strangle the Catholics right -away; we do not wish to do so" (November 9th, 1906). Precisely. What -they do wish is to empty the churches by every means, then close them, -one by one. - -On December 11th, 1906, state receivers are to be appointed for all -Church property, movable and immovable. The very sacred vessels and -ornaments, chasubles, etc., are all appropriated, and merely lent to the -Catholics, temporarily, at the Government's good pleasure. There has -been of late years a dearth of treasures of ancient religious art in the -Salles Drouots of Paris, Frankfort, Munich, etc. But soon Jew -_brocanteurs_ will be in clover. All that escaped the revolutionists of -1790 will be scattered to the four winds ere long. This is one of the -by-products, duly discounted, of this "law of liberty" called -"Separation." - -But they still have a latent hope that the inextricable difficulties -will force Catholics to capitulate and form associations. M. Briand's -circular, 31st August, 1906, ordered his prefects to report to him any -_subreptice_ associations not in conformity with the law of 1905. -Cardinal Lecot's society for the support of aged priests (their old age -pension fund being taken like everything else) is certainly of this -category. It conforms to none of the requirements of the law of 1905, -nevertheless M. Briand gives it a clean bill of health (November 9th). -His speech in the Chambers is a complete repudiation of his circular of -August 31st, and is a tissue of misrepresentation and tergiversation. He -harps upon Article 4 ("the associations must be formed according to the -general rules of worship"), which he declares "places all the -associations under the control of the bishops and of the Holy See." -Article 8 of the law provides, it is true, for endless schisms, all -subject to the decisions of the Conseil d'Etat, alone competent to judge -if an association is or is not orthodox, i.e. "formed according to the -general rules of worship." In this Article 8, also, he finds a guarantee -which should satisfy all reasonable Catholics! - -Now this same M. Briand, as Minister and reporter of the law, combated -(April 6th, 1905) in the Chambers a proposed amendment tending to -safeguard ecclesiastical authority in this matter. "You wish to turn -over to the Pope, by means of the bishops (_la haute discipline_), the -government of these associations. We cannot subject the faithful to this -discipline." - -In the Senate, too, this same minister declared "that even after one -association had been legally formed, dissensions might arise, not only -in matters of dogma, but also of administration; we must allow those, -who do not wish to submit, to form another independent association if -they wish to use the same church."[21] - -If the intentions of the Government were so benevolent as M. Briand -pretends, why did they not accept the insertion of the word "bishop" in -Article 4? It would have rendered the associations tolerable; but this -they strenuously opposed, and the keystone of their law was demolished -by the _non possumus_ of Pius X, August 15th. In the Chambers (November -9th) M. Briand admitted that "the law had been made in view of the -organization of _Associations cultuelles_." This I have affirmed since -nearly two years, and it is in vain that, elsewhere, M. Briand seeks to -make-believe that the law has accomplished its purpose, which, in -reality, it has just missed. - -Even to-day, if the intentions of the Government are as candid and -benignant as M. Briand pretends, why do they not insert one little -amendment in the text of the law which would make it possible for the -Church to form these associations? No, not so. They wish the Holy See to -accept the word of some irresponsible minister, or some declaration of -the Conseil d'Etat, equally valueless. - -In 1901 Waldeck Rousseau solemnly declared in the Chambers that Article -13 of the Associations Bill in no wise affected the parochial schools, -and two days after the law was voted three thousand of these schools -were summarily closed. He had also assured the Vatican that authorized -Congregations had nothing to fear. Even M. Delcass and the Ambassador -at Rome had given similar assurances to the Vatican before the law of -1901 was deposed in the Chambers. With these and similar precedents it -would be idle indeed to attach any faith to M. Briand's dulcet, fair, -feline, fallacious utterances in the Chambers (November 9th). They are -merely "words, words," and _verba volant_. Moreover, how long will M. -Briand and the Clemenceau Cabinet be able to resist the Socialist impact -of the advance guard? - -More than a year ago, I wrote that any interpretation could be given to -some of the ambiguous terms in which the law was couched, and that this -ambiguity was deliberate and intentional. - -By his own authority. M. Briand (Chambers, November 12th, 1906) has -offered the Catholics one year more in which to form associations under -the Separation Bill. Thereupon M. Puech, a deputy of the Left, flung -these biting words at the Government: "The law without the associations -is void ... it has fallen to pieces.... And you have no associations. In -1907 you will not have them any more than in 1906.... Void, nothingness, -chaos, behold your law." "In 1790," said the same deputy, "as to-day, -the struggle was engaged between two principles, between dogma and -science.... The Constituante was not firm. Camille Desmoulins spoke like -M. le Ministre Briand.... Three succeeding assemblies were forced -logically to extreme measures--death and transportation." - -The astute guile that characterizes M. Briand's declarations in the -Chambers can only be compared to that of Julian the Apostate, who began -his reign by a grand edict of toleration. Or rather it recalls those -deliberations of that council in Pandemonium (Book II, _Paradise Lost_): -"Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood, the fiercest spirit, now -fiercer by despair, spoke thus: My sentence is for open war of wiles I -boast not." But he was overruled by Beelzebub, who "pleaded devilish -counsel first devised by Satan," and which consisted in "seducing the -puny habitants of Paradise to our party" by guile and fraud. - -These associations of the law of 1905, which ignorant or malevolent -writers continue to represent as being the same as those of Prussia and -other half-Protestant countries, were a most ingenious device for -inducing the Church to commit suicide by the repudiation of her divinely -given constitution. - -The point, that essentially differentiates associations for public -worship in Prussia and elsewhere from those of the law of 1905, is that, -in the former, the Catholic hierarchy was respected. In them the curate -is by right president, episcopal authority is paramount, and the State -cannot intervene if dissensions arise. Now Articles 8, 9, etc., of the -French law are the very antipodes of all this.[22] - -The fact is that there can be no real accord between the Church and the -French atheocracy, whose openly avowed object is the radical destruction -of the religious idea, even of natural religion. - -Never perhaps, in the history of humanity, has there been such a -monstrosity as a distinctly atheistic state. Pagan antiquity, even the -Grecian Republics, had a cult of some kind. The First Republic, under -Robespierre, having decreed the abolition of Christianity, immediately -substituted theo-philanthropy. But the Third Republic proclaims itself -atheist, and insists that the nation shall be made atheist by means of -public schools. - -Hitherto the words lay, layman, meant in French as in English, simply, -not of the clergy; to-day, _laque_ in France means atheist. _L'cole -laque_ means, not a school taught by laymen, but a school of -infidelity. Catholic lay or secular schools are still holding their own -against the state schools, which are nearly empty in some communes. - -Not satisfied with having suppressed twenty-seven thousand religious or -congregational schools, the annual September convent of the Grand Orient -has decided that all these Christian lay schools, primary and secondary, -must disappear. It also finds that the State _lyces de filles_ "are not -sufficiently laicized," meaning of course not sufficiently atheized and -depraved. Yet the work seems to be well under way, if we are to judge by -the following extracts from the discourse pronounced on the grave of a -child of twelve by one of her companions of an _cole laque_ near -Allevard, in presence of the whole school. "For thee infinite -nothingness has begun, as it will begin for all of us. Thy death, or -rather the supposed Being who caused it, must be very wicked or very -stupid.... He made thee the victim of a society refractory to society -solidarity.... We really cannot excuse this celestial iniquity." I -transcribe from the anti-clerical _Dpche Dauphinoise_. The spectacle -of this free-thought funeral, and of a little schoolgirl blaspheming -over the grave of a playmate, is simply hideous. Poor hapless victims of -a pagan state, that nevertheless enlists the sympathies of Christians -who spend millions on missions to the heathen Chinese! - -This Masonic convent has also decided "that the means of production and -exchange must be restituted to the collectivity." Therefore we know in -advance what the new Chambers will accomplish: State monopoly of -instruction, and State Socialism prepared and accomplished as rapidly -as possible. - -Under these circumstances it really does not matter very much if the -churches remain open or not, for the present. As an English ecclesiastic -recently observed, "We can do without our churches, but we cannot do -without our schools." - -It is by means of Christian schools that Europe was redeemed from -barbarism, and preserved from relapsing into its first estate. Each -generation, in turn, must be redeemed from barbarism, as were our -forefathers, by the Christian upbringing of the young, otherwise -retrogression must inevitably ensue. Every gardener understands this. It -is natural law in the spiritual world. To descend and retrograde is so -much easier than to ascend. - -To-day, the eternal enemy of God and man seeks to wrest from the Church -the great fulcrum by which Christendom was upraised from barbarism, and -to use her own arms against the Church, by converting schools into -nurseries of infidelity and immorality. - -In vain secularists would tell us that history, geography, and grammar -are neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Mohammedan. The venom of -infidelity and vice can be conveyed by the conjugation of a verb. -Physical geography may be used as a catapult against the very notion of -right and wrong. As to the misuse of history, its possibilities are -unlimited. Moreover, the Church, that has received the divine -commission to "teach all nations," needs the aid of all the arts and -sciences to accomplish this mission. The Catholic Church, that is -essentially, and _jure divino_, _Ecclesia docens_, will never forego her -right to teach them all, as she has been doing for two thousand years. -In the sixteenth century China seemed hopelessly closed against -Christian missionaries. But where apostles failed to penetrate, a man of -science, who was also a saint, succeeded. Mathew Ricci, the Jesuit -savant, was welcomed by mandarin _literati_, and founded the first -Christian mission in China in 1581. - -All the old universities of Europe were founded by the Church. The arts -and sciences grouped themselves around the Chair of Theology, as -hand-maidens around their mistress. Religion is, indeed, the aromat -which alone preserves them from becoming corrupt and corrupting. -Already, society is beginning to discover the evil effects of separating -religion from learning. The knowledge and uses of fire form one of the -main lines of demarcation that separate us from animals. Monkeys -appreciate the kindly blaze, but the smartest of them has never -attempted to light a fire. - -When men, with this distinctive and dangerous knowledge of fire, shall -have degraded their mentality to that of the simian by atheism or -secularism, and its concomitant materialism, the social order will no -longer be possible. A few rudely constructed, diminutive bombs can lay -the proudest city in ruins. - -To-day, as in 1790, France is the field on which another great battle is -to be fought between Christianity and paganism, and its results will be -far-reaching. The French atheocracy has "said unto God, Depart from us; -for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways" (Job XXI. 14). Churches, -here and there, have already been profaned by Masonic revelry, the cross -has been demolished on every highway, and removed from every school and -hospital. The State, disposing of all the power and all the riches of -the nation, is at the command of a secret society that is the sworn and -avowed enemy of religion. If the Church again come forth victorious from -the struggle, stronger and purer through poverty and persecution, "if -the Christian Hercules uplift Antus, son of the earth, into the air and -stifle him there, then--_patuit Deus_." - - - - -LIBERTY AND CHRISTIANITY - - -Liberty is, pre-eminently and indisputably, a product of Christianity -and must diminish with every diminution of the faith. "Other -influences," writes Lecky, "could produce the manumission of many -slaves, but Christianity alone could effect that profound change of -character that rendered the abolition of slavery possible, and there -are," he says, "few subjects more interesting than the history of that -great transition" (_History of Rationalism_, II, 258). - -There is, indeed, no grander spectacle than that of the Catholic Church -proclaiming, in ages of barbarism, a divine "Thou shalt not" to masters, -whose power over their slaves was unlimited by any law, and even -assuming jurisdiction over them in virtue of a moral law, above all -human laws. - -Ecclesiastical jurisprudence enacted penalties against "masters who took -from their theows (Saxon slaves) the money they had earned; against -those who slew their theows without just cause; against mistresses who -beat their theows so that they died within three days.... Above all, the -whole machinery of ecclesiastical discipline was set in motion to -shelter the otherwise unprotected chastity of the female slaves" -(Wright's _Political Condition of the English Peasantry in the Middle -Ages_). "That Church which seemed so haughty and so overbearing in its -dealings with kings and nobles," writes Lecky, "never failed to listen -to the poor and the oppressed, and for many centuries their protection -was the foremost of all the objects of its policy" (_History of -Rationalism_, II, 260). Simultaneously with the gradual abolition of -slavery, we find the elevation of woman, and her redemption from -polygamy, a natural concomitant of slavery. "No ideal," writes Lecky, -"has exercised a more salutary influence than the medival conception of -the Virgin [he means devotion to]. For the first time, woman was -elevated to her rightful position and the sanctity of weakness was -recognized. No longer the slave, the toy of man, no longer associated -only with ideas of degradation and sensuality, woman rose, in the person -of the Virgin Mother, into a new sphere, and became the object of a -reverential homage of which antiquity had no conception. Love was -idealized. The moral character and beauty of female excellence was for -the first time felt ... a new kind of admiration was fostered. Into a -harsh, and ignorant, and benighted age this ideal type infused a -conception of gentleness and purity, unknown to the proudest -civilizations of the past.... In the millions who have sought with no -barren desire to mould their characters into her image ... in the new -sense of honour, in the softening of manners in all walks of society, in -this, and in many ways, we detect its influence. All that was best in -Europe clustered around it [the devotion to Mary], and it is the origin -of many of the purest elements of our civilization" (_History of -Rationalism_, I, 231). - -These are striking words from the pen of a rationalist, and would that -all women understood that the laws of divorce, the first-fruits of the -weakening of the Christian principle, and the pagan renaissance in -Europe, mark also the first steps of their retrogression to the -condition, from which they were uplifted by Christianity. - -After centuries of judicious preparation, the emancipation of all -Christians was proclaimed by Pope Alexander III. "This law alone," -writes Voltaire, "should render his memory precious to all, as his -efforts on behalf of Italian liberty should endear him to Italians" -(_Essai sur les moeurs_). - -Mr. Hallam has satirically remarked in his _History of the Middle Ages_, -page 221, that "though several popes and the clergy enforced manumission -as a duty on laymen, the villeins on church lands were the last to be -emancipated." But he well knows, for he has told us himself on page 217 -of the same work, that "the mildness of ecclesiastical rule and the -desire to obtain the prayers of the monks induced many to attach -themselves as serfs to monasteries." An old German proverb, too, says: -"It is good to live under the crozier." When the monasteries were -suppressed by Henry VIII, we know by Strype's _Chronicles_, that misery -and vagrancy reached terrible proportions. - -But while freely admitting that "in the transition from slavery to -serfdom, and from serfdom to liberty, the Catholic Church was the most -zealous and the most efficient agent" (II, 234), Lecky is loath to admit -that her action in the sphere of political liberty was equally -efficacious, and that this second emancipation could have been -accomplished slowly, and judiciously, as was the first, without the -upheavals, the violence, and the excesses of the sixteenth and the -eighteenth centuries. Yet on page 158, vol. II, he reminds us that "St. -Thomas Aquinas, the ablest theologian of the Middle Ages, distinctly -asserts the right of subjects to withhold obedience from rulers who were -usurpers or unjust." "To the scholastics of those days also," he says, -"we chiefly owe the doctrine of the mediate rights of kings, which is -very remarkable as the embryo of the principles of Locke and Rousseau." -Authority considered in the abstract is of divine origin; but still the -direct and immediate source of regal power is the nation, according to -Suarez. Apparently, the noisy standard-bearers of civil liberties and -political rights, in the eighteenth century, were not exactly pioneers, -but mere plagiarists. - -"As long," continues Lecky, "as the object was not so much to produce -freedom, as to mitigate servitude, the Church was still the champion of -the people.... The balance of power created by the numerous corporations -she created or sanctioned, the reverence for tradition, which created a -network of unwritten customs with the force of public law, the -dependence of the civil on the ecclesiastical power, and the right of -excommunication and deposition, had all contributed to lighten the -pressure of despotism" (II, 235). - -We must array Mr. Lecky against himself, and conclude that the Church -did more than "mitigate servitude"; she also produced freedom by the -institution of these numerous guilds and unwritten laws, many of which -still existed until they were swept away by the Revolution of 1790, -which left nothing standing but an omnipotent tyrant, called the State, -and a defenceless people, _corvable_, _taillable_, and guillotinable, -at mercy. These "unwritten customs with the force of public law" made -Spain the freest country in Europe, until the seventeenth century. To -suppress these _fueros_ of the commons, or unwritten constitutional -liberties, was one of the chief objects of the Spanish Inquisition, -established by royal authority, and aimed chiefly at the bishops, as -champions of popular rights. One of its first victims was the saintly -Archbishop of Toledo. The Basque provinces retain their _fueros_ intact -to this day. - -In France too liberty succumbed with the Public Law of Europe (1648). - -In 1314 Philippe le Bel, in order to obtain subsidies, convoked the -States General (Les Trois Etats). From that time to 1359, they were -convoked seven times. In the first half of the fifteenth century there -were fourteen convocations. From 1506 to 1558 there was an interruption -of fifty-two years. From Henry II to the minority of Louis XIII, the -States met six times. In 1614 was held the last convocation of the Trois -Etats, until 1789. - -Under the despotic Louis XI (1401-83), Philippe de Commines still dared -to write with impunity: "Il n'y a roi ni seigneur qui ait pouvoir, outre -son domaine, de mettre un denier sur ses sujets sans octroi et -consentement, sinon par tyrannie et violence." ("It would be tyranny and -violence for any king or lord to raise a penny of taxation on his -subjects, without their leave and consent.")[23] - -"Nevertheless," writes de Tocqueville, "the elections were not abolished -till 1692 ... the cities still preserved the right to govern themselves. -Until the end of the seventeenth century we find some which were small -republics, in which the magistrates were freely elected by the citizens -and answerable to them, and in which public spirit was active and proud -of its independence" (_Ancien Rgime_, p. 83). - -Mr. Lecky is pleased to attribute to the papal power "some of the worst -calamities--the Crusades, religious persecutions, the worst features of -the semi-religious struggle that convulsed Italy.... It is not -necessary," he continues, "to follow in detail the history of [what he -is pleased to call] the encroachments of the spiritual on the civil -power" (II, 155), though it would be more correct to say the -encroachments of the civil on the religious power. - -But it is very necessary to do so, because though the main object of -these struggles of the spiritual power with despotic kings was the -independence of the Church, it cannot be gainsaid that personal and -civil liberty were thereby enhanced, as Lecky himself admits (p. 235). - -It would be too long to discuss here the Crusades, which merely saved us -from the fate now enjoyed by Islamic countries, or the alleged -persecution of the Manichans, who, under the name of Albigenses, -menaced to disrupt the incipient civilization of Europe by their -subversive tenets of anarchy and collectivism, equally opposed as they -were to ecclesiastical and to civil government. - -The "semi-religious wars," or the so-called "wars of investiture," which -both he and Montesquieu disingenuously confound with the wars of Italian -independence, eminently contributed to the cause of civil liberty in -England, not less than in Italy, and elsewhere. Anselm, Becket, and -Stephen Langton were worthy coadjutors of the policy of St. Gregory VII -and the pioneers of political liberty. No one understands this better -than Mr. Wakeman, the Anglican author of a recent History of the English -Church. - -"It is true," he says, "that Anselm could not have maintained the -struggle [against clerical investiture by laymen] at all if he had not -had the power of Rome at his back. Englishmen quickly saw that the -question between Anselm and Henry was part of a far wider question. They -felt that bound up with the resistance of the archbishop was the sacred -cause of their own liberty. The Church was the one power in England not -yet reduced under the iron heel of the Norman kings. The clergy was the -one body which still dared to dispute their will. To them belonged the -task of handing on the torch of liberty amid the gloom of a tyrannical -age. The despotism of the crown was the special danger to England in the -eleventh and twelfth centuries. It was the Church that, in that time of -crisis, rescued England from slavery. Had there been no Becket, Stephen -Langton, Archbishop of York, would have failed to inspire the barons to -wrest the Charter from John" (p. 105). And on page 108 he continues: -"From the Conquest to the time of Simon de Montfort two great dangers -threatened England, the uncontrolled will of unjust, wicked kings and -the grinding administrative despotism of the government. From both she -was saved by the Church. In her own canon law she opposed to the king's -laws a system which claimed a higher sanction, was based on principles -not less scientific, and was already invested with the halo of -tradition." - -It is this same canon law that the Church in France is, to-day, opposing -to the tyranny of an omnipotent State or parliamentary majority, _alias_ -Grand Orient, which has, since four years, crushed out two of the most -sacred liberties--the right to live in community and the right to -educate one's children in the Christian faith, the faith of our fathers, -"once delivered to the saints." - -The long struggle, between the Popes and the German rulers, who sought -to establish their despotic rule in Italy and enslave the whole Church -by making the bishops of Rome their domestic chaplains, resulted in the -glorious Congress of Venice, 1177, confirmed by the Peace of Constance, -which is the first instance in history of peoples wresting political -liberties from regal tyrants. The Magna Charta is the second in point of -time. - -After a long and seemingly hopeless struggle with Frederick Barbarossa, -Alexander III, to whom this Hohenstaufen had opposed a series of servile -anti-popes, triumphed, and with him triumphed the League of the Italian -Cities, of which he was the unarmed chief. Milan, Brescia, Pavia, and -other cities, which had been razed to the ground by the tyrant, thanked -the Pope for having rendered them their liberty. Alexandria, an -important city of the Piedmont, bears the name of this peaceful -liberator. Voltaire refers to these events in the following terms: -"Barbarossa finished the quarrel by recognizing Pope Alexandria III, -kissing his feet, and holding his stirrup." (Le matre du monde se fit -le palefrenier du fils d'un gueux qui avait vcu d'aumnes.) "God has -permitted," exclaimed the Pope, "that an old man and a priest should -triumph, without fighting, over a terrible and powerful emperor" (_Essai -sur les moeurs_, II, 82).[24] - -In the Eastern or Byzantine Empire, the clergy, at an early date, and -long before the schism of 1054, began to succumb to Csaro-papism, a -revival of the ancient pagan system, in which the temporal ruler was -also the high-priest of his realm, and we well know that neither -personal nor civil liberty ever found foothold in this _Bas Empire_. - -"While the ecclesiastical monarchy of the West," writes a Protestant -historian, "could lead onward the mental development of the nations to -the age of majority, could permit and even promote freedom and variety -within certain limits, the brute force of the Byzantine despotism -stifled and checked every free movement" (Neander, _History of the -Church_, VIII, 244). - -The French kings, even more than the English before Henry VIII, strove -hard to establish the same system, and above all to exempt themselves -from the Christian law of monogamy, which, with personal freedom, -constitutes the great line of demarcation between Eastern, and Western -or Latin civilization. Montesquieu assures us that a neighbour's wife, -unlawfully taken, or their own unjustly repudiated, caused all, or -nearly all, the troubles between the Papacy and the French kings. - -On the whole, however, civil liberty in Europe had reached an advanced -stage in the fifteenth century. Cities and provinces really had more -self-government then, than during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and -eighteenth centuries, more than they have now in some countries, notably -in France. - -The neo-paganism of the Renaissance was one of those periodical revolts -of what St. Paul calls the "carnal mind, which is enmity with God." -"Sapientia carnis inimica est Deo" (Rom. VIII). It was a conjuration -against Christianity and culminated in the Protestant revolt, which for -ever destroyed the unity of Christendom, and set in motion a progressive -scepticism or rationalism, which is Protestantism in its last analysis. - -For more than three centuries English writers have repeated that the -Protestant revolt was a struggle for liberty of conscience, -notwithstanding the incontrovertible fact that all its foremost leaders -were bitterly opposed to religious toleration, and that the sects -relentlessly persecuted each other, as well as the adherents of the -ancient faith. - -Protestantism being, intrinsically, the nursery of rationalism, was -necessarily a diminution of Christianity, and produced a corresponding -diminution of liberty, both personal and civil. At the Congress of -Westphalia, 1648, where, as Macaulay states, "Protestantism reached its -highest point, a point it soon lost and never regained" (_Essay on -Ranke_), was formulated the monstrous axiom _Cujus regio ejus religio_, -which became the common law of Europe in lieu of the hitherto prevailing -rule of One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism. Henceforth, as in pagan days, -each ruler assumed the right to dictate the religious beliefs of his -subjects in the new system of national churches. The "territorial -system" it was called, and represented the net result of a century of -Protestantism. - -There were, indeed, no fiercer despots over men's consciences than the -so-called "reformers." If any doubt let him read their lives. Let him -read of the bloody strife that rent the Netherlands after they had -shaken off the Spanish yoke; how the great Barneveldt fell a victim to -miserable oppression of Gomarists by followers of Arminius, and vice -versa; how Remonstrants persecuted contra-Remonstrants, all on account -of some metaphysico-religico distinctions neither understood clearly. - -Then let us consider the embarkation of the Pilgrim Fathers from -Holland, where they had sought asylum from the rigid conformity enforced -by reformed England. Finding themselves no better off in the republic, -which had emancipated itself, simultaneously, from Spain and Rome, the -Pilgrim Fathers shook the dust of the old world from their feet and -sought a new hemisphere. Surely in the primeval forests men might hope -to interpret Scripture and serve God each according to his own lights. -Not so. No sooner were the camp fires lighted, and the barest -necessities of life provided for, than we find a theocracy of the most -hard and fast type established by the Argonauts of the Golden Fleece of -religious toleration. A veritable office of the Holy Inquisition was -instituted "to search out and deliver to the law" all who "dared to set -up any other exercises than what authority hath set up." While it was -gravely affirmed that "these cases were not a matter of conscience, but -of a civil nature," Sir John Saltonstall wrote from England to the first -Puritan Grand Inquisitors, Wilson and Cotton, remonstrating "at the -things reported daily of your tyranny, as that you fine, whip, and -imprison men for their consciences." - -The acts of the Inquisition dwindle into insignificance if we place in -the other balance the excesses committed, and the penal laws enacted -from 1530 to 1829 against Dissenters and against English Roman Catholics -in England. The Toleration Act of William and Mary, 1701, relieved -Protestant "Recusants," but the penal laws against Catholics were -maintained till 1829, though many had fallen into desuetude. The -principal were: For hearing Mass a fine of 66 pounds and one year's -imprisonment; they were debarred from inheriting or purchasing lands; -they could hold no office nor bring any action in law; they could not -teach under pain of perpetual imprisonment; they could not travel five -miles without a licence, nor appear within ten miles of London under -penalty of 100 pounds; while the universities were closed against them -by test acts. Catholics having been thus deprived of all means of -obtaining a liberal education and raising their voice on behalf of the -truth, Protestant writers, since three hundred years, have been able to -travesty and misrepresent, unchallenged, all the facts connected with -the Reformation. - -In France Louis XIV persecuted the Huguenots in virtue of the _Cujus -regio ejus religio_ (Whose the kingdom his the religion), and in spite -of the protests of Innocent XI, who instructed his legate d'Adda to beg -James II to intercede for them, declaring that "men must be led, not -dragged to the altar." - -The German, Swiss, and Scandinavian rulers made, modified, and changed -the religion of their subjects at will. Of the intolerance of the -Calvanistic Republic of Geneva less said the better. Oppenheim, often -pawned by its needy electors, is said to have changed its form of -Protestantism fifteen times in twenty-one years. In Denmark, where -Lutheranism was paramount and unadulterated, we find, writes Dollinger, -"that the nobility made use of the Reformation to appropriate not only -the Church lands, but that owned by the peasants." "A dog-like servitude -weighs down the Danish peasants, and the citizens, deprived of all -representative power, groan under oppressive burdens" (_Geshicte von -Rugen_, p. 294, quoted by Dollinger). - -"The dwellers on the great estates of the Church were now obliged to -exchange the mild rule of the clergy for the oppressive rule of the -nobility," writes Allen, page 313. "By these laws and enforced compacts -the spoliation and the degradation of once free peasants were -accomplished." In 1702 Frederick IX abolished slavery, but glebe -serfdom, as in Russia, continued till 1804. Until 1766 the education of -the people stood at the lowest grade, and it was not till 1804 that -freedom was conferred on 20,000 families who had been in a state of -serfdom since the Reformation. - -In Sweden we find the great Protestant hero, Gustavus Vasa, -appropriating all the commonage lands of the villages, and even the -weirs, the mines, and all uncultivated lands. Gustavus was, of course, -obliged to share the spoils with his henchmen, whose rule was even more -oppressive, and the peasants became wholly impoverished and degraded. - -In Germany we find the same record of spoliation and oppression of the -peasantry, whose rights there was none to defend since bishops no longer -sat in the Diet. In 1663, 1646, 1654, the personal liberty of the -peasants was progressively annihilated. "Then was forged that slave -chain," writes Boll, "which our peasantry have had to drag within a few -decades of the present day" (_Mecklenburg Geschichte_). In 1820 this -glebe serfdom was abolished by the Grand Duke. - -In Pomerania, united with Brandenburg since the Reformation, -Protestantism was paramount already in 1534, and the fate of the -peasantry was the same. The oppression was so intolerable that even -those whose farms had not been appropriated or turned into grazing -grounds, as in Ireland, fled the country. In the peasant ordinance of -1616 they were declared "serfs without any civil rights," and preachers -were compelled to denounce fugitives from the pulpit. - -The Elector of Brandenburg, it will be recalled, was the first to abjure -Catholicism, and founded what became in 1701 the Prussian monarchy. - -There was no general Diet since 1656. The Estates no longer met, and the -rulers imposed taxes at their will. Peasants fled to Poland, or became -mendicant vagrants or brigands. - -The Lutheran clergy were mere puppets in the hands of their tyrannical -rulers, who even dictated or revised their sermons at times. Prussian -despotism reached high-water mark under Frederick the Great, but he -being a frank and consistent rationalist, who believed "in letting every -man be blessed in his own way," religious persecution ceased. - -In Brunswick and Hanover the spoils of the Church appeased for a time -the greed of reformation princes, but habits of luxury were engendered -by their ill-gotten wealth, and they soon resorted to "money clipping." -The towns lost all their inherited independence. For the decisions of -municipal councils were substituted governmental decrees and circulars, -as in France to-day, and ere long all trace of the ancient freedom of -the Estates was lost. "The clergy," writes Havemann, "had long since -sunk into dependence.... The cities were languishing from lack of public -spirit.... The power of modern states was unfolding itself over the sad -remains of the ancient life and liberty of the Estates." - -In Saxony there was a nip-and-tuck struggle between Lutheranism and -Calvinism in which the rack and the scaffold were freely used by -Lutheran princes, who enforced their form of Protestantism according to -the axiom _Cujus regio ejus religio_. - -On the Church lands in England had lived a dense population of tenant -farmers. When these lands were confiscated by Henry VIII, thousands of -these peasantry became helpless paupers under the new regime. Vagrancy -and mendicancy reached alarming proportions. It was enacted that vagrant -beggars should be enslaved. If they tried to escape they were to be -killed. - -It appeared to Burnet (_History of Reformation_) that the intention of -the nobility was to restore slavery. According to Lecky there were -72,000 executions in the reign of Henry VIII; vagrant beggars furnishing -a large contingent. - -Under Elizabeth charity by taxation or poor rates was resorted to for -the first time in the history of Christendom. - -I think we must admit that liberty, both civil and religious, made -shipwreck at the Reformation, and that the champions of the Protestant -revolt were not exactly actuated by a desire for the well-being and -freedom of conscience of their fellow-men. - -In England all was laboriously reconquered till 1829, when Catholics -were _emancipated_ on their native soil.[25] - -Some Catholic countries, Spain and Italy, were saved from the horrors of -religious wars, but all felt the effects of the new rationalistic -spirit, which, being a diminution of Christianity, was also a diminution -of liberty. They lost many civil liberties, and despotism strengthened -its bands, till the great upheaval of 1790 destroyed the whole fabric of -Europe and inaugurated a system of constitutional representative -government. - -Representative government, our modern fetish, was not unjustly rated by -J. J. Rousseau, when he said "that a people with a representative -government were slaves except during the period of elections, when they -were sovereigns." France to-day is a striking illustration.[26] - -An amusing incident is related by Leroy Beaulieu of a Neapolitan who -hired donkeys to tourists. He was an eager advocate of representative -government in 1869. Questioned as to his reasons, he said that since -twenty-one years he had been hiring donkeys to English, French, and -American tourists, who enjoyed representative governments and were all -rich. Some years later the eminent economist met him again, and -congratulated him on Italy's having acquired a representative -constitution. The disabused peasant bitterly denounced the new regime in -that the burden of taxation had trebled, and that the very donkey he -hired out was taxed. - -If the laws, or at least all important ones, were submitted to -untrammelled public vote, then only might we say that the government was -truly representative. - -In many cases universal suffrage means the tyranny of ignorant, -unprincipled majorities, while nowhere can it oppose an effective -barrier against the accumulation of immense wealth in a few hands, and -the creation of all-powerful oligarchies. When the majorities and the -oligarchies come into collision, liberty will succumb. There will be -more than one Bridge of Sighs. - -It is in vain that false philosophers would persuade us that altruism, -some vague "moral element of Christianism," will combine with -rationalism and perpetuate our Christian civilization in some -transcendent form. - -Christian civilization and morality are intimately and indissolubly -connected with Christian dogma. The Fatherhood of God, Jupiter Optimus, -was not unknown to the ancients, but the brotherhood of man, involving -personal liberty and also civil liberty by extension, is essentially a -Christian predicate, and is based on the dogma of the Incarnation. - -The lofty contempt our modern rationalists express for the fierce -controversy waged over two Greek vowels by the partisans of _Homoousion_ -and _Homoiousion_ merely betrays their ignorance of its vital -importance. On that dogma, so nobly maintained by the See of Peter and -Athanasius, rests our whole fabric of Christian civilization, the -brotherhood of man, and its logical sequence, freedom from slavery. - -It is as absurd to suppose that the "moral element of Christianity" will -continue to exist after the erosion of Christian dogma, as to expect -that a tree we have hewn down will continue to bear fruit. It may indeed -for a time remain verdant, and even put forth new shoots, just as we -often see the loveliest flowers and fruits of Christianity in the lives -and characters of individuals with whom the Christian faith has almost -ceased to exist. But let us not be deceived. The lingering sap will -cease to flow, and the last semblance of life will fade away. "The -elements of dissolution have been multiplying all around us," writes -Lecky. And when rationalism or secularism, or neo-paganism in other -words, which has already corroded Christendom to so great an extent, -shall have accomplished its work of disintegration with the aid of -godless schools and gross literature, society will, I repeat, be -compelled to restore Christianity, or slavery, or perish. - - - - -CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION - - -"At the end of the fourth century," writes Guizot, "the Church saved -Christianity ... resisted the internal dissolution of the Empire and the -barbarians, and became the bond, the medium, and the principle of -civilization.... Had the Church not existed the whole world must have -been abandoned to purely material force" (_History of Civilization_, I, -38).... "When all was chaos, when every great social combination was -vanishing, the Church proclaimed the unity of her doctrine and the -universality of her right; this is a great and powerful fact which has -rendered immense service to humanity" (_ibid._, II, 19). - -This unity was indeed the great factor in European civilization. On it -the new civil societies, like wild olive branches, were grafted, so to -speak. It became the bond of political unity, a kind of centripetal -force, we may say, and the redemption from that inordinate love of -independence which characterized the barbarians. - -Consequently the new civil societies made the maintenance of religious -unity the foremost object of their policy. It became the public law of -all Europe and the common law of each state. To impugn this unity was -considered a most heinous offence not against God only, but against the -nation and against all Christendom. - -"Thus," writes another great Protestant, "Christianity became -crystallized into a single bond embracing all nations, and giving to all -life, civilization, and all the riches of the mind" (Hurter, _Life of -Innocent III_, I, 38). - -A corollary of this system of an universal Christian society was the -recognition of a supreme tribunal. "One of the most elevated principles -of the age," writes the same eminent German, "was that, in the struggles -between the peoples and their rulers, there should be a superior -authority charged to recall laws not made by men, though their -interpreter were himself a man." Referring to the fiercely contested -election of Othon, he continues: "Othon was the first to have recourse -to Rome, the tribunal with whom rested the decision in these matters, -when the parties did not wish to resort to the arbitrament of war." - -In France we find the great Suger, Abbot of St. Denis, remonstrating -with the Bishop of the free chartered city of Beauvais, brother of the -King, with whom he was often at odds. - -"I beseech you not to raise a guilty hand against the King ... for you -must see the consequences of armed insurrection against the King, -especially if it be without consulting the Sovereign Pontiff.... If the -King, drawn aside by evil counsellors, has not acted rightly, it was -proper to have informed him by the bishops and notables, or rather by -our Holy Father the Pope, who is at the head of the whole Church, and -could easily have reconciled all differences." - -In England we have many instances of both laymen and clergy appealing to -the arbitrament of the Papacy. - -"The recognition of some principle of right, powerful enough to form a -bond of lasting concord, has always been the dream of statesmen and -philosophers," writes Lecky. "Hildebrand sought it in the supremacy of -the spiritual power, and in the consequent ascendency of moral law" -(_History of Rationalism_, 245). - -Voltaire pays homage to this public policy of the Middle Ages. "The -interests of the human race required a controlling power to restrain -sovereigns and protect the lives of peoples. This controlling power of -religion could well be placed in the hands of the Papacy. The Sovereign -Pontiffs warning princes and people of their duties, appeasing quarrels, -rebuking crimes, might always have been regarded as the images of God on -earth. But men, alas, are reduced to the protection of laws without -force" (_Essai sur les moeurs_, II). - -He describes what really did exist for centuries, though, of course, -papal arbitration was not always efficacious. Every great institution -needs time to develop and mature. It would not be great were it -otherwise. Moreover there were, unfortunately, many troublous times -between the sixth and the fifteenth century, in which the Papacy itself -was captive, buffeted, demeaned, and exiled by the struggles and -ambitions of turbulent political factions in Rome itself. The very day -on which Gregory VII excommunicated the German Emperor, he was seized -and imprisoned by a noble Roman bandit, until his people were able to -deliver him by main force. - -"Another corollary of this universal Christian Society was that right -found a protector in the common Father of the faithful; in the grand -idea of a supreme chief who without employing material force judged in -last resort.... What great misfortunes would France and all Europe have -been spared if, in the reign of Louis XVI, an Innocent III had been -Pope. His rle would have been to save the lives of the people" -(Hurter's _Innocent III_, II, 200-23). To German Protestant writers like -Hurter, Voigt, Neander, etc., is due the honour of vindicating the true -rle of the Papacy in the Middle Ages. - -The rights of suzerainty exercised by the Papacy also formed part of the -public law of Europe. In those wild, lawless days, when robber barons -enjoyed the privilege of being highwaymen on their own estates, and -often extended their depredations to those of their neighbours, property -rights had no sanction, and the weaker succumbed to the stronger in -virtue of the "fist right," which we now translate variously by "the -right of the strongest," political "majorities," and the "survival of -the fittest." - -The practice then arose among weak owners of dedicating their lands to -the Church, in order to obtain spiritual or moral protection against the -brute force of stronger neighbours. What private owners did in a small -way was done by princes on a larger scale. - -Referring to the peculiar incidents when roving Norman pirates, in -possession of Sicily and Naples, seized the person of the Pope and -insisted on becoming his vassal, Voltaire writes as follows:--"Robert -Guiscard, wishing to be independent of the German Emperor, resorted to a -precaution which private owners took in those days of trouble and -rapine. The latter gave their property to the Church under the name of -Oblata, and, paying a slight tax, continued to enjoy the use of it. The -Normans resorted to this custom, placing under the protection of the -Church in the hands of Nicholas II (1059) not only what they held, but -also their future conquests (on the Saracens). This homage was an act of -political piety like Peter's Pence; the two pence of gold paid by the -Kings of Portugal; like the voluntary submission of so many kingdoms" -(_Essai sur les moeurs_, II, 44). - -It was thus that England became a fief of the Holy See, a most -unfortunate circumstance, as the temporal pecuniary obligations arising -therefrom were exploited to estrange the English from the See of Peter, -in the following centuries. - -"In 1329," continues Voltaire, "the King of Sweden, who wished to -conquer Denmark, addressed the Pope as follows: 'Your Holiness knows -that Denmark depends on the Roman See and not on the German Emperor.' -... I only wish to show," Voltaire adds, "how every prince who wished to -recover or usurp a domain appealed to the Pope.... In this case the Pope -defended Denmark, and said he could only decide on the justice of the -case when the parties had appeared before his tribunal, according to the -ancient usage." - -Nor did Christians alone appeal to this spiritual tribunal. The bull of -Innocent III, cited by Hurter, is an excellent exponent of the mind of -the Church in all times. "As they (the Jews) claim our succour against -their persecutors, we take them under our special protection, following -in this the example of our predecessors, Calixtus, Eugenius, Alexander, -Clement, and Celestin. We forbid every one to force a Jew to be -baptized, for he who is compelled cannot be said to have the faith. No -Christian must dare commit any violence against them, nor seize their -property, without a legal judgment. Let no one trouble them on their -feast days by striking or throwing stones at them," etc. - -It will be objected that the fulcrum of Western civilization was a -spiritual despotism. But these terms exclude each other. Can we call an -authority despotic which had no material force, and rested only on a -divine commission and the common sense of prince and people, recognizing -its credentials--on public opinion in fact? - -It was a fundamental law of every state that any one, no matter what his -rank, who impugned the Unity of the Faith, or committed offences so -heinous as to justify the supposition that he was no longer a Christian, -fell under the ban of the Church and became outlawed, if at the end of a -year he had not been absolved. In his _Historia Imperatorum_ Schafnaburg -explains the wintry flight of Henry IV across the Alps to Canossa by his -eagerness to be absolved before the year had revolved, because otherwise -he would have forfeited his crown. _Ut ante hanc diem non absolveretur, -deinceps juxta Palatinas leges indignus regio honore habeatur._ - -Three causes were generally admitted as sufficient for the -excommunication of a sovereign. First, if he fell from the faith. -Second, if he ravaged or seized ecclesiastical lands or desecrated -churches. Third, if he repudiated his own wife or appropriated his -neighbour's. This latter point, as Voltaire and Montesquieu have pointed -out, was the cause of nearly all the quarrels between the French kings -and the Papacy, a fact which our Jacobins, in the Chambers and -elsewhere, deliberately ignore, when they mendaciously misrepresent the -Church as having constantly encroached on the civil power. The case of -Philippe Augustus and the hapless Ingleburge of Denmark was a test case, -so to speak. - -"It was not," writes Hurter, "a question of contested claims of the -Papacy, but of this great question, Is the sovereign subject to the laws -of Christianity? It had to be decided whether the royal will should -triumph or not over the force regarded as constituting the unity of -Christendom" (_Life of Innocent III_). Montesquieu's testimony is -unimpeachable when he testifies that this Public Law of Europe was -universally recognized. "All the sovereigns," he writes, "with -inconceivable blindness, themselves accredited and sanctioned, in public -opinion, which had no force except by it." - -If the laws against heretics, who were to our forefathers what the -anarchists are to us, were oppressive, some of the blame should surely -be apportioned to the laymen who sat in the mixed assemblies in which -they were made. "Almost all Europe, for many centuries, was deluged in -bloodshed at the direct instigation or with the full approval of the -ecclesiastical authorities." It is in this disingenuous way that Lecky -refers to the operations of the Public Law of Europe against the -Albigenses or Manichans of Provence, and probably to the wars of -Italian independence and the Thirty Years War. Until the thirteenth -century he assures us that practically no persecutions (prosecutions) -against heretics occurred. It was then that the Public Law of Europe -began to be trampled on by sectarians who adopted and propagated -Gnostic, Paulician, Manichan, and other subversive theories, imported -from the East by Semitic-Islamic settlers in the fair lands of Provence. -Spain and Italy, the countries in which the Public Law of Europe was -maintained, were the only ones who were spared the horrors of civil -religious wars. They were saved by inquisitions, it will be retorted. - -Without seeking to defend the system, we may be permitted to inquire -whether it were not preferable, at that time, to execute some -ringleaders of religious revolt (30,000 in three centuries is a fair -estimate), than to deluge whole countries in blood for many decades, -about controversies which not one in a million could possibly grasp? -Lecky the rationalist assures us that "the overwhelming majority of the -human race, necessarily, accept their opinions from authority. Avowedly -like Catholics, or unconsciously like Protestants. They have neither -time nor opportunity (nor capacity) to examine for themselves" (_History -of Rationalism_, I, 101). - -Does any one seriously believe that the Camisards were fighting for -predestination and infant damnation, which have been shelved recently by -Presbyterians in the United States? - -In England, France, Germany, everywhere, greed and political ambition -were the incentives; the passions of ignorant masses were merely used as -a means. Back of both, and behind all, we descry secret societies, the -true pandemoniums, where these revolts are organized, and whence Mammon, -"the least-erected spirit that fell," Moloch, "horrid king besmeared -with blood," Belial, and all that crew, described by Milton, are sent -forth to execute the behests of the eternal enmity between "the -serpent's seed and the seed of the woman." - -In this unholy struggle "all the bonds of cohesion on which political -organization depended were weakened or destroyed," writes Lecky. "The -spirit of private judgment had descended to those totally incapable of -self-government, and lashed their passions into the wildest fury" -(_History of Rationalism_, p. 239). Voltaire is even less complimentary. -He describes the Hussites as "wild beasts whom the severity of the -emperor had roused to furor." - -In Germany, apostate ecclesiastical and secular electors were seeking -their own aggrandizement. Bishoprics with their manses were converted -into hereditary principalities. As to their Swedish ally, Gustavus -Adolphus, I refer my readers to the judgment of a Protestant admirer of -this doughty champion of the Reformation. On page 329 of _Thirty Years -War_ Schiller writes as follows:-- - -"The last, the greatest service, Gustavus Adolphus could render to -religious and civil liberty was to die (1632, at battle of Lutzen).... -It was no longer possible to doubt that he was seeking to establish -himself in Germany, not as a protector, but as a conqueror. Already -Augsburg boasted that it had been chosen as the capital of the new -monarchy. The Protestant princes, his allies, made claims which could -only be satisfied by despoiling the Catholics. It is then permitted to -conclude that like the barbarian hordes of yore, he intended to divide -the conquered provinces of Germany among the Swedish chiefs of his army. -His conduct towards the unfortunate Elector Palatine, Frederick V, is -unworthy of a hero. The Palatinate was in his hands, justice and honour -required that he return it to the legitimate sovereign. But to avoid -doing so he had recourse to subtleties which make us blush for him." - -It is only fair to add that Gustavus did finally restore the Palatinate -to Frederick, but as a fief of the Swedish crown. - -What, I ask, has been gained by the overthrow of the Public Law of -Europe? For this was waged the Thirty Years War, one of the most cruel -the world has known. Atrocities were committed on both sides, and the -_tu quoque_ argument is very foolish. But if it be admitted that -defensive war is always just and righteous, we must allow that the -Catholics were justified in fighting for their public law. They were in -possession since more than twelve centuries, and were resisting -assailants who showed no quarter, and who robbed them of their churches -and persecuted them, relentlessly, whenever they gained the upper hand, -just as the Puritans did in Maryland. And what was the net result of the -Thirty Years War? The loss of liberty both civil and religious. The -German electors, ecclesiastical as well as secular, had been but -administrators of free citizens, who now became subjects with little or -no voice in the government. As to religious liberty, the new axiom -_Cujus regio ejus religio_ was substituted for One Lord One Faith. The -ruler of each realm became the infallible Pontiff of his subjects. "If -any gratitude from this scandalous and accursed world were to be gained, -and I, Martin Luther, had taught and done nothing else than this, that I -have enlightened and adorned the temporal authority, for this alone -should it be thankful to me, since even my worst enemies know that a -like understanding as to the temporal authority was completely concealed -under the Papacy" (Walch's _Augs._, XIV, p. 520). - -In this same connexion Schiller makes the following statement. "No -country changed religion oftener than the Palatinate. Unhappy -weathercock of the political and religious versatility of its -sovereigns, it had twice been forced to embrace the doctrines of Luther -and then to abandon them for those of Calvin. Frederick III deserted the -Confession of Augsburg, but his son re-established it by most violent -and unjust measures. After closing all the Calvinist temples and exiling -the ministers and school teachers, he ordered by his will that his son -should be brought up by Lutherans; his brother, however, annulled this -will and became regent under the young Frederick IV, who was confided to -Calvinists with strict orders to destroy in his mind the "heretical -doctrines of Luther by all means, by beating and whipping even." It is -easy to guess how subjects were treated when the heir to the throne was -thus tyrannized over" (_Thirty Years War_, p. 40). - -What, I ask, has Europe gained by the overthrow of its public law? -Strife, anarchy, nihilism in religion as in philosophy. After centuries -of dabbling, floundering, and blundering, we are again seeking to devise -some principle of unity, some Amphictyonic Council to supplement the -illusory balance of power; to set up a Court of Arbitration to replace -the one that really did exist in the Middle Ages and functioned as well -as could be expected in those days of liquescence. - -All in vain. The grand Peace Congress from which the Papacy was excluded -was followed, almost immediately, by two most cruel wars which were -pre-eminently subjects for arbitration. Men will submit to this court -questions about which they do not care enough to fight about them, but -these subjects only will they submit to arbitration. Unless the Lord -build the house, in vain they labour who build. - -There is only one tribunal that can ever arbitrate efficaciously, and -this is the one which presided at the Genesis of Christendom.[27] - -Socialists and anarchists, without having pondered the passage from -Guizot I quoted in beginning this chapter, understand perfectly that our -Western or Christian civilization is grounded on the unity of one Holy -Catholic Church, and the destruction of the social structure being the -object of their ambition, they very logically direct all their efforts -to destroying this foundation. - -The work of disintegration was begun in the sixteenth century. -"Socinius, the most iconoclastic of Protestants, predicted that the -seditious doctrines by which Protestants supported their cause would -lead to the disintegration of society" (_History of Rationalism_, II, -239). - -This work of disintegration has made rapid progress since the eighteenth -century in virtue of the law of accelerated movement. The French -Revolution, like the Protestant revolt, was essentially a work of -disintegration. The successors of the Masonic Jacobins of 1790 openly -proclaim their set purpose of completing the work begun by the _grands -anctres_ of bloody memory. - -"The Revolution," wrote Renan (in the preface to _Questions -contemporaines_), "has disintegrated everything, broken up all -organizations, excepting only the Catholic Church. The clergy alone -have remained organized outside the State. As the cities, in the days of -the ruin of the Roman Empire, chose bishops for their representatives, -so in our provinces the bishops will soon be the only leaders left in a -dismantled society." - -The object of the Separation Law was to accomplish the disintegration of -the Church, the only organized body, outside the State, which the -Revolution failed to disintegrate, because Pius VI rejected, _in toto_, -the civil constitution of the clergy. These noble French priests were -drowned, guillotined, proscribed, and imprisoned by tens of thousands, -but the Church in France maintained the principle of life strong within -her, and on the third day she rose again. - -What violence failed to accomplish a century ago, the Third Republic -hoped to compass by guile and fraud, labelled liberty and legality. - -The true purpose of the Law of Separation was to break up the Church -into an ever-increasing number of viviparous _Associations cultuelles_, -independent of all ecclesiastical control. - -The successor of Pius VI, Ithuriel-like, has pierced the thin disguise -of the toad lurking in the purlieus of Eden.[28] Instead of a divided -demoralized clergy, the Masonic Jacobins are confronted by the serried -ranks of an invincible phalanx. - -"At the end of the fourth century," writes Guizot, "it was the Church -with its magistrates, its institutions, and its power that vigorously -resisted the internal dissolution of the empire and of the barbarians, -and became the bond, the medium, and the principle of civilization -between the Roman and the barbarian worlds" (_History of Civilization_). - -Now, as in the fourth century, we are menaced with social dissolution. -The barbarians are at our gates, nay, in our midst, and not in France -alone, by any means. A ferocious, self-seeking atheistic materialism is -disrupting Christendom. And let us not be deceived. Societies are never -saved and regenerated except by their generating principle; and the -generating principle of Western civilization is Christianity. - -Therefore, I repeat, that society will be compelled, in self-defence, to -restore Christianity or slavery, in some form; State Socialism -perhaps--or perish. - -_21st November, 1906._ - - - - -APPENDIX - - - PAGE 29 - - SANCE DU 28 DECEMBRE, 1906. - - Au _Snat Journal Officiel_, page 1236. - -M. DELAHAYE: "M. Briand's law is older than himself. We find traces of -it in all the Masonic convents.... Gentlemen, why are we going to vote -this additional law, as we did the first Separation Law, without -changing an iota?... Because the lodges have so decided. - -"The Convent, the public should be told, is the general assembly of the -lodges.... The Convent, called during the Revolution _La Convention_, is -the source of all our evils. On 12 November, 1904, brother Lafferre (a -senator), thirty-third degree, read the following _ordre du jour_: 'The -general assembly of the Grand Orient addresses to M. Combes warm -assurances of sympathy and confidence, and begs him to persevere -courageously in the struggle to defend the Republic against clericalism, -and accomplish social, military, and fiscal reforms. The Assembly -demands that at the session of January, 1905, Separation and the -_retraites ouvrires_ be discussed simultaneously.'" - -M. Lafferre and the reporter of the new Separation Law here applauded -ironically. - -M. Delahaye continued: "Let us pass to the Convent of 1905, sance 23 -September, 1905. - -"Le Frre Roret, reporter (of the Masonic Commission): ... A wish more -important, and which will be adopted without discussion, emanates from -the Congress of the region of Paris. It regards the Separation and has -been slightly modified by the (Masonic) Commission (of political and -social studies). The Congress demands that the Separation Law voted in -the Chambers be amended by the Senate. Your Commission judges that it is -most important that this law be voted immediately and promulgated before -the legislative elections (May, 1906), so that the country may see that -it is a liberal law and not at all vexatious.... Your Commission -proposes the following vote: 'The Convent emits the wish that the law, -imperfect but perfectible, be adopted by the Senate as rapidly as -possible and promulgated before the elections, but that it be amended -later by the Republican Parliament and rendered more distinctly -_laque_.'" - -M. Delahaye continued: "It is well to notice that laic has two meanings. -For us it means not ecclesiastic; for Freemasons it means atheistic, -anti-Catholic.... I have proved, incontestably, that M. Briand is here -as the mouthpiece of Freemasonry, to which he says he does not -belong.... There is a privileged Congregation in France which holds -property as a _socit immobilire_ of the Grand Orient by 'interposed -persons.' This Congregation is about to sell its real estate of the Rue -Cadet (Paris). It received an offer of 1,250,000 francs. The State -offers to buy it for 1,300,000 francs, to be used as a telephone -office.... I wish to know why the State does not simply expropriate this -Congregation, seeing that it is illegal, because this _socit -immobilire_ is simply a _personne interpose_?... Gentlemen, the book -just published by one of your former friends, M. Flourens (ex-minister), -_La France Conquise Edward VII and Clemenceau_, is going to enlighten -rulers deaf to the voice of the Pope (who had condemned Masonry since -1728). The Bourbons and the French nobility, whom Freemasonry had doomed -to death, were dancing on the first floor of the lodges, while overhead -sentence was being passed on them.... In spite of many changes of -government since a century, we are descending steadily, because your -principles, destructive of family, country, and private property, have -entered into our legislation.... We have a fine army, but at your touch -it becomes no more than a national guard. We have many vessels, but no -navy.... Ere long kings and emperors, who now utilize Freemasonry, will -end by saying, 'This instrument is very dangerous.'" - -There were cries of "_Clture, clture_." The discussion was closed. No -one replied to M. Delahaye. - - - PAGES 113-125 - -Commenting on the annual Convent of the Grand Orient, September, 1906, -the _Journal de Gnve_, the leading Swiss Protestant daily, made the -following statements:-- - - - "LE RLE DE LA MAONNERIE - - "_Septembre, 1906._ - - "Il ne faut pas se dissimuler que la franc-maonnerie tient entre - ses mains les destines du pays (la France). Quoiqu'elle ne compte - que vingt-six mille adhrents, elle dirige sa guise la politique - franaise. Toutes les lois dont le catholicisme se plaint si - amrement ont t d'abord labores dans ses convents. Elle les a - imposes au gouvernement et aux Chambres. Elle dictera toutes les - mesures qui seront destines en assurer l'application. Nul n'en - doute, et personne, non pas mme les plus indpendants, n'oserait - heurter de front sa volont souveraine. Il serait aussitt bris, - celui qui se permettrait seulement de la mconnatre. - - "Jamais, depuis l'poque o Rome commandait aux rois et aux - princes, on ne vit pareille puissance. Et cette puissance est - d'autant plus forte, cette heure, qu'elle vient de subir - victorieusement une crise redoutable. Aprs l'affaire des fiches, - on croyait la maonnerie morte, tout au moins bien malade; mais, - force d'audace, elle a triomph de ses ennemis, qui dj sonnaient - joyeusement l'hallali. Les deux tiers des membres de la Chambre - actuelle sont francs-maons. - - "La volont de la franc maonnerie, nul ne l'ignore plus, c'est de - dtruire le catholicisme en France. Elle se dresse comme une Eglise - contre l'Eglise de Rome. Elle n'aura ni cesse ni rpit, qu'elle ne - l'ait jete bas, qu'elle n'en ait sem les poussires au vent. Tous - ses ressorts sont uniquement tendus vers ce but. Les autres - religions, si mme elle ne les ignore momentanment, elle parat - les mnager. Elle se dit sans doute que, le catholicisme ayant - rendu l'me sous son treinte, l'anantissement des autres - confessions ne serait pour elle que jeu d'enfant. - - "Mais l'adversaire n'est pas encore terrass, auquel elle s'tait - attaque. Il est comme Ante, qui, toutes les fois qu'il touchait - le sol, retrouvait de nouvelles forces. Elle s'en rend bien compte. - C'est pourquoi, crainte que d'un tour de reins dsespr il ne se - dresse dans toute sa vigueur, elle n'a point pouss jusqu'ici la - lutte fond. Parfois mme elle semble accorder une trve; elle - rentre dans ses quartiers. Mais, ds que la vigilance des - catholiques lui parat suffisamment endormie, elle se jette de - nouveau sur sa proie. Elle continuera cette tactique jusqu'au - triomphe dfinitif. - - "Ce triomphe est-il prochain ou lointain? Pour le moment, la - dfiance de Rome est bien veille, et Pie X n'est peut-tre pas de - ces hommes qui se laissent prendre aux feints dsarmements. - - "Quelques-uns se demanderont comment il peut se faire qu'une - minorit si faible gouverne ainsi tout un pays. C'est pourtant trs - simple. D'abord les maons sont troitement unis; et l'union fit - toujours la force. Ensuite, appartenant tous aux classes moyennes, - ils exercent par leur situation personnelle, par leurs - fonctions--tous les gros bonnets de l'administration sont affilis - la franc-maonnerie--une influence trs grande. L'on peut dire - qu'ils disposent de toutes les faveurs gouvernementales; et ces - faveurs, ils ne les distribuent qu' bon escient. Non seulement - donc ils tiennent leur discrtion tous ceux qui occupent un poste - quelconque de l'Etat, mais encore tous ceux qui aspirent en - occuper un, et ils sont lgion. a leur fait une arme formidable, - discipline par l'intrt. - - "On comprend que, dans ces conditions, la franc-maonnerie n'ait - qu' faire un signe aux pouvoirs publics pour qu'elle soit - immdiatement obie. Quoi qu'elle dcide, ce sera excut sur - l'heure. - - "La franc-maonnerie, dit-il, sait mieux que le gouvernement - lui-mme, quelle somme de rsistance, en ce moment, le catholicisme - peut opposer un assault dcisif. Elle n'ignore pas que, quoiqu'il - soit trs branl, il serait trs hasardeux de le vouloir abattre - d'un dernier coup. Elle craint surtout que, si elle ne parvenait - pas lui faire exhaler le soupir suprme, il ne retrouvt une - nouvelle vie, la volont et l'nergie de vaincre son tour. - - "La franc-maonnerie se gardera de compromettre, dans une lutte - chanceuse, les fruits de longs efforts. Elle a emprunt sa devise - Rome: 'Patiens quia terna,' et elle attendra qu'elle puisse - frapper coup sr. Les probabilits sont donc pour que, tout en - s'opposant ce que des relations soient renoues avec le - Saint-Sige, elle ne chassera pas les catholiques de leurs derniers - retranchements, c'est--dire de leurs glises; elle les y laissera - tranquilles, jusqu'au jour o, par un nouveau coup d'audace, elle - s'en emparera. - - "Un de ses orateurs a prophtis qu'avant peu on entendrait des - 'batteries d'allgresse' sous les votes de Notre-Dame; et les - prophties maonniques ne se sontelles pas souvent ralises?" - - - PAGE 204 - - On November 9th, 1906, M. Briand described the Status of the Church - in France as follows (_Officiel_, 2459): "The churches are affected - to public worship and must remain so indefinitely.... It is our - duty to leave them open.... Reunions are possible, you may have - them. The priest may live in direct communication with the people, - he may receive manual gifts. Perhaps the Catholic hierarchy about - which you are so much concerned will suffer. Perhaps this faculty - left to the faithful to live with their priest haphazard (_au - hasard de la rencontre_) will soon dry up the revenues of the - priests; it will certainly dry up those of the bishops." - - It is well also to recall here the words pronounced by M. Briand, - October 17th, 1905 (_Journal Officiel_, 1223), regarding the - _Associations cultuelles_: "They will be hardly born on the 11th - December, 1906. They will not have had time to obtain funds. If we - deprive them of the patrimony of the _fabriques_ and _menses - episcopales_ it will be impossible for them to maintain public - worship, and the faithful will be unable to practise their - religion." - - Yet the Government impudently declares to-day that the Catholics - are hard to please! - - On December 1st, 1906, M. Briand sent forth an ukase commanding - every priest to consider public worship assimilated to public - meetings, and to make a declaration to the mayor according to the - law of 1881. - - Now the law of 1905 says that public worship cannot be regulated by - the law of 1881. Moreover, this law requires the constitution of a - bureau, and that a declaration be made before each meeting - twenty-four hours in advance. M. Briand took upon himself to modify - the law (_l'assouplir_) and to say no bureau was necessary, and - that one declaration would do for a year! The clergy made no - declarations. A few were made by Anarchists and Freemasons. - - From the 12th to the 20th December the police were kept busy making - thousands of _procs verbaux_ all over France. This idea of making - 65,000 prosecutions every day was soon found to be grotesque and - impracticable. Moreover, under the law of 1881 it is the owner of - the public hall or the caf or cabaret who is prosecuted for not - making the required declaration. The State and the communes being - now the alleged owners of the churches since December 11th, 1906, - _they_ should have been prosecuted and not the priests. This same - M. Briand, who thus modified the law of 1881, had declared in the - Chambers: "Common right no longer exists if you interpret it - otherwise than the law" (November 9th, _Journal Officiel_, p. - 2438). - - Since December 11th, 1906, the Church in France is very much in the - condition of the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. - - On December 29th, 1906, a new Law of Separation was passed. It - confers on 36,000 mayors the right to invest 36,000 priests with a - precarious use of Church edifices, _sauf dsaffection_. The - time-limit is to be decided, _ l'amiable_, between the mayors and - their nominees. Truly this is the _reductio ad absurdum_ of - separation. - - M. Briand assures us "that the mayor will accord the church to the - _cur_ most capable of keeping it in good condition" (_Journal - Officiel_, p. 3398, December 21st, 1906). This is lay orthodoxy. - "As to the period of enjoyment, it is impossible to fix it by law," - says M. Briand, "to one, two, or three years" (_Officiel_, p. - 3407), "'ce sont des questions d'espce qui seront tranches selon - les communes'; it will vary in each commune." - - To this M. Ribot replied: "'C'est l'anarchie dans 36,000 communes.' - At every election this question will be raised, Shall we leave the - church to the _cur_ or not? You are making of this question, - eminently a governmental one, a municipal question, given over to - dissensions, competitions, and coteries" (_Officiel_, p. 3407). - - The new Law of Separation (December 29th) abolishes the - sequestration ordered on December 11th of all Church revenues, - etc., till December, 1907. It turns over immediately to the - communes and to lay institutions all the property of the Church. - Yet on November 9th (_Journal Officiel_, p. 2461) M. Briand stoutly - resisted the Left, clamouring for this very thing. "We must not - raise illusory hopes," he said. - - "No," cried a deputy, "it will be like the milliard of the - Congregations." - - "There are fourteen millions of revenue," continued M. Briand," -...but are they 'liquid,' free of charges? The communes are - stretching out their hands to receive. You will give them what? - Nests of lawsuits. Yes, nests of vipers that will poison the - communes with their venom." - - To explain this change of policy M. Briand said: "We have acquired - the certitude that the situation is without issue. It was - impossible to expect that during the next year regular associations - (of 1905) will be constituted to claim this property of the - _fabriques_. We cannot remain another whole year in this - uncertainty" (_Journal Officiel_, p. 3396, December 21st). A French - proverb says: "Souvent femme varie bien fou qui s'y fie." - - And in the same session M. Briand, to explain why it was not - possible to lend the churches to _curs_ under the new law for any - definite time, said: "In fixing no term the Government is logical. - Having a law to execute (that of 1905), and having the conviction - that the Church will end by accepting it, we could not give to - uncontrolled associations under the law of 1901, which are a - concession to the Church, the same advantages as to _Associations - cultuelles_" (1905) (_Journal Officiel_, p. 3407, December 21st, - 1906). - - The new law of December 28th, 1906, says the use of the churches - can be obtained by the declaration of the _cur_ individually, or - of an association formed according to the law of 1901, or rather - according to _certain_ articles of this law _only_. The Church may - not avail herself of the articles which permit the formation of - associations called "of public utility"--like the S.P.A., for - instance. - - This is what these Jacobins understand by combating the Church. A - _coup de libert_ by dint of liberty! They speak of giving _droit - commun_, common right. But they never do so. The Church is excluded - from the right of forming _Associations d'utilit publique_ - conferred by the law of 1901, though placed under this law since - December 28th, 1906. The new law is only a makeshift. M. Briand - said (21st December, p. 3398, _Journal Officiel_): "Evidently this - legislation is not definitive. Turn the pages of history up to the - Revolution; you will see that the Convention had the same - difficulties as we to-day. See the number of laws voted in the year - 1795 alone" (there were eleven Laws of Separation). Just so. France - stands where she did in 1795. - - PAGE 228 - - RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN CATHOLIC MARYLAND - - Confirmed by the Lord - Proprietary by an instrument - under his hand & seale. - - PHILLIP CALVERT. - 26th August 1650. - - Enacted & made at a - Geall Session held 1 & - 20 day of Aprill Anno D[~m] - 1649 as followeth viz. - - An act concerning Religion. - - fforasmuch as in a well - governed & Xpian Co[~m]un Wealth matters concerning Religion and - the honor of God ought in the first place to bee taken into serious - consideracon & endeavoured to bee settled. Be it therefore ordered - and enacted by the Right Hoble Cecilius Lord Baron of Baltemore - absolute Lord Proprietary of this Province with the advice & - consent of this Generall Assembly. That whatsoever 'pson or 'psons - within this province & the Islands thereunto belonging shall from - henceforth blaspheme God that is curse him or deny our Saviour - Jesus Christ to be the sonne of God, or shall deny the holy Trinity - or the unity of the Godhead, or shall use or utter any reproachfull - speeches concerning the said Holy Trinity shal be punished with - death & confiscation to the lord Proprietary and his heirs.... - - And bee it also further enacted by the same authority advise and - assent that whatsoever 'pson or 'psons shall from henceforth uppon - any occasion of offense or otherwise in a reproachful manner or way - declare call or denominate any 'pson or 'psons whatsoever, - inhabiting residing or traffiqueing or commerceing within this - Province or within any of the Ports Harbors Creeks or Havens to the - same belonging, an heritik, Scismatick Idolater, puritan, - Independent, Calvenist, Anabaptist Brownist Antimmoniam, Barrowist - Roundhead, Sepatist Presbiterian, popish prest, Jesuite, Jesuited - papist or any other name or terme in a reproachful manner relating - to matter of Religion shall for every such offense, forfeit and - loose the some of tenne shillings one half thereof to be paid unto - the person of whom such reproachfull words are or shall be spoken - and the other half thereof to the Lord Proprietary.... And whereas - the inforceing of the Conscience in matters of religion hath - frequently fallen out to be of dangerous Consequence in these - Commonwealths where it hath been practised. And for the more quiet - and peacable govt of this Province & the better to pserve - mutuall Love & Amity amongst the inhabitants thereof. Be it - therefore also by the L[-o] Proprietary with the advice and consent - of this Assembly Ordeynd & enacted that noe persons whatsoever - within this province or the Islands Ports Harbors Creeks thereunto - belonging professing to believe in Jesus Christ shall from - henceforth bee any waies troubled Molested or discountenanced for - or in respect of his or her religion nor in the free exercise - thereof within this province ... nor any way compelled to the - beliefe or exercise of any other Religion against his or her - consent soe as they be not unfaithfull to the Lord Proprietary or - molest or conspire against the Civill Govt established.... And - that all & every person that shall presume contrary to this act - directly or indirectly either in person or Estate wilfully to wrong - disturb or molest any person ... in respect to his or her Religion - shall be compelled to pay trebble damages to the party soe wronged - or molested & for every such offence shall also forfeit 20s - sterling ... or if the ptie soe offending as aforesaid shall refuse - or be unable to recompense the party soe wronged ... then such - offender shall be severely punished by publick whipping & - imprisonmt without baile or maineprise.... - -The ffreemen have assented. - - - - -BY THE SAME AUTHOR - - -_SLAV AND MOSLEM_ - -SOME OPINIONS - -"_Slav and Moslem_ does you the greatest honour, for I quite understand -how difficult it is for foreigners to comprehend so correctly as you do -the origin, the value, and the destinies of our institutions. - -PRINCE CANTACUZENE. - -"_Russian Imperial Legation, Washington._" - -"The perusal of your valuable and interesting book on the historical -relations of Slav and Moslem has afforded the keenest pleasure. - -A. ISWOLZY. - -"_Lgation Impriale de Russe prs le Saint Sige._" - -"We are separated from the Western world by difference of race, culture, -and history, and the Western mind is very hard in understanding us. -Therefore the testimony of a just and unprejudiced mind is always -gratefully appreciated in Russia. - -C. POBEDONOSTZEFF, - -"_Petersburg._ _Prsident du Saint Synod_." - -"I was not only pleased with _Slav and Moslem_, but acknowledge a large -accretion to my knowledge of the subject. - -Your friend, -LEW WALLACE, -_Author of 'Ben Hur,' and formerly Ambassador -of U.S. to Constantinople_." - -"I consider _Slav and Moslem_ the clearest exposition on the Eastern -Question I have ever met with. - -J. HUGHES, -_Author of the "Dictionary of Islam_." - -"I regard _Slav and Moslem_ as a very valuable contribution to the -history of Russia. You are entitled to great credit for your -comprehensive view of the Russian Government and people. - -JOHN SHERMAN, - -"_Washington._ _Senator and Diplomat, U.S._" - -"Your development of the historical relations of Russia and Turkey is -admirable and full of interest. In vigorous and picturesque language you -have presented the other side. - -JOHN A. KASSON, - -"_Washington._ _Senator and Diplomat_." - -"I find no words to express the historic breadth of your political -summary, and the deep and genuine philosophy and truth of your treatment -of this great drama. - -CASSIUS MARCELLUS CLAY, -_Ten years Minister of the U.S. at St. Petersburg_." - -"I have read _Slav and Moslem_ with much interest, as it contains many -suggestions to fruitful thought regarding this great empire. - -ANDREW D. WHITE. - -_Legation of the U.S., St. Petersburg._" - -"_Slav and Moslem_ is written with justice, clairvoyance, and talent. - -JULIETTE ADAM." - -"I have read many books on Russia, but none met with my approval to such -an extent as _Slav and Moslem_.... The statements and descriptions of -the Russians are so correct.... During the years of my official stay I -studied the people, their history and language, and know what I am -talking about. - -JOHN KAREL, -_U.S. Consul at St. Petersburg_." - -"For the chapter on the Crimea alone your book deserves the thanks of -all who would study the present century. - -GEO. J. LEMMON, -_Lecturer and Publicist_." - -SOME PRESS NOTICES - -"Vivid historical sketches.... Eminently worthy of careful -perusal."--_The Press_ (Philadelphia). - -"The author shows an intelligent mastery of his subject." - -_Herald_ (Boston). - -"Its every sentence is clear-cut and positive.... The subjects are all -treated with a vigour and boldness that rivet the attention from first -to last." - -_The American_ (Baltimore). - -"The author has a surprisingly firm grasp on his subject.... Vivid, -thorough, original." - -_The Tribune_ (Salt Lake City, Utah). - -"Intensely readable.... It is one of the notable books of the -day."--_Commercial Gazette_ (Cincinnati). - -"From first to last the book is one of unusual interest." - -_The Chronicle_ (Augusta, Ga.). - -"A sober and trenchant defence of Russia." - -_Times Star_ (Cincinnati) - -"Mr. Brodhead writes lucidly and discriminatingly.... Interesting and -suggestive throughout." - -_The Churchman_ (New York). - -"J. Brodhead's work on the Eastern is creating a more and more favorable -impression throughout the country." - -_The Press_ (New York). - -PLYMOUTH -WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS - - * * * * * - - -FOOTNOTES: - -[1] I transcribe the following from _Le Lyon Republicain_ (ministerial -anti-clerical), 1905:--"The criminality of youths from sixteen to -twenty-five is increasing in shameful and overwhelming proportions. This -collection of beardless scoundrels, cynically vicious, murderers, -thieves, _souteneurs_, is the curse of our large cities.... It is only -since fifteen or eighteen years at most that criminalists notice this -remarkable depravation of youths almost children.... May we not ask if -the State that has done the most for instruction has not done the least -for education? Truly this frightful development of youthful criminality, -of alcoholism, and anti-socialism must make us reflect." - -"_Fifteen years or eighteen at most._" The scholar anti-Christian laws -of Jules Ferry, Goblet, Paul Bert, date from 1882 to 1895, and by their -fruits they are judged. - -[2] In January, 1906, M. Poincar, minister of finance, in reply to M. -Grousseau, admitted that up to February, 1905, the State had advanced -the sum of 4,551,319 frs. to the liquidators of the Congregations. - -[3] "Vel Judam non videtis, quomodo non dormit, sed festinat tradere me -Judis?" (Feria V in Coena Domini--"See ye not Judas, how he sleeps not, -but makes haste to betray me into the hands of the Jews?") - -[4] According to a recent article in the _Figaro_, 8th October, 1906, -among the conscripts sent this month to the army by Paris, ninety could -neither read nor write; seventy-nine could read only. - -[5] It was only at the annual September Convent of the Grand Orient, -1904, that it was decided to rush the assault on the Church itself by -the law of alleged separation. "Il nous reste un rude coup de collier -donner ... la separation figurera en Janvier prochain a l'ordre du jour -de la chambre." - -[6] At the Free-Thought Congress. - -[7] His native city recently hoisted the French flag and proclaimed its -annexation to the Third Republic, 1906. Of course it was only a platonic -demonstration on the part of Sicilian Freemasons. - -[8] M. Rouvier had obtained a law obliging every one without exception -who distilled anything to pay the usual tax on alcohol. This law was -made and repealed by the same Parliament, so that now every one who has -a peach or a plum tree can manufacture any kind of alcohol of poor -quality, and retail it in the _buvettes_ or drink-stands which are found -at every step almost; in every little vegetable and grocery shop, even -in Government tobacco stores where stamps are sold. These _buvettes_ are -the curse of France to-day. They have caused far greater ravages than -the Franco-Prussian war. - -[9] "We do not wish to see the secular arm placed at the service of -free-thought," said a deputy of the "bloc" not long since. "Meanwhile -the secular arm in the service of free-thought has closed all our -schools and colleges," retorted a deputy of the Right. - -[10] On November 17th, 1906, the Bishop of Nancy wrote as follows to M. -Briand, Minister of Cults, regarding the sad plight of the Sisters du -Saint Coeur de Marie at Nancy: "In 1902, 56 of them were huddled together -in a small house situated at the extremity of their grounds.... Their -spacious chapel was razed to the ground and in its place three private -houses have been built. The property was sold for 527,000 francs. The -liquidator promised that in conformity with the law the sisters should -receive pensions. Out of the 56 there remain to-day but 44. Of these 10 -are over seventy, and 22 of them are over sixty.... In these last four -years they have received out of the 527,000 francs only 12,000 in three -instalments.... They owe 17,800 to their baker, butcher, etc., and are -threatened with starvation if further credit be denied them.... Are -these aged women, who have devoted their lives to the instruction of the -poor, to die of cold and hunger, M. le Ministre?" And these things -happen in the twentieth century under a Government that proclaims the -rights of man and of the poor! - -[11] There is no such thing as proportional representation in France, -and the whole electoral machinery is manipulated to give the Government -a majority. - -[12] Recently in the Chambers (November 13th, 1906), M. Lassies -criticized that part of M. Clemenceau's declaration in which he referred -to the Holy See "as a foreigner subject to foreign influences." "Foreign -influences," said M. Lassies, turning pointedly to M. Delcass, "we find -them here in the person of the ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs, who fell -from power without our knowing why. Whence came the gust which caused -his fall? From which frontier?" - -[13] The Bill was adopted by the French Senate early in December. - -[14] Everything except the _encyclique_ of August 15th, 1906. - -[15] M. Lefas, deputy of the Right, maintained in the Chambers (Nov. -9th, 1906, _Journal Officiel_, p. 2448) that "the churches could not -form part of the Communal domain when Communes did not exist in France. -Communal domain only began with the existence of the Communes; that is -to say, a hundred years ago." Therefore these Church edifices cannot be -said to belong to the Communes to-day. Formerly France was divided into -parishes, and each parish had its parish church. - -As to the cathedrals, if kings and nobles, like other Catholics, -contributed to their embellishment or construction, they did so as -Catholics. All the guilds and corporations, too, contributed, not only -money, but personal labour. Would this entitle the syndicates of masons, -goldsmiths, etc., of to-day to claim these cathedrals? But the chief -factor in the construction of these noble edifices were the freely given -toil and humble labours of the multitudes of Catholics who raised these -monuments of faith. It is well known that a Catholic church cannot be -dedicated as long as any one has a lien on it, that is, not until the -Church's proprietorship of the building is undisputed. Therefore the -assumption that these edifices belong to the State and the Communes can -only be justified on the theory of the men who, seeing a trunk lying in -the hall of a hotel, said, "This trunk belongs to no one; let us say it -belongs to us." - -The recent judgment of the highest court of England in the case of the -"wees and the frees" of the Scotch Presbyterian Kirk is eminently -applicable in this question of Jacobin appropriations and spoliations. - -[16] These inventories, left incomplete after the fall of the Rouvier -Ministry (February), are being completed now (November, 1906). - -[17] When the daily Press is constantly recording the exploits of -_cambrioleurs_ picking locks and bursting open _coffres forts_ with -dynamite, it is very piquant to see the Government doing the same thing, -flanked by _gens d'armes_ and the regular army. Yesterday at Nantes 1500 -soldiers, with two generals and one colonel, surrounded the cathedral at -5 a.m. Forty locks were picked before noon! In _cambrioleur_ slang this -would be called a "record haul." Thanks to the injunctions of Pius X, -there was no bloodshed, and M. Clemenceau and his friends proclaim that -these inventories are made _sans incident_. - -[18] This Protestant senator seems to have been inspired by an eloquent -passage in Bossuet, "Une voix nous crie, _Marche, Marche_." - -[19] The founder and owner of _La Lanterne_ is said to be a Frankfort -Jew, and it is an open secret that all the advanced Socialist and -anti-clerical dailies are owned or controlled by the princes of Israel. -And it is from these that English and American papers seem to derive all -their information regarding the Church in France. - -[20] LES CAISSES D'PARGNE. - -Voici le relev des oprations des Caisses d'pargne ordinaires avec la -Caisse des dpts et consignations du 1er au 10 octobre, 1906:-- - -Dpts de fonds 2.830.949 fr. 72. Retraits de fonds 6.576.856 fr. 30. -Excdent des retraits 3.745.906 fr. 58. - -Excdent des retraits du 1er janvier au 10 octobre, 1906, 26.784.318 -fr. 60. - -[21] Thus Notre Dame might witness a Catholic Mass in the morning, a -theosophical reunion at noon, and a positivist conference in the -evening. The Swiss Catholics, 1872-6, had some such experiences: a -venerable priest died recently at Berne who had refused to give up the -keys of his church for other uses, and was imprisoned for many years; -while the last prisoner of Chillon was the Catholic Bishop of Fribourg, -another victim of the Swiss Kulturkampf. - -[22] When public men and editors in France and elsewhere descant on -German _Associations cultuelles_ accepted by the Holy See that rejects -them in France, they stand accused of ignorance or malevolence. M. -Briand basely insinuated (Chambers, 9th November) that the Church in -Germany was being ransomed by France: "Notre situation nous est-elle -la ranon de la situation d'un pays voisin? Je me borne poser la -question." The fact is there is no such thing as _German Associations -cultuelles_, each State of the Confederation has its own regulations. -Bavaria has a concordat and a papal nuncio at Munich. The Governments of -Wrtemberg and the Grand Duchy of Baden made special conventions with -the Holy See, 1857 and 1859. Alsace-Lorraine is still under the French -Concordat of 1801 between Pius VII and the First Republic. Prussia and -Hesse in 1873 and 1875 made special conventions with the Vatican. -Prussia has a Legation to the Holy See at Rome. Moreover, in none of the -German states is there separation of Church and State. They all -recognize and subsidize the Catholic Church and one form of -Protestantism. In Prussia several bishops are appointed senators by the -King. In Alsace-Lorraine the Bishop of Strasburg is member of the -Council of State. In Bavaria, Baden, Wrtemberg, the prelates are -members of the Upper House. - -[23] What would Philippe de Commines have said had he heard of the -little _coup de main_ (November 20th, 1906), by which deputies and -senators in _quasi huis clos_ voted themselves an increase of 6000 -francs without any "_octroi or consentement_" of the sovereign people, -delivered from tyranny and servitude by the Revolution? - -[24] There is in the Palace of the Doges at Venice an immense picture -commemorating this Congress, where the Peace of Constance was prepared. - -[25] In refreshing contrast with this record of persecution is the -proclamation of religious liberty in Maryland, 1650. "The Catholics took -quiet possession [of Maryland], and religious liberty obtained a home, -its only home in the wide world ... every other country had persecuting -laws.... Protestants were sheltered against Protestant intolerance. The -disfranchized friends of Prelacy in Massachusetts and the Puritans from -Virginia were welcomed to equal liberty of conscience and political -rights as Roman Catholics in the province of Maryland.... In 1649 the -General Assembly of Maryland passed an Act to this effect, yet five -years later, when the Puritans obtained the ascendency there, they -rewarded their benefactors by passing an Act forbidding that liberty of -conscience be extended to 'popery,' 'prelacy,' and 'licentiousness of -opinion'" (Bancroft's _History of the United States_, I, VII.). - -Lecky corroborates this statement: "Hpital and Lord Baltimore were the -two first legislators who uniformly maintained liberty of conscience, -and Maryland continues the one solitary home for the oppressed of every -sect till Puritans succeeded in subverting Catholic rule, when they -basely enacted the whole penal code against those who had so nobly and -so generously received them" (_History of Rationalism_, II, 58). - -An abridged copy of the Act of 1650, the first Act of religious -toleration, will be found in the Appendix. The original from which I -copied is in the archives of the Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore. - -[26] On November 9th, 1906, the Socialist minister Viviani, after -"putting out the lights in heaven," exclaimed, "What shall we say to -these sovereigns who are slaves economically speaking, to these men who -enjoy universal suffrage yet suffer in servitude? How shall we appease -them?" - -[27] Hall Caine, explaining the title of his book, _The Eternal City_, -expressed himself as follows: "In the new methods of settling -international disputes, the old mother of the Pagan and the Christian -worlds will have her rightful rank.... Her religious and historical -interest, her artistic charm, above all the mystery of eternal life seem -to point to Rome as the seat of the great court of appeal which the -future will see established." - -[28] _Paradise Lost_, Book IV. - - * * * * * - -Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: - -their precedessors=> their predecessors {pg 97} - -evacute Rome=> evacuate Rome {pg 111} - -public shools=> public schools {pg 206} - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Religious Persecution in France -1900-1906, by Jane Milliken Napier Brodhead - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION *** - -***** This file should be named 42434-8.txt or 42434-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/4/3/42434/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Napier Brodhead. -</title> -<style type="text/css"> - p {margin-top:.2em;text-align:justify;margin-bottom:.2em;text-indent:4%;} - -.c {text-align:center;text-indent:0%;} - -.cb {text-align:center;text-indent:0%;font-weight:bold;} - -.errata {color:red;text-decoration:underline;} - -.letra {font-size:250%;float:left;margin-top:-.5%;} - -.nind {text-indent:0%;} - -.r {text-align:right;margin-right: 5%;} - -.rt {text-align:right;margin-right: 2%;margin-top:0%;margin-bottom:0%;} - -small {font-size: 70%;} - - h1 {margin-top:5%;text-align:center;clear:both;} - - h2 {margin-top:5%;margin-bottom:2%;text-align:center;clear:both; - font-size:120%;} - - h3 {margin:8% auto 2% auto;text-align:center;clear:both;} - - hr {width:50%;margin:2em auto 2em auto;clear:both;color:black;} - - hr.full {width: 50%;margin:5% auto 5% auto;border:4px double gray;} - - table {margin-top:2%;margin-bottom:2%;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;border:none;text-align:left;} - - body{margin-left:2%;margin-right:2%;background:#fdfdfd;color:black;font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;font-size:medium;} - -a:link {background-color:#ffffff;color:blue;text-decoration:none;} - - link {background-color:#ffffff;color:blue;text-decoration:none;} - -a:visited {background-color:#ffffff;color:purple;text-decoration:none;} - -a:hover {background-color:#ffffff;color:#FF0000;text-decoration:underline;} - -.smcap {font-variant:small-caps;font-size:95%;} - - img {border:none;} - -.blockquot {margin-top:2%;margin-bottom:2%;} - - sup {font-size:75%;vertical-align:top;} - -.figcenter {margin-top:3%;margin-bottom:3%; -margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;text-align:center;text-indent:0%;} - -.footnotes {border:dotted 3px gray;margin-top:15%;clear:both;} - -.footnote {width:95%;margin:auto 3% 1% auto;font-size:0.9em;position:relative;} - -.label {position:relative;left:-.5em;top:0;text-align:left;font-size:.8em;} - -.fnanchor {vertical-align:30%;font-size:.8em;} -</style> - </head> -<body> - - -<pre> - -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Religious Persecution in France -1900-1906, by Jane Milliken Napier Brodhead - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: The Religious Persecution in France 1900-1906 - -Author: Jane Milliken Napier Brodhead - -Release Date: March 29, 2013 [EBook #42434] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - - - - - -</pre> - -<hr class="full" /> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="386" height="550" alt="bookcover" title="" /> -</p> - -<p class="cb">THE<br /> -RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION<br /> -IN FRANCE<br /> -1900-1906</p> - -<p> </p> - -<p class="c"><span style="margin-right: 15em;"><i>Nihil Obstat</i>:</span><br /> -JOSEPH WILHELM, S. T. D.,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10em;"><span class="smcap">Censor Deputatus</span>.</span></p> - -<p class="c"><span style="margin-right: 15em;"><i>Imprimi potest</i></span><br /> -✠ GULIELMUS,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10em;"><span class="smcap">Episcopus Arindelensis</span>,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 20em;"><span class="smcap">Vicarius Generalis</span>.</span></p> - -<p class="c"><span style="margin-right: 15em;"><span class="smcap">Westmonasterii</span>,</span><br /> -<i>Die 6 Aprilis, 1907</i>.</p> - -<p> </p> - -<h1>THE RELIGIOUS<br /> -PERSECUTION<br /> -IN FRANCE<br /> -<br /> -1900-1906</h1> - -<p class="cb"> <br /><br /><br /> -BY<br /> -J. NAPIER BRODHEAD<br /> -<small>AUTHOR OF “SLAV AND MOSLEM”</small><br /> -<br /><br /> -<i>LONDON</i><br /> -KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO., <span class="smcap">Ltd.</span><br /> -43 GERRARD STREET, SOHO, W.<br /> -1907<br /> -</p> - -<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE</h2> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span>HESE Considerations, written during the last six years’ residence in -France, have already appeared in the Press of the United States. They -were written from year to year without any thought of republication, -which seems justified to-day by the acuity of the conflict between the -Church and the French atheocracy, a conflict which cannot but interest -Christians everywhere.</p> - -<p class="r">J. N. B.</p> - -<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2> - -<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary=""> - -<tr><td align="right" colspan="2"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#FIRST_IMPRESSIONS"><span class="smcap">First Impressions</span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_001">1</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#THE_TWO_CAMPS"><span class="smcap">The Two Camps</span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_007">7</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#THE_ASSOCIATIONS_BILL1"><span class="smcap">The Associations Bill</span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_013">13</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#THE_ASSOCIATIONS_BILL2"><span class="smcap">The Associations Bill</span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_018">18</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#ARBITRARY_INCONSISTENCY"><span class="smcap">Arbitrary Inconsistency</span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_029">29</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#A_PAGAN_RENAISSANCE"><span class="smcap">A Pagan Renaissance</span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_033">33</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#INCONSISTENT_JACOBINISM"><span class="smcap">Inconsistent Jacobinism</span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_040">40</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#UNAUTHORIZED_CONGREGATIONS"><span class="smcap">Unauthorized Congregations</span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_046">46</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#A_COMBES_COUP_DE_MAIN"><span class="smcap">A Combes <i>coup de main</i></span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_050">50</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#LEGALIZED_DESPOTISM"><span class="smcap">Legalized Despotism</span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_057">57</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#DESPOTISM_PLUS_GUILE"><span class="smcap">Despotism Plus Guile</span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_063">63</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#UNCHANGING_JACOBINISM"><span class="smcap">Unchanging Jacobinism</span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_071">71</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#DEATH_OF_WALDECK_ROUSSEAU"><span class="smcap">Death of Waldeck Rousseau</span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_078">78</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#LIBERTY_AND_STATE_SERVITUDE"><span class="smcap">Liberty and State Servitude</span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_082">82</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#THE_FRENCH_REVOLUTION"><span class="smcap">The French Revolution</span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_091">91</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#A_PAPAL_NOTE"><span class="smcap">A Papal Note</span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_105">105</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#FREEMASONRY1"><span class="smcap">Freemasonry</span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_112">112</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#FREEMASONRY2"><span class="smcap">Freemasonry</span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_118">118</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#PART_SECOND"><span class="smcap">Part Second</span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_125">125</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#ALCOHOLISM_IN_FRANCE"><span class="smcap">Alcoholism in France</span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_131">131</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#THE_LAW_OF_SEPARATION"><span class="smcap">The Law of Separation</span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_135">135</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#CATHOLICISM_IN_GERMANY"><span class="smcap">Catholicism in Germany</span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_144">144</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#PSEUDO-SEPARATION"><span class="smcap">Pseudo-Separation</span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_147">147</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#THE_PROGRESS_OF_ANARCHY"><span class="smcap">The Progress of Anarchy</span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_160">160</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#THE_ABOLITION_OF_THE_CONCORDAT"><span class="smcap">The Abolition of the Concordat</span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_170">170</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#THE_INVENTORIES"><span class="smcap">The Inventories</span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_177">177</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#DUC_IN_ALTUM"><span class="smcap">Duc in Altum</span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_185">185</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#SEPARATION"><span class="smcap">The Latest Phase of Separation</span></a> </td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_197">197</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#LIBERTY_AND_CHRISTIANITY"><span class="smcap">Liberty and Christianity</span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_211">211</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#CHRISTIANITY_AND_CIVILIZATION"><span class="smcap">Christianity and Civilization</span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_233">233</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#APPENDIX"><span class="smcap">Appendix</span></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_249">249</a></td></tr> - -</table> - - -<p><a name="page_001" id="page_001"></a></p> - -<h1>THE RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION IN FRANCE</h1> - -<h2><a name="FIRST_IMPRESSIONS" id="FIRST_IMPRESSIONS"></a>FIRST IMPRESSIONS</h2> - -<p class="r"> -<span class="smcap">Lyon</span>, <i>March 17th, 1900</i>.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="nind">T<small>HERE</small> seems to be considerable misapprehension in the United States as -to the status of the Catholic Church in France. “One iniquitous -arrangement in France,” writes the <i>Central Baptist</i>, “is the support of -the priesthood out of public funds.” In receiving stipends from the -State the French clergy, however, are no more its debtors, nor its -functionaries, than holders of French 3 per cents who receive the -interest of their bonds. When that essentially satanic movement, known -as the French Revolution, swept over this fair land, deluging it in -blood, the wealth of the Church, the accumulation of centuries, was all -confiscated by the hordes who pillaged and devastated, and killed in the -name of Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality, until Napoleon restored order -with an iron<a name="page_002" id="page_002"></a> hand. A born ruler of men, this Corsican understood that -the principal feature of the work of restoration must be the -reorganization of the Catholic Church in France. Accordingly he -concluded with the Pope the convention known as the Concordat. It was -not possible in the dilapidated state of the country to restore the -millions that had been stolen by those “champions of liberty who,” -according to Macaulay, “compressed into twelve months more crimes than -the kings of France had committed in twelve centuries.” Still less was -it possible to rebuild many noble structures, and recover works of art -sold by sordid harpies or destroyed by impious vandals. It was -accordingly agreed (Arts. 13 and 14, Concordat) that in lieu of this -restitution the State should henceforth pay to the Church, annually, the -stipends of so many archbishops, bishops, curates, etc.</p> - -<p>The Concordat constitutes an organic law of the State. The clergy -receive their stipends, not as a salary, but as the payment of a debt -due to them by the State. It is in vain, therefore, that efforts are -made now to represent the Catholic clergy as salaried functionaries of -the State. The act by which Waldeck Rousseau recently decreed the -suppression of the stipends of certain bishops was wholly arbitrary, -and, moreover, the violation of an organic law. It was the partial -repudiation of a public debt, quite as dishonourable as if the payment -of interest of<a name="page_003" id="page_003"></a> three per cent bonds were withheld from certain -bondholders.</p> - -<p>The position of Protestant and Jewish ministers in France is entirely -different. They do receive salaries which are purely gratuitous. The -Revolutionists did not trouble them, and they had no part in the -Concordat of 1801. We may say that the French Revolution was appeased, -but it is not over by any means. No nation less well founded and -grounded could have withstood as France has done the shocks and -upheavals of a century.</p> - -<p>To this day France is still profoundly Catholic, in spite of the -millions of public money expended in so-called non-sectarian primary -schools and colleges. Travellers stroll into French churches, in summer, -at High Mass on Sundays at 9.30 or 10.30 generally, and because they -find a very small congregation at this service they report that the -churches are deserted and religion fast dying out. They ignore the fact -that in these churches low masses have been said hourly since 5 a.m., so -that people may comply with their duty, and then go off on their outing. -Lyon has many large beautiful old churches, and many handsome new ones. -Yet not one of them could contain all their parishioners if they wished -to attend the same service.</p> - -<p>For nearly twenty-five years the Government has been running its -educational machine at immense cost, compelling the French to support -schools they<a name="page_004" id="page_004"></a> will not patronize, as well as those of their own choice. -Nevertheless, State colleges and primary schools are so neglected that -laws are being devised to compel parents to send their children to them. -If all other means fail, the congregations of both sexes occupied in -teaching will be suppressed. This is the Government’s programme. There -is nothing so bad as the corruption of that which is best. France is -still profoundly Catholic, and it is only natural that the struggle -between good and evil should be sharp here. The forces of reaction and -action are always proportionate. Hence it is that France has always been -“the centre of Masonic history,” and of the Goddess Reason’s supreme -efforts against Christianity. Her temperament, too, makes her a choice -field for experiments.</p> - -<p>We can therefore understand M. Waldeck Rousseau’s indignation when so -many bishops openly expressed their sympathy with and admiration for the -Assumptionist Fathers who were condemned recently—and condemned for -what crime? For being an unauthorized association of more than twenty -persons, when there are hundreds of other similar associations at the -present moment.</p> - -<p>Briefly stated, the present phase of the Church in France is simply the -nineteenth-century phase of the struggles of Investiture in the Middle -Ages; the secular power seeking to have and to dominate a national -Church, whose ministers are to be nothing<a name="page_005" id="page_005"></a> but state functionaries, -bound to serve and to support the Government. This was the old pagan -ideal, and every portion of the Church that has renounced allegiance to -Rome has fallen into this condition. In England, in Russia, in the -Byzantine Empire, in Turkey, in Africa—wherever there is a national -Church—it is little better than a department of State. The Gallican -Church narrowly escaped a similar fate in the days of Louis XIV. The -Civil Constitution of the Clergy was another desperate and abortive -attempt to nationalize and secularize the Church in France. Gloriously, -too, her clergy expiated their momentary Gallican insubordination. All -over France they were guillotined, drowned, and exiled, and imprisoned, -<i>en masse</i>, rather than submit to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. -There is nothing more admirable in the history of Christianity than the -conduct of the victims massacred in the convent of the Carmelites, -converted into a prison by the Jacobins. Martyrs and confessors were as -numerous as in the first centuries of the Church, and from their ashes -arose a new French Church purified by poverty and suffering.</p> - -<p>Never have institutions of learning and charity under religious -direction been so numerous. No country has a clergy more zealous, more -learned, more united with the Holy See than that of France to-day. No -wonder then that the powers of darkness are devising means to destroy -the new structure, so<a name="page_006" id="page_006"></a> zealously and so laboriously raised on the ruins -accumulated by the Revolution of 1790.</p> - -<p>“Not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar among the people.” -Violent measures would rouse French Catholics from their political -apathy. The Government cannot afford to do this. Religious liberty must -be destroyed by degrees—and herein lies the danger.<a name="page_007" id="page_007"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="THE_TWO_CAMPS" id="THE_TWO_CAMPS"></a>THE TWO CAMPS</h2> - -<p class="r"> -<i>May 25th, 1900.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="nind">T<small>O</small> the thoughtful and sympathetic observer, France presents a singular -spectacle of duality—two camps and two standards are confronting each -other, neo-paganism and Christianity. By Christianity I mean, of course, -Catholicism, for though there may be good Protestants, who adhere to -some of the truths of revealed religion, such a thing as a good pervert -French Protestant is a <i>lusus naturæ</i>, practically non-existent. It is a -notorious fact that Protestants in France as elsewhere in Europe are, as -a rule, absolutely indifferent in religious matters since they have -ceased to be persecuted, and in many cases they have become the enemies -of revealed religion.</p> - -<p>All civilization, all redemption from barbarism, is fostered and -developed around a sanctuary. Consecrated hands have, in every instance, -laid the corner stone of the social edifice. The Church, the -school-house, the university, the courts of justice—these are the -normal steps by which societies, cities, and nations have advanced in -the Old World out of barbarism and chaos since the overthrow of the -Roman Empire. Of France this is pre-eminently true. Hundreds of<a name="page_008" id="page_008"></a> -villages and towns bear the names of holy missionary monks who built -first a cell, and then a monastery around a chapel, which became the -centre of a village, that grew in time to be a city. We see the same -thing all over Europe and in the British Isles. Gibbon says that the -French bishops made the French monarchy as bees construct a honeycomb. -Like every institution that bears a religious imprint, this monarchy was -long-lived. Those who descant so volubly on the flightiness of the -French people, always overturning their government and never satisfied -with the one they have, would do well to reflect that the French -monarchy lasted some fourteen centuries. When this monarchy was -overthrown by the assassination of Louis XVI there was formed a vortex -in which were engulfed millions of human lives. Not that I consider a -monarchical or any special form of government indispensable to France’s -prosperity. There is, however, one essential condition. The generating -principle of the French nation was the Catholic Faith. Without it, -France would no longer be herself. She would disintegrate interiorly, -and dismemberment and decadence would follow. France is still profoundly -Catholic, in spite of the prodigious efforts made since the days of -Voltaire and Tom Paine by numerous native and alien religious vandals, -whose prostituted intellects were garnished from the storehouse of -centuries of Christian culture. She will always be this or nothing. For -any one who<a name="page_009" id="page_009"></a> knows France, historically and psychologically, it is -preposterous to think of a substitute creed, corresponding to any of the -various shreds of Christianity, which do duty for religion under the -name of some one or other of the multitudinous Protestant sects.</p> - -<p>France, I repeat, will always be Catholic or nothing. But the Government -is on the verge of apostasy. For the first time in French history the -usual religious observances on Good Friday were suppressed in all the -naval ports. “What thou doest do quickly,” and on this occasion the -order was sent by telegraph on Thursday evening. As I stated in my last -letter, irreligious education is doing its work, and the increase of -juvenile criminals is appalling.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> - -<p>If the projected law regarding religious associations is voted, it will -be tantamount to the abolition of all religious teaching, as the -existence of these congregations will be rendered impracticable. England -and the United States will be the gainers, as they were<a name="page_010" id="page_010"></a> when the -Revolution dispersed the priesthood in 1790.</p> - -<p>The French Government is on the verge of apostasy, as I have said. Is -this a cause, a presage, or a symptom of national decadence? All three, -I fear. Nations stand or fall with their governments. They have the -government they merit and they are punished for the evil doings of their -rulers. “I gave them a king in my wrath,” it was written. Is there -sufficient vitality left in the French constitution to reject the poison -that is undermining it, and of which alcoholism, unknown in France fifty -years ago, is but the outward and visible sign? The assertion I make -that the greatness of the French people and their very national -existence is bound up with the Christian Faith is unquestioned by every -thinker in France, even by those who, for diverse reasons, do not -practise their religion, though they all bank on the last sacraments and -would be very sorry to see their wives and children neglect their -religious duties.</p> - -<p>The governments which have succeeded each other since 1880 have -flattered themselves that they could govern without the Church and -against the Church. Bismarck tried it and failed. The Catholic party -triumphed. It still holds the balance of power in Germany, and the -nation is growing daily more powerful and prosperous. In France, alas! -it is quite the contrary. In order to crush what they are pleased to -call the “clerical” party, the Government has allied<a name="page_011" id="page_011"></a> itself with -Socialists of the reddest streak. Indeed, we may say that anarchy and -socialism, or collectivism as it is called, are sitting in high places.</p> - -<p>Any president or minister who dared to stem the tide would fall. They -must temporize, resign, or die. Carnot was assassinated. Casimir-Perier -resigned; Faure, who steadily opposed the revision of the Dreyfus case, -was poisoned, I am told—at any rate, it is said that he died almost -immediately after swallowing a cup of tea at a soirée. Though the public -has no means of forming a correct judgment regarding the guilt of the -notorious Dreyfus, the most important evidence having been secret, I -have never doubted that he was justly condemned. At any rate, he -accepted the Presidential pardon, and withdrew his appeal, a strange -thing for an innocent man to do. This alone, it would seem, ought to -estop him from a new trial. But unfortunately the whole thing is to be -gone over again, though it is a perfect nightmare for four-fifths of the -French nation.</p> - -<p>I know France intimately since thirty years, and it is with infinite -sorrow that I diagnose her present condition and its perils.</p> - -<p>According to custom, the Imperial Court of Russia retired to Moscow for -Holy Week, and while the Czar, laying aside court etiquette, was -kneeling humbly on the bare floor among his peasant subjects, holding -his lighted candle like them, his allies, the<a name="page_012" id="page_012"></a> rulers of France, were -desecrating Easter Vigil by inaugurating the Paris Exhibition with -speeches, which seemed to have been compiled from those made by -Robespierre and his companions on that very Champs de Mars a century -ago, when they inaugurated their theo-philanthropy and the worship of -the Goddess of Reason.</p> - -<p>I presume Holy Saturday was selected because it is a high festival among -the Jews; otherwise Easter Monday would surely have been more -appropriate in a country where there are thirty-five million Catholics. -This was on the 9th April, and the Exposition they were in such a hurry -to inaugurate on that particular day is far from ready even now.<a name="page_013" id="page_013"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="THE_ASSOCIATIONS_BILL1" id="THE_ASSOCIATIONS_BILL1"></a>THE ASSOCIATIONS BILL</h2> - -<p class="r"> -<i>May 4th, 1901.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="nind">A <small>YEAR</small> ago I wrote in these columns as follows: “For twenty years the -Government has been running its educational machine at immense loss, -compelling the French to support their own schools as well as those they -will not patronize. Nevertheless, State schools and colleges are so -neglected that laws are being devised to compel parents to send their -children to them. If all other means fail, the congregations of both -sexes occupied in teaching will be suppressed.”</p> - -<p>Now this is the true object of the Associations Bill; all the rest is -merely padding. Liberty of association for Freemasons, Socialists, and -all friends of the Third Republic will be untrammelled as heretofore. -The blow aimed at religious teachers is of peculiar interest at this -hour, when Christians, all over the world, are recognizing the immense -importance of the religious education of the young, if we would preserve -the structure of Western civilization, so laboriously built up during -2000 years, and save its deep foundations from being sapped by the -returning tide of barbarism and paganism. For the revolutionary spirit -of to-day is simply another<a name="page_014" id="page_014"></a> version of that renaissance of paganism -which culminated in the Protestant revolt. As in the past, it will be -met by a great Catholic revival like that of the sixteenth century, -which Macaulay has so eloquently described in his Essay on Ranke’s -<i>Papacy</i>. This is the counter-revolution against which the self-styled -government of “Défense Republicaine” is dressing its batteries. Already -the effects of this revival are felt and, as Macaulay has pointed out, -revivals of the religious spirit, this everlasting factor in the history -of humanity which our pseudo-scientists so unscientifically ignore, -always redound to the benefit of Catholicism. When men like Brunetière, -Bourget, Lemaître, François Coppée, become standard-bearers of truth, we -are consoled for the vociferations of any number of Vivianis, -Trouillots, etc., in and outside the French Chambers, for whom “the -eternal decalogue” is but an antiquated superstition that must be swept -away.</p> - -<p>The law against the Congregations has been opposed in the Chambers by -many Republicans who have no religious scruples, and one may safely -affirm that there is not a respectable Frenchman, outside the coterie in -power, who does not condemn the Bill.</p> - -<p>A few days before its passage, a mass meeting of many trade unions, -presided over by Leroy Beaulieu, was held in Paris to protest against -the projected suppression of the Congregations. The eminent economist -declared that the proposed legislation was one<a name="page_015" id="page_015"></a> of “national suicide.” -If the law is so repugnant to the French in general, how is it that the -Government always obtains a majority? it may be asked.</p> - -<p>The explanation lies in the fact that while honest Frenchmen have been -attending to their business and leaving politics strictly alone, this -anti-religious campaign has been carefully prepared since many years by -the enemies of Christianity. Like all notable persecutions, it is the -work of secret societies. The Boxers of China are a congeries of these -societies. In the days of Julian the chief instigators and abettors of -persecution were the secret societies of Mithra, whom Renan declared to -have been “veritable Masonic lodges with their initiations, passwords,” -etc.</p> - -<p>Since 1875 the “Grand Orient,” in which the Jewish element predominates, -has gradually been gathering into its hands all the reins of government; -not a very difficult task, seeing that as a rule respectable, -industrious Frenchmen will not touch politics, while the emissaries of -the lodges go out into the slums of mining and industrial centres, and -organize primaries and Socialist clubs that defeat any respectable -candidate who dares to enter the lists against the candidate of the -Government. Jules Lemaître, in the <i>Echo de Paris</i>, states that there -are 400 deputies and 10 ministers who are Freemasons. As these latter -number about 25,000 in France, it follows that there is one -representative in Parliament for every 50 Freemason electors, whereas -there is only one representative<a name="page_016" id="page_016"></a> for every 1800 votes who are not -affiliated to the “Grand Orient.” With a house packed in this way, any -legislation is possible. Madame Sorgues, lately sub-editor of Jaurès’ -Socialist organ, <i>La Petite Republique</i>, has published some interesting -revelations, showing how the Judeo Freemasons have made tools of the -Socialists in order to seize the reins of government. “In combating the -combats of Dreyfus,” she writes, “Jaurès and his friends brought about a -singular <i>rapprochement</i> of the two most irreconcilable camps ... the -presents of the kings of capital were accepted. The first service -rendered was to restore the tottering Socialist Press.... All the -advanced [meaning anti-clerical Socialist] dailies have passed into the -hands of the great barons of finance; they are <i>their</i> journals now, not -the journals of the workers.... Then they cast their eyes on Waldeck -Rousseau, the clever rescuer of the Panamists.... The agent of the -Dreyfus politics had the happy thought of introducing into the Cabinet, -Millerand, the Socialist leader, with the consent of his party. -Socialism become ministerial would be <i>domestiqué</i>, and rendered -inoffensive against capital,” etc. Last fall, the President, Loubet, -when at Lyons, dared to be the guest of the Chamber of Commerce, in -spite of the Socialist mayor, Augagneur, and his gang. Immediately, the -<i>Aurore</i>, a Socialist organ of Paris, clamoured for his suppression in -these terms: “As he is not subject to the same accidents as Felix -Faure,<a name="page_017" id="page_017"></a> we must defend ourselves without waiting for the good offices of -Judith.” M. Faure, M. Loubet’s predecessor, it will be remembered, is -said to have died suddenly after a cup of tea at a soirée given by a -rich Jewess, and the present ministry of the Dreyfus revision, to which -he had been steadfastly opposed, came into power almost before the -country knew what had happened, bringing in their political wallet -another Dreyfus trial and this notorious Associations Bill.</p> - -<p>If I insist, it is because I wish that it may be clearly understood that -the French people are not guilty of the criminal legislation of which -they are the victims, owing to their incurable reluctance to touch the -mire of politics, left, as a rule, to the most unworthy and -unscrupulous.</p> - -<p>M. Waldeck Rousseau is a smart, wily politician; so was Camille -Desmoulins, an obscure, ambitious lawyer, who saw in the Revolution of -1790 a grand opportunity of reaching a proud eminence. This -accomplished, he had no further use for Revolutionists. “The Revolution -is over,” he said; but it went on and on, until his own head rolled into -the fatal basket.</p> - -<p>How long will all this last? How long will the mad dogs of Socialist -anarchy be held in leash?<a name="page_018" id="page_018"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="THE_ASSOCIATIONS_BILL2" id="THE_ASSOCIATIONS_BILL2"></a>THE ASSOCIATIONS BILL</h2> - -<p class="r"> -<i>3rd April,</i> 1901.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="nind">F<small>EW</small> persons in the United States have the leisure or the means of -following the debates of the French Chambers, and appreciating the Law -on Associations, of which many garbled and falsified versions appear in -metropolitan and other dailies.</p> - -<p>It is pre-eminently a project of tyranny and religious persecution. The -sympathy of sectarian antagonism with anti-Catholic measures, in any -part of the world, is always a foregone conclusion. It does not concern -itself with the arbitrary tyranny involved, alleging, perhaps, that now -the tables are turned, and thirty-five millions of Catholics are being -treated as were the Huguenots from 1685 to 1790. But when former -governments strove to maintain national unity, founded on “One Lord, one -Faith, one Baptism,” their position was that of a man defending his own -house against assailants, while the position of this Government is that -of a small armed band who have taken forcible possession, and mean to -coerce and outlaw the owners by imprescriptible right. But neither -Elizabeth nor Louis XIV ever invoked liberty to palliate their coercive -policy in order to establish, or maintain unity or uniformity.<a name="page_019" id="page_019"></a></p> - -<p>As Bodley says in his excellent work on France (1898): “The intolerant -system under the Third Republic differs from all persecutions known to -history in that it is not only practised in the name of liberty, but is -aimed against an established religion”—in possession since fifteen -centuries.</p> - -<p>It is a curious fact that the Huguenots, so clamorous for toleration and -the rights of conscience in the past, have during a century of absolute -liberty and equality, 1793-1900, dwindled from 2,000,000 in a population -of 27,000,000 to 600,000 in a population of 38,000,000. They have -evolved, in the usual process of Protestant disintegration, into the -deistical and atheistical minority who, with the Jews, are now so -determined to restore national unity in national infidelity. For it is a -notorious fact that France is ruled and oppressed by a small coalition -of Freemasons, chiefly Protestants and Jews, who are using the -Socialists as cats’ paws.</p> - -<p>Waldeck Rousseau clearly stated the Government’s programme in his -political speech at Toulouse, and its scope is unmistakable, no matter -what affectation of tolerance and amity for the secular clergy may -accompany it. He is an astute lawyer, and his unruly band of Socialist -henchmen in the Chambers often try his patience sorely by calling a -spade a spade.</p> - -<p>The suppression of religious orders and the confiscation of their -property is no new thing. St. Paul<a name="page_020" id="page_020"></a> reminds the Hebrews of their -neophyte fervour, and how they accepted being despoiled with joy. -<i>Rapinam</i> is the word used in the Vulgate; modern euphemism eschews the -unsavoury word robbery, and says “<i>secularization</i>,” “<i>liquidation</i>.” -Julian the Apostate, like the Rousseaus and the Trouillots of to-day, -was also of opinion that the “Clericals” must be impoverished and -discredited in order to crush out Christianity. Henry VIII robbed and -suppressed English monasteries simply because he saw no other means of -replenishing the empty treasury he had inherited. Moreover the religious -orders were not likely to sustain him in his new character of supreme -head of the Anglican Church. Suffering, crime, and ignorance reached -unprecedented proportions in the century that followed, as we learn from -Strype’s <i>Chronicles</i>. Lecky asserts that 75,000 vagrant beggars were -hanged in Henry’s reign.</p> - -<p>Suppressions and confiscations have always been a prominent feature in -all revolutions, and they have been numerous in the nineteenth century. -The reason is twofold. Everything that has a religious stamp is -essentially and very properly conservative. It requires infinite pains, -patience, and wisdom to build up or to reconstruct. Any fool or madman -can tear down. <i>Quieta non movere.</i> The religious congregations, -therefore, were always the last to abandon the mother country or the -regime under which they had existed for centuries. On the other hand, -revolutionists<a name="page_021" id="page_021"></a> always have a crying need for money to furnish the -sinews of rebellion, and also, incidentally, to feather the nests of -patriots. What can be more handy, too, than church property, and the -untold wealth of the religious orders! It is true that these gold mines -are sometimes found to be ‘salted,’ as they are in the fantastical -statistics put forth by the Rousseau ministry.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> They seldom justify -the brilliant expectations of the populace lured by the perspective of -rich spoils, as they are to-day—pensions for the veterans of toil, etc.</p> - -<p>These spoliations have always been followed by an immense recrudescence -of popular misery. It was so in France, in Italy, in Spain—everywhere.</p> - -<p>The twofold motive that instigated these spoliations does not excuse -them, but it explains and perhaps palliates to some extent. In France, -to-day, there is no extenuating circumstance. The Holy See loyally lent -its support to the Third Republic when the second president, M. Grévy, -humbly solicited it at a precarious moment. Leo XIII distinctly -requested the clergy and the faithful to rally to the Republic in the -interest of peace. With very few exceptions the regular and the secular -clergy have strictly abstained from politics. The inquisition of which -the<a name="page_022" id="page_022"></a> Assumption Fathers were recently the object only succeeded in -incriminating two or three members of the order.</p> - -<p>Of course the regular and secular clergy cannot urge their flocks and -their pupils to embrace the atheistical and pagan ideals of the -coalition in power. If this be disloyalty they are all disloyal.</p> - -<p>Considering that since 1888 not less than 20,000,000 have been added -every year to the public expenditure, one might suppose that the -Government would think twice before depriving itself of this army of -some 180,000 self-sacrificing men and women who minister to the poor, -the sick, the maimed, the blind, the insane, the orphan, and the -outcast. Recently the Prefect of the Department of Bouches du Rhone was -summoned by the anti-clericals to secularize all the hospitals. He -refused to accede to their request, alleging that the budget of charity -was totally inadequate already, and that many indigent sufferers were -turned away from lack of accommodation. This is only one item; what will -it be when the Government has to pay an army of hirelings to minister to -the poor all over the land? But the Congregations do not concern -themselves with bodily wants only. Many of them are devoted to the -education of all classes. This is the head and front of their offending, -and the true reason of their taking off. Every one knows that the -godless scholastic institutions devised by Paul Bert, Ferry, and Jules<a name="page_023" id="page_023"></a> -Simon are repugnant to the nation, and have been a complete failure. In -spite of the millions of public money lavished upon them, they have -never been able to hold their own against the religious schools of the -Congregations, which are supported entirely by private initiative, and -at the cost of great pecuniary sacrifices on the part of Catholic -parents, who support two sets of schools—those they patronize and those -for which they have no use. Not content with imposing these sacrifices, -as in the United States, the Third Republic now proposes to crush out -all competition by suppressing the teaching congregations, and indeed -all congregations, with the proviso of retaining for the present such as -shall be deemed of public utility—meaning, of course, those who bring -surcease to the straining budget by rendering gratuitous service to -thousands, who would be a burden to the State, in a country already -taxed to its utmost capacity. The tyrannical and arbitrary character of -a measure which declares all conventual institutions “against public -order” on account of their vows, which are likened to “personal -servitude,” and yet utilizing some of them, does not trouble these -modern Dracos. Still less are they concerned with the iniquity of -depriving thousands of citizens of the right to dispose of their lives -as they see fit, and of preventing millions of parents from educating -their children as they choose.</p> - -<p>About the middle of the last century, representative<a name="page_024" id="page_024"></a> men like -Montalembert, Lacordaire, Berryer, Dupanloup, entered the political -arena to fight the battle of free education against the tyranny of the -State University. They won the day, and freedom in educational matters -seemed henceforth the inalienable appanage of France and of all -communities boasting of Western civilization.</p> - -<p>The aim of the projected Law of Associations is to crush out this -liberty. It is no question of Church and State, but of Christianity and -liberty against atheism and tyranny. All the rest is mere padding. It is -a reversion to Lacedæmonian state tyranny and an odious anachronism. No -wonder, then, that the present Dreyfus-Rousseau ministry should seek to -throw dust in the eyes of the public, even subsidizing press syndicates -to mislead public opinion abroad.</p> - -<p>In a nutshell, the Trouillot Bill amounts to just this: No association -can exist without government authorization, which will never be given to -any religious congregation formed for educational purposes. None need -apply but those who work with the Government. “We will give our money -only to those who please us,” said the Socialist mayor of Lyons -recently. “Our money,” forsooth—considering that the taxpaying portion -of the community of Lyons is strongly Catholic and Conservative. Yet -this municipal autocrat declared that destitute children, who went to -any but state schools, should not be assisted by civic funds.<a name="page_025" id="page_025"></a></p> - -<p>It is the true Jacobin spirit that permeates this Republican organism. -The stamping out of religious education is itself but a means to an end. -That arch-traitor Renan declared “that religion would die hard; primary -education and the substitution of scientific for literary studies were -the only means of killing it.”</p> - -<p>The final purpose of this Republic is to establish national unity in -national atheism, with perhaps a creedless church administered by -servile state functionaries—a modified form of the worship of the -Goddess of Reason. In saying this I do not calumniate the Republic, as -Waldeck Rousseau himself clearly stated the governmental programme at -Toulouse. A small coalition of Jews, Protestants, and other Freemasons -have gained control of the country by capturing the Socialist vote. The -latter do not yet see that they are being used as cats’ paws. For what -fellowship can there be between Jew capitalists and collectivists? All -honest, industrious Frenchmen despise politics as a rule. The great -mining and industrial centres and the slums of large cities furnish -practically all the voters, and this proletariat is lured on by -brilliant prospects of the collectivist Utopia that is coming, when the -Congregations and the Church have been abolished. Respectable Frenchmen, -who do try to serve their country by taking a hand in politics, usually -withdraw in disgust, and thus the scum comes to the top and is utilized -by unscrupulous<a name="page_026" id="page_026"></a> ambition. If any one wants to enjoy a clever, graphic -pen-picture of French politics, let him read <i>Les morts qui parlent</i>, by -M. de Vogué.</p> - -<p>The purpose of those in power is, I repeat, to break away completely and -for ever from the Catholic religion, with which the French nation is so -bound up that its fibres can only be torn out with the last palpitating -remnants of national life. “Few greater calamities can befall a nation,” -wrote Lecky, “than to cut herself off as France has done from her own -past in her great Revolution.” To consummate this calamity is the avowed -purpose of this Government. A hue and cry is raised by its Socialist -henchmen at papal <i>ingérence</i> in French affairs, though the Concordat -surely gives the Pope a right to protest against the ostracism and -proposed suppression of the Congregations, as being a violation of -Article I of the Concordat, which guarantees the “free exercise of the -Catholic religion in France.”</p> - -<p>Meanwhile “<i>The Jewish Alliance</i>” and the “<i>Internationale</i>” operate -freely and openly, causing strikes in every direction, and disorganizing -the industrial conditions here for the benefit of other countries. -During the last few months immense sums are being taken out of the -country, not by the Congregations only by any means. The boom in the New -York Stock Market, which redounds to the credit of the McKinley -administration, may be connected with this migration of personal -property from France.<a name="page_027" id="page_027"></a></p> - -<p>It has been France’s glory and misfortune to be a great purveyor of -ideas, ideals, and fashions. She is essentially missionary, and was in -the vanguard of Christianity from the beginning. In the early centuries -of the Church, her monastic missionaries peopled the islands that lie -around this beautiful Riviera. St. Vincent de Lerins, St. Tropez, St. -Aygulf, St. Maxim, have left indelible footprints in these regions. In -her terrible Revolution France was an object-lesson to the nations, -whose intervention saved her from self-extermination. Foreign war was a -boon and a safety-valve. The Commune of 1870 was another warning to the -nations. Again to-day she is being made a spectacle to men and -angels—to men who are, with secret rejoicing, applauding the Waldeck -Rousseau ministry, and all for which it stands. They known full well -that decadence and doom are near. There will be another Sedan, another -Commune. The colonies, Indo-China in particular, will be the first to -fall away in the general dismemberment.</p> - -<p>I know France intimately since more than thirty years, and it is with -infinite sorrow that I diagnose her condition. Her recuperative powers -are very great. I fear, however, that they will prove inadequate after -the next great shock.</p> - -<p>But France’s admirable gift of apostleship, her lofty idealism, which no -number of Voltaires could abase or abate, will not perish with her -territorial integrity, nor even with her national life. Like the<a name="page_028" id="page_028"></a> -deathless masterpieces of Greece and Rome, her immortal genius will -inform and inspire countless unborn generations, long after France -herself shall have become a mere geographical reminiscence. “I will move -thy candlestick,” it is written—not extinguish.<a name="page_029" id="page_029"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="ARBITRARY_INCONSISTENCY" id="ARBITRARY_INCONSISTENCY"></a>ARBITRARY INCONSISTENCY</h2> - -<p class="r"> -<i>16th February, 1901.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="nind">T<small>HE</small> attitude of the Jacobin government in France towards the religion -professed by nine-tenths of the inhabitants is truly instructive. After -prating about liberty, fraternity, and equality, and the rights of man -for a hundred years, the successors of the revolutionary <i>Constituante</i> -are preparing to deal a deathblow at the most sacred rights of the -individual, to overstep the most arbitrary acts of any regime, nay of -the Inquisition itself. These, at least, only concerned themselves with -outward manifestations of personal idiosyncrasies tending to disturb the -social order. But the successors of the Jacobins of the <i>Constituante</i>, -so proud of their blood-stained origin, direct their attacks, to-day, -against that most intangible thing the Vow, which has no existence -except in the inner conscience of the individual, seeing that monastic -vows which involved “civil death” were abolished by law in 1790, and all -religious are, to-day, free to exercise the rights of citizens—to buy, -sell, contract, or vote. The vow cannot even be considered a convention -or a contract binding together the members of a religious association.<a name="page_030" id="page_030"></a></p> - -<p>The ground on which it is proposed to declare religious congregations -illegal without interfering with Masonic and other associations is, said -Waldeck Rousseau, that “our public right [<i>droit public</i>] and that of -other States proscribes all that constitutes an abdication of the rights -of the individual, right to marry, to possess, all, in fact, that -resembles personal servitude.”</p> - -<p>Thus in the name of liberty and the famous rights of man, I am denied -the right to exercise my freewill by electing to remain single, because -not to marry would be an abdication of one of the rights of the -individual, and resemble “personal servitude.” Anything more grotesquely -inconsistent cannot well be imagined, and this project of law has been -in process of elaboration in the lodges since twenty years! In 1880, -when the decree against the Jesuits and all congregations of men was -promulgated, it was declared illicit and unconstitutional by 1500 -jurists, and 400 of the higher magistrates, who refused their -connivence, were removed from office. One of my best friends was among -these victims. The decree was enforced <i>manu militari</i>, but the current -of public opinion was so strong that, ere long, these establishments -were reopened and continued their good works unmolested.</p> - -<p>It was next proposed to crush out the Congregations by fiscal measures. -This also has proved inadequate, and the present project of law is the<a name="page_031" id="page_031"></a> -supreme effort of a most paternal and absolute Republic to secure the -liberty of thousands of unappreciative subjects, by preventing them from -exercising it in the choice of a mode of life. Truly a strange -aberration of liberty, equality, and fraternity!</p> - -<p>Of course it is an open secret that what is aimed at is the destruction -of the Catholic Church in France, and the establishment, if possible, of -a national church with a “civil constitution of the clergy” as was -attempted in 1792.</p> - -<p>Before attacking the citadel it is proposed to demolish the two great -ramparts of the Church, Christian education and Christian charity, by -disbanding the noble men and women who man these ramparts.</p> - -<p>It is a notorious fact, well established by Taine, that the French -Revolution, with all its saturnalia of carnage and nameless tyranny, was -the work of a handful, some ten thousand in all, and even many of these -were foreigners. They carried all before them, and I fear that history -will repeat itself.</p> - -<p>The moral unity of France was destroyed for ever by the Huguenots in the -seventeenth century. Louis XIV sought in vain to restore it by the -Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The Revolution also tried to -enforce moral unity by the unlimited practice of the “<i>Sois mon frère ou -je te tue</i>.” It is in the name of this lost moral unity that the<a name="page_032" id="page_032"></a> -coalition in power now propose to crush out all educational and -religious liberty. French Protestantism can hardly be said to exist any -longer. In 1799, when their religious and civil liberties were restored, -Rabaut de St. Etienne, then president of the <i>Constituante</i>, stated -their number to be 2,000,000 in a population of 26,000,000. After a -century of complete liberty and equality, the <i>Agenda Protestant</i> of -Lyons states their number to be 650,000 in a population of 37,000,000. -In the usual process of Protestant disintegration, the Huguenots, -erstwhile so zealous for Calvinistic purity of doctrine, have evolved -into the freethinking materialists, who form an important contingent in -the anti-religious Masonic coalition I referred to some months ago.</p> - -<p>The situation in France painfully recalls that of Constantinople some -forty years before the fall of the Eastern Empire. A house divided -against itself cannot stand.<a name="page_033" id="page_033"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="A_PAGAN_RENAISSANCE" id="A_PAGAN_RENAISSANCE"></a>A PAGAN RENAISSANCE</h2> - -<p class="r"> -<i>10th August, 1901.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="nind">I<small>N</small> a previous article I asserted that the revolutionary spirit so -rampant to-day is a new version of that renaissance of Paganism in the -fourteenth century which culminated in the Protestant revolt. I find the -same view expressed in Goldwin Smith’s recently published work on the -United Kingdom. In a chapter on the Renaissance he writes as follows: -“Our generation may look upon this period with interest, since it is -itself threatened with an interregnum between Christian morality and the -morality of science.”</p> - -<p>“Much learning maketh thee mad” might be said to our generation, that -seems to be science mad and blissfully unconscious of the paradoxes of -its programme. We are promised a scientific religion or a religion of -science, meaning probably a religion worthy of men of science, unmindful -of the fact that men of the highest attainments have been nurtured in -the Church in every century, and that the supernatural must always be an -indispensable element of religion.</p> - -<p>Now Mr. Goldwin Smith raises our expectations<a name="page_034" id="page_034"></a> to a future era in which -“the morality of science” is to succeed to the hiatus or interregnum -with which we are threatened to-day, as in the fifteenth century, when -the Church was “drugged,” he says.</p> - -<p>In his excellent work on <i>Social Evolution</i>, Kidd accentuates the fact -that our Western civilization, the highest yet attained, has been wholly -religious and not scientific; that in intellectual capacity and -attainments we are, even now, far below the average Greek mind of -centuries ago. This civilization of ours, marvellous in spite of all its -shortcomings and blots, is founded on abnegation and self-sacrifice -which are wholly irrational, scientifically speaking. It is indeed -scientifically impossible for science to have any other morality than -the law of brute force and the survival of the strongest, whether it be -on the battlefield, the mart, or on ’change. The law of supply and -demand is a corollary of this law.</p> - -<p>Complacency for the weak and the lowly, that characterized Christianity -from the beginning, and found expression in the legend of the Holy -Grail, is all folly, the sublime folly of the Cross. The equality and -brotherhood of man is also part of this “foolishness,” so repulsive to -the cultured Greek mind. Nay, all our much-vaunted “free institutions” -have grown out of this mustard seed, to which our Lord compared His -kingdom on earth. “When the tree falls the shadow will depart,” as -Tennyson wrote in another connexion. Nothing will be left to our poor -science-ridden<a name="page_035" id="page_035"></a> humanity but the cruel glare of human egoisms, passions, -and ambitions.</p> - -<p>In one of those sonorous paradoxes which his soul loved, J. J. Rousseau -assures us that “all men are born free, and everywhere they are in -chains.” That all men are born free is as false as that all men are born -upright and virtuous. History and experience give the lie to both -assertions. It is an incontrovertible fact that before Christ slavery -was the normal status of the masses in every age and clime, and Lucanus -only expressed an universally accepted axiom when he cynically declared -that the human race only existed for a few: <i>Humanum paucis vivit -genus</i>.</p> - -<p>The doom of slavery was sealed when Peter began his memorable discourse, -saying “Men and brethren” to circumcised and uncircumcised alike. On -that day the Church began her mission of liberation by subjugation to -the Christian law.</p> - -<p>But so ancient and deeply-rooted an institution as slavery could not -wisely nor safely be felled suddenly. It was not till 1167 that Pope -Alexander III published the charter of Christian liberty. “This law -alone,” writes Voltaire (<i>Essai sur les mœurs</i>, chap. <span class="smcap">LXXXIII</span>), -“should render his memory precious to all people, as his efforts on -behalf of liberty for Italy should endear him to Italians.”</p> - -<p>Wherever Christianity permeates, even in an emaciated form, slavery must -disappear, and wherever<a name="page_036" id="page_036"></a> Christianity has not penetrated slavery is and -always will be a standing institution, with its concomitant degradation -of women.</p> - -<p>Another proposition, a corollary of the first, is equally true. If, and -when, and where Christianity disappears, liberty, which is bound up with -and inseparable from the Christian law, will also diminish and -disappear, <i>tantum quantum</i>.</p> - -<p>The world, in my opinion, has never adequately laid to heart the -terrible lessons taught by the French Revolution. They are not laid bare -in their naked hideousness. The glamour of those much-violated -principles of 1789, and the catchwords of liberty, equality, and -fraternity are used to cover up the dire significance of that event. In -a moment of wild delirium, the most illustrious of nations allowed its -government to pass into the hands of a band of atheists prepared by -Voltaire and his ilk. Christianity was solemnly abjured in the name of -the whole nation, and the worship of Reason inaugurated with all the -paraphernalia of ritual and the pomp of worship. What was the immediate -result? In the twinkling of an eye all liberty vanished. Terror reigned -supreme. The most sacred rights of the individual were proscribed. Men -could no longer call their lives their own under the law of <i>Suspects</i>. -From my window at Lyons, I could see the monument to the victims of -1793. This city had at first submitted to the Revolutionary government, -but the<a name="page_037" id="page_037"></a> Lyonnais revolted when they found themselves deprived of civil -and municipal liberties they had enjoyed under the most despotic kings. -Lyons was besieged by those singular champions of liberty who, according -to Macaulay, “crowded into a few months more crimes than had been -committed by the French kings in as many centuries.”</p> - -<p>Lyons succumbed after a gallant resistance of ten months. This quarter, -where stands the monument to the victims, was then swampy ground, and it -was literally soaked that year, not with the overflow of the Rhône, but -with human gore. On the beautiful Place Bellecour two guillotines -functioned day and night, but they were inadequate to the bloody task, -and the citizens were mown down in batches on the Place des Jacobins. -The successors of these Freemason Jacobins control the destinies of -France to-day, by means of a Socialist parliamentary majority, obtained -by the means I described in a previous article. They lost no time in -ostracising tens of thousands of France’s noblest sons and daughters, -who may not live as they see fit, nor exercise a profession which is -open to all by law. The law Falloux of 1852 confers on all citizens duly -qualified the right to teach or open schools, and it is still -unrepealed. Millions of parents are deprived of the right to educate -their children as they see fit in their native land. Exile is the price -of liberty. This is the beginning of that diminution of liberty which<a name="page_038" id="page_038"></a> -must always accompany the elimination of the Christian principle on -which our civilization reposes.</p> - -<p>With stupendous cynicism Waldeck Rousseau calls the Associations Bill a -“law of liberty and of appeasement.” One or two passages will exemplify -the character of this infamous Act.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p class="c">ART. I</p> - -<p>All associations can be formed freely and without authorization.</p> - -<p class="c" >ART. XIII</p> - -<p>No religious association can be formed without authorization given -by a law which will determine how it is to function.</p></div> - -<p>One of M. Waldeck Rousseau’s henchmen stated the truth squarely, a few -days ago, when he said “the enemy is God,” improving on Gambetta’s -maxim, “Le clericalisme voilà l’ennemi.”</p> - -<p>Already there are symptoms that the Premier is being carried away by his -Socialist advance guard. When they now demand the suppression of the -Concordat he no longer protests as earnestly as he did, affirming his -devotion to the secular clergy, whose interests, he used to declare, -were the main object of the Trouillot or Associations Bill.</p> - -<p>The trial of Comte Lur Saluce by a so-called “High Court,” composed of -senators, was a most peculiar episode. Accused of plotting to restore -the<a name="page_039" id="page_039"></a> monarchy, his defence was one long, incisive, itemized arraignment -of the Third Republic and all its works and ways. His judges listened -with much interest, fascinated, no doubt, by the truth of his -statements, after which they found him guilty with extenuating -circumstances—a tacit admission apparently that his enmity to the Third -Republic was justified. Meanwhile, poor France is threatened with all -the horrors of another revolution, if the same elements compose the next -parliament, as they most certainly will, if opposition candidates are -not even allowed to hold meetings unmolested, as at Toulouse and Lyons -recently.</p> - -<p>Religious liberty has however found a new home in a most unexpected -quarter, none other than the realm of the Grand Llama of Tibet, who is -sending a special embassy to the Czar. The latter may follow the good -example and proclaim religious liberty in all the Russias, at the same -time as the Calendar reforms which are being prepared. The two questions -are not as irrelevant to each other as one might suppose at first -sight.<a name="page_040" id="page_040"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="INCONSISTENT_JACOBINISM" id="INCONSISTENT_JACOBINISM"></a>INCONSISTENT JACOBINISM</h2> - -<p class="r"> -<i>11th November, 1901.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="nind">I<small>N</small> 1894, 1895, and 1896 I contributed several papers on the Eastern -Question to the <i>Progress</i>. At that time public opinion was much excited -and indignant over the massacres in Armenia, but none of the Powers who -signed the Berlin Treaty thought fit to interfere. Massacres on a small -scale were renewed from time to time, and a few months ago they reached -considerable proportions; but nothing was done to punish the culprits, -or to protect the victims of Turkish barbarity.</p> - -<p>This week a mild surprise has been caused by the sending of the French -fleet to Turkish waters. The callous lethargy, which a sense of duty, a -chivalrous sympathy with the weak and the oppressed, could not dispel, -has yielded to a financial exigency. Two naturalized citizens are -creditors of the Sultan for a large sum. It is true they have been -receiving most usurious interest these last fifteen years, but now -Lorando and Turbini wish to recover their capital; and lo! the might of -France is put forth on their behalf! It is said that M. Waldeck -Rousseau, the Premier, is professionally interested in the matter, and -will receive a fee even bigger than<a name="page_041" id="page_041"></a> the one he earned when he saved his -clients in the Panama scandal, who are now in the seats of the mighty. -The long-suffering French taxpayer will grudgingly pay the expenses of -this naval demonstration, and the Porte will promptly pay up in order to -be rid of his unwelcome visitors. But France does not mean to be a -simple collector for MM. Lorando and Turbini.</p> - -<p>The elections of 1902 are at hand, and the semi-Jacobins in power are -anxious to obtain the suffrages of the better element, and not be -entirely carried away captive by their Socialist and ultra-Jacobin -supporters, through whom they have seized the reins of government.</p> - -<p>The Crimean war, as I have shown in <i>Slav and Moslem</i>, was partly -brought about by a similar preoccupation on the part of Napoleon III, -who had just made himself emperor by an infamous <i>coup d’état</i>. -Voltairean France had allowed her protectorate over the Eastern -Christians to fall into desuetude, and Russia supplanted her. But when -the latter exercised her treaty-acquired rights, France and England -combined against her.</p> - -<p>To-day with impudent inconsistency the Third Republic, which has done -its utmost, these thirty years, to dechristianize France, sees fit to -exact from the Porte that French religious schools be allowed to -multiply freely, and that its protectorate over Eastern Christians be -distinctly recognized.<a name="page_042" id="page_042"></a></p> - -<p>What is more, the Republic demands that the Catholic University of -Beyruth deliver diplomas entitling the recipients to practise medicine -in all parts of the Turkish empire. Now, considering that the Third -Republic has just made a most iniquitous law against religious -congregations, depriving French parents of the means of educating their -children in accordance with their faith, it is a grotesque incongruity -that the Turks should be compelled to harbour these congregations and -their schools, which are being closed in France with a latent view to -establishing a Government monopoly of education.</p> - -<p>This university of Beirut, and practically all the French schools and -hospitals in Turkey, are under the direction of Jesuits, Dominicans, -Assumptionists, etc., and they are of great importance to French -influence, as they implant this language and the love of a nation that -has such admirable sons and daughters.</p> - -<p>I have no doubt that railroad concessions will also be demanded, and -that all details were discussed during the Czar’s recent visit to Paris. -Russia is using France to checkmate Germany in her Bagdad railway -scheme, and to undermine her influence with the Sultan.</p> - -<p>The deaths of Abdul Hamid and the Emperor of Austria may at any moment -precipitate the European crisis which all expect and fear.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile, neither China nor the Moslems have said their last word. In -the heart of China, Tung-fu-Siang<a name="page_043" id="page_043"></a> and Prince Tuan may, even now, be -engaged in founding a new Mohammedan power. A China galvanized by that -dangerous vitality of Islam would mean the extinction of Europe in -China. And if any great Moslem chief should succeed in combining the -interests of the faithful in Africa and Turkey, the European nations may -all look to their laurels.</p> - -<p>The self-conceit and self-complacency of the white races are simply -immense. This self-complacency is unparalleled, except perhaps by that -which distinguished the Jewish people. Because Providence had chosen -them for the accomplishment of certain designs which were to embrace the -whole human race in their ultimate scope, the Hebrews flattered -themselves that the Gentiles only existed for their benefit, as the -yellows, browns, and blacks do for us to-day. When the chosen people had -filled their cup of iniquity, heedless of that last pathetic appeal, -“Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” etc., there came that terrible siege (<span class="smcap">A.D.</span> 70) -which made them henceforth a people without an altar, without a country.</p> - -<p>Another proud empire arose, intoxicated with material and military -greatness, and we all know how the barbarians, our forefathers, -overthrew the mighty empire of the Cæsars.</p> - -<p>We, their descendants, flatter ourselves that because we wield the -sceptre of civilization and science, we do so in virtue of some inherent -race-qualities, and that our candlestick can never be moved, whatever -may<a name="page_044" id="page_044"></a> have happened to the rushlights of antiquity. But if we have been -in the vanguard of civilization and science since many centuries, it is -merely because we were Christendom. To-day Protestantism has devoured, -one by one, all the vital truths of Christianity, till it is strictly -true to say of many so-called Christian peoples and individuals, “Thou -hast a name”—for Christian beliefs with their practical sides have been -almost eliminated.</p> - -<p>When the apostasy of the governments of Christian peoples shall have -been consummated, when unlimited divorce, which is successive polygamy, -shall be generalized; when monogamy shall vanish from our codes, which -forms, with freedom from slavery, the line of demarcation between -Western and Eastern civilization—then indeed shall we be ready for the -burning.</p> - -<p>The modern barbarians are at our gates, nay, in our midst. Godless -education and the peculiar political methods of unscrupulous, educated -proletariat are rapidly preparing what may be termed government by -anarchy.</p> - -<p>Yesterday I spent a few hours at Nice, and was waiting for a tramway to -return home, when a youth of about fifteen, with a candid, ingenuous -countenance, waved his newspapers just out with the cry: “Voilà la lutte -sociale. Buy <i>La lutte sociale</i>.” I took the extended copy, asking the -youth if he believed in the <i>lutte sociale</i>.<a name="page_045" id="page_045"></a></p> - -<p>“Oh yes, of course I do,” he replied with a most convinced air.</p> - -<p>“What is this <i>lutte sociale</i>?” I inquired. This he “did not know.”</p> - -<p>Glancing through the leading article, I read a virulent denunciation of -the clergy, and a most contemptuous diatribe against the masses, <i>à la -Voltaire</i>. “They [the masses] are formed of vicious, ignorant, covetous -individuals.... What writers call ‘the soul’ of the multitude is in -general nothing but an immense horrible cry of wild beasts, an -accumulation of the lowest instincts of the human brute ... they do not -reason, they howl and they strike.”</p> - -<p>It is these masses that unscrupulous politicians and secret societies -are preparing to hurl against organized society as in 1789, after having -destroyed in them from infancy all reverence for God or man: <i>Ni Dieu ni -maître</i>—neither God nor master.</p> - -<p>In self-defence, society will be compelled to restore Christianity, or -slavery—or perish.<a name="page_046" id="page_046"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="UNAUTHORIZED_CONGREGATIONS" id="UNAUTHORIZED_CONGREGATIONS"></a>UNAUTHORIZED CONGREGATIONS</h2> - -<p class="r"> -<i>25th April, 1902.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="nind">I <small>HESITATE</small> to write anything more on religious conditions at the present -time, because I shall have to repeat what I have written in these -columns since two years. My worst previsions have been realized. The -Budget of Cults which I had hoped would be thrown as another sop to -Cerberus, has been voted by a compact Ministerial majority.</p> - -<p>If the clergy of France, with the Holy See, do not themselves reject all -connexion with a distinctly pagan government, and hold their own as the -Church did in the first three centuries, I fear this fair land may -revive the experiences of the Byzantine or Bas Empire, as it is aptly -called, for there is a distinct determination to enslave or to destroy -the Church.</p> - -<p>The French are an optimistic people. From year to year they keep -repeating that matters will soon improve, that the next elections will -make everything right and restore liberty.</p> - -<p>France’s great misfortune is, I repeat, that respectable people will -not, as a rule, touch politics, or soon give them up in disgust, while -denaturalized Frenchmen and naturalized foreigners do nothing else for a -living.<a name="page_047" id="page_047"></a></p> - -<p>In 418 the Emperor Honorius wished to establish a representative -government in Southern Gaul. “But,” writes Guizot, “no one would send -representatives, no one would go to Arles.” This same state of mind is -working the ruin of France to-day.</p> - -<p>On March 17th, 1900, I wrote: “Thus the bad element captures the votes -of the labouring masses by the circulation of vile newspapers and -brilliant promises of the Social Utopia that is coming. Consequently -both Houses are packed with this element, whose war cry is <i>Vive la -Sociale</i>, and whose emblem is the red flag of anarchy which was waved -under the very nose of President Loubet at a recent Republican fête. -With a parliament and a ministry like this any legislation is possible. -If other means fail, all the Congregations engaged in teaching will be -suppressed.... But Waldeck Rousseau is no fool,” I added. “He and his -Freemason employers know that there are some thirty odd millions of -French Catholics.... The Government cannot afford to rouse them from -their political lethargy by violent measures.... Religious liberty must -be destroyed by degrees.”</p> - -<p>Two years have elapsed since the notorious Associations or Trouillot -Bill has been passed; and the law Falloux (1850), which guarantees -liberty of teaching, may already be considered as abrogated in favour of -a state monopoly of education.</p> - -<p>Never since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), strongly -reproved by Pope Innocent, has so<a name="page_048" id="page_048"></a> great a blow been dealt at liberty of -conscience and the rights of free citizens. The pendulum of progress has -been set back at least two hundred years; nay, we witness an odious -reversion to Lacedæmonian state tyranny. And this crime against liberty, -this liberticide, is committed in the twentieth century, amid the -plaudits of all sectarian haters of the Catholic Church, and in a -country which unceasingly flaunts its catchwords of “Liberty, Equality, -Fraternity.”</p> - -<p>The general elections of May, 1902, will not, I fear, modify the -situation. I doubt, indeed, if any efforts, however earnest and -well-concerted, could now retrieve the political situation.</p> - -<p>Waldeck Rousseau, whose wily effrontery is something more than human, -knows this, and begins to throw off his mask of Liberalism.</p> - -<p>His recent political speech in the mining centres near Lyons was bold -enough, judging by a stenographic report, for the <i>Officiel</i> and <i>Havas</i> -toned it down somewhat.</p> - -<p>He gave it to be understood that only those congregations who relieved -the State in caring for the maimed, the halt, the blind, and the insane -were to be tolerated. In other words, the souls of her children are to -become the prey of a pagan State, but their diseased bodies are to be -left to the care of the Church!</p> - -<p>Eight Jesuits are being prosecuted for preaching<a name="page_049" id="page_049"></a> Advent sermons, though -they have closed their establishments and dispersed. The proper course, -apparently, would be to arraign the bishops and curés who had invited -these Jesuits to occupy their pulpits. Waldeck Rousseau is too wily for -that. His policy is to make a fine distinction between the secular and -regular clergy—to divide and conquer.</p> - -<p>Three other Jesuits, who profess theology at the Institut Catholique, -obtained from Rome dispensation of their vows, in order to be able to -retain their chairs at the Institut. They, too, are being prosecuted for -alleged violation of the Associations Bill.</p> - -<p>I think the situation is clear, and that if any Catholics here or -elsewhere still misapprehend the true purport and scope of this law of -1901, their purblindness is no longer admissible.<a name="page_050" id="page_050"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="A_COMBES_COUP_DE_MAIN" id="A_COMBES_COUP_DE_MAIN"></a>A COMBES COUP <i>DE MAIN</i></h2> - -<p class="r"> -<i>23rd August, 1902.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="nind">T<small>HE</small> elections of May, 1902, have not improved the situation in France. -No efforts, as I said, however earnest, could now retrieve the political -situation. For twenty-five years the “Grand Orient” has been gathering -into its hands all the threads of power; ministers, presidents, cabinets -are made, unmade, remade, as it suits the well-conceived plans of this -band of sectarian Jacobins, who differ from other Freemasons in that -with them God is both non-existent and <i>l’ennemi</i> to be vanquished, -while at the same time they are strictly a political organization, whose -object is to control the country and conform it to their own image.</p> - -<p>The Associations Bill, or to speak more accurately, the law against all -Christian education, was decreed by the lodges in 1877. An abortive -attempt was made to carry it through in 1880. That attempt was -premature, because the “Grand Orient” had not yet gained complete -control over the judiciary. To-day very nearly every part of the -administration is in their power.</p> - -<p>People wondered why Waldeck Rousseau resigned<a name="page_051" id="page_051"></a> immediately after the -elections, which seemed a tribute to the success of his administration. -The reason of this shuffling of the cards is evident. It had been -resolved, as soon as the elections were assured, to make a <i>coup de -main</i>, and close, summarily, 3000 primary schools, frequented by -hundreds of thousands of children of the poorer classes, and this a few -weeks before the holidays, without the slightest regard to the fact that -state lay schools were already inadequate, while in many places there -were none but congregational schools.</p> - -<p>Now Waldeck Rousseau, speaking for the Government, had most formally -declared that these schools were in no wise affected by the law of 1901 -(Associations Bill), and continued to be regulated by the law of 1885 on -primary education. It was by making this solemn declaration that Waldeck -Rousseau obtained votes enough to carry Art. XIII of the Associations -Bill, which is now being flagrantly violated by the closing of these -3000 primary schools.</p> - -<p>Many of these schools were conducted by a few Sisters in buildings owned -by private individuals, and the sealing up of these premises was a -distinct violation of property rights. In one instance, the proprietor -resorted to the use of a ladder to go in and out of his house; in -another the local tribunal removed the seals and restored the house to -the owner; but the Government had the premises sealed again. I cannot -say who had the last word, but it is certain<a name="page_052" id="page_052"></a> that there is open -conflict between the judiciary and the executive. The tribunals have not -yet been sufficiently <i>épurés</i>, nor the magistrates sufficiently -<i>domestiqués</i>. It is consoling to think that there are still a few -magistrates in France who have not “bowed the kneel to Baal, nor kissed -his image.”</p> - -<p>But a complete <i>épuration</i> of the army and of the judiciary is going on. -All the “suspects” are being displaced, from the humblest <i>garde -champêtre</i> to the highest prefect and magistrate. It will then be smooth -sailing for the coalition in power.</p> - -<p>The <i>coup de main</i> against the primary schools having been resolved -upon, it is easy to understand how desirable it was that Waldeck -Rousseau should not be on the Ministerial bench to undergo -interpellations and eat his own words. A quondam Seminarist was put in -his place, and bore the brunt of the interpellations. He contented -himself with saying that “M. Waldeck Rousseau had made a -mistake”—<i>voilà tout!</i> The Left meanwhile came to his assistance by -banging their desks and vociferating against the deputies of the Right -and Centre. A free fight was taking place in the hemicycle, when M. -Combes produced the decree, closing the session, and so ended this -disgraceful scene at two o’clock in the morning.</p> - -<p>Of course it is pretended by Ministerialists that all these primary -schools of the poor were closed in virtue of Art. XIII of the law of -1901. This is<a name="page_053" id="page_053"></a> absolutely false. Jules Laroche, a Liberal who cannot -even be suspected of “clericalism,” in his public letter, announcing to -M. Combes an interpellation, expressed himself as follows, quoting M. -Waldeck Rousseau’s own words, consigned in the <i>Officiel</i> of March 19th, -1901:—</p> - -<p>“As to the right to open private schools, the Chamber knows that this is -regulated by a special law; a simple declaration is enough, the school -is then under the State Inspector. Art. XIII [Associations Bill] has -absolutely nothing to do with the legislation on education, and the new -law does not touch it at all.”</p> - -<p>“Thus spoke Waldeck Rousseau,” continues M. Laroche. “It was on this -formal, categoric, and solemn declaration that we voted Art. XIII. You, -M. le President [Combes], are not applying Art. XIII. You are violating -it, you are transforming the law of 1901 into a trap, and the loyal and -categorical declaration of M. Waldeck Rousseau into the act of a -traitor” (<i>en œuvre de trahison</i>).</p> - -<p>This is enough for any one who cares to know the truth. It is thus that -the French people are fooled and led on, step by step, to their -destruction.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, many admirers of these sectarian persecutors prefer to -believe that all these primary schools and infant asylums were closed -because they refused to comply with the Associations Bill! Many of these -teachers belonged to amply authorized<a name="page_054" id="page_054"></a> Congregations. Those of Savoy and -the county of Nice had letters patent from the King of Savoy and -Piedmont, and the treaty of annexation to France, 1860, distinctly -stipulated that the religious congregations and ecclesiastical -properties should never be molested; it was one of the conditions on -which the inhabitants consented to be annexed. Of all this the Third -Republic makes litter.</p> - -<p>The amusing part of M. Combes’ <i>coup de main</i> is that his minions even -went around expelling small groups of three to five sisters employed by -the Government in the infirmaries of State Lyceums! In these instances, -however, they neglected to seal up the premises, as they did in the case -of private owners—a fine Jacobin distinction between <i>mine</i> and -<i>thine</i>.</p> - -<p>The Socialist Mayor of Reims recently took upon himself to laicize the -civil hospital, which, strange to say, had been served uninterruptedly -for two hundred years by a congregation called “Sœurs de l’hôpital,” -whom even the Revolutionists of 1793 had spared.</p> - -<p>Ministerial organs like the <i>Matin</i> are now busy assuring the public -that the sick, the blind, the insane, are not all to be cast into the -streets like the children of the poor, until the Government finds time -and money to build schools for them.</p> - -<p>If the Congregations devoted to the sick, the maimed, and the blind -could make common cause with the teaching Congregations, if all refused -to<a name="page_055" id="page_055"></a> demand authorization, which is merely a trap and a noose, the -Government, I think, would be checkmated. But, of course, Christian -charity will not allow them all to go on strike and throw their poor and -sick and halt upon the hands of the Government. It will be their turn -soon, and meanwhile they are holding the clothes of those who stone -Stephen. No concessions, no pliancy on the part of the persecuted, will -disarm or arrest the Government—the “Grand Orient,” I mean.</p> - -<p>The final purpose of these Freemasons is to crush out Christianity by -means of anti-religious education of all classes, and have, if possible, -a national, Republican institution, to be known as the Church of France. -It is said that M. Combes is preparing a formula of the oath to be taken -by the clergy of this institution; it is a revival of the Civil -Constitution of the Clergy of 1793, and we may also look for a renewal -of the persecution of the <i>non-assermentés</i> or non-jurors of that epoch.</p> - -<p>Decidedly these modern Jacobins have no imagination; all their -proceedings have a twang of ancient history. Read in Taine’s <i>Ancien -Régime</i>, “<i>La conquête Jacobine</i>,” and it will seem like current -history. You will read how prefects and maires and gens d’armes often -knocked in the dead of night at the doors of peaceful sisters and -ordered them to disperse. At Avignon, recently, the police had to -barricade the streets to prevent thousands of indignant men and<a name="page_056" id="page_056"></a> women -from manifesting before the Prefecture. Lyons is preparing to resist. -The speech pronounced by the Socialist mayor, M. Augagneur, at the -political banquet on 14th July, would certainly warrant retaliation.</p> - -<p>After the usual stereotyped glorification of that disgraceful -performance known as <i>La Prise de la Bastille</i>, M. Augagneur said: “The -new Bastille we must take to-day is that power, far more dangerous, of -the spirit of the past incarnated in the Church, acting by its priests, -its preachers, its monks, its professors, by all its lay accomplices. It -is this Bastille we must destroy, if we do not wish to see wasted the -immense efforts of 113 years ... thus, gentlemen, I invite you to drink -to the success of the campaign being waged by the Government.” This is -clear speaking. “No greater misfortune can befall a nation,” wrote -Lecky, “than to cut itself away from its own past as France has done.” -It is this misfortune that these blinded sectarians are seeking to -consummate in hatred of the Catholic Faith, which is so bound up with -the fibres of the nation that they can only be torn out with the last -palpitating remnants of national life.<a name="page_057" id="page_057"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="LEGALIZED_DESPOTISM" id="LEGALIZED_DESPOTISM"></a>LEGALIZED DESPOTISM</h2> - -<p class="r"> -<i>15th February, 1903.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="nind">A <small>CURIOUS</small> feature in the case of the doomed Congregations in France is -that more than nine hundred awards were made to them for educational -work during the Paris Exhibition of 1900. Leroy Beaulieu, who presided -over this international jury, has written several articles, and a most -scathing letter to M. Combes, on the subject of his malicious official -calumnies. He, Brunetière, Paul Bourget, and many other distinguished -Frenchmen have countersigned a Defence, presented by the Salesian -Fathers, in which not less than thirty-four misstatements made by M. -Combes are rectified. In general, it may said that all these official -statements are as unreliable as those made by the Commissioners of Henry -VIII. The Chambers were supposed by the law of 1901 to decide what -Congregations were to be granted authorization. They really were allowed -no voice in the matter. M. Combes presented only the names of four or -five, Les frères de St. Jean de Dieu and some others, who are to be -spared for the present. The remaining sixty-four were condemned without -a hearing.</p> - -<p>Parents of the richer classes will soon be compelled, like the poor, to -send their children to<a name="page_058" id="page_058"></a> government schools, keep them at home, or send -them to foreign lands to be educated.</p> - -<p>The true character of the Jacobin policy is becoming every day more -apparent.</p> - -<p>The social body, like our own, has its periods of adolescence and -senility, its maladies and critical periods, while the axiom that -nations have the government they deserve is attested by the fact that -governments correspond to the national pathology.</p> - -<p>The individuals too who dominate in turbulent times are like straws on -an impetuous stream. They merely serve to show the direction of the -current and its force.</p> - -<p>Danton and Robespierre did not make the Revolution. It made them. A -popular fallacy exists that the Revolution ended with the fall of -Robespierre, or at any rate when Napoleon planted his artillery before -the doors of the National Assembly. It is not over yet, and the men in -power to-day are but straws on the surface.</p> - -<p>The French Revolution was an avatar of the revolution of the sixteenth -century, or rather one of the periodical renaissances or revolts of -Paganism against Christianity. No doubt many economical causes were at -work in 1789 and there was an urgent need for readjustment.</p> - -<p>The <i>corvéable</i>, or what we call to-day the taxpayer, then as now, -groaned and repined against the excessive burdens laid upon him. -Proportion guarded,<a name="page_059" id="page_059"></a> it is even true to say to-day that all tradesmen, -agriculturists, and shopkeepers, all <i>except</i> the <i>vendors of alcohol</i>, -are as much crushed by taxes now as the <i>corvéables</i> were in 1789.</p> - -<p>The moving spirit, the genius and soul of the Revolution were the -Jacobin Clubs. There were organized the Civil Constitution of the -Clergy, theo-philanthropy, the worship of the prostitute as Goddess of -Reason, the <i>noyades</i> and the <i>fusillades</i> which made France a vast -charnel-house.</p> - -<p>To-day the Jacobin Clubs have changed their signboards, they are now -Lodges of the Grand Orient. But the spirit is unchanged. The ideal is -always the same—the destruction of all revealed religion, and with it -the noblest fruit of Christianity, Liberty.</p> - -<p>The Jacobin mind, served by organs of political administration, is to -constitute the Omnipotent and Infallible State, the golden image before -which all must bow down and worship and sacrifice—for is not sacrifice -the soul of worship? They must sacrifice all preconceived, congenital, -and inherited notions of honour, morality, and religion, and acquiesce -humbly in those edicted by the Omnipotent Infallible State; for <i>de -facto</i> infallibility is always a concomitant of supremacy. A necessary -corollary of moral unity, established by an omnipotent State, is an -evening up of social and financial conditions. No man may possess more -learning, more wealth, or more prestige than his neighbour. Thus after -having preluded by<a name="page_060" id="page_060"></a> the assault on personal liberty, depriving thousands -of men and women of the right to live in communities, the Jacobin -Omnipotent State is itself to constitute one vast Congregation in which -all, <i>nolens volens</i>, must live and practise <i>Poverty</i> by submitting to -fiscal confiscations for the laudable purpose of equalizing fortunes, -<i>Chastity</i> or unchastity according to new Government formulæ regarding -divorce and free love, etc., with a view to procreation under -governmental supervision, and above all <i>Obedience perinde ut -cadaver</i>—Obedience to the Omnipotent Infallible State, henceforth the -only regulator of their own and their children’s morality.</p> - -<p>Since twenty-five years every law, every constitutional and electoral -manipulation, has been elaborated at the lodges. To-day sixteen -Commissions composed of their most trusted members are masticating the -execution of the Associations Bill, or rather the wholesale executions -of this <i>guillotine sèche</i> which are imminent. No congregation of men -engaged in preaching or teaching is to be tolerated, or its members -allowed to exercise these functions even individually. The same rule -will be applied to the congregations of women. Those engaged in primary -schools have nearly all been dispersed by decree, and in violation of -the law, as I have shown. The suppression of those who teach the -children of the rich is only a question of a short lapse of time.</p> - -<p>The rulings of these Commissions will be presented<a name="page_061" id="page_061"></a> to the Chambers, and -the “bloc” will vote as one man. It is an admirable means of eliminating -all useless discussion on the part of the opposition minority, which -every day grows lesser, and still more less, and will soon reach the -vanishing point. Thus after being governed by decrees and ministerial -circulars, France will be governed by Commissions as under the -Constituante, and the ideal of the Omnipotent State, universal teacher, -preacher, and general purveyor, may be realized ere long. Surely a -strange outcome of a century of Liberalism!</p> - -<p>From whatever point of view we consider the suppression of all religious -Congregations and of educational liberty, we must admit that a grave -violation of personal and civil liberty has been committed and will soon -be consummated.</p> - -<p>The Moslems for a long time levied on the Spaniards and the Venetians a -tax of so many boys and girls a year, but no Government of a free people -has yet called on all parents to stand and deliver, not their purse, but -the souls of their children, that it may sow therein the tares of a -hideous state materialism. The right free citizens have to follow their -inclination and conscience by living in community and practising the -counsels of evangelical perfection to which they feel called is a most -sacred part of personal liberty.</p> - -<p>“Liberalism,” writes Taine, “is the respect of others. If the State -exists, it is to prevent all intrusion into<a name="page_062" id="page_062"></a> the private life, the -beliefs, the conscience, the property of the individual. When the State -does this, it is the greatest of benefactors. When it commits these -intrusions itself, it is the greatest of malefactors.”</p> - -<p>Curiously similar was the judgment of an old Spanish peasant with whom -Montalembert conversed during his travels in Spain after one of its -nineteenth-century anti-clerical revolutions and the usual -accompaniment, the suppression of religious Congregations. Pointing with -her bare and scraggy arm to some deserted monastery buildings, she -pronounced these two eloquent words, “<i>Suma tyrania</i>,” acme of tyranny!<a name="page_063" id="page_063"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="DESPOTISM_PLUS_GUILE" id="DESPOTISM_PLUS_GUILE"></a>DESPOTISM PLUS GUILE</h2> - -<p class="r"> -<i>6th June, 1903.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="nind">T<small>HE</small> true character and scope of the Associations Bill can no longer be -dissimulated. It should have been labelled “An Act for the suppression -of religious congregations and Christian education preparatory to the -suppression of Catholicism in France.”</p> - -<p>Nor is this all. It looks as if this Trouillot or Associations Bill, -with its numerous articles, was merely a vulgar trap set by the -Government to extract from the doomed unauthorized Congregations -accurate information regarding their property and members, in order to -seize the former and see to it that the latter are for ever debarred -from teaching. These inventories were a necessary part of all demands -for authorization, without which no Congregation could henceforth exist. -I say “seize,” for every one knows that “liquidation” means purely and -simply spoliation and confiscation.</p> - -<p>I have in previous articles dwelt on the bad faith of the Combes -ministry in closing by simple decree some three thousand free parochial -schools, in spite of the solemn assurance given by M. Waldeck Rousseau, -on behalf of the State, that these schools were in<a name="page_064" id="page_064"></a> no wise affected by -the new law of 1901 (Associations Bill). At the last session of the -Chambers a more monstrous illegality was committed.</p> - -<p>“Both the letter and the spirit of the law of 1901 were violated.” These -are the words pronounced at Bordeaux recently by M. Decrais, an -ex-minister, who was thereupon elected senator by an imposing majority.</p> - -<p>The law distinctly provided that the demand for authorization of each -religious order be submitted to the vote of the Chambers, but M. Combes -just bunched them all into three categories—preaching, teaching, -contemplative—and they were sent to execution by cartloads, like the -victims of 1793.</p> - -<p>In vain the Right protested against the illegality of this proceeding. -“What do we care for legality? We have the majority,” were some of the -cynical utterances of the Left, who banged their desks, stamped their -feet, and vociferated to drown the voices of speakers of the Right. -Worst of all, M. Combes produced, and used with much effect, a document -purporting to bear the signature of many Superiors of Congregations, -urging all to sell out their government bonds.</p> - -<p>In vain the Right demanded that the authenticity of this document be -proven before taking the final vote. This act of M. Combes speaks for -itself.</p> - -<p>The wholesale suppression of all preaching and teaching orders is, -moreover, a distinct violation of<a name="page_065" id="page_065"></a> Art. I of the Concordat, which is an -organic law of the French State. This article provides, “that the -Catholic religion shall be freely exercised in France.”</p> - -<p>The allegation that this Concordat does not mention religious -Congregations is a mere quibble.</p> - -<p>“No church,” declares Guizot, “is free that may not develop according to -its genius and history,” and every one knows that preaching and teaching -Congregations have always formed an integral part of the Catholic -Church, her most important organs of expansion in fact.</p> - -<p>This wholesale suppression of preaching and teaching Congregations is a -violation not only of the law of 1901 and of the Concordat, but also of -the law Falloux, 1850, which entitles all persons duly qualified to -teach and open schools. It was then that the great preacher and teacher, -the Dominican Lacordaire, speaking in the Chambers as deputy, pointed to -his white robe, exclaiming, “I am a liberty.”</p> - -<p>The Charter of 1830 (under the <i>Monarchie de Juillet</i>, as the reign of -Louis Philippe of Orleans was called) conferred this liberty, in theory; -but it remained ineffective until the law Falloux finally abolished the -state monopoly of education, which Napoleon had centred in the -University of Paris.</p> - -<p>But the Third Republic brushes aside Art. I of the Concordat, the loi -Falloux, 1850, the scholar<a name="page_066" id="page_066"></a> laws of 1885, and its own new-fledged law of -1901, all with the utmost unconcern.</p> - -<p>“What do we care for liberty,” as the Left cynically exclaimed. Quite as -little as they care for the wishes of the whole country, expressed by -innumerable petitions, and the votes of 1500 Municipal Councils of -Communes, whom the Government condescended to consult. One thousand and -seventy-five of these voted for the Congregations; about four hundred -voted against them; the others abstained. The attitude of the people in -every place where Congregations were dispersed, with the aid of the -regular army and the police, leaves not the slightest doubt that if a -referendum had been taken as in Switzerland, more than two-thirds of the -nation would have voted for Liberty and the Congregations.</p> - -<p>With the astute hypocrisy that characterizes him, Waldeck Rousseau -professed intense devotion to the secular clergy and declared that the -law of 1901 (Associations Bill) was devised to protect them from the -encroachments of the regular clergy or monks. He thought to divide and -conquer. Now that seventy-two bishops have sent a combined petition to -Parliament on behalf of the Congregations, and the whole secular clergy -have openly identified their cause with that of the Congregations, this -ministerial fiction can no longer be upheld.</p> - -<p>The Left or “bloc” are clamouring already for the suppression of the -secular or parochial clergy, who<a name="page_067" id="page_067"></a> they say “are all in connivance with -the Congréganists.”</p> - -<p>M. Combes has sent a circular to the bishops requiring that all churches -and chapels <i>non concordataires</i> be closed, and threatening to close -even the parish churches which existed already in 1808, if any member of -a dispersed Congregation preached in it.</p> - -<p>Only four bishops, I am happy to say, “had the courage to submit,” to -use the words of a ministerial organ.</p> - -<p>The language in which the French prelates have expressed their <i>non -possumus</i> is worthy of the best traditions of the Church, and when these -sectarian persecutors shall have completely thrown off the mask, another -glorious page will be added to her history, I trust.</p> - -<p>Jealous, no doubt, of M. Trouillot’s laurels, M. de Pressensé, son of a -Protestant pastor, and some others have attached their names to projects -of law for what is mendaciously and hypocritically called “the -Separation of Church and State,” meaning a law for the complete -shackling of the Church in France in view to its suppression.</p> - -<p>I think it is very desirable that the lodges should do their worst here -and now. But it is just possible that Waldeck Rousseau may return and a -halt be called.</p> - -<p>M. Combes and <i>his employers</i> the “Grand Orient<a name="page_068" id="page_068"></a>” must see that they -have gone a little too far. Civil war on a small scale has been raging -on many points of France for two or three weeks; and they would be -running blood if French Catholics carried concealed weapons as people do -in South Carolina and Kentucky. As it is, there have only been -innumerable broken limbs and heads and no end of arrests. M. de Dion, a -deputy wearing his insignia of office, which offered him no immunity, -appeared handcuffed before the police court, and was there and then -condemned to three days’ imprisonment for “manifesting.” A young lady of -twenty was condemned to eight days’ imprisonment for having cried -“Capon” to a justice of the peace, who beat a hasty retreat when he -found himself confronted by a few hundred men in the hall of a convent -into which he had forced an entrance with the aid of state locksmiths, -or <i>crocheteurs</i>. Here on my boulevard, Cimiez Nice, two squadrons of -cavalry and numerous infantry were called out to aid the police at 4 -a.m. in beating back the crowds who were “manifesting” against the -expulsion of the Franciscans. At Marseilles, Avignon, etc., the main -streets had to be barricaded, and cavalry charged the crowds, wounding -great numbers. Of course all these grand manifestations of popular -indignation are carefully belittled or suppressed by foreign -correspondents of English and American papers. In the <i>Evening Post</i>, -August 25th, M. Othon Guerlac, with lofty affectation of<a name="page_069" id="page_069"></a> impartiality, -echoes all the commonplaces of ministerial calumnies against the -Congregations, but he has not one word to say about the monstrous -illegalities committed by the Government from first to last.</p> - -<p>The indignant protestations of the foreign colony have suspended for a -time the closing of churches and convents on this Riviera.</p> - -<p>The Ministerials have not even the courage to do evil logically and -consistently, with equal injustice to all.</p> - -<p>Two years ago Waldeck Rousseau, in his famous political speech at -Toulouse, declared religious vows to be contrary to public law; and in -the same breath he introduced the law of 1901, inviting all -Congregations to apply for authorization. His colleague, M. Brisson, at -the session in which fifty-four Congregations of men were executed <i>in -globo</i>, loftily declared “that the Republic would never put its -signature to an act alienating human liberty.” And at that very moment, -three or four of these Congregations were nestling, securely, under the -protecting wing of M. Combes. That of St. Jean de Dieu has a first-rate -establishment for men in need of surgical treatment, similar to the one -conducted by Augustine nuns, at which Madame Waldeck Rousseau was -operated on recently. None of these will be interfered with, no matter -how heinous their vows may be.</p> - -<p>It would be foolish, I repeat, for Catholics to rejoice<a name="page_070" id="page_070"></a> at the possible -return of Waldeck Rousseau, or at any <i>machine en arrière</i> policy.</p> - -<p>M. Combes has been hired to do an odious job, when it is done he, too, -will retire or fall. But the well-matured plans of the Grand Orient will -be carried out with long-drawn, unrelenting, satanic astuteness. This is -the peril I noted in my first article from France, March 17th, 1900.<a name="page_071" id="page_071"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="UNCHANGING_JACOBINISM" id="UNCHANGING_JACOBINISM"></a>UNCHANGING JACOBINISM</h2> - -<p class="r"> -<i>6th May, 1903.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="nind">L<small>AST</small> August I described the true spirit and scope of the Associations -Bill, as it is called, and which many supposed was a mere matter of -domestic economy. It should have been called an act for the suppression -of all religious associations preparatory to the elimination of -Christianity in France. <i>L’ennemi c’est Dieu.</i> It is evident to-day that -the law of 1901 was a mere trap set by the Government to obtain from the -Congregations accurate information regarding their pecuniary resources, -in order to seize their property (for the term “liquidation” is only an -euphemism); and regarding their members, so that they may be marked men -and women, for ever debarred from preaching or teaching. The law -required that demands for authorization of each religious order or -association be submitted to the Chambers. M. Combes just bunched them -all into three categories: preaching, teaching, and contemplative. At -the request of the Government, the majority or “bloc” then sent them to -execution by cartloads, as in 1793. Then the categories were labelled -royalists, <i>emigrés</i>, and Catholic priests.<a name="page_072" id="page_072"></a></p> - -<p>It is much to the credit of these fifty-four Congregations of men that -their lives were so free from reproach that <i>three</i> times the Government -had recourse to the same incident of a certain Superior, said to have -been condemned to hard labour in the year 1868! As another instance, the -case of the Frère Duvain was alleged. Like the Frère Flamidien, the -former had been recently arrested and imprisoned on false charges. For -since then, only a week or so ago, Frère Duvain too was acquitted as -wholly innocent!</p> - -<p>These wholesale executions have been committed not only illegally, but -in spite of the fact that out of 1600 municipal councils consulted on -the subject, 1200 voted for the maintenance of the Congregations. About -100 abstained, and the others voted against. The prefects, being mere -satraps of the Government, were nearly all opposed to the Congregations.</p> - -<p>The Government has been profuse in its protestations that its object in -suppressing the religious Congregations was to protect the secular -clergy against their encroachments. But since seventy-two bishops signed -a petition to the Chambers on behalf of the Congregations, and are daily -raising their voices to denounce the tyranny which has ostracized them, -this mask also falls. The right to preach and to teach are corollaries -of the right of free speech and free thinking. All liberties, indeed, -are inseparably connected, and must stand or fall together.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile the loi Falloux, 1850, is still extant;<a name="page_073" id="page_073"></a> nevertheless -thousands of citizens are placed <i>hors la loi</i>, because they live and -dress in a certain way.</p> - -<p>The Concordat, a solemn pact and contract between the Holy See and the -French Government in 1801, is still supposed to be in vigour, and one of -its most important clauses provides for the “free exercise of the -Catholic religion in France,” and Guizot affirms that no Church is free -that may not develop and function according to its genius and -traditions. Teaching and preaching religious associations have, from the -beginning, formed an integral part of the Catholic Church. The -suppression of her schools was one of the first means resorted to by -Julian the Apostate when he undertook to restore paganism. The Third -Republic invents nothing. Its next step will be to attack the secular -clergy and establish a department of State known as the National Church, -ministered to by servile state functionaries, recruited among apostate -excommunicated priests, of whom there are always a few lying around. It -is erroneously supposed that the Catholic Church in France is an -established or state Church; that the clergy receive a salary and are -functionaries. This is absolutely false. Two decisions of the Court of -Cassation have decided that they are not functionaries.</p> - -<p>To understand their position we must recall that the Convention -confiscated all Church property and lands, the pious donations of kings -and people which had accumulated during fifteen centuries of national<a name="page_074" id="page_074"></a> -progress and prosperity. Not satisfied with this act of spoliation, they -threw these lands on the market with the precipitation and greed that -characterize all revolutionary iconoclasts, fondly believing that the -whole nation had sloughed off Christian superstitions regarding <i>ipso -facto</i> excommunications of all, who seized or even acquired Church -lands. They were mistaken. These holdings became a drug on the market. -From common prudence and honesty, if not from higher motives, few could -be found willing to traffic in the pious gifts and foundations of their -ancestors. Ten years of massacres, of civil and foreign wars, and -anarchy, did not improve matters. Two classes of landed proprietors, two -standards of valuation were created, and civil and religious discord was -perpetuated in this material form. When Napoleon undertook the work of -reconstruction, his first care was to restore normal conditions in the -real estate market by obtaining a clear title to the confiscated lands -of the Church. There was but one person who could give this clear title. -To him Napoleon appealed, and the Concordat was signed.</p> - -<p>Pius VII could not, however, relinquish all claims to the confiscated -lands without compensation. Hence the engagement entered into by the -French Government to pay in perpetuity adequate subsidies for the -maintenance of an adequate number of bishops and parochial clergy. This -was the consideration [the <i>do ut des</i>] for which the Pope, as supreme -chief of<a name="page_075" id="page_075"></a> the Catholic Church, gave a clear title to the confiscated -lands. The payment of these subsidies became henceforth a charge on the -public treasury, a portion of the national debt, just like the payment -of interest on state bonds.</p> - -<p>The suppression, at the present moment, of these subsidies in the case -of the Bishop of Nice and many other bishops and hundreds of parish -priests is a partial repudiation of this part of the public debt. And -there is nothing to prevent the repudiation of the whole. “What do we -care for legality?” “We have the majority,” were utterances which passed -unrebuked in the Chambers recently. They can imprison and kill the Roman -Catholic clergy. The First Republic did both most freely. So did Nero -and Bismarck. It also tried the experiment of a national schismatic -Church and failed. The Third Republic openly proclaims its intention of -renewing the experiment in which Abbé Gregoire, with <i>carte blanche</i> -from the Republic, so signally failed a hundred years ago.</p> - -<p>To understand the abnormal conditions prevailing in France, we must -remember that France is in revolution since a century or more. The -Revolution of 1793 was essentially a religious movement, born of the -monstrous alliance of the French ruling classes with the spirit of -libertinage and infidelity. It destroyed the monarchy and all the -institutions of the ancient regime, merely because they were associated<a name="page_076" id="page_076"></a> -with the Catholic Church, whose destruction was their main object—a -means to an end. The final purpose was the destruction of Christianity -and its noblest fruit, liberty. The ideal, then as now, is the -omnipotent State, sole purveyor, teacher, and preacher. This may seem -exaggerated, but it is strictly the spirit and the tendency of the -Revolution since 1789. Napoleon was the offspring and the incarnation of -the Revolution. After Austerlitz, he threw off the mask, and clearly -showed his intention of establishing state despotism on the ruins of all -civil and religious liberty. There was but one will in Europe that -resisted him. Alone of all the sovereigns of Europe, the aged, -defenceless Sovereign Pontiff refused to enter into his continental -<i>blocus</i> against England, declaring that all Christians were his -children, and we know the story of his long martyrdom at Fontainebleau. -Capefigue, in the third of his ten volumes on the Consulate and the -Empire, comments on the singular fact that the First Republic always -bitterly antagonized the United States, and he explains this “singular -phenomenon” by the reason that the former was a government of tyranny -and anarchy, whereas the Republic of Washington was one of law and -liberty.</p> - -<p>What was true then is equally so to-day. The United States owe their -independence to his most Christian Majesty, the murdered Louis XVI, and -not to any pagan French Republic. Louisiana was<a name="page_077" id="page_077"></a> ceded by the Emperor -Napoleon, and not by any French Republic, first, second, or third. There -can be no sympathy between the two republics other than that of -sectarian sympathy with persecutors of the Catholic Church. I speak of -the Government, not of the French people, whose genius and high -qualities we must always admire.</p> - -<p>Methods have greatly altered in all departments, but the generating -principle, the inner mind of Jacobinism, is unchanged. We hear no more -about the worship of the Goddess of Reason and theo-philanthropy. -Jacobin clubs have changed their signboards; they are now called Lodges -of the “Grand Orient,” but they rule France with an iron hand by means -of the Socialist vote. When the day of reckoning comes with the -Socialist masses, who are now being used as cats’ paws, the Revolution -will again enter into one of its acute phases. Millerand and Jaurès are -merely politicians who fall into line with the Government quite -gracefully. But, as Lincoln said, you cannot fool all the people all the -time. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church will reap the benefits of -persecution. The Congregations will carry on their work elsewhere, and -she will more than recuperate her losses on this little point of earth -called France. Unhappy country that is committing “national suicide,” to -use the expression of Leroy Beaulieu.<a name="page_078" id="page_078"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="DEATH_OF_WALDECK_ROUSSEAU" id="DEATH_OF_WALDECK_ROUSSEAU"></a>DEATH OF WALDECK ROUSSEAU</h2> - -<p class="r"> -<i>August, 1904.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="nind">I <small>REFER</small> my readers to what I wrote on May 4th, 1901, regarding the -advent of the Waldeck Rousseau Cabinet, and its policy after the sudden -and suspicious death of M. Felix Faure, rapidly replaced by M. Loubet. I -then related how Socialist revolutionists were skilfully used to obtain -a majority with which both Houses were packed to carry through the -odious legislation of the last few years.</p> - -<p>The laws of 1901 (Associations Bill), and of July 7th, 1904, suppressing -all teaching religious orders, are measures which represent the closing -of some twenty-seven thousand Christian schools!</p> - -<p>Two days after the law was voted some 3000 <i>authorized</i> institutions -were ordered to close their doors, and almost immediately was -inaugurated the long series of <i>liquidations</i>, a genteel euphemism for -wholesale spoliation of the victims, deprived of their homes, and of -their only means of earning a living, as they may no longer teach.</p> - -<p>There is nothing more tragically pathetic than the last appearance in -the Senate of M. Wallon. This veteran republican, called the “Father of -the<a name="page_079" id="page_079"></a> Constitution,” and now a hoary octogenarian, raised his quavering -voice in one last eloquent denunciation of the laws of 1901, 1902, and -1904. Condemning the shameless violation of property rights, he boldly -applied to the Government the Article of the Code which debars the -assassin of the testator from inheriting his property. “Messieurs,” he -cried, “on n’hérite pas de ceux qu’on a assassinés.” “Gentlemen, it is -not permitted to inherit from those we have destroyed.”</p> - -<p>Equally tragical was the last appearance in the Senate of M. Waldeck -Rousseau, so near his last hour.</p> - -<p>He had risen from his bed of sickness to unburden his conscience by -protesting against the anti-clerical fury of his ci-devant supporters -and instruments. In vain he denounced the violations of his law of 1901, -travestied by that of 1904 suppressing even authorized Congregations. -The verve of the great tribune had abandoned him. His speech was but a -hollow echo of its former eloquence. Twice he reeled and was forced to -steady himself by clinging to the railing. When he rose for the second -time, to reply to the sarcasms of M. Combes, he suddenly lost the thread -of his discourse, and before he had ended, many benches were vacated; -the forum, where his words had so often been greeted with wild applause, -was almost empty.</p> - -<p>“He threw down the thirty pieces of silver, saying,<a name="page_080" id="page_080"></a> I have sinned. And -they said, What is that to us? See thou to it. And he went forth.”</p> - -<p>It is needless to inquire whether the story of attempted suicide be true -or not; to-day he is no more. The last two years of his life were a long -agony, of which the last two hours were passed on the operating table. -While he was dying under the surgeon’s knife the minions of his -successor, M. Combes, were invading a convent of Notre Dame Sisters. -They even insisted on going into the infirmary to inventory beds and -blankets. A sick nun was so shaken by the emotion caused by this -unwonted intrusion, that she had a seizure and died before the minions -of the law had left the convent.</p> - -<p>And thus persecutor and persecuted met on the threshold of eternity.</p> - -<p>This sister is only one of the many hundreds of infirm and aged who have -been literally killed by this infamous legislation of 1901 and 1904, and -only one of the thousands who are dying of hardships and privations. -Many of them are living on four sous a day.</p> - -<p>The Government wanted to give M. Waldeck Rousseau a national funeral, -strictly pagan and masonic of course; but he had left instructions to -the contrary, and is to be buried from his parish church, Ste. -Clothilde. Whether he received the last Sacraments of the Church or not -is still a matter of conjecture. The death of Waldeck Rousseau will not -in<a name="page_081" id="page_081"></a> any way affect the trend of politics. The recent municipal elections -are proclaimed a victory for the Government. As usual not one-third of -those inscribed voted. <i>A quoi bon?</i> Before the law of 1901 was voted, -the immense majority of the municipalities consulted pronounced in -favour of the Congregations. This made no difference.</p> - -<p>Before the law of 1904 suppressing authorized Congregations was voted, -the Right demanded that the municipal councils be consulted again. The -Government peremptorily refused. As I have said before, nothing can -restrain Jacobin tyranny but a national cataclysm which would bring -about a violent reaction. “We have the majority, what do we care for -legality?” as the Left proclaimed recently at the Palais Bourbon.</p> - -<p>They have no other rule of conduct but the “fist right,” now known as -“the majority.<a name="page_082" id="page_082"></a>”</p> - -<h2><a name="LIBERTY_AND_STATE_SERVITUDE" id="LIBERTY_AND_STATE_SERVITUDE"></a>LIBERTY AND STATE SERVITUDE</h2> - -<p class="r"> -<i>July, 1904.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="nind">M<small>ODERN</small> democracy, which flatters itself that it has shaken off all the -shackles of authority, is itself but an evolution of what it so loftily -contemns. If we are free to-day, it is because our fathers have borne -the yoke of Christ.</p> - -<p>In one of his sonorous paradoxes, Rousseau declared that “men are born -free and everywhere they are in chains.”</p> - -<p>That all men are born free is as false a statement as that all men are -born upright and virtuous. History and experience give the lie to both -assertions. Men are not born free. Our rights and liberties are secured -by laws which are a circumscription of the sphere of individual -independence for the benefit of the community, and this in virtue of a -divine “thou shalt not,” written on the tablets of the heart, or on -tables of stone. Human laws have no sanction except in divine law, and -no man has a right to command his fellow-men, except within the limits -of natural and of divine law.</p> - -<p>The sum of liberty in every community is the sum of its amenity to law, -both divine and natural.<a name="page_083" id="page_083"></a> Hence Plato’s remark that “republics cannot -exist without virtue in the people,” and Montesquieu’s assertion that -“the vital principle of democratic government is virtue.” All human laws -deriving their sanction from divine and natural laws, it follows that -liberty must diminish when these laws are violated with impunity.</p> - -<p>Plutarch, referring to the Golden Age, which, according to all writers, -even Voltaire, came first, writes that “in the days of Saturn all men -were free.” Our data regarding this period are not numerous, -unfortunately; but we learn from the traditions of all peoples, as well -as by revelation, that something momentous happened, which abolished the -Golden Age. Prometheus stole fire from heaven and was chained to a rock. -Sisyphus was compelled to roll a stone uphill all his days. Adam was -condemned to labour in the sweat of his brow, etc. The myths are -various, but the central idea is always the same—a crime punished by a -penalty involving the loss of liberty.</p> - -<p>What the nature of the act of disobedience committed by Adam when he ate -the forbidden fruit we do not know. Probably we should not understand -even if we were told; for the magnitude of a crime is always -commensurate with the intellect of the criminal, and knowledge has -considerably diminished among the sons of men. To name anything as Adam, -or whoever is thereby designated, named all<a name="page_084" id="page_084"></a> the creatures in the Garden -implies that his knowledge of them was adequate, while the great trouble -with all our up-to-date science is, that back of every phenomenon, of -every fact, stands an inexorable X, an unknown quantity that baffles -research.</p> - -<p>If we could wrest her secret from the Sphinx in any one instance, it is -probable that the whole book of nature would stand revealed. But the -angel with the flaming sword guards the portal.</p> - -<p>With the passing away of the Golden Age, or “the days of Saturn, in -which all men were free,” there came a diminution of light, and above -all of liberty. What justice does in individual cases, when malefactors -are incarcerated, seems to have been accomplished on a large scale, when -the masses of a race, nay of the whole species, were reduced to slavery. -For though our data regarding the “days of Saturn when all men were -free” are scant, we do know, beyond a peradventure, that before Christ -slavery was the normal condition of the masses in every age, in every -clime; not alone among barbarous and predatory tribes, who reduced their -captives to this condition, but also among the most stable and cultured -communities—in Assyria, in Babylon, Egypt, Idumea, Rome, Greece, -everywhere. Nor was there found one sage, one legislator, to raise his -voice against an inveterate institution, which one and all deemed a -<i>sine quâ non</i> of any society, of any government. Lucanus only expressed -an universally<a name="page_085" id="page_085"></a> accepted axiom when he wrote that “the human race only -existed for a few”—<i>Humanum paucis vivit genus.</i> Towards the end of the -Republic, when Rome numbered a million and a half inhabitants, there -were only some 20,000 proprietors; all the rest were slaves.</p> - -<p>Sages and legislators of antiquity who considered slavery a <i>sine quâ -non</i> of government were not wrong. Vast numbers of human wills cannot be -left in freedom without a restraint of some kind. “Christianity alone,” -writes the Rationalist Lecky, “could affect the profound change of -character which rendered the abolition of slavery possible” (<i>History of -Rationalism</i>, II, 258).</p> - -<p>When Peter the Fisherman proclaimed the brotherhood of man, saying “Men, -brethren” to all alike, the Church began her perennial mission of -liberty by sanctification. Individually, men must be delivered from the -yoke of evil passions by Christianity, so that the masses might be -delivered from servitude.</p> - -<p>The powers of darkness, that are now waging fierce warfare on the -Christian Church, understand perfectly what the legislators of antiquity -understood and practised. Being resolved to uproot Christianity and its -moral teaching, which alone have rendered freedom and government -compatible, they are casting about for some new kind of slavery, which -apparently is to take the form of State Socialism. A coterie is to -concentrate in its hands all the power, all the<a name="page_086" id="page_086"></a> wealth, all the natural -resources of the country. This coterie will be named the State; the -others, the cringing, crouching millions yclept the Sovereign People, -will have nothing left but to obey the edicts of the Omnipotent -Infallible State, only teacher, preacher, and general purveyor. <i>Humanum -paucis vivit genus.</i></p> - -<p>This reversion to the pagan regime from which Christianity delivered us -will be the just penalty of apostasy from Christianity.</p> - -<p>If, and when, and where Christianity is crushed out, liberty both civil -and personal, which are bound up with and inseparable from it, will -disappear in exact proportion <i>tantum quantum</i>.</p> - -<p>We need only turn a few pages of contemporary history and read the -lessons taught by the French Revolution. The most illustrious of -nations, in the zenith of its civilization, allowed the government to -pass into the hands of a band of neo-pagans prepared by Voltaire and his -ilk. Christianity was solemnly abjured; its temples were desecrated; at -Notre Dame a prostitute, posing as the Goddess of Reason, was -worshipped; on the Champ de Mars the new religion of theo-philanthropy -was inaugurated.</p> - -<p>What was the immediate consequence? In the twinkling of an eye all -liberty vanished. The most sacred rights of the individual were -proscribed. Men could no longer call their lives their own under the Law -of Suspects, a time to which Camille Pelletan,<a name="page_087" id="page_087"></a> <i>ministre de la marine</i>, -actually referred, yesterday, as “an hour when under the influence -necessary, but somewhat enervating, of Thermidor, the Republic was in -danger.”</p> - -<p>Without going so far back as 1793, we have but to read the records of -the Commune in 1870, which was a phase of the Revolution that is still -marching on. One of the moving spirits of this time was Raul Ripault. M. -Clemenceau was only Mayor of Montmartre, and M. Barrère, now ambassador -at Rome, was an active member.</p> - -<p>To Monseigneur Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, one of the hostages taken -and shot by the Commune, Raul Ripault said, “Ta liberté n’est pas ma -liberté, aussi je te fait fusiller” (“Thy liberty is not my liberty, so -I have you shot”).</p> - -<p>Liberty, I repeat, is bound up with and inseparable from Christianity. -To-day, as in 1793, a coterie of atheists or neo-pagans have captured -all the avenues of power by means of godless schools and the Socialist -vote, and even by hobnobbing with the red flag of anarchy, which waved -unrebuked around M. Loubet at that famous fête called Triomphe de la -République.</p> - -<p>They have worked, steadily and intelligently, to this end since -twenty-five years, while two-thirds of the country have been absolutely -indifferent to politics. Some even affect to ignore the name of the -President. Laborious, honest Frenchmen as a rule despise politics, and -cannot be induced to take part<a name="page_088" id="page_088"></a> in them or be candidates for office. One -has but to consult the electoral returns to see how many hundreds of -thousands abstain from voting. Thus the Government has passed into the -hands of the Judeo-Masonic coterie.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p> - -<p>As in 1793, the first result is the diminution of liberty. It was long -sought to represent the Associations Bill (1901) as a mere measure of -domestic economy. It was the entering wedge of tyranny. The object to be -attained is the suppression of all Christian education, by the -suppression of all religious teachers, preparatory to a state monopoly -of education.</p> - -<p>The indignant protestations and the tumultuous manifestations of men and -women who fill the streets with cries of “Vive la liberté!” “Vivent les -sœurs!” are wholesome signs; but I think it is just as well that the -Jacobins should go on and do their worst. Overvaulting tyranny, like -ambition, doth overleap itself. At the Gare St. Lazare, recently, some -ten thousand people accompanied the expulsed sisters of St. Vincent to -the train with cries of “Liberty! Liberty!” The police were powerless.</p> - -<p>In another place the population unharnessed the horses of the omnibus -that was taking some other<a name="page_089" id="page_089"></a> sisters to the station. They dragged the -conveyance back and broke down the doors of the convent which had been -sealed by the Government.</p> - -<p>In Paris at least 50,000 children of the poor have been thrown into the -streets; for the state schools were already inadequate, and 30,000 or -more children were waiting for a chance to comply with the law of -compulsory education.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> In a mining town, a <i>crèche</i>, or infant asylum, -where 150 babies from six months to four years of age were cared for -while their mothers worked, was closed suddenly.</p> - -<p>When we think of all the suffering and inconvenience caused by these -executions, we are amazed that more blood has not flowed.</p> - -<p>The right parents have to educate their children as they see fit, and -the right all citizens have to live as they see fit, and teach when duly -qualified, are primordial, inalienable rights that cannot be violated -without crime, and a crime which must find its repercussion in all -civilized countries. In general it may be said that every Government has -a right to administer its own affairs as it sees fit. This is precisely -what the Turks assumed when they were massacring the Bulgarians and the -Armenians. But Europe thought differently in 1877. The Jacobins of 1793, -who had conquered France then, as to-day, by cleverly<a name="page_090" id="page_090"></a> combined -manœuvres in which fear played a large part, also thought it was -nobody’s business, if they saw fit to drown, proscribe, and guillotine -by tens of thousands, in order to enforce their peculiar views of -liberty. But every act of tyranny, every crime against liberty, offends -all Christendom. It cannot be circumscribed by national frontiers. Soon -all Europe was weltering in blood. The First Consul marched rough-shod -over Europe, imposing French liberty on unappreciative nations. And we -all know how the allied armies occupied Paris in 1815 and curbed the -Revolution for a season. History repeats itself.<a name="page_091" id="page_091"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="THE_FRENCH_REVOLUTION" id="THE_FRENCH_REVOLUTION"></a>THE FRENCH REVOLUTION</h2> - -<p class="r"> -<i>27th June, 1904.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="nind">T<small>HE</small> Associations Bill, pre-eminently an act of oppression and religious -persecution, has been rendered doubly odious by the many illegalities by -which it has been surrounded, some of which I enumerated in my letter in -the <i>Evening Post</i> of May 6th. Not long since, M. Decrais, ex-Minister -of the Waldeck-Rousseau Cabinet, was elected by a large majority at -Bordeaux, after he had branded the wholesale execution of the religious -orders as “a violation of the spirit and the letter of the law of 1901,” -and assured his electors that he had not voted with the Government on -that occasion. Indeed, these Jacobins seem to revel in illegality for -its own sake, and cannot even respect their own enactments.</p> - -<p>Civil war on a small scale has been raging since nearly two months in -various parts of France. It became quite monotonous to read the recital -of all these expulsions <i>manu militari</i> which filled the columns of the -daily Press. The programme was almost the same in every case. The crowds -varied from three hundred to many thousands, according to the locality, -and were more or less violent in their denunciations of the Government; -the police and the<a name="page_092" id="page_092"></a> regular army, employed to surround the convents and -disperse the crowds of manifestants, were also more or less numerous, -and acted more or less brutally. The troops as a rule left their -barracks at night, arrived on the scene at 2 or 3 a.m., and awaited -daybreak before surrounding the house. Then, the Commissaires ringing in -vain, the doors are battered down, police and soldiers enter the breach -and find a few old monks in the chapel, for as a rule the communities -had dispersed. The delinquents are marched off between two rows of -soldiers, the crowds break out in seditious cries of “Vive la liberté, à -bas les tyrans,” numerous arrests of both sexes are made, and the -country is informed that, fanaticized by the monks, men and women have -assailed the representatives of the law.</p> - -<p>It was on one of these occasions that Mlle. de Lambert cried “Capon” to -a justice of the peace because he had beaten a hasty retreat when he -found, in a cloister, two or three hundred angry men instead of a few -old monks. She was condemned to be imprisoned for eight days. On the -expiration of her term some five thousand persons went to the prison to -give her an ovation, but found that she had been removed.</p> - -<p>At Nice there was a small community of Franciscans on the Boulevard -Carabacel. Their chapel was very popular with the humbler classes of -Niçois, as well as with visitors, and manifestations like those that -occurred at the church of La Croix de Marbre,<a name="page_093" id="page_093"></a> much frequented by -American sailors, were expected. Several companies of infantry and -cavalry were sent to surround the building at 3 a.m.; but hundreds of -persons had spent all night on the premises, and the usual -manifestations and arrests occurred. Even after the premises had been -sealed up, police agents were detailed to guard them night and day. This -was very amusing, considering that policemen are so scarce in Nice that -people are robbed in broad daylight in the most-frequented quarters.</p> - -<p>All these grotesque executions <i>manu militari</i> represent one of the most -recent violations of the law, wholly gratuitous in this instance, seeing -that the Government had itself traced the method of procedure. On -November 28th, 1902, M. Valle, Minister of Justice, said:—</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“We have to examine if, after refusal of authorization and a decree -closing an establishment, we should continue to have recourse to -armed force, or whether it is not preferable to have recourse to -the tribunals. M. Chamaillard himself recognizes that it is better -to substitute judicial sanction to the sanction of force, always -brutal. It is this substitution we ask you to vote” (<i>Officiel</i>, -November 29th).</p></div> - -<p>Again, December 2nd, the Minister said:—</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“The Government abandons the right to have recourse to force, and -asks you to substitute judicial for administrative sanction. This -is the object of the proposed law” (<i>Officiel</i>, December 3rd, p. -1221, col. 2).</p></div> - -<p><a name="page_094" id="page_094"></a></p> - -<p>On December 4th this law was passed. Therefore all these executions -<i>manu militari</i>, before the tribunals had pronounced, were another -flagrant violation of law. But, as I said, these Jacobins seem to revel -in illegality for its own sake. Meanwhile the tribunals, civil and -military, have been kept busy condemning officers who refused to take -part in these degrading, unsoldierlike expeditions, as well as men and -women guilty of manifesting in favour of liberty.</p> - -<p>The fate of the Congregations of women engaged in teaching is a foregone -conclusion. Nay, M. Combes is closing many of these establishments even -before the demands for authorization have been submitted to the Chambers -to be refused <i>in globo</i>. I was in Lyons recently when two -establishments of the Society of the Sacred Heart were dispersed in the -middle of the school year, without the slightest regard to the -convenience of the pupils or their teachers. More than three thousand -persons invaded the railway station at 7 a.m. for the departure of the -first group of exiles. An enthusiastic ovation was given them, in which -all the passengers took part, and the bouquets were so numerous that -they had to be piled into a vacant car. In the afternoon there was a -second departure for Turin. This time the police took timely -precautions. The avenues leading to the vast square were barricaded -against all but travellers. These ladies have educated several<a name="page_095" id="page_095"></a> -generations of Lyonnaises, and were greatly esteemed.</p> - -<p>It would be too long to relate the exploits of the Government’s -henchmen, who have distinguished themselves at Paris and elsewhere. It -is simply astounding that such things should happen in any civilized -country and in a century so proud of its progress, liberty, and -enlightenment. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was an offence -against liberty and justice, but it occurred two hundred and fifty years -ago—almost in the Dark Ages. Some time ago, Mr. Bodley, in his -excellent work on France, commented on the extraordinary phenomenon of a -republic persecuting, in the name of liberty, a religion professed by -more than two-thirds of the nation and officially represented in the -State as the dominant religion of the country. To understand this -phenomenon we must bear in mind that French republicanism is not a form -of government, but merely the <i>modus operandi</i> of a secret society. The -Grand Orient has openly proclaimed that there would be no republic but -for them. And all the laws have been elaborated at their convents since -two decades.</p> - -<p>Above all we must remember that France is in revolution since a hundred -years and more. There have been intervals of calm which resembled -convalescence, but these have been followed by new paroxysms, as in -1830, 1848, 1870, and to-day. Madame de Staël’s clever saying that -Napoleon was “Robespierre à<a name="page_096" id="page_096"></a> cheval” is by no means as flippant as might -appear. The genius of the Jacobin Revolution was embodied in the -Convention and the Comités de Salut Public, and the representative of -this dictatorial tyranny was Robespierre. When Napoleon substituted -himself for the Convention and the Directory he abated none of the -pretensions of the Revolution. On the contrary, he consolidated them and -enlarged immensely their field of operation by riding rough-shod, not -over France alone, but over all Europe; hence the happy expression of -Madame de Staël, “Robespierre à cheval.”</p> - -<p>Unlike the upheaval known as the Reformation, the French Revolution was -essentially a religious movement, a vast renaissance of paganism -prepared by the atheistic philosophy of the eighteenth century, with -which the ruling classes became so largely imbued. It is a great mistake -to suppose that these philosophers were seeking the welfare of the -masses or the reign of the people, whom no one so thoroughly despised as -did Voltaire. The true object of the Revolution, prepared by the -encyclopedists, was the destruction of Christianity and its noblest -fruit, freedom, in order to establish on the ruins of both the reign of -the Omnipotent Infallible State, the statue of gold before which all -must fall down and worship or perish. “Sois mon frère, ou je te tue.” -For it has always been a peculiarity of French free-thinkers that they -could never tolerate any free-thinking but their<a name="page_097" id="page_097"></a> own. If the -revolutionists of 1793 inflamed the passions of the masses against the -clergy and the nobles, it was merely to use the arms of this Briareus to -batter down the monarchy and all the institutions of the ancient regime, -just as the Jacobin Republicans of to-day are using the Socialists to -accomplish the work begun by their predecessors a century ago. The final -purpose of all is the destruction of Christianity.</p> - -<p>We have but to turn the pages of any reputable French history (Taine, -Capefigue, Guizot) to see that liberty was the last preoccupation of the -Jacobin conquerors. One of the worst Roman emperors is said to have -wished that the people had but one head that he might cut it off. This -also seems to have been the idea of the Revolution, for by abolishing -all social hierarchy, all intermediate classes, all guilds and -associations, provincial parliaments, and local institutions, nothing -was left standing but a defenceless people and the omnipotent State, -which was a coterie composed sometimes of five hundred, sometimes of -four, and finally of one, the first Consul and Emperor.</p> - -<p>Never had the tyranny of the omnipotent State been more completely -realized than by the Jacobins, and their heir-at-law, Napoleon. In the -heyday of his power this great despot found but one opponent. There was -but one force that measured itself with him and vanquished. When -Holland, Prussia,<a name="page_098" id="page_098"></a> Denmark, all Europe in fact, became tributary to -Napoleon and entered into his continental scheme, in the blockade of all -European seaports, Pius VII alone refused to close Ancona, Ostia, and -Civita Vecchia against British commerce, and to prevent any Englishman -from entering the Papal States. When cabinets and rulers all succumbed -to “Robespierre on horseback,” and the inhabitants of every land became -the prey of the victor, the Spanish people alone found, in their -religious faith, the nobility and the energy of a free people, that rose -in their weakness to shake off the octopus that was fastening itself on -their vitals. Napoleon had seized, by guile and treachery, the persons -of the Royal Family of Spain, and had nominated a new tributary king, -his brother Joseph, to the throne of Spain, when the monks, the clergy, -and the peasantry organized that wonderful guerilla war, which is so -little known, and is, nevertheless, one of the most glorious episodes in -the history of liberty. Two signal defeats of the French army destroyed -the prestige of Napoleon and his motley armies, composed of conscripts -from many vassal nations, who now began to ask themselves why they could -not do what Spanish peasants had done in spite of Manuel Godin, the -Prime Minister, who had sold them to the enemy.</p> - -<p>After the restoration of the Bourbons in 1815 it seemed as if the -Revolution were over, but in 1830<a name="page_099" id="page_099"></a> it broke out anew. Charles X barely -escaped with his life. The “Monarchy of July,” as the reign of Philippe -d’Orléans is called, was merely a phase of the Revolution. In 1848 the -revolutionary fever again seized the nation in an acute form and was not -limited to France.</p> - -<p>It was at this time, strange to say, that a group of resolute Catholics -entered the political arena and fought the battle of liberty in -educational matters against the monopoly of the University. -Montalembert, Dupanloup, Berryer, Lacordaire conquered, inch by inch, a -liberty inscribed in the Charter of 1830, but ineffective so far. La loi -Falloux was not passed till 1850 but long before, Guizot, with unerring -statesmanship, had proclaimed “liberty in teaching to be the only wise -solution,” and declared that “the State must accept the free competition -of its rivals, both lay and religious, individuals and corporations” -(<i>Memoirs</i>, t. III, 102). St. Marc Girardin, reporter of the Educational -Commission (1847), expressed himself thus:—</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“Even before the Charter, experience and the interest of studies -required and obtained liberty in teaching. Here certainly we may -say that liberty was ancient and arbitrary despotism new. I do not -need to defend the principle of this liberty, for it is in the -Charter. I only wish to show that it has always existed in some -form. Emulation is good for studies. Formerly the emulation was -between the University and the<a name="page_100" id="page_100"></a> Congregations, and studies were -benefited. In 1763 Voltaire himself deplored the dispersion of the -Jesuits because of the beneficial rivalry that existed between them -and the University.... A monopoly of education given to priests -would be an anachronism in our day. But to exclude them would be a -not less deplorable anachronism.”</p></div> - -<p>Thus spoke a representative Liberal fifty years ago. Napoleon had -established a state monopoly of education in the hands of the University -of Paris. Villemain and Cousin were educational Jacobins. There was a -state rhetoric, a state history, and a state philosophy, which was, of -course, Cousin’s eclecticism. Any professor with leanings to Kant or -Comte was sent to Coventry. This state monopoly was abolished by the loi -Falloux (1850), and its reestablishment is the true purpose of the law -of 1901. During the last fifty years congregational schools multiplied -in proportion to the great demand, i.e. to such an extent that -government schools could not compete with them successfully. Hence the -Trouillot Bill (Associations).</p> - -<p>In 1870 the Revolution again triumphed. This time it was not -“Robespierre on horseback,” but Robespierre draped in toga and ermine; -the reign of despotism in the name of law and liberty; prætors and -quæstors dilapidating public funds, and giving and promising largesses. -At one time it seemed as if the Republic would be overthrown. It was -then<a name="page_101" id="page_101"></a> that M. Grévy appealed to Rome, and Leo XIII, while reproving -certain laws, advised the clergy and the Catholics to rally to the -Republic in the interest of peace. They did so. But no sooner did the -Republic feel secure than it began to enact a series of laws offensive -to Catholics. I refer to the divorce and scholar laws, and unjust fiscal -laws against Congregations.</p> - -<p>Foreigners wonder why thirty million French Catholics allow themselves -to be thus tyrannized over by a handful of Freemasons. I fear it is a -hopeless case of atavism, which will prove the undoing of France, under -the representative system. In 418 the Emperor Honorius wished to -establish this system of government in Southern Gaul, but, writes -Guizot, “the provinces and towns refused the benefit; no one would -nominate representatives, no one would go to Arles” (<i>History of -Civilization</i>). This same tendency is operating the ruin of France -to-day. Honest, laborious Frenchmen have an invincible repugnance to -politics and this periodical electioneering scramble. Moreover, it would -mean ruin and famine for hundreds of thousands of functionaries if they -dared to vote against the Government.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile the anti-clericals or lodges of the Grand Orient, largely -composed of Jews, Protestants, and naturalized foreigners, have been -hard at work these twenty years preparing the election of their<a name="page_102" id="page_102"></a> -candidates and abusing the minds of the working classes by immoral, -irreligious printed stuff, and above all by the multiplication of -drinking-places where adulterated strong drinks are sold for the merest -trifle. The number of these licensed places is simply appalling. Nearly -every grocery, every little vegetable store, and even many tobacco -stores where stamps are sold, have a drinking stand. It is needless to -say that neither Chartreuse nor any decent liqueur is ever sold at such -places. These drink stands supplement the innumerable cabarets and -cafés, in town and country, where elections are engineered.</p> - -<p>Leroy Beaulieu recently related the following incident of his encounter -with one of the habitués of these political institutions.</p> - -<p>In Easter week I was coming out of the chapel of the Barnabites one -morning when I met a workman somewhat the worse for liquor, shaking his -fist against the grated convent window. “Ah! you haven’t skedaddled yet, -you dirty skunks.”</p> - -<p>And when I asked him why he was so anxious to see them expelled, he drew -himself up proudly and replied: “Because they are not up to the level of -our century!” (“Ils ne sont pas à la hauteur de notre siècle!”)</p> - -<p>Meanwhile a crime has been committed against liberty, humanity, and -justice, and it seems to move the world no more than the passing of a -summer<a name="page_103" id="page_103"></a> cloud, because no blood has been shed. The right which men and -women have to dress and dispose of their lives as they choose is a most -sacred part of personal freedom.</p> - -<p>“Liberalism,” says Taine, “is the respect of others. If the State exists -it is to prevent all intrusions into private life, the beliefs, the -conscience, the property.... When the State does this it is the greatest -of benefactors. When it commits these intrusions itself it is the -greatest of malefactors.” The young and the strong can begin life anew -elsewhere, in the cloister or out of it, but what shall we say of those -tens of thousands aged and infirm, who, after having passed thirty to -fifty years in teaching or in other good works, find themselves suddenly -thrown into the streets, homeless and penniless? The Associations Bill -entitles them “to apply” for indemnity. But this is merely illusory. -Years will elapse before “the liquidation” is accomplished, and there -will be no assets except for the Government and its friends. Public -subscriptions are being opened all over France for these victims of -Jacobin tyranny.</p> - -<p>Moreover, the right which parents have to give their children teachers -of their own choice is also an inalienable right. The Lacedæmonian State -imposed physical training on all its sons. The Turks for centuries -levied a tax of so many boys and girls a year on the Spaniards and the -Venetians, but no Government has yet called on every parent to “stand<a name="page_104" id="page_104"></a> -and deliver,” not the purse, but the souls of their children, that it -may sow therein, from tenderest infancy, the tares of a hideous state -materialism. With cynical hypocrisy this Government protests that -liberty of teaching is intact, while parents see all the teachers of -their own choice proscribed. The rich can send their sons to be educated -across the border, but the law of <i>stage scolaire</i> is intended to meet -this alternative. Those who have not frequented state schools are to be -made pariahs, ineligible for the army, the navy, or any civil -function—truly a singular application of the words “Compel them to come -in,” which should be inscribed on all the scholar institutions of France -to-day.<a name="page_105" id="page_105"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="A_PAPAL_NOTE" id="A_PAPAL_NOTE"></a>A PAPAL NOTE</h2> - -<p class="r"> -<i>13th June, 1904.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="nind">T<small>HE</small> storm of words aroused the world over by a Papal diplomatic Note is -another proof that the Papacy has lost none of its power and prestige, -and is still, on this threshold of the twentieth century, the -incarnation of moral power opposed to mere brute force, the right of the -strongest. In reading the many silly comments on this Note in different -parts of the globe, we are reminded of the brick thrown into the -frog-pond and the emotion it caused.</p> - -<p>Long before M. Loubet went to Rome it was well known that he would not -be received by the Vatican, and the Papal Note is practically the same -as the one drawn up by Leo XIII on a previous occasion, when it was -sought to obtain a deviation from the policy of the Vatican in favour of -a predecessor of M. Loubet. The protest itself contained nothing new, -and was merely a reiteration of Papal claims to sovereignty in Rome, and -a notice to rulers of other Catholic countries that there was no change -in the policy of the Vatican, that declined to receive the visit of any -such ruler who came to Rome as the guest of Victor Emmanuel.<a name="page_106" id="page_106"></a></p> - -<p>The long session devoted to the discussion of the incident was merely a -little anti-clerical diversion to kill time; otherwise the Papal Note -would have remained pigeon-holed in M. Delcassé’s desk, where it had -lain unheeded for weeks, when suddenly, at the psychical moment, M. -Jaurès’ new Ministerial organ, <i>l’Humanité</i> (<i>commanditée</i> by the Jews), -published the copy of the Note which had been addressed, it is said, to -the King of Portugal. Then the little comedy was enacted at the Palais -Bourbon, and the whole Socialist Ministerial Press clamoured, -hysterically, for condign punishment of the Vatican and the vindication -of the national honour. But nothing was done. M. Delcassé declined to -state clearly if the ambassador to the Vatican, M. Nisard, had really -been recalled, while M. Combes loftily sneered at “the superannuated -claims of a sovereignty dispossessed since thirty-five years.” Yet he -must have learned at the Seminary that the Papacy was exiled from Rome -for eighty years once upon a time.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> But all these ferocious Radicals -declined to take advantage of this opportunity to denounce the -Concordat, and M. Combes’ best friend, <i>The Lantern</i>, is now denouncing -him as a traitor and a fraud. History is repeating itself: <i>La -Montagne</i><a name="page_107" id="page_107"></a> (the Extreme Left of 1793) is getting ready to execute the -<i>Girondins</i> called Radicals to-day. No efforts of opportunism will save -them from the <i>guillotine sèche</i> which awaits them.</p> - -<p>The silly talk of some of the great dailies who represent the Pope as -“greatly worried” and confronted with the necessity of making an -apology, can only be excused on the ground of ignorance of the whole -situation. Personally I desire to see the Concordat denounced. The -letter and the spirit of its first and most important article, which -provided for liberty and the free exercise of the Catholic religion, -have been flagrantly violated by the laws of 1901 and 1904, and by the -illegalities committed by the executors of these laws.</p> - -<p>All that remains of the Concordat is the indemnity paid yearly to the -Catholic Church, as a very slight compensation for the millions stolen -by the revolutionary government of 1792, known as the First Republic. -Though it must be said to the credit of those Jacobins that when they -instituted the budget of cults they recognized that they had taken the -property of the Church, and that the payment of these yearly subsidies -was part of the National Debt.</p> - -<p>The Jacobins of to-day, less scrupulous than their forefathers of 1790, -are craving for the repudiation of this portion of the National Debt.</p> - -<p>The untold wealth of the Congregations, the<a name="page_108" id="page_108"></a> billions held out as a -glittering lure by Waldeck Rousseau in 1900 as a nest-egg for <i>retraîtes -ouvrières</i>, having melted into thin air “the bloc” or Ministerial -majority must be held together by the prospect of some new quarry. -Those, who for years past made a fine distinction between the secular -clergy and the regular or <i>congréganist</i> clergy are now convinced that -there is no distinction to be made between them. When New York dailies -kindly advise the French clergy and Catholics to give up what their -editors are pleased to call “their salaries” and adopt the American -system, they merely proclaim their ignorance of the situation.</p> - -<p>The French would gladly sacrifice everything, even to the noble church -edifices built and endowed by their ancestors during long centuries, if -thereby they could secure liberty and separation from the State, as they -are understood in the United States. But all the alleged projects of -“Separation” are merely projects of strangulation. The articles of all -these projects of law are as unacceptable as were those of the Trouillot -Associations Bill, even if it had not been superseded by the <i>table -rase</i> of the law of 1904 suppressing all teaching orders whatsoever.</p> - -<p>The carrying into execution of any of these projects of “Separation,” -even the least Jacobin, would render the normal existence of the -Catholic Church in France impossible. This has been the aim and purpose -of the Third Republic ever since its advent.<a name="page_109" id="page_109"></a> For, once again, I repeat -that Republicanism in France is not a form of government; it is the -<i>modus operandi</i> of a secret society, of the same secret society which -established a monarchy in Italy, in order to have a pretext for seizing -Rome and destroying, if possible, the prestige of the Papacy. In both -cases the object was the same, the weakening and the destruction of the -Church.</p> - -<p>The Freemasons in France openly proclaim that they founded the Republic. -The scholar and anti-clerical laws since twenty-five years, all the -laws, in fact, have been prepared in the lodges. Of this, too, they make -no secret. To suppose that the Chambers in any way represent the French -nation is an egregious mistake. The lodges prepare the elections; their -candidates people both Houses. In my first letter to the <i>Review</i> in -1900 I showed how the abstention of honest laborious Frenchmen from -politics had thrown the power into the hands of the Freemasons, who are -chiefly Jews, Protestants, and infidels. To-day this coterie of about -twenty-five thousand reigns supreme.</p> - -<p>A few resolute, capable, bigoted Freemasons are the master minds of the -coterie; the others, “the bloc,” just follow suit. If a current of -reaction set in to-morrow they would glide with it most gracefully.</p> - -<p>It is simply impossible to retrieve the situation in France to-day by -any ordinary legal means. To<a name="page_110" id="page_110"></a> suppose that the people are in sympathy -with the Government because they do not overthrow it implies total -ignorance of the situation. The voting machinery of the country is -falsified, and can no more be relied on than a clock out of gear, which -rings out the hours haphazard. Even if every Frenchman inscribed as a -voter did his duty and went to the polls, which they do not, it would -make no difference to-day.</p> - -<p>If death had not cut short Waldeck Rousseau’s career we might witness a -<i>machine en arrière</i> policy. It is even possible, now, that a moderate -Rouvier-Ribot ministry may succeed the Combes despotism.</p> - -<p>But I have no confidence in any palliatives. The evil is too -deep-seated. Only by blood and anguish can France be redeemed, and the -sooner the crisis comes the better; a few years later it may be too -late. This is why I desire the denunciation of the Concordat, for with -Gambetta, and all his anti-clerical successors, I think it may be the -ruin of the Third Republic.</p> - -<p>Excommunications and interdicts are no longer published as in former -days, but they operate nevertheless. And, as in the past, there is -always some ruler ready to execute the mandate; though this, too, is not -done in the same way. There is not, necessarily, any invasion of -territory.</p> - -<p>Germany and Italy (yes, and England too) are keenly awaiting the moment -when they may seize<a name="page_111" id="page_111"></a> France’s birthright. Both are assiduous in their -marks of deference to the Holy See. Victor Emmanuel would gladly -evacuate Rome to-morrow if he dared. Thirty-five years are the mere -twinkling of an eye in the lives of nations. Yet there are simple-minded -people who look upon the Piedmontese occupation of Rome as an immutable -fact.<a name="page_112" id="page_112"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="FREEMASONRY1" id="FREEMASONRY1"></a>FREEMASONRY</h2> - -<p class="r"> -<i>December, 1904.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="nind">W<small>E</small> cannot adequately appreciate the religious and politico-social -conditions of countries like Italy, France, Spain, Austria, Belgium, -unless we take into account the action of Freemasonry in all its -ramifications—Carbonari, Grand Orient, Mafia, etc.</p> - -<p>There is eternal enmity between them and Christianity. It was said in -the beginning: “I will put enmity between thy seed and the seed of the -Woman,” etc. The Catholic Church being the largest, strongest, most -accredited and influential Christian Society, it is against her, -naturally, that all attacks are directed. In Protestant countries people -shrug their shoulders and sneer at the idea of Freemasons militating -against Christianity, or any political order. This is not surprising. A -distinguished atheist of the eighteenth century used to say that -“England was the country where Christianity did the least harm because -it was divided into so many rivulets.” Here we have the explanation of -the different attitude of Freemasons in Protestant countries, split up -into innumerable sects, and in Catholic countries, where “One holy -Catholic Church” still holds sway over the whole nation practically.<a name="page_113" id="page_113"></a></p> - -<p>The great purpose of the French Revolution in 1792 was to break up the -Church in France. For this purpose the throne and all the institutions -of the ancient regime, some of them very excellent, were all overthrown.</p> - -<p>The revolutions of Italy in the nineteenth century had no other purpose. -The destruction of the Papacy was considered a means of disrupting the -Catholic Church, not in Italy only. Mazzini, Garibaldi, Crispi, Cavour, -etc., were all fierce republican anarchists; the last thing they wanted -was an Italian monarchy. But they were Freemasons, and the “Order” -imposed its will. An Italian monarchy demanded Rome as its capital, -whereas a republican system would, no doubt, have left the Papacy in its -ancient city. “A schism,” wrote Renan in 1870, “seems to me more than -probable, or rather it already exists; from latent it will become -effective.... It seems to me inevitable that there will soon be two -Popes, and even three.... The schism being made in the papal person, the -decomposition of Catholicism will follow; a quantity of reforms will -then be possible.”</p> - -<p>Napoleon III, a dignitary of the order, entered into the plot, and -received Savoy and the county of Nice. Rome was seized 20 September, and -the Franco-Prussian war brought swift and condign punishment on Napoleon -for his complicity.</p> - -<p>Simultaneously with the establishment of a<a name="page_114" id="page_114"></a> monarchy in Italy, the Grand -Orient established a republic in France, always with the same purpose, -the disruption of the Church. During the last four years of residence in -Europe I have repeated in the Press of the United States that -Republicanism is not a form of government here, but the <i>modus operandi</i> -of a secret society. The manifesto issued by the Grand Orient (3 -November, 1904) is an irrefutable proof of my allegation. It is the most -astounding document ever made public. They evidently consider that -France is a conquered country which can never shake off their -domination. “Without the Freemasons,” says the document, “the Republic -would not exist.” The elaborate spy system they had established at the -Ministry of War is defended on the ground that “the head partner, or -<i>commanditaire</i>, of a great industrial enterprise in which he has placed -his capital has the right to denounce to the manager the peculations of -his employees.”</p> - -<p>Thus France is an industrial company; the ministers are managers -appointed by the head partner, the Grand Orient! But the most revolting -part of this manifesto is the manner in which the deputies of the “bloc” -are whipped into line like a pack of disorderly hounds under the lash of -their keeper. “We denounce to our lodges and to all masons present and -future the votes of fear, defaillance, cowardice, of a certain -<a name="page_115" id="page_115"></a>number.... We shall have our eyes on them ... and they will find -themselves treated as they would have treated those to whom they were -bound by interest if not by loyalty.”</p> - -<p>The revolutions which have convulsed Spain during the last century, down -to the recent Republican riots in Madrid and Brussels, are all traceable -to the “Order” which issued this manifesto. Among the rioters killed -were Frenchmen. The visit of M. Chaumié, Minister of Public Instruction, -to Italy, and the famous Congrés de Libre Pensée, are all manifestations -of the Grand Orient, which will never rest until it has destroyed the -stability and peace of other Catholic countries, as it has done in -France. When I arrived at Innsbruck in July last, I saw many students -with bandaged heads and arms. An Italian student had knocked the book -out of the German professor’s hand with his cane. This was the origin of -that last riot. What has occurred recently at Innsbruck is far more -serious, and was undoubtedly prepared at Rome in September.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> A band of -Italian anarchist students were sent to the University of Innsbruck to -cause trouble. One hundred and thirty-eight of them were arrested, -yesterday, with revolvers and other weapons on their persons.</p> - -<p>Two years ago I was in Venice when there was a monster international -gathering of students. The Marseillaise and the Hymn of Garibaldi were -vociferated by these thousands on the Place of St. Mark.<a name="page_116" id="page_116"></a> Why the -national anthems of other nations were not given is clear. The whole was -a Freemason demonstration of the Grand Orient like the Congrès de Libre -Pensée at Rome, presided over by M. Brisson, the President of the French -Chambers.</p> - -<p>The revolutionary strikes at Milan, Genoa, Venice, etc., which were made -to coincide with the birth of the heir of the House of Savoy, are -symptomatic. The Grand Orient undoubtedly find that they have been -marking time long enough in Italy. They have not been able to carry -their divorce law there yet.</p> - -<p>There is a Socialist party in Italy which is not anarchist and Freemason -as in France, but sincerely desires the good of Italy. One of its -leaders declared, recently, that they would lend their aid even to the -Papacy for the common weal. Between this party and the secret societies -and their henchmen, the position of Victor Emmanuel is not enviable. Ere -long, therefore, we may see the aid of the Pope and of the Catholic -vote, now in abeyance to a great extent, solicited both by the monarchy -and the reforming Socialists.</p> - -<p>There is really no insuperable difficulty in reconciling the -independence of the Papacy and the integrity of the Italian kingdom. The -Principality of Monaco has surely never been considered an obstacle to -the integrity of France, nor the Republic of San Marino to that of -Italy. Why should not the Pope be left<a name="page_117" id="page_117"></a> in peaceful possession of the -Trastevere and the port of Ostia, for instance? There is no difficulty -except with the Grand Orient, this <i>imperium in imperio</i>.</p> - -<p>All through the centuries, “the Papacy has had to negotiate, -simultaneously, with each of the republican cities of Italy, with -Naples, Germany, France, England, and Spain. They all had contests -(<i>démêlés</i>) with the Popes, and these latter always had the advantage” -(Voltaire, <i>Essai sur les mœurs</i>, II, 87).</p> - -<p>In the same work, page 81, Voltaire relates the Congress held at Venice, -where Barbarossa made his submission. “The Holy Father,” he says, -“exclaimed: ‘God has willed that an aged man and priest triumph without -fighting over a terrible and powerful emperor.’” The triumph over the -machinations of the Grand Orient will be no less striking.<a name="page_118" id="page_118"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="FREEMASONRY2" id="FREEMASONRY2"></a>FREEMASONRY</h2> - -<p class="r"> -<i>21st January, 1905.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="nind">I<small>N</small> these columns (<i>The Progress</i>, December 10th, 1904), I referred to -the recently published Manifesto of the Grand Orient of France (November -4th, 1904), defending its attitude with regard to the elaborate spy -system, a veritable <i>régime des suspects</i> which they had established, -not in the War Office only, but in every Department of State. The Press, -both in England and in the United Sates, has been singularly reticent -regarding this most remarkable document, whose authenticity cannot be -gainsaid.</p> - -<p>It is, however, the key to the whole politico-religious situation in -France, and more or less in other Catholic countries.</p> - -<p>Republicanism in Catholic countries will always be the <i>modus operandi</i> -of this secret society in some one or other of its ramifications. The -Carbonari, who engineered all the Italian revolutions in the nineteenth -century, sent their emissary, Orsini, to remind Napoleon III of his -obligations and duties. The gentle reminder was a bomb, and Orsini paid -the death penalty, but not without leaving a letter with certain behests -which were soon complied with. The<a name="page_119" id="page_119"></a> Italian campaign against Austria was -undertaken ere long.</p> - -<p>In the <i>Evening Post</i>, November 8th, 1904, I find in a review of Count -Hubner’s <i>Memoirs</i> the following extract: “The Emperor of the French, -placed at the summit of greatness, had forgotten the pledges made in his -youth to those who dispose of the unknown dark powers. Orsini’s bomb -came to remind him. A ray of light suddenly struck his mind. He must -have understood that his former associates never forgot or forgave, and -that their implacable hatred would be appeased only when the renegade -returned to the bosom of the sect.”</p> - -<p>An example of the power wielded by these secret societies is the case of -the ex-Minister of Public Instruction in Italy. Prosecuted for -misdemeanour and extensive peculations while in office, the Freemasons -compassed his escape to Geneva. He was condemned by default, when, lo -and behold, he quietly returns to Italy in triumph and is elected -deputy.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p> - -<p>Since eight weeks the French papers (non-Ministerial of course) are -daily printing <i>fiches</i> or spy documents stolen from the Grand Orient. -No end of duels and prosecutions for slander have been the result. Nor -were army officers the only victims. Even Monsieur and Madame Loubet -have come in for<a name="page_120" id="page_120"></a> their share! In some cases the spies of the Grand -Orient have denied the authenticity of these documents. Thereupon M. de -Villeneuve has printed photographed copies of the letters in question.</p> - -<p>Brother Bedderide, an advocate of the bar at Marseilles, an active spy -on magistrates and other civil functionaries, has been expelled from the -Order of Advocates. The Grand Orient will no doubt amply compensate him, -for they are as generous to their friends as they are implacable to -their foes.</p> - -<p>Read this passage from the Manifesto of the Grand Orient, 4th November, -1904: “All our workshops know the campaign waged against us by the -reaction, nationalist, monarchical, and clerical. They seek to travesty -acts in which we justly glory and thanks to which, we have saved the -Republic. A traitor, a felon, bribed by the Congregations [poor -congregations recently shorn of all] lived in our midst since ten -years.... As sub-secretary he gained the confidence of our very dear -brother Vadecard [Secretary of G. O.] and became the confidant of all -our secrets. He projected to steal from our archives documents confided -to us ... new Judas, he sold them to the irreconcilable enemies of our -brethren. Brother Bidegain is in flight like a malefactor. We signal him -to Masons all over the world. In waiting the just punishment of his -crime, the Council of the Order summons him before masonic justice, and -until the final sentence is rendered, we suspend all his titles and<a name="page_121" id="page_121"></a> -prerogatives.... And now we declare to the whole Freemason body that in -furnishing these documents [spy denunciations] the Grand Orient has -accomplished only a strict duty. We have dearly conquered the Republic -and claim the honour of having procured its triumph.... Without the -Freemasons the Republic would not be in existence.... Pius X would be -reigning in France.”</p> - -<p>Then follows the menace quoted in my last to the tricky, cowardly -deputies who voted against the Government, which was saved by two votes -more than once. The memorable slap administered by M. Syveton to General -André compelled M. Combes to throw the Minister of War overboard, though -the latter protested to the last, “They want my skin, but they shall not -have it.” The Minister of Public Instruction also nearly succumbed. He -declared that if a certain <i>ordre de jour</i> were not voted he would throw -down his portfolio there and then. The votes were not forthcoming but he -clung to his portfolio and contented himself with another <i>ordre de -jour</i>.</p> - -<p>All the performances at the Palais Bourbon are indeed a most amazing -comedy.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile M. Syveton, who negotiated the purchase of the purloined -documents from the Grand Orient, and slapped General André on the -ministers’ bench, got his quietus in a very mysterious way on the very -day on which he was to have retaken his seat in the Chambers (after his -thirty days’ punitive<a name="page_122" id="page_122"></a> exclusion), and on the eve of his appearance -before the Cours d’Assise for that famous slap. His defence, carefully -prepared by himself, was published in the papers next day. It is a long -incisive arraignment of the Government in imitation of Cicero’s -<i>Catalina</i>. All the witnesses, who were to have appeared in his defence, -were also witnesses against the Government. In fact the trial was to -have been a great political manifestation, and the Government had every -interest in its not taking place. Since two weeks public opinion is on -tenter-hooks regarding the death of M. Syveton. It was declared at first -to be a vulgar accident by the Ministerial organs. While M. Jaurès, -strange to say, published in <i>Humanity</i> a most remarkable brief, -establishing clearly the guilt of Madame Syveton, and, still more -strange, the latter did not prosecute him for it. Then the suicide -theory was adopted, and the most odious, baseless, and unproven -calumnies were launched against the memory of the dead man. His widow -even accused him of having stolen funds of the Nationalist party. All -this in order to explain his suicide on the eve of what was expected to -be a great political triumph of the Nationalists, and for which M. -Syveton was preparing with the ardour of a fighter by temperament, just -forty years old.</p> - -<p>The autopsy, made before the twenty-four legal hours had elapsed, -revealed seventeen per cent of oxide of carbon in the blood. The lungs, -brain, and<a name="page_123" id="page_123"></a> viscera, strange to say, were not examined at all, but -placed under seals for eleven days! They are now to be examined. -Meanwhile the last person who must have seen M. Syveton alive, must have -been the emissary of the Government, who, according to custom, served -the writ on the dead man, commanding his presence in court in -twenty-four hours. Who was he, and why was he never heard of again?</p> - -<p>No one believes seriously that M. Syveton committed suicide. His father -and brother-in-law have begun a prosecution for murder against X, in -which the Mutual Life is also interested.</p> - -<p>As to Brother Bidegain, the traitor, he was at Salonica when last heard -of. His sudden death there was announced; but I think the rumour is -false. It would be very imprudent, coming so soon after the other. But -he will have to make his peace with the G. O. or beware. He cannot be -prosecuted for stealing these documents, as they represent no monetary -value, and, moreover, the Grand Orient has no legal existence or civil -personality. They are said to have millions of <i>main morte</i>, but they -simply ignore the Associations Bill.</p> - -<p>In conclusion, I hope it will be understood that I do not accuse many -honest Freemasons of England and the United States of being <i>particeps -criminis</i> in all or any of the doings of the Grand Orient, Carbonari, -Mafia, Cimorra, Senuisi, or the secret societies of Islam or in China.<a name="page_124" id="page_124"></a></p> - -<p>Freemasonry assumes different aspects in different circumstances, but it -is the eternal enemy of militant organized Christianity. It does not -trouble itself with Christianity “divided into many rivulets,” and -consequently harmless, according to the saying of Lord Shaftesbury, who -was of opinion that “England was the country in which Christianity did -the least harm because it was divided into so many rivulets.”</p> - -<p>The Catholic Church alone is an enemy worthy of its steel, and wherever -these two foes meet there must be war—latent or overt.</p> - -<p>This war is on in France, and must be fought to the finish.<a name="page_125" id="page_125"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="PART_SECOND" id="PART_SECOND"></a>PART SECOND</h2> - -<p class="r"> -<i>October, 1904.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="nind">M. C<small>OMBES</small>, who proclaimed at the Chambers two years ago that he had -taken office only to wage war on Clericalism, enumerated his deeds of -prowess recently in a political speech at Auxerre. Fifteen thousand -scholar establishments, strongholds of the ghostly enemy, had been -demolished! “Gentlemen, you will grant that this is a great deal for a -ministry obliged to fight at every instant for its own existence,” he -exclaimed.</p> - -<p>We are now coming to the second part of the Jacobin programme. As I -wrote last year in the <i>Evening Post</i> (June 27th), the true object of -the Revolution in 1790, as to-day, is the destruction of Christianity -and its offspring, Liberty, in order to establish on the ruins of both, -the reign of the Omnipotent Infallible State, before which all must fall -down and worship or disappear. To-day the State is M. Combes and his -“bloc,” a very poor avatar of the Titanic Corsican who measured himself -with all Europe. There was but one force that resisted him, and against -this obstacle M. Combes stumbled when he demanded, peremptorily, that -the Vatican<a name="page_126" id="page_126"></a> withdraw letters addressed to two bishops needing to be -disciplined. The Holy See was acting in the plenitude of its spiritual -jurisdiction. M. Combes curtly demanded that Pius X send in his -resignation, as “the political system of the Republic consists in the -subordination of all institutions, whatever they may be, to the -supremacy of the State.”</p> - -<p>This is the latest phase of a very old struggle which began in the days -of the Apostles. In the history of all the nations of antiquity, the -problem of Church and State and their correlations existed, and was -solved, easily and summarily, by the system proclaimed by M. Combes. The -ruler of each nation was the Pontifex Maximus of his realm. This system, -with its necessary concomitant of national religions, reached its -culminating point in the worship of the “divine Cæsars,” the acme of -human servitude.</p> - -<p>Now Christianity was a profound and radical innovation. Never had the -supremacy of the ruler or the State been questioned before the Apostles -proclaimed the Creed in “One Holy Catholic Church,” destined to -transcend all natural and political boundaries, without distinction of -class or colour. Not less radical was the second innovation, a necessary -corollary of the first, viz. the ecclesiastical autonomy and -independence of the new spiritual society or Church, one, Catholic. -“Never,” writes J. B. Martineau, “until the Church arose did faith<a name="page_127" id="page_127"></a> -undertake the conquest alone, and triumph over diversities of speech and -antipathies of race.”</p> - -<p>But Paganism, with its system of state absolutism in spiritual as well -as in temporal matters, has never accepted its defeat by the Catholic -Church, a spiritual, autonomous society, distinct from the State. The -tale of Byzantine heresies, from the fourth to the eighth century, were -all efforts of each successive Emperor of Constantinople to shake off -the spiritual supremacy of Rome, and be again the Pontifex Maximus of -his dominions. The long struggle of the Investitures, the Constitutions -of Clarendon, statutes of Præmunire, State Gallicanism, the Civil -Constitution of the Clergy, 1792, Josephism in Austria, the Kultur-Kampf -laws in Germany and Switzerland, 1870-76 were all episodes of this -struggle, between the new dispensation and the ancient system of -national religions under state supremacy. In the sixteenth century there -was a vast renaissance of this latter system in a new dress called -Erastianism. Lord Clarendon declared that this spiritual supremacy of -rulers was “the better moiety of their sovereignty.” The old pagan, or -Erastian system, triumphed in the eastern empire with the Schism of -Photius, in Russia under Peter the Great, in England under Elizabeth, in -all the Protestant States of northern Europe.</p> - -<p>The well-defined purpose of the Revolution and of Napoleon, its -heir-at-law, was to establish this system<a name="page_128" id="page_128"></a> in France. After long and -arduous negotiations the Concordat of 1801 was concluded with Pius VII. -It was a bilateral contract between two sovereignties, the French -Republic, as party of the first part, and the Holy See as party of the -second part. It contains seventeen articles. To these, Napoleon, without -the knowledge of the Pope, added seventy-six articles, and published -both documents, in conjunction, as the law of Germinal l’an X. Great was -the indignation, and loud were the protestations of the party of the -second part, as we may well suppose. Nor is this surprising when we -consider that one of these “organic articles” (24th) requires that all -professors in ecclesiastical seminaries shall “submit to teach the -doctrine of the Declaration of 1682, and the bishops shall send act of -this submission to the Council of State.” In other words, the Catholic -Church in France was to turn Protestant. Even Louis XIV, who had had -this famous Declaration drawn up to spite Pope Innocent, who alone in -Europe had dared to oppose him, never exacted that it should be taught, -and had practically suppressed it before he died. Since the Council of -the Vatican the subscribing to and teaching the Declaration of 1682 -would be an act of formal heresy and apostasy. The fifty-sixth of the -organic articles renders obligatory the use of the Republican calendar -to the exclusion of the Gregorian. There are other articles equally -absurd, which have never been observed.<a name="page_129" id="page_129"></a></p> - -<p>Now M. Combes declares that “in deliberately separating the diplomatic -convention (Concordat) from the organic articles, Pius VII and his -successors have destroyed its efficacy.” Napoleon himself understood -this and, for seven years, he held Pius VII a close prisoner, hoping to -break his spirit and wring from him another Concordat which would be an -abdication. Fortunately, the tide of war turned against Napoleon, and -the new Concordat was never ratified. M. Combes recognizes that no -Government since a century has been able to enforce the “organic -articles,” and that the only course left is “divorce,” and by this -unstatesmanlike term he means the repudiation of thirty or forty million -francs of the national debt. The payment in perpetuity of suitable -subsidies to the Catholic clergy is stipulated for by Article 14 of the -Concordat. It is a <i>quid pro quo</i> of Article 13, by which the Holy See -consented to give a clear title to all the Church property confiscated -by the Revolution. The payment of these subsidies was inscribed on the -national debt by the spoliators themselves, the Conventionals of 1792, -and it was solemnly recognized as part of this debt in 1816, 1828, 1830, -and 1848. The salaries paid to Jewish and Protestant clergymen are -purely gratuitous. Their property was not stolen by the Revolution in -1792. They had no part in the Concordat.</p> - -<p>But the projected spoliation of the Catholic clergy<a name="page_130" id="page_130"></a> is a mere detail, -and would be an insignificant ransom, if at this price the French -Catholics could have liberty such as we enjoy in England and the United -States. “Separation” means strangulation in Jacobin parlance. They would -infinitely prefer Erastianism. But the defection of the Bishops of Dijon -and Laval, on whom they counted, and the spontaneous and unanimous -adhesion of the episcopate to the Holy See, which provoked the thunders -of M. Combes against the Vatican in July, have shown the impossibility -of a schism. It was tried for four years a century ago and failed. The -“Separation” plan was also tried in 1795 for two or three years, and was -an epoch of virulent persecution. History will repeat itself, though not -exactly in the same words.<a name="page_131" id="page_131"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="ALCOHOLISM_IN_FRANCE" id="ALCOHOLISM_IN_FRANCE"></a>ALCOHOLISM IN FRANCE</h2> - -<p class="r"> -<i>July 10th, 1905.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="nind">T<small>HE</small> Chambers continue the discussion of the Bill of alleged separation -in a perfunctory, apathetic way, and it is curious that M. Rouvier, the -successor of M. Combes, has never once condescended to speak or even to -be present at these sessions.</p> - -<p>The utter lack of interest in these debates is misinterpreted to mean -indifference on the part of the French public. This is not correct. It -is, as I have often repeated, the great misfortune of France that people -will not concern themselves with politics, and they only begin to -interest themselves in a law when it is applied.</p> - -<p>Even I, who have followed the phases of the religious persecution with -keen interest since four or five years, can hardly wade through these -tedious, irksome columns, in which ambiguity reigns supreme. Even M. -Briand, the reporter of the law and spokesman of the Government, being -questioned closely as to the sense of certain passages, replied “It is” -and “It is not” in the same breath. He is evidently of the opinion that -language is a convenient means of disguising thought.<a name="page_132" id="page_132"></a></p> - -<p>This Bill is, I repeat, a law of guile, spoliation, and tyranny from -first to last. There is a general impression that it will never be -executed entirely. They will content themselves with spoliation, for the -present at least. It is hard to persuade a people who have had religious -worship gratis for fifteen centuries, that they must now pay for the -privilege of attending Mass, while their Government subsidizes opera -dancers and singers, of whose services not one in a million ever avails -himself.</p> - -<p>While the Socialist majority, or <i>bloc</i>, are revelling over perspective -spoliation and sacrilegious confiscations, the handwriting on the wall -is dimly perceived. The enemy is at the gates—nay, within the -walls—while legislators are discussing “with what sauce they will eat -the curés,” though they have not yet digested their copious repast of -congregations.</p> - -<p>Yesterday the reports of the Chambers on Separation were unusually -tedious, and the <i>rendu compte</i> ended with this phrase: “To-morrow -amnesty for the <i>bouilleurs de cru</i> and wine frauders.” This heartless -Government, that flings aged and infirm <i>congréganists</i> out of their -homes without mercy for age or sex, has, at least, one tender spot in -its make-up. It is for the liquor traffic in all its forms. -Falsification of wine is carried on to such an extent that it is -impossible for grape growers to make a living. I dilated recently in -these columns on the anti-clerical propaganda by means of an immoral, -irreligious<a name="page_133" id="page_133"></a> Press, and the multiplication of these drink-stands to an -extent which is simply appalling.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p> - -<p>New York, with three millions, has 10,000 liquor saloons. Paris, with -two-and-a-half millions, has 30,000 <i>debits de boissons</i>.</p> - -<p>The <i>Gaulois</i> recently published some figures which I think are -accurate.</p> - -<p>Fifty years ago 735 hectolitres of absinthe were consumed in France; -to-day 133,000 are consumed.</p> - -<p>Fifty years ago 600,000 hectolitres of alcohol were consumed; to-day -2,000,000 hectolitres are consumed.</p> - -<p>The intermediate figures show that the increase has been in almost -geometric progression in recent years.</p> - -<p>In 1880 the consumption had increased from 735 hectolitres of absinthe -to 13,000. In 1885 it was still only 112,000.</p> - -<p>In 1905 it was 133,000.</p> - -<p>Sixty years ago there were only 10,000 demented in France. To-day there -are more than 80,000.</p> - -<p>Belgium has just made a law prohibiting not only the manufacture, but -all traffic in absinthe, which<a name="page_134" id="page_134"></a> cannot even be transported through the -country. In this admirably governed commonwealth there is, it is said, -but one saloon <i>brasserie</i> to every two thousand inhabitants. Formerly -the number of drinking-places was limited and restricted in France; -to-day the highest of high licence prevails.</p> - -<p>Recently I counted not less than fourteen places where alcoholic drinks -were sold in a charming little seaside village of four or five hundred -inhabitants.<a name="page_135" id="page_135"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="THE_LAW_OF_SEPARATION" id="THE_LAW_OF_SEPARATION"></a>THE LAW OF SEPARATION</h2> - -<p class="r"> -<i>June 3rd, 1905.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="nind">T<small>HERE</small> is still a persistent tendency in the Press to believe or -make-believe that the Bill of alleged Separation, still pending in the -French Chambers, means Separation as it is understood in England and the -United States, and that the whole question is only one of dollars and -cents, or of the suppression of the Budget of Cults. It is true that -there is to be a partial repudiation of the National Debt by the -suppression of the few paltry millions paid yearly to the French clergy -as a slight indemnity for the vast amount of property confiscated by the -Jacobins of 1792, but this is a mere detail, and would be considered but -a small ransom, if, thereby, the Church could enjoy the same liberty as -in the United States.</p> - -<p>The Associations Bill was proclaimed to be a “law of liberty,” and we -know to-day that it was only a vulgar trap set by the Government to -betray the Congregations into furnishing exact inventories of all their -property so that it might be more easily confiscated.</p> - -<p>The Separation Bill is also a law of perfidious tyranny aimed at the -very existence of the Church<a name="page_136" id="page_136"></a> in France. M. Briand caused great hilarity -in the Chambers when, by a slip of the tongue, he declared that in every -part of it “could be seen the hand of our spirit of Liberalism.”<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> What -is evident throughout is the hand of the secret society which has -governed France since twenty-five years, and in whose lodges and -convents all the anti-religious laws have been elaborated.</p> - -<p>The Chambers are merely its <i>bureaux d’enregistrement</i>, and not even -that. Under the <i>ancien régime</i> the Parliament could and often did -refuse to enregister royal acts and decrees.</p> - -<p>It was two years before the Parliament of Paris consented to enregister -the Concordat of 1516. But the Chambers to-day are merely the executive -of the Grand Orient. This is the plain unvarnished truth, which is -corroborated by all who have any knowledge of French politics.</p> - -<p>I have repeated many times in the Press of the United States that -Republicanism in France is not a form of government, but the <i>modus -operandi</i> of a secret society. Before me are <i>verbatim</i> reports of their -assemblies and the speeches made at their political banquets in 1902. At -that time only unauthorized Congregations had been suppressed. This,<a name="page_137" id="page_137"></a> it -was declared, “was not enough.... The Congregations must be operated on -with a vigorous scalpel, and all this suppuration must be thrown out of -the country; only thus will the social body, still very sick with acute -clericalism, be cured.” In July, 1904, all the authorized Congregations, -too, were suppressed, as we know. Even this was not enough.</p> - -<p>At the general “convent” of the Grand Orient, January, 1904, it was -said: “We have yet a great effort to make.... The separation of Church -and State will be in the order of the day in the Chambers in January, -1905.... The Cabinet and the Republican Parliament will end the conflict -between the two contracting parties of the Concordat. The destruction of -the Church will open a new era of justice and goodness.”</p> - -<p>M. Combes, then in power, was notified of the wishes of the Grand -Orient, and he telegraphed back that he would conform thereto.</p> - -<p>The sensation caused by the publication of the spy documents, or -<i>fiches</i>, stolen from the Grand Orient by M. Syveton and de Villeneuve -nearly overthrew the Republic last November. The assassination of M. -Syveton saved the Government and struck terror into the Nationalist -camp. The publication of the spy documents ceased, and the lodges -continued their work with a new figure-head, M. Rouvier instead of M. -Combes.</p> - -<p>On 4th November, 1904, the Grand Orient<a name="page_138" id="page_138"></a> published a political manifesto -which is a most important document from an historical and sociological -standpoint.</p> - -<p>It is simply amazing that the government of a once great nation should -have passed into the hands of a secret society which, though it has no -legal standing, treats France as if it were a great business concern of -which the Freemasons are the <i>commanditaires</i>, the ministers “the -managers,” and the deputies and functionaries the employees.</p> - -<p>Already in 1902, at the closing banquet of the “convent,” Brother -Blatin, a “venerable,” had declared:</p> - -<p>“The Government must not forget that Masonry is its most solid -support....</p> - -<p>“But for our Order neither the Combes Cabinet nor the Republic itself -would exist. M. and Mme. Loubet would still be simple little bourgeois -in the little town of Montélimar.... But the Government must remember -that we are only at the opening of hostilities. Until we have destroyed -every congregation, denounced the Concordat, and broken with Rome, -nothing is done.” In conclusion, these remarkable words were pronounced, -of which the manifesto of 4th November, 1904, is only an echo: “In -drinking to French Freemasonry I really drink to the Republic, because -the Republic is Freemasonry operating outside its temples; and -Freemasonry is the Republic under cover of our traditions and symbols.” -Is this clear enough?<a name="page_139" id="page_139"></a></p> - -<p>The Revolution of 1790 was undoubtedly due to Freemasonry, which about -that time began to appear openly for the first time, and almost -simultaneously, in France, Great Britain and America, etc. The Palladian -Rite, established in France in 1769, found a congenial field of -operation in the corrupt society of the <i>Régence</i> and Louis XV.</p> - -<p>Its aim then, as to-day, is the same—the destruction of Christianity. -The Jacobin Clubs of 1792 were simply Masonic lodges. M. Waite, an -eloquent apologist of the fraternity, makes the following statement in -<i>Devil Worship in France</i>, page 322: “There is no doubt that it -[Masonry] exercised an immense influence upon France during the century -of quakings which gave birth to the great Revolution. Without being a -political society, it was an instrument eminently adaptable to the -subsurface determination of political movements.... At a later period it -contributed to the formation of Germany, as it did to the creation of -Italy. But the point and centre of masonic history is France in the -eighteenth century.”</p> - -<p>This explains the outbreak of <i>Kulturkampf</i> in Germany and Switzerland -soon after 1870, and the wave of anti-religious furor which swept over -Italy at the same period. To-day Catholicism has repulsed Freemasonry in -Germany, and the victory is not far distant in Italy. The Liberal -Socialist party is waning, and it is always with these elements of<a name="page_140" id="page_140"></a> -socialistic anarchy that Freemasonry operates under a guise of liberty.</p> - -<p>The efforts being made to break up the Austro-Hungarian and the Russian -Empire are undoubtedly traceable to these Judeo-Masonic secret -societies. But France remains the great battlefield. Christianity and -Freemasonry are about to fight a decisive duel. One or the other must -perish. “Si nous ne tuons pas l’Eglise, elle nous tuera,” said a -prominent Mason recently. The suppression of the Congregations and their -27,000 schools was, as they said, “only the opening of hostilities.” The -battle must be fought to the finish. I have repeatedly affirmed that -France was held firmly in the coils of the Grand Orient, which has -packed both Houses with its creatures, thanks to the political apathy of -respectable Frenchmen.</p> - -<p>The Separation Bill is merely a blind, a slip-knot which can be drawn at -any moment to strangle the victim around whose neck it is cast. When his -Socialist accomplices of the Left reproached M. Briand with being too -liberal, he replied, “If necessary we can always amend the law or make -another.” Only two short years ago M. Combes openly pronounced against -any project of separation. M. Rouvier was of the same opinion, but the -masters of France have spoken!</p> - -<p>In vain it was pleaded that the country be consulted before taking so -important a step. The perfidious<a name="page_141" id="page_141"></a> feature of the Bill is just this—that -nothing will be changed until two years (1907) hence, when the “bloc” -will probably have gained a new lease of life by this manœuvre; for -in May, 1906 they will be able to say to their electors, “You see the -law is voted, and nothing is changed.”</p> - -<p>Article I sounds sweetly liberal: “The Republic assures liberty of -conscience and guarantees the free exercise of worship under the -following restrictions” (contained in some forty more articles). In my -opinion these numerous little “<i>restrictions</i>” will render the normal -existence of the Church in France impracticable. Of course she will -continue to exist, as she existed during the Terror, and under the -<i>Directoire</i> and Diocletian.</p> - -<p>Another article, not yet voted, provides for the final disposition of -church buildings twelve years hence. That, apparently, is the allotted -span of life meted out to us by Masonic Jacobins.</p> - -<p>Article II with sweet inconsistency declares that “the Republic neither -recognizes nor subsidizes any cult,” and immediately after it inscribes -on the Public Budget the service of <i>aumôniers</i> of state lyceums and -colleges.</p> - -<p>Peasants and poor struggling tradesmen and artisans must pay for the -luxury of religious worship or go without, but the sons of the rich, who -frequent these state schools, are to be provided for, gratis, by this -liberal Republic, which neither “recognizes nor<a name="page_142" id="page_142"></a> subsidizes any -worship,” except, of course, Islamism in Algeria, which is now, <i>ipso -facto</i>, the religion of the State.</p> - -<p>It is very pitiful to see so momentous a question treated with such -flippancy and indecent haste.</p> - -<p>All their utterances in the Chambers and in their Press show that the -Freemasons are convinced that they would be defeated if the next -elections were made on this issue. Therefore they must “do quickly.”</p> - -<p>Alone of all the nations of Christendom, France totally disregarded Good -Friday this year. The Stock Exchange remained open and the Chambers met -as usual. The apostasy of the State will soon be complete.</p> - -<p>In Spain, where I spent Holy Week, the young king has taken a decided -stand against the Revolution. He has caused vehement enthusiasm by -reviving Christian customs fallen into desuetude during a century of -revolutions. On Holy Thursday he washed and kissed the feet of twelve -poor men whom he afterwards served at table, aided by the grandees of -Spain. On Friday he returned from church alone and on foot, and was -wildly acclaimed. We are so accustomed to see the menus of the banquets -of the rich, that it was refreshing to read, for once in the daily -papers, the menu of a banquet of some poor old men served by a king.</p> - -<p>This is the counter-revolution, and M. Salmeron<a name="page_143" id="page_143"></a> and his Republican -Socialist Freemasons, French and Spanish, who recently caused riots in -many cities, might as well suspend operations. Only the assassination of -Alphonse XIII can prevent Spain from recuperating steadily. In Italy, -too, the counter-revolution is setting in. The Socialists, <i>alias</i> -Freemasons, are succumbing to the Conservative or clerical party. The -Quirinal is steering for Canossa. France must bear the brunt till she, -too, can have her counter-revolution.<a name="page_144" id="page_144"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CATHOLICISM_IN_GERMANY" id="CATHOLICISM_IN_GERMANY"></a>CATHOLICISM IN GERMANY</h2> - -<p class="r"> -<span class="smcap">Germany</span>, <i>August, 1905</i>.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="nind">W<small>HILE</small> Freemasonry in France seems on the point of triumphing over -Christianity by the destruction of all religious education and a law of -alleged Separation of Church and State, it is interesting to recall that -only thirty-five years ago Catholicism in Germany was as much menaced as -it is in France to-day. Churches were closed, prisons were full of -priests, bishops, and archbishops, and Bismarck, like M. Briand of -France, swore he would never, never go to Canossa.</p> - -<p>In 1871 there were only fifty-eight Catholics in the Reichstag, -representing 720,000 electors; in 1903 there were more than a hundred, -representing 1,800,000 electors; and to-day this Catholic Centre forms -the ruling majority in the country. The Emperor understands this -perfectly, and hence his amenities towards the Church and the Holy See.</p> - -<p>I have no doubt that the great Catholic Congress was held recently at -Strasburg with his knowledge and approval, not to say at his suggestion. -The event is significant coming so soon after his own investiture, at -Metz, with the Order of the Holy Sepulchre,<a name="page_145" id="page_145"></a> conferred upon him by the -papal legate in the presence of the German cardinals and archbishops, -and the highest military dignitaries of the empire.</p> - -<p>At this Catholic Congress of Strasburg, forty thousand delegates of the -federated societies of Germany paraded the streets with banners and -music. The whole city was decorated, papal colours being most -conspicuous. These popular federated societies count half a million -members, grouped in nine hundred associations, that have 350 press -organs of their own.</p> - -<p>What makes the strength of these Catholic organizations in Germany is -that they represent all classes of society—princes, peasants, artisans, -nobles, and bourgeois—whereas Socialism finds its recruits almost -exclusively, amongst the proletariat, cultured and uncultured, chiefly -the latter.</p> - -<p>At the Congress, Prince d’Arenberg renewed the usual protestations -against the Piedmontese occupation of Rome, and the Bishop of Strasburg -rejoiced that, “in spite of the devastations of the French Revolution, -the ancient faith was still flourishing in Alsace, whence he hoped it -<i>might soon extend its salutary influence</i>.”</p> - -<p>These events are significant following the diplomatic humiliation -inflicted on France when M. Delcassé, Minister of Foreign Affairs, was -peremptorily dismissed at the behest of Germany.</p> - -<p>Not long since the Socialist Bebel saucily told M.<a name="page_146" id="page_146"></a> Jaurès the French -would never have a pension for old age until the Germans gave it to -them. Nothing, too, would please William more than to play the rôle of a -paladin of religious liberty to the oppressed French Catholics.</p> - -<p>Nor is there anything to prevent the resuscitation of the Germanic -Confederation as it existed in the Middle Ages. The Habsburgs and the -Austrian Empire might never have arisen, and the Hohenstauffens might -still be reigning, if they had had sense enough to keep their hands off -the Papacy. Napoleon, too, might have founded a dynasty as long-lived as -that of the Bourbons, had he not also fallen into the same evil ways, -and sought to dominate the whole Church by enslaving the Sovereign -Pontiff. His nephew, the third Napoleon, in his youth, unfortunately -became the bondsman of secret societies, whom he aided and abetted in -the spoliations of 1870 which preluded his fall.</p> - -<p>The Third Republic, too, will be shattered on the same rock, though not -before having caused irretrievable wrong to France, I fear.<a name="page_147" id="page_147"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="PSEUDO-SEPARATION" id="PSEUDO-SEPARATION"></a>PSEUDO-SEPARATION</h2> - -<p class="r"> -<i>19th August, 1905.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="nind">I<small>N</small> the past, marauding kings and robber barons bound to themselves their -fighting lieges by investing them with vast tracts of stolen lands which -they, in turn, distributed among their leal followers.</p> - -<p>The Third Republic has found a better way. To say nothing of the -extensive network of electoral strongholds that they have established -all over the country by unlimited and most abusive high licence, the -masters of France have enlisted the enthusiastic support of myriads of -pettifogging lawyers and all the nondescript red-tapers of law by the -unlimited supply of lucrative jobs, pickings, and perquisites, furnished -by the notorious laws of 1901 and of 1904, and their bandit operations -called “liquidation.”</p> - -<p>They do not all pocket a few hundred thousands, like the millionaire -Socialist, M. Millerand, appointed by M. Waldeck Rousseau, but all have -a share in the carving up of the quarry. Not content with devoting to -this novel kind of graft all the holdings of the hapless Congregations, -who fell into its trap and asked for authorization, the Government has -kindly put up more than four millions and a<a name="page_148" id="page_148"></a> half of public money, thus -far, to cover the cost of innumerable lawsuits, expropriations, etc., -going on all over the country since four years. The mobilizing of the -regular army for the expropriations was in itself an important item. All -this reckless, thriftless expenditure, joined to the continuous drain of -millions from the <i>Caisses d’Epargne</i> and the exodus of capital, will -lead up to national bankruptcy as in 1795.</p> - -<p>To throw dust in the eyes of the public, domestic and foreign, a most -elaborate document has been published regarding pensions and retreats -for aged <i>congréganists</i> ruthlessly thrown into the streets.</p> - -<p>This document is a huge farce, seeing that these pensions are only -conditional to there being funds enough, and there will be no assets -left. The Chartreux of Grenoble had some hundreds of their aged workmen -on their pension list. These were, in common justice, creditors of the -order, and should have received compensation from the <i>liquidateur</i>. But -the latter repudiated their claims absolutely.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a><a name="page_149" id="page_149"></a></p> - -<p>What a fall was there from the billions of the Congregations, held out -as a glittering lure by Waldeck Rousseau in 1900, to bait his Socialist -majority with promises of pensions for workmen, etc.</p> - -<p>The Bill of alleged Separation, eminently calculated to bring Church and -State into constant contact and collision, holds out another golden -perspective. To use an expressive slang term, there is in it unlimited -<i>poil à gratter</i>, fur to scratch, for years to come—nay, as long as the -Republic lasts.</p> - -<p>A few days after it was voted, 200 “venerables” of the Grand Orient -offered a banquet to M. Briand, the reporter of the Law of Separation, -while at a Socialist Congress presided over by M. Combes, the President -of the Commission of Separation, referring to this law, declared “that -the war against the Church must be carried on without intermission.”</p> - -<p>Commenting thereon, the <i>Temps</i> sarcastically wrote: “If the clerical -spectre is still to haunt us, was it worth while to be turning like -squirrels in a cage for the past five years?”</p> - -<p>The gist of the law is in the articles that regard “<i>Associations -cultuelles</i>,” which are aimed at the destruction of Catholic hierarchy -and unity. M. Ribot<a name="page_150" id="page_150"></a> sought, in vain, to obtain that religious edifices -and property should be attributed only to associations approved by the -bishop in each diocese. The words <i>bishop</i> and <i>diocese</i> are most -carefully eschewed throughout the law. The attribution of property is to -be made to “associations formed in conformity with the rules of general -organization of the cult whose exercise they are to assure” (Art. 4). -The formula is most perfidious, and intentionally so, whereas the -amendment of M. Ribot and the one little word bishop might have rendered -the law supportable.</p> - -<p>What are “the rules of general organization”? The seventy-six Organic -Articles, perfidiously added by Napoleon to the Concordat, purported to -be “rules of general organization of Catholic worship.” Some of these -are rankly heretical, and have of course never been observed. These -Organic Articles are abrogated together with the Concordat by the new -law (Art. 37), but what is to prevent the Conseil d’Etat, composed -exclusively of Freemasons, from deciding that these articles are still a -criterion, being the <i>statu quo ante</i>?</p> - -<p>By similar means all their church property was taken from the Catholics -of Geneva (1872-5) and turned over to apostate French priests, Loyson, -Carrère, etc.</p> - -<p>A like contingency is foreseen by Art 8. It is anticipated that rival -associations may claim the same church property, and that scissions may -arise in associations, regularly formed and invested.<a name="page_151" id="page_151"></a></p> - -<p>Now in these cases the decision does not lie with the bishop, nor even -with the ordinary civil courts. Decrees of Conseil d’Etat are suspended -everywhere like swords of Damocles, or rather like the blades of the -<i>guillotine sèche</i>, which has replaced the bloody guillotine of “the -grand ancestors of 1793,” whom these up-to-date Jacobins invoke so -complacently. We must not forget, too, that Conseil d’Etat means Conseil -du Grand Orient. It is said that the Masons are secretly organizing -<i>Associations cultuelles</i>, so-called Catholic. Human nature has not -changed since 1790, and it would be strange, if they could not pick up -another Abbé Gregoire or two, and a Talleyrand to boot. They can always -import some of that ilk from Geneva if necessary.</p> - -<p>Moreover, these <i>Associations cultuelles</i> can be dissolved for so many -reasons (five), at a moment’s notice, by a decree of Conseil d’Etat, -that it does not seem worth while to form them.</p> - -<p>The paltry reserve fund the <i>Associations cultuelles</i> are allowed to -have must, like the rest of their funds, be deposited in the -Government’s strong-box, and can only be used “for building, repairing, -embellishing church edifices.”</p> - -<p>Evidently, it is not intended that there shall be any further -ecclesiastical recruitment. Seminaries are eliminated, <i>ipso facto</i>, as -they cannot exist on thin air.</p> - -<p>I do not enter into the details regarding pensions<a name="page_152" id="page_152"></a> of aged priests, as -it is all too contemptible, the sums accorded being just enough to -starve on. But we may note a few violations of liberty and justice.</p> - -<p>1. All church property, movable or immovable, to which are attached -<i>fondations</i> not directly regarding public worship, which are, in other -words, charitable or educational, are to be turned over to civic -institutions. Thus testators who left money for Christian parochial -schools and charities see it applied to the paganizing of the rising -generation and the poor.</p> - -<p>2. All churches and chapels arbitrarily closed by M. Combes are to -remain disaffected, i.e. confiscated.</p> - -<p>3. Ecclesiastical archives and libraries of episcopal sees and grand -seminaries that are claimed by the State are to be immediately -transferred to the State. This reveals the whole Jacobin mind. The -Church is to be deprived of all social action, by education and charity, -which she has exercised since two thousand years, and she must be -mummified like the Photian and Coptic and Nestorian Churches.</p> - -<p>The confiscation of these archives and libraries by a pagan state is, to -my mind, the most serious loss. Money can always be found again, but -when impious vandals have destroyed or dispersed these libraries and -archives, they can never be replaced. All English students deplore the -irreparable loss, caused by the cynical and base uses made of invaluable -manuscripts by reforming vandals in the sixteenth century.<a name="page_153" id="page_153"></a></p> - -<p>4. The Law of Separation deprives communes of the right to give any -subventions for religious worship—though the State inscribes on its own -budget the stipends to chaplains of lyceums frequented by children of -the rich, notwithstanding Art. II.</p> - -<p>5. A whole class of citizens are placed <i>hors la loi</i>, in that they are -deprived of the right of trial by jury for offences amenable to this -procedure. They (priests) are placed on the same footing as convicted -anarchists.</p> - -<p>6. Divine service is assimilated to any public meeting. A band of -Socialists may fill the church and render prayer impossible by their -irreverent attitude but they cannot be expelled unless they resort to -violence.</p> - -<p>7. The same class of individuals can invade any cathedral at any hour -and insist on inspecting, gratis, all its treasures (<i>objets mobiliers -classés</i>). In other words, these venerable edifices, the church of Brou, -Notre Dame, etc., are treated already like public museums, less well in -fact. And all this, we are told seriously, is “Separation.”</p> - -<p>Meanwhile the two parties most nearly concerned in this question, the -Holy See and the French people, thirty-five million Catholics, have -never been consulted.</p> - -<p>M. Briand with remarkable impudence asserted that, since thirty-five -years, the country had sighed after “Separation,” though he well knows -that no one<a name="page_154" id="page_154"></a> thought about it but the Grand Orient. He himself admitted, -in the same session, that the question did not exist (<i>n’était pas -posée</i>) at the beginning of this legislature (1902), and was only raised -by the Pope’s violations of the Concordat. This lie, which tends to -become historic, was amply exploded, when M. Combes was convicted in the -Chambers of having suppressed a document, which amply justified Pius X’s -action in the case of the Bishops of Dijon and Laval, which the lodges -used as a <i>casus belli</i>. Moreover, we must remember that the current -Jacobin thesis is that the Seventeen Articles of the Concordat, which -alone were signed by Pius VII, and the Seventy-six Organic Articles, -added <i>ex parte</i> by Napoleon, in violation of every code of honour and -equity, form an intangible whole. Nevertheless, the Seventeen Articles -of the Convention which were alone signed by Pius VII and Napoleon, in -Messidor l’an IX, took effect as soon as the ratifications were -exchanged. The churches, seminaries, etc., were immediately “placed at -the disposal of the Bishops,” and the stipulated indemnities were -forthcoming.</p> - -<p>It was not till Germinal l’an X that the Seventy-six Organic Articles -were promulgated, together with the Convention.</p> - -<p>Now no one surely can be accused of violating articles regarding which -he has never been consulted. Yet this is precisely the ground taken by -the Jacobins.</p> - -<p>A senator of the Right alleged, in defence of the<a name="page_155" id="page_155"></a> Concordat, Art. 1134 -of the Code Civil: “Conventions legally formed are a law to those who -make them. They can only be revoked, by mutual consent, by those who -make them, and for causes which the law recognizes.”</p> - -<p>Thereupon the reporter replied: “There was a Convention between Pius VII -and Napoleon; this Convention formed a whole (<i>un ensemble</i>) with the -Seventy-six Organic Articles.” And as no Government has ever been able -to enforce these articles, some of which are rankly heretical, the -reporter alleged Art. 1184 of the Code against Art. 1134 to defend the -Government’s <i>ex-parte</i> denunciation of the Concordat. This Art. 1184 -declares that “a Convention is rescinded when one of the parties does -not keep his engagements.”</p> - -<p>In other words, they say Pius VII and his successors have always -protested against the Seventy-six Organic Articles which the former did -not sign, therefore we are justified in denouncing, <i>ex parte</i>, the -Convention or Concordat of Seventeen Articles signed by Pius VII and -Napoleon.</p> - -<p>It is by this sophism that the Third Republic justifies the repudiation -of a portion of the National Debt; for the payment of annual indemnities -to the Catholic clergy was undoubtedly placed on the “Grand Livre” of -France by the Constituante, and recognized as part of the National Debt -by succeeding legislatures, before and since 1801.<a name="page_156" id="page_156"></a></p> - -<p>Recently, when it was proposed to suppress, without indemnity, the -<i>Majorats</i> of the <i>ancien régime</i>, M. Rouvier, Président de Conseil, -indignantly rejected the motion, saying, “Il ne faut jamais que la -signature de la France soit protestée.” But when it is a question of -mere Catholics, the sense of national honour becomes blunted. They are -<i>hors la loi</i>. This form of jurisprudence has been familiar to -highwaymen from time immemorial—for them, the unarmed are always <i>hors -la loi</i>.</p> - -<p>M. Raiberti, a deputy from Nice, eloquently protested against the vote -of urgency, declaring that the country had never been consulted. “No -law,” he said, “can be just and stable which does not express the wishes -of the people.” All in vain. The Socialist voting machine worked -automatically at every turn towards the end.</p> - -<p>It is an incontestable fact that Separation has never appeared on any -programme these thirty-four years, except on that of 181 deputies at the -elections of 1902. Nevertheless, 341 (against 249) have just voted for -this law of Separation that is the negation of fifteen centuries of -national history.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p> - -<p>The <i>Gazette de France</i> calculates the number of electors represented by -these 341 deputies who carried the Separation Bill in the Chambers in -July:—<a name="page_157" id="page_157"></a></p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“On a total of 11,219,992 French electors only 2,997,063 pronounced -yesterday by their deputies in favour of the denunciation of the -Concordat and the spoliation of the Church, voted by a so-called -majority.</p> - -<p>“We must bear in mind that at the elections of 1902 the majority -only vanquished by 200,000 votes out of 8,000,000 voters inscribed, -and there are 400,000 functionaries. Thus spoke a senator (de -Cuverville), and he further quoted the declarations of M. Deschanel -in a public speech, July, 1905.</p> - -<p>“A minority, he declared, governs the country, and a law voted by a -certain majority represents 25 to 30 per cent. One deputy is -elected by 22,000, another by 1000. The Department du Nord has -500,000 more inhabitants than six departments of the south-east, -yet it has five deputies less. Roubaix, with 125,000 inhabitants, -has one deputy, while the Department of Basses Alpes, with 115,000 -inhabitants, has five deputies.”</p></div> - -<p>It is easy to see how a little judicious electoral geometry and -arithmetic will always give the Government a majority. Each -<i>arrondissement</i> having a deputy, it is only necessary to cut up a given -district, notably anti-clerical, into a great many <i>arrondissements</i>, in -order to secure an increased number of deputies, <i>blocards</i>; and vice -versa the process need only be reversed in districts suspected of -“clericalism.” We must also remember that at least one-third of the -electors never vote, and so the Government can always have a majority.<a name="page_158" id="page_158"></a></p> - -<p>This Separation Law is, as M. Briand said, only “transitory.” It is, I -repeat, eminently perfidious. There is no form of tyranny, vexation, and -spoliation which cannot be legalized by its equivocal articles. It -contains all that is necessary to eliminate Catholicism from France as -far as public worship is concerned.</p> - -<p>On June 3rd I wrote, “What these Jacobins want is to have the law voted -before the elections of May, 1906, and then say to the people, ‘You see -the law is voted, and nothing is changed.’” At the final session after -the vote, M. Briand, in a speech now pasted up all over the country, -said, “Our work is done. What have you to say? You tried to trouble the -conscience of the French Catholics, but can you find anything in the -Bill to warrant your grievances? Dare now to tell the people the -churches are to be closed, the priests proscribed.” Yet all this, alas! -arrived almost immediately after the first Separation Law made in 1795.</p> - -<p>“No one,” echoed M. Deschanel, a smooth-tongued, dainty politician like -M. Rousseau, “can maintain that this law is the work of hatred and -persecution, unless it is travestied by some profoundly dishonest -Government.”</p> - -<p>“Like that of M. Combes, who travestied Waldeck Rousseau’s Associations -Bill,” rejoined a deputy of the Right.</p> - -<p>This Law of Separation bears the same imprint as<a name="page_159" id="page_159"></a> that of 1901; both -emanated from the same quarter. It is, I repeat, a masterpiece of guile -and arbitrary tyranny. Any sense can be given to the ambiguous language -in which the most important articles are couched, and their -interpretation is not to be left to ordinary civil tribunals. The <i>jus -et norma</i> in all doubtful questions is to be the Conseil d’Etat. In -other words, the Grand Conseil of the Grand Orient is to be the supreme -court of first and last appeal.</p> - -<p>The Church in France might just as well descend into the catacombs here -and now. It will come to this, unless some cataclysm rouse the French to -a violent uprising, in which the Third Republic and all its works and -ways will be swept away.</p> - -<p>The Senatorial Commission is composed of fourteen Jacobin Freemasons. -Their rulings are a foregone conclusion. The Separation Bill may be -considered already voted in the Senate.</p> - -<p>Great crimes against liberty, justice, and humanity cannot be -circumscribed by national frontiers. They offend all Christendom, and -though nations may, supinely, say “Am I my brother’s keeper?” they pay -the penalty sooner or later. France in acute revolution will mean Europe -in flames, as in 1792.<a name="page_160" id="page_160"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="THE_PROGRESS_OF_ANARCHY" id="THE_PROGRESS_OF_ANARCHY"></a>THE PROGRESS OF ANARCHY</h2> - -<p class="r"> -<i>12th October, 1905.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="nind">T<small>HE</small> stories that are going the rounds of the whole European Press leave -little doubt as to the fact, that a once great, free nation had her -Foreign Minister, M. Delcassé, kept in office by the King of England -while he was in Paris this spring, and that two months later, he was -dismissed at the behest of Germany, who tore up the Anglo-French -Convention regarding Morocco and inaugurated the Congress of Algeciras. -No nation can act as France has done with impunity.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p> - -<p>This is curious too when we consider that France is so sensitive about -the <i>ingérence</i> of even a spiritual sovereign, that the denunciation of -a Concordat and the rupture with the Holy See were ascribed to the fact -that Pius X had taken the liberty of suspending two French bishops!</p> - -<p>It is also interesting to recall that the Bill of<a name="page_161" id="page_161"></a> alleged Separation -was first voted at the Congress of Free-Thought held at Rome, in -September, 1904. The motion was made by Professor Haeckel, of the -University of Jena, Prussia, that: “We congratulate M. Combes in his -struggle for free-thought against theocratical oppression, and for the -radical separation of Church and State.” Allemane, a French Socialist -deputy, exclaimed: “This is not enough. We want the abolition of the -Church.” Robin, another French deputy, rejoined: “We are equally opposed -to both. We demand the abolition of Church and State.”</p> - -<p>I have already stated how the annual convent of the Grand Orient of -France notified M. Combes (September, 1904) of their wishes regarding -the passage without delay of the Separation Bill. This Bill was voted, -or rather enregistered, by the Chamber of Deputies in July, as it will -be done shortly by the Senate.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p> - -<p>Yesterday in Paris, the bureau of the “Federation of International -Free-Thought” actually intimated to the French Senate its behest that -the Law of Separation of Church and State be voted, without discussion -or amendment, before December 31st. When we consider that this bureau is -composed of one French Socialist Freemason deputy, the others being -German, Belgian, and Italian, it seems preposterous! It would be so, -even if all were Frenchmen, seeing that the Senate is supposed to be a<a name="page_162" id="page_162"></a> -free deliberative body, having the responsibility of accepting or -rejecting what is done in the lower House.</p> - -<p>The London <i>Saturday Review</i> is almost the only organ in the English -language which seems adequately to appreciate the enormity of the -religious persecution in France.</p> - -<p>“The extraordinary conspiracy of silence on this momentous matter, in -the English Press,” writes the <i>Saturday Review</i>, London (July 8th, -1905), “is doubtless due to the fact that English Christians and -gentlemen are usually considered unfit to represent English newspapers -on the Continent. The Paris correspondents of our leading journals, -being nearly all men of oriental extraction, cannot, however honourable -and enlightened, be expected to entertain any interest in the fate of -the Christian religion. We are invariably led by these gentlemen to -believe that all is for the best in the best of republics. When, a -fortnight ago, France suddenly realized that she was within sight of a -war with her ancient foe on the other side of the Rhine, a thrill of -terror passed over the land at the mere thought that while engrossed in -the work of dechristianizing France, and hustling monks and nuns up and -down the country, the politicians in power had demoralized the army, -neglected the navy, and left the frontiers almost entirely unprotected. -Things have quieted down since then, but none the less there is a -feeling of<a name="page_163" id="page_163"></a> unrest which makes people dread the passage of a law that -may lead to internal divisions and disorders even more serious than -those which agitate France at the present time.”</p> - -<p>Referring to the Bill of alleged Separation, the <i>Saturday Review</i> -continues: “<i>La Lanterne</i> (the organ of the ‘bloc’) intimates that ‘it -only accepts the Bill as it stands as a preliminary; we must silence the -priests and prevent them from infusing any more of the virus of religion -into the minds of the people.’ ... To a thinking foreigner, the -spectacle presented by contemporary France is an amazing one. Here is a -great nation, which for sixteen centuries has proclaimed herself ‘eldest -daughter of the Church,’ renouncing her great position as protector of -the Catholics in the east and breaking off her connexion with the -Vatican, at a time when Germany is menacing her and proclaiming at Metz, -of all places in the world, her imperial wish to become more friendly -with the Church.”</p> - -<p>This is an allusion to the Emperor William’s having himself invested by -the papal legate with the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, surrounded by -German cardinals and prelates, as well as the highest military -dignitaries of Alsace-Lorraine. For me, the dismissal of M. Delcassé and -the whole Moroccan incident are the handwriting on the wall which the -French are slow to read. On the Feast of St. Michael, September 29th, -the Minister of<a name="page_164" id="page_164"></a> Public Worship held high revelry at a banquet of five -hundred Freemasons in the church of the recently expropriated convent of -the Ursuline nuns at Ave-ranche, just opposite that wonderful pile known -as the Mount St. Michel, a mediæval monastery and church. It is not -stated whether—like Balthazar—he sent for the vessels of the temple.</p> - -<p>The crimes against justice, liberty, and humanity committed in France, -since four years, are without a parallel in Europe since the Revolution -of 1790, if we except, of course, the atrocities in the Turkish Empire. -But most dire racial and religious antagonism may be alleged on behalf -of the Turk. In Spain, too, similar violations of liberty, justice, and -humanity have been committed during the nineteenth century, but this was -done in the heat and turmoil of revolutionary and anarchist upheavals. -In France they were committed in cold blood, under cover of law. Nearly -27,000 Catholic schools, freely patronized by Catholic parents, have -been suppressed, thousands of aged men and women have been dragged out -of their homes and cast into the street, <i>vi et armis</i>, the regular army -being employed in a great many cases. Their homes, built up by years of -patient labour, have been confiscated and sold for a trifle. Yet many of -them were authorized and had contracts with the Government. Recently, -convent and school buildings, estimated at 200,000 francs, were sold for -2200 francs.<a name="page_165" id="page_165"></a></p> - -<p>Two days ago, forty-three nuns of the Benedictine Order were expelled -from their homes; eleven of them were over seventy, and quite infirm. -The Congregations who were wary enough not to ask for authorization, and -realized what they could before going into exile, are not to be pitied -so much. Unfortunately, the majority fell into the Government’s trap and -asked for authorization, which obliged them to declare all their assets, -that have been confiscated, and of which they will never see one cent. -Not only have all the assets been consumed in the process called -“liquidation,” but the Government has been obliged to put up over -4,000,000 of the public money to cover the expenses of the -“liquidators.” So ends the myth of the “billions of the Congregations,” -held out as a glittering lure by Waldeck Rousseau in 1900 to his -Socialist henchmen.</p> - -<p>The terrible inroads, made by anti-patriotism and anarchical Socialism -by means of public-school teachers, are seriously alarming the creators -of this modern Frankenstein. Domiciliary perquisitions are being made -just now, in many cities, to seize the leaders of a conspiracy to -debauch the young conscripts who begin their two years’ military service -now. A brochure, called <i>Crosse en l’air</i> (meaning military revolt), has -reached, it is said, the million mark of circulation, in spite of the -Government.<a name="page_166" id="page_166"></a></p> - -<p>The conclusion of the Russo-Japanese war is an illustration of what I -wrote in <i>Slav and Moslem</i> ten years ago, page 170: “Henceforth -commerce, not ideas, will rule in the council chambers of the world. -Politics will be forged in counting-houses and warehouses, ‘where only -the ledger lives,’ in whose dusty atmosphere none but merchantable ideas -are current. Wars will be declared, peace be made, alliances formed or -repudiated, according to their probable effect on the pulse of the -market.”</p> - -<p>Without wishing to derogate from the merit of Mr. Roosevelt’s good -offices, I am convinced he could not have succeeded if the financial -consideration had not rendered the belligerents docile. Japan was -absolutely at the end of her financial resources; the Russian coffers -were not far from empty. By the intermediary of the President, both -parties were given to understand that not a yen or kopeck more could -they borrow if peace were not concluded there and then. Any prolongation -of that war would have meant financial panic in many countries, chiefly -in France. Israel, by its bankers, has its hand on the throttle in -Christendom, and can make for peace and war more than all the peace -congresses. When we reflect on the three cruel, uncalled-for wars which -followed the Hague Conference in 1898, we can only tremble for the -future, if there is to be a new peace congress. In spite of conferences -and Jew bankers, guns will continue to “go off by themselves.” These<a name="page_167" id="page_167"></a> -Delcassé revelations are not calculated to render the Germans more -friendly to France or England, and the knowledge they have acquired of -France’s inability and unwillingness to fight must be a strong -temptation to a nation whose population is increasing at a formidable -rate, in spite of emigration, while that of France is stationary, not to -say steadily decreasing.</p> - -<p>Belgium, that great country in a very small compass, has doubled hers -since 1830. With 7,000,000 inhabitants, the figure of her business -operations is now the same as that of France with 38,000,000. This last -statement was made by M. Leygnes, ex-minister, in a recent political -speech, regarding the steady decadence of France under Jacobin rule -since twenty years.</p> - -<p>No country wants war, but all fear it. The causes of unrest are manifold -and legion.</p> - -<p>In an important political speech made by Lord Beaconsfield (Disraeli) at -Aylesbury, September 20th, 1873, he expressed himself as follows: “I can -assure you, gentlemen, that those who govern must count with new -elements. We have to deal not with emperors and cabinets only. We must -take into consideration secret societies, who can disconcert all -measures at the last moment, who have agents everywhere determined men -encouraging assassinations, and capable of bringing about a massacre at -any given moment.<a name="page_168" id="page_168"></a>”</p> - -<p>The passage is quoted in an article in the <i>Nineteenth Century</i> (1876), -“A History of the ‘Internationale.’” The “Internationale,” by the way, -is fast superseding the “Marseillaise.” The verse of blasphemy against -Christ and His mother is followed by one which ends with these words: -“Our balls are for our generals.” A short time ago there were prolonged -riotous strikes on the eastern frontier. A striker was killed -accidentally. Thereupon M. Berteaux, the Minister of War, retired a -general and imprisoned a captain and a lieutenant for the crime of -having allowed the lancer regiments to carry lances when they were sent -out against the strikers!</p> - -<p>To propitiate these rioters the Minister of War went to Longwy, and the -strikers marched past singing the “Internationale,” and the Minister of -War actually saluted the red flag! He afterwards protested in the -newspapers that he did not salute the red flag, but the men and women -who were escorting it! This Minister of War began life as dry-goods -commercial traveller. He is to-day a millionaire <i>agent de change</i> at -the Paris Bourse, and is said to ambition the presidential chair.</p> - -<p>Shakespeare wrote: “Motley is the only wear.” In France, everything -seems to be running to red. I have witnessed here two “free-thought” -funerals, one last April and another yesterday, in which pall and -banners were red, and even the coffin was draped in flaming red. Red “is -the only wear,” though<a name="page_169" id="page_169"></a> it is not easy to understand why “free-thought” -should necessarily blush—for itself. At the “Free-Thought” convention -held, recently, at Paris, under government patronage, anarchy dominated, -just as it did at Rome last September. Red was the keynote.<a name="page_170" id="page_170"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="THE_ABOLITION_OF_THE_CONCORDAT" id="THE_ABOLITION_OF_THE_CONCORDAT"></a>THE ABOLITION OF THE CONCORDAT</h2> - -<p class="r"> -<i>February 3rd, 1906.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="nind">O<small>N</small> August 19th, 1905, I described some of the odious features of the -alleged Separation Bill voted by the House of Deputies on July 7th, at -“midnight, the hour of crime.” It may truly be ranked in that category -to which Cicero referred when he said, “There are laws which are merely -conventions among thieves.” “The vote of the Senate is a foregone -conclusion,” I wrote. The order had been given; every amendment (there -were about a hundred) was rejected automatically, and the law was voted, -December 6th, 1905, by a majority of 180 to 101. “The French -Government,” I wrote (June 30th, 1900), “is on the verse of apostasy. Is -this a cause, a presage, or a symptom of national decadence? All three I -fear. Nations stand or fall with their governments. They have the -government they deserve, and are punished for the evil doings of their -rulers! ‘I gave them a king in my wrath,’ was once written of the Jews. -Is there sufficient vitality left in the French national constitution to -reject the poison which is undermining it, and of which alcoholism, -unknown in France fifty years ago, is but the outward and visible sign?” -To-day this<a name="page_171" id="page_171"></a> apostasy, not of the nation, but of the French State, is -complete. It is the latest, though by no means the last act of a series -of anti-religious laws, elaborated by the Grand Orient and voted by -majorities and cabinets formed by them. I dealt with this subject on -March 17th, 1900, and said, then, that “with a Parliament and Ministry -like this any legislation is possible.”</p> - -<p>The pseudo-Separation Bill is the most important legislation -accomplished in France since a century at least, and it has been done in -a manner which would not be tolerated in any free, civilized country. An -Act, which is the repudiation of fifteen centuries of national life, and -is fraught with the gravest consequences both political and religious, -interior and exterior, has been rushed through both Houses with most -unseemly, “scandalous haste.” “You are treating it,” said a senator, “as -if it were a question of a fourth-rate railroad.” There was only one -deliberation in the Chamber of Deputies, and not one in the Senate we -may say. Senators of the Right were allowed to soliloquize eloquently. -Their speeches were admirable from every point of view and might well -have given pause to the Left. But these were dumb, by order. With few -exceptions, the reporter and President of the Separation Commission and -the Minister of Worship alone spoke, to curtly and peremptorily repulse -the proposed amendments. M. Rouvier, Prime Minister and Minister of -Foreign<a name="page_172" id="page_172"></a> Affairs, who did not speak at all in the House of Deputies, -made but one appearance, on November 9th, at the first session of the -Senate, to declare that “the question was essentially a political one,” -and that there was “a primordial and dominant interest for the -Government that this reform should be completed before the Senate went -before the electoral body.” He further declared “that the Senate had -given its adhesion in advance ... if it were otherwise the Government -would resign.” Surely a singular speech to make to a deliberative -assembly, on a matter that transcends in importance anything that has -been transacted in the French Parliament since 1793.</p> - -<p>If the law were not what Cicero calls “a convention among thieves,” how -did M. Rouvier know “that the Senate had given its adhesion in advance”? -Indignant at the systematic refusal of the Left to enter into any -discussion, a senator exclaimed: “You are a deliberative assembly; try -at least to keep up appearances.” MM. Monis and Clemenceau spoke on the -Left, not to refute the arguments of the Right, but to travesty history, -to malign and misrepresent, and to discuss subjects wholly irrelevant. -M. Monis entered into a long digression on the Franco-Prussian war in -order to incriminate a French cardinal and Pius IX. He was ably refuted -by M. de Lamarzalle.</p> - -<p>Whence this unseemly haste to vote a measure so<a name="page_173" id="page_173"></a> important on the ragged -edge of a legislature? Next month one-third of the Senate is to be -renewed, the presidential term expires, and in May general elections are -to take place. In vain the Right, in learned and eloquent speeches, -adjured the Senate to postpone the final vote: (1) till one-third of the -Senators had been replaced; (2) till the Municipal Councils had been -consulted; (3) till the country had been consulted; (4) until after the -general elections of May, 1906. All in vain. “<i>Motions préjudicielles</i>” -and a hundred odd amendments all had the same fate.</p> - -<p>The explanation of this “scandalous haste” is very simple. The reporter -of the Commission said: “If you do not vote this liberal law now, you -can say good-bye to it, for you will never see it again.”</p> - -<p>The country has never been consulted, and the Government wishes to -confront the people with the <i>accomplished</i> fact, and above all to be -able to say, as I pointed out in my last: “You see the law is voted and -nothing is changed.” If this law had been passed two years ago, it would -have gone into operation a year before the general elections and the -people might have been roused. On the other hand, if it hung fire now, -it would certainly have to be placed in all the electoral programmes. -Everything has been planned and foreseen by the lodges since twenty -years.<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a><a name="page_174" id="page_174"></a></p> - -<p>Several senators of the Right convincingly established that there was no -adequate reason for this unseemly haste—that no organic law had ever -been passed without a second reading; and they adjured the Senate not to -abdicate. M. de Chamaillard even offered to withdraw all the proposed -amendments (about a hundred) if the Senate would not vote the “urgency” -and give the law a second reading. All in vain.</p> - -<p>No one ignores or denies that the true purpose of the law is to -dechristianize France; even the spokesmen of the Government could not -dissimulate the truth. The coterie of Freemason Jacobins who have ruled -France for the past twenty years have not renounced their scheme of -national schismatic churches; only, instead of having one, which was -seen to be impossible, they propose to establish dozens of them by means -of associations of worship. Articles 4, 6, 8, 19 dealing with these -associations contain the whole venom of the law. In vain the -obscurities, the anomalies, the legal antinomies were pointed out, and -explanations demanded. <i>Règlements d’organization and Conseil d’Etat</i>, -it was said, would settle everything later on! In this <i>Review</i>, August -19th, I commented on the text of the law—and not one word, not one -comma, has been changed by the Senate!</p> - -<p>To-day, Islamism is, <i>ipso facto</i>, the only religion recognized by the -French Government; its ministers<a name="page_175" id="page_175"></a> and mosques and schools are provided -for, and its ceremonies are often honoured by the presence of state -officials. This, in spite of Article 2, “the Republic recognizes and -subventions no worship.”</p> - -<p>Another point worth noticing is that while discussing Article 1, “The -Republic assures liberty of conscience,” the Minister of Public Worship, -speaking for the Government, clearly indicated that state functionaries -would never be permitted to send their children to any but government -schools.</p> - -<p>There are three points on which I insist in conclusion: (1) That the -country has not been consulted. At the general elections, 1902, not one -senator, and only 130 deputies out of 580 had “Separation” in their -programmes, and the Budget of Worship was voted in 1902, 1903, 1904 by a -compact majority who would then have been indignant had it been said -that they were acting against the wishes of the country. On January -27th, 1903, M. Combes himself repelled a suggestion of denunciation of -the Concordat thus: “If you do this by an improvised vote ... you will -throw the country into the greatest difficulties, trouble consciences, -and cause a veritable peril to the Republic.” Now the country has not -been heard from since 1902. Yet the law was rushed through, on the eve -of a new election, for reasons I have indicated.</p> - -<p>(2) We must remember that when continual violations of the Concordat are -alleged as an excuse for<a name="page_176" id="page_176"></a> the rupture, the Jacobins constantly confound -the seventy-five Organic Articles with the seventeen articles of the -Convention called Concordat, 1801, which alone was signed by Pius VII.</p> - -<p>(3) The suppression of the indemnity <i>Concordataire</i> is, as far as the -Catholic clergy are concerned, a partial repudiation of the National -Debt. It was recognized as such by laws of 1789, 1790, 1791, 1793, 1801, -etc.</p> - -<p>This law of pseudo-Separation is not only a law of spoliation, but also -of supreme tyranny, in that in the name of Separation, it pretends to -regulate minutely the mode of existence of its victims, in future, by -special codes, and deprives them of the right to have more than the -strictest necessary for a hand-to-mouth existence.</p> - -<p>I am convinced that to acquiesce in regard to these “associations of -worship” will be to fall into the Government’s trap as the Congregations -did when they applied for authorization in 1902. It will only mean -retreating before the enemy, and postponing the hour of violent -persecution and combat, which must come before the Jacobin-Freemason -yoke can be broken.<a name="page_177" id="page_177"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="THE_INVENTORIES" id="THE_INVENTORIES"></a>THE INVENTORIES</h2> - -<p class="r"> -<i>12th February, 1906.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="nind">Y<small>EAR</small> by year, I have foreshadowed and characterized the programme of -persecution, spoliation, and arbitrary tyranny which is that of the -Judeo-Masonic coterie which governs France, by means of the Socialist -vote. We have now reached the second part of this programme.</p> - -<p>In 1901 the Associations Bill was, according to Waldeck Rousseau, -intended to give legal standing and liberty to the unauthorized as well -as to the authorized Congregations. We all know, to-day, how -twenty-seven thousand of their schools have been closed, and how the -Congregations, simple enough to fall into the Government’s trap by -asking for authorization and furnishing inventories of their property, -have been robbed of everything and turned adrift.</p> - -<p>The inventories now being made in the churches, amid scenes of violence -and bloodshed, with the cooperation of the regular army, represent the -first step on the road to wholesale spoliation and strangulation. If -only the victims would be docile and resigned there would be no trouble -whatever. Resistance will compel the operators to be drastic, when they -would<a name="page_178" id="page_178"></a> rather go slowly and surely. The French voters should be -consistent. After giving themselves such law-makers, they ought at least -not to wince when the laws made by them are put into execution. But this -is an incurable idiosyncrasy of the French; they are clear-sighted, -energetic, and practical in the administration of their private affairs, -but when it comes to politics and government, they are absolutely -apathetic and purblind. Any pothouse politician can wheedle them out of -their votes, who would find it difficult to coax a sou out of their -pockets. All they ask is to be left in peace to attend to their business -and pleasures. It is only when the unpleasant practical sides of laws -like those of 1902, 1904, and 1905 are brought home to them that the -peasant seizes his pitchfork, and the bourgeois his cane, and bloody -manifestations occur all over France, as in 1902, 1904, and to-day -(1906).</p> - -<p>Generally speaking, inventories are made only when property is about to -change hands, as in cases of death and bankruptcy. Now the adherents of -the Catholic Church in France are numerous and very much alive, and they -cannot see why their ecclesiastical furniture and property should be -inventoried, quite forgetting that they gave carte blanche to the “bloc” -of Briands, Brissons, Combes, etc., who made the law they are now -resisting.</p> - -<p>If <i>Associations cultuelles</i> are formed, a consummation most devoutly to -be deprecated by every<a name="page_179" id="page_179"></a> friend of Catholic France, evidently they will -be composed by bishops, curés, and their present <i>conseils de fabrique</i>, -and there will not be any transmission of property.</p> - -<p>If there were no <i>animus furtandi</i>, no malevolent projects of -strangulation in the background, the Government would have contented -itself with denouncing the Concordat, and repudiating that portion of -the National Debt represented by the <i>Budget of cults</i>, instituted by -the Jacobins themselves, in 1790, when they appropriated Church property -and assumed the charge of maintaining Catholic worship in France. -Neither Protestant nor Jewish worship was included, originally, in the -<i>Budget de Cults</i>, seeing that their Church property had not been -touched, and they had no part in the Concordat.</p> - -<p>When the Anglican Church was disestablished or separated from the State -in Ireland, it surely never occurred to Mr. Gladstone and his Government -to order inventories to be made in the churches.</p> - -<p>To understand this revolt of the French people just now, we must recall -their past experience with inventories. In 1790 a decree obliged all -cathedral chapters and titulars of benefices to furnish complete -inventories of all their holdings, and in March, 1791, about four -hundred millions of Church property was seized and sold by the State. In -1901 the Congregations were invited to furnish ample inventories with -their demands for authorization; no authorizations<a name="page_180" id="page_180"></a> were given, but the -inventories were very useful for the wholesale spoliations which -followed, spoliations which still masquerade under the pseudonym of -“liquidations.”</p> - -<p>Moreover, the State makes these inventories to-day as proprietor, though -by no sleight of language can its ownership be proven, even as regards -churches existing before the Revolution, while many costly structures -have been erected and endowed since then by private initiative.<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p> - -<p>Fierce riots occurred over one of these churches<a name="page_181" id="page_181"></a> built on private -grounds. The proprietor produced his title deeds, proving that the -commune had not contributed one cent and that he was absolute owner, but -this made no difference.</p> - -<p>The law Mirabeau of 1789 distinctly recognized that all ecclesiastical -property then existing had been “irrevocably given to the Roman Catholic -Church for public worship and charity.” The Jacobins of to-day -apparently base their claims (Art. 12 de Separation) on this loi -Mirabeau, which declares, forthwith, that all this Church property is -“placed at the disposal of the nation,” (“<i>mise à la disposition de la -nation</i>”). But Art. 12 of the Concordat uses exactly the same words in -speaking of what was left, in 1801, of Church property, edifices, -etc.—“<i>sont mises à la disposition des évêques</i>”—all was “placed at -the disposal of the bishops”; and the faithful, moreover, were invited -to reconstitute the stolen patrimony by gifts and legacies, which are -now to be confiscated.</p> - -<p>Church edifices and everything pertaining thereto, as well as pious -legacies (<i>fondations</i>), are to confiscated, if <i>Associations -cultuelles</i> are not formed before 6th December, 1906, or if said -associations are dissolved for any of the five cases foreseen by the law -ironically called of “Separation.” Lineal descendants may claim -<i>fondations</i> made by ancestors, but this liberal provision is illusory, -as all important bequests are made by people who are childless. Thus the -dead are despoiled as well as the living.<a name="page_182" id="page_182"></a></p> - -<p>The recitals which fill the daily papers of churches besieged and -assaulted by <i>gens d’armes</i> and the regular army are very sickening, -coming so soon after a similar campaign against convents. There are -places where no workmen will break down doors or pick locks for the -fiscal agents, and they are obliged to carry operators, or official -<i>crocheteurs</i>, around with them.</p> - -<p>Recently two thousand soldiers were mobilized against a village church. -In many places the regular army have occupied the churches, -unexpectedly, before daylight, and thus the people were outwitted and -the inventories were made quietly. Though, if we may believe a -functionary interviewed by a reporter of the <i>Journal de Génève</i>, not -one inventory has been made thoroughly, as the Government is very -anxious to have it over. The probability is that the odious work will -soon be suspended entirely, so that all may be forgotten before the -elections of May.<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p> - -<p>Yesterday two superior officers of the Engineering Corps at Cherbourg -had their swords broken by the Government, because they manifested their -disgust too openly. Many others are under arrest, because they refused -to lead the assault on Church edifices, and their careers may be -considered at an end.<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a><a name="page_183" id="page_183"></a></p> - -<p>The first article of this Law of alleged Separation declares that “the -Republic assures liberty of conscience.” Yet surely it is a violation of -liberty of conscience to command a Catholic officer to batter down the -doors of his parish church. Moreover, when this article of the law was -being discussed in the Senate, the Minister of Cults (M. Briand), -speaking for the Government (as M. Rouvier was never present!), gave it -to be clearly understood that functionaries would never be allowed to -send their children to any but government schools! Yet surely it must be -a matter of conscience with any Catholic to send his children to -schools, which are frankly and aggressively materialistic and atheist.</p> - -<p>Article II declares that “the Republic recognizes, salaries, and -subventions no religion.” This too must not be taken literally. For, as -I anticipated last year (May 29th), this law, made against thirty-five -million French Catholics, is not applicable to six million Mohammedans -of Algeria. Their mosques, their ulemas, their schools and congregations -will continue to be supported by the Republic which neither recognizes -nor supports any religion. This is just, seeing<a name="page_184" id="page_184"></a> that the Third Republic -took all their ecclesiastical property, promising annual subsidies -instead, just as the Jacobins of 1790 did with regard to the Catholics, -only in the latter case the capital appropriated is retained, while the -charge is repudiated.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile Islamism is the state religion of France, <i>ipso facto</i>; the -only one whose ceremonies and mosques are honoured by government -officials on solemn occasions. Shades of Godfrey de Bouillon and St. -Louis!</p> - -<p>Spoliation and poverty would be endurable if only the Church were truly -separated from the State. But the latter presumes to dictate to the -Church a new organization of its parishes (<i>Associations cultuelles</i>), -to limit its financial resources, and decide how these are to be -obtained, how they must be invested, and what use may be made of them.<a name="page_185" id="page_185"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="DUC_IN_ALTUM" id="DUC_IN_ALTUM"></a>DUC IN ALTUM</h2> - -<p class="r"> -<i>20th August, 1906.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="nind">“A<small>ND</small> the Lord said to Peter, Launch out into the deep,” <i>Duc in altum</i>. -To-day again the successor of Peter has heard the word of command, <i>Duc -in altum</i>. He has exercised that <i>potentiorem principalitatem</i> or -eminent leadership ascribed to the Roman See by St. Irenæus in the -second century, and the whole leash of anti-clericals are transported -with rage and surprise at this grand act of Pius X, the one contingency -for which they were not prepared. The previous encyclical (<i>Vehementer</i>) -had left them indifferent. They treated it as a mere rhetorical -manœuvre destined to cover a retreat, and as a covert acquiescence in -their law of tyranny and spoliation.</p> - -<p>The whole venom of this law is, as I wrote a year ago (August 19th, -1905), contained in the numerous articles that regard <i>Associations -cultuelles</i>—which are aimed at the very life of the Church, by the -destruction of her hierarchy, which is the basis of her constitution. In -the English and American Press it is sought, disingenuously, to -make-believe that these associations were merely “boards of trustees” -to<a name="page_186" id="page_186"></a> administer Church property, and that similar associations exist in -the United States, England, Germany, etc., with the approbation of the -Holy See. This is not so; French parishes already have <i>fabriques</i> and -<i>conseils de fabriques</i>, that correspond to boards of trustees. They are -abolished by the Law of Separation, and for them are substituted these -<i>Associations cultuelles</i>, in which the bishops have no standing and no -authority whatever. Any seven, twelve, or twenty-five persons, calling -themselves Catholics, because they happen to be baptized, can form one -of these associations, claim a church and all its revenues, and run the -parish to suit themselves.</p> - -<p>Even after one association has been legally formed “according to the -general rules of worship” (Art. 4), a most ambiguous expression, which -the lawmakers deliberately refused to make explicit, it is anticipated -that scissions may occur, and that rival associations may claim the same -Church property. In all these contentions the bishop has no voice except -incidentally. The Conseil d’Etat, an administrative tribunal composed -exclusively of Freemasons, is the supreme judge of the orthodoxy of -these associations. The phrase “formed according to the general rules of -worship” was supposed to offer ample guarantee to Catholics. Yet -recently the <i>Journal Officiel</i> has officially registered four or five -schismatic associations, formed by already interdicted priests. They are -in insignificant hamlets, it<a name="page_187" id="page_187"></a> is true, one of them being a parish of -only 175 members, but they are test cases, and show how foolish it would -have been to trust to the illusory guarantee offered by Article 4, -“according to the general rules of organization of worship.”</p> - -<p>The discussion raised by M. Combes with the Vatican, regarding the words -<i>nobis nominavit</i> in the canonical investiture of French bishops -presented by the Government as candidates, and then the affair of the -deposition of the Bishops of Dijon and Laval, 1894, convinced them that -a national schismatic church was impossible, so they fell back on this -alternative scheme of <i>Associations cultuelles</i>, destined to set in -motion a process of slow disintegration and gradual decomposition. A -noted Freemason said recently, “Twenty years of secular schools have -made us the masters of France; with twenty years of <i>Associations -cultuelles</i> every trace of the Catholic religion in France will be -effaced.”</p> - -<p>In the Senate M. Berger, a Protestant Freemason, made the following -interesting statement (<i>Journal Officiel</i>, p. 1380): “The law,” he said, -“had been slumbering in the Republican programme for the past fifty -years ... but how can a law be perfect that has had only one -deliberation?... Instead of this a voice cries to us, ‘Vote, vote.’ Here -are articles in disagreement with each other—Vote. They are in -contradiction with the spirit of the law—Vote. They violate existing -rights—Vote, vote.<a name="page_188" id="page_188"></a> Do your duty as a Republican.... Well, yes, I will -vote this law from a sense of duty.”<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p> - -<p>This same senator described the true character of the <i>Associations -cultuelles</i> when he said, “They are free associations destined to take -the place of the ancient Church.”</p> - -<p>Not less clear was the statement of M. Briand, Minister of Public -Worship: “Dissensions may arise, not in matters of dogma only, but in -questions of administration. We must allow those, who do not wish to -submit, to form independent autonomous associations if they wish to use -the same church.”</p> - -<p>If Christians anywhere wonder at the severity of the papal encyclical -rejecting these associations, it is because they have not even scanned -the text of the law, and accept, unchallenged, the misrepresentations of -a Press which seems to derive all its information from organs like <i>La -Lanterne</i>, <i>L’Action</i>, <i>Le Siècle</i>, <i>Le Temps</i>, etc. This Law of alleged -Separation presumes to dictate to the Catholic Church, an organization -in which episcopal authority, the basis of her divinely given -constitution, is completely set at naught. The Roman Pontiff, her -supreme head, was not once consulted, and in order to make it impossible -to do so, they began by severing all connexion with the Vatican in 1904. -It is very much as if, after suppressing all their schools and -colleges,<a name="page_189" id="page_189"></a> the English Government were to pass a law declaring that -Quakers and Presbyterians are to be deprived of all their ecclesiastical -property unless they consent to adopt episcopacy and the Book of Common -Prayer. Would any one under these circumstances hesitate to say that -Quakers and Presbyterians were persecuted? I trow not.</p> - -<p>When Henry VIII had resolved to reduce the Church of England to the -condition of a department of State, his first step was to undermine her -constitution by removing the keystone of the arch. To do this it was -necessary to detach the clergy from Rome, the See of Peter on whom the -Church is founded. In 1530 he compelled them “to acknowledge the king to -be the singular protector and only supreme lord, and, so far as the law -of Christ will allow, supreme head of the English Church and clergy.” In -1532 Convocation further abdicated by the elimination of the saving -clause, “as far as the law of Christ will allow.” They also consented to -have their canon law revised by a Royal Commission, “with a view to the -elimination of all canons contrary to the laws of God and of the realm.” -Their abdication and submission were recorded in an Act of Parliament, -and “henceforth,” writes Wakeman, the Anglican author of a history of -the English Church, “the Church of England will be at the mercy of -Parliament.” We all know how the schism and apostasy of this great -province of the Church were consummated<a name="page_190" id="page_190"></a> by Elizabeth. The fate of -Moscow, and that of Constantinople five centuries before, was the same. -Detached from Rome, they fell beneath the tyranny of the State.</p> - -<p>It is this condition that the Judeo-Masonic coterie would fain have -brought about in France. The seventy-six Organic Articles added -surreptitiously to the Concordat of 1801 had no other object in view. -But, as M. Combes admitted in the Chambers, the Papacy never accepted -them, and no government had ever succeeded in enforcing them. The -question of <i>nobis nominavit</i> and that of the Bishops of Dijon and Laval -were the last abortive efforts to bring about a schism. Failing this, -they resolved to reduce the Church in France to the condition of a -Polish Diet, in which the Conseil d’Etat, i.e. the Grand Orient, would -have enjoyed an unlimited <i>liberum veto</i>.</p> - -<p>Even legally speaking, these <i>Associations cultuelles</i> could not -function normally, because their situation was anomalous. They were -neither owners, <i>usufruitiers</i>, nor simple tenants of the Church -property of which they had the charge and the responsibility. The law -is, as I said before, full of antinomies and obscurities. Senators of -the Right pointed them out one by one. All in vain. Decrees of Conseil -d’Etat will settle every question as it arises was always the -Government’s reply.</p> - -<p>The trap was smartly constructed, and neatly baited with the greater -portion of the present patrimony of<a name="page_191" id="page_191"></a> the Church, some two million -pounds, it is said, and all Church edifices, etc. Everything is to be -confiscated if <i>Associations cultuelles</i> are not formed by December -11th, 1906.</p> - -<p>Considering the disastrous consequences of not forming associations, it -is not surprising that some Catholics, and even some priests, were -disposed, once more, to retreat before the enemy by forming some kind of -Janus-faced association, canonical on one side, and in conformity with -the law on the other. But it is absolutely false that a majority, or -even a minority, of the bishops at the Assembly were in favour of the -acceptation of the Law, <i>telle quelle</i>.</p> - -<p>The clergy and the Catholics of France have been retreating before the -enemy for twenty years and more, quite forgetting the “Resist the devil -and he will flee from you.”</p> - -<p>Leo XIII, in his profound attachment to France, loyally lent his aid to -the Third Republic when implored by M. Grevy. He begged the clergy and -the Catholics to rally to the new regime in the interest of peace.</p> - -<p>He even discountenanced the formation of a Catholic party in France at -that time, because Catholics being divided, politically, into three -camps—Royalists, Republicans, and Imperialists or Bonapartists—he -feared strife, and did not wish the Catholic religion to be identified -with any form of government.<a name="page_192" id="page_192"></a></p> - -<p>At the time of Leo’s death the <i>Journal de Genève</i> (Protestant) declared -that “this Pontiff had at least one miracle to his credit, in that to -the end he had maintained kindly relations with an ungrateful Republic -that repaid his condescendence and friendly aid by reiterated -provocations.” This is quite true. The scholar laws of 1886, when this -campaign against religion was begun by irreligious instruction, given -under a mask of <i>neutralité</i>, now completely laid aside; unjust fiscal -laws against the Congregations; and finally the laws of 1901, 1902 and -1904 which embittered Leo’s last hours, were so many acts of hostility, -leading up to the final assault, all foreseen and prepared in the -Judeo-Masonic lodges since a century we may say. “Il faut sérier les -questions,” said Gambetta, whose maxim was <i>Le clericalism c’est -l’ennemi</i>; and “clericalism,” it seems now, means simply <i>God</i>. To-day, -they openly proclaim that God is the enemy.</p> - -<p>After destroying the outposts and the ramparts by the destruction of all -her religious orders engaged in teaching, preaching, and ministering to -the poor and the halt, it was resolved to storm the citadel, the Church -of France herself, and the Law of alleged Separation was sprung upon the -nation.</p> - -<p>If any confirmation were needed as to the great hopes the Masonic -coterie had founded on the <i>Associations cultuelles</i>, we find it in the -unanimous outburst of surprise and fury which some of their more<a name="page_193" id="page_193"></a> -moderate Press organs sought in vain to dissimulate. Billingsgate cannot -furnish the <i>Lanterne</i> with terms adequate to the occasion; all the more -so, that from the beginning it has affirmed, in most scurrilous -language, that never, never would the Church refuse the “liberalities” -of the law, by which is meant the permission to keep some of her -property. Three editorials of <i>La Lanterne</i>—November 25th, 1905, “Ils -capitulent!”; August 16th, 1906, “C’est la guerre”; and “La folie -suprême,” of August 20th—are most interesting revelations of the -contemporary Jacobin mind.<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> Even the millions represented by the -confiscation of the <i>menses episcopales</i>, etc., which the law had -assigned to the <i>Associations cultuelles</i>, cannot console these -sectarian Jacobins, whose budget shows a deficit of hundreds of -millions. They loudly proclaim that the law must be enforced -<i>integrally</i>, forgetting that the numerous articles regarding -<i>Associations cultuelles</i> are already null and void, and that they -themselves propose to annul those regarding pensions to aged priests. If -they had the courage to enforce Article 35 of the law (<i>police des -cultes</i>) every French bishop would be in prison for reading the -encyclical of August 15th in the churches. Other articles of the <i>police -des cultes</i> also fall to the ground,<a name="page_194" id="page_194"></a> as they were aimed at -<i>Associations cultuelles</i>, who were to be held responsible if a preacher -used seditious language in the pulpit.</p> - -<p>No <i>Associations cultuelles</i> will be formed except by Freemasons -masquerading as Catholics; but at least there will be no confusion, no -disorganization of the Church, which was the main purpose of the law. -Thus has Pius X unmasked their batteries and spiked their guns. They -will have to resort to other arms, those of undisguised persecution, the -very thing they wished, above all, to avoid.</p> - -<p>Little is left standing of the Law of Separation but the articles of -spoliation and confiscation. If these Jacobins have the courage to -enforce them “integrally,” as they say, even to the confiscation of -Church edifices, it will mean, for the present, the most threadbare -poverty. Whether they will dare to do so remains to be seen.</p> - -<p>M. Clemenceau stopped the inventories, because, he said, “it was not -worth while to have riots and bloodshed for the pleasure of counting a -few candelabras.” He and his employers may find that it is not worth -while to risk the Republic for the sake of some Church edifices, for -which they have no use.</p> - -<p>They may content themselves for the present with seizing all the -available cash, which will go the way of the “billions” of the -Congregations, and the exchequer will grow poorer and poorer, till the<a name="page_195" id="page_195"></a> -vanishing point of national bankruptcy is reached as in 1793.<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></p> - -<p>Referring to the critical condition in which the Church was placed under -the feudal system owing to the abusive practice of investiture by laymen -of ecclesiastical dignitaries, Guizot writes: “There was but one force -adequate to save the Church from anarchy and dissolution, this was the -Papacy” (<i>History of Civilization</i>).</p> - -<p>To-day also, the Papacy, alone, could rally the clergy and the faithful -in complete unity, to offer a solid and compact resistance to these -associations of a law of anarchy and dissolution. “That they all may be -one that the world may believe” (John XVI).</p> - -<p>By a stroke of his pen Pius X, whom these anti-clericals affect to -despise as an ignorant peasant, has broken up their cunningly contrived -trap. To reject the associations seemed fraught with dire consequences -and a perilous launching into deep waters. Happily the French episcopate -are worthy and equal to the emergency. My “First Impressions” regarding -them (p. 5) were correct.</p> - -<p>Their addresses to Pius X and to their flocks, form,<a name="page_196" id="page_196"></a> with the -encyclicals “Vehementer” and “Gravissimo” (15th August), one of the -grandest pages of the annals of the Church. “Satan hath desired to sift -you as wheat”; to sift you in sore persecutions; to sift you by poverty -and by riches; to sift you in the flux and reflux of barbarian -invasions; to sift you in the ruins of crumbling empires, that you, like -them, might become as “dust which the wind scattereth,” the dust of -sects and schisms and national churches. “But I have prayed for thee, -Peter, and thou, confirm thy brethren.” <i>Duc in altum.</i><a name="page_197" id="page_197"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="SEPARATION" id="SEPARATION"></a>SEPARATION</h2> - -<p class="r"> -<i>24th November, 1906.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="nind">D<small>ISGUISE</small> the fact as they may, there is religious persecution in France. -Never since the days of Julian the Apostate has any war been waged -against Christianity more malign, more insidious. The ancient Faith was -crushed out, by sheer force, in England and in many parts of the -Continent, in the sixteenth century. In France, too, it seemed, in the -eighteenth century, as though Christianity had received its quietus by -the same brutal means. But methods have greatly altered. Masonic -Jacobins, to-day, shudder at the mere suggestion of blood. A senator of -the Right warned the Government that the Separation might lead to -bloodshed. Thereupon the minister Briand made a gesture of deprecation. -“Pray do not speak of blood,” he cried. One man was killed during the -inventories; and immediately they were stopped, and the Rouvier Ministry -fell. Yesterday again in the Chambers M. Briand exclaimed, “Du sang, -quelle parole atroce!” (“Blood, what an atrocious word!”).</p> - -<p>They have pondered the words of the Divine Master, “Fear not them that -kill the body”; and<a name="page_198" id="page_198"></a> they are determined that there shall be no more -martyrs in the usual sense, no more guillotines, no more <i>noyades</i> as in -1790. But they mean to choke out every germ of Christianity by casting -the minds of the rising generation in a mould of atheism, and to quench -every divine spark in the adult by degrading him in his own eyes to the -level of a mere animal, that must seize every fleeting advantage, by -fair means or foul, because there is no hereafter.</p> - -<p>“We have combated the religious chimera, and by a magnificent gesture we -have put out all the lights in heaven, which will never more be -rekindled.... But what then shall we say to the man whose religious -beliefs we have destroyed?” Thus spoke on November 8th, 1906, M. -Viviani, Socialist Minister of Labour. At the same tribune, the very -next day, M. Briand declared that his Government was not anti-religious, -but only irreligious, or neutral. Meanwhile both this Minister of Public -Instruction and M. Clemenceau, in public speeches all over the country, -have been reviling and calumniating the religion of the nation, and -congratulating public instructors on their zeal in emancipating the -minds of their pupils from all religious superstition, thus training up -“true men whose brains are not obstructed by mystery and dogma,” whose -“consciences and reason are emancipated.”</p> - -<p>In December 1905, this same M. Briand declared that the Government would -never suffer that its<a name="page_199" id="page_199"></a> hundreds of thousands of public functionaries -send their children to any but state schools, and to make assurance -doubly sure, a law is deposed, and will soon be passed, establishing a -state monopoly of instruction. Disconcerted by the attitude of the -Papacy and the splendid unity of the clergy and their flocks, the one -contingency for which they were not prepared, the French atheocracy has -decided to content itself with spoliation for the present. A receiver is -to be appointed for all the holdings of the Church, <i>menses -episcopales</i>, pious and charitable foundations, libraries, etc. The Left -clamoured for the immediate attribution of the property to the communes, -as the law requires. But M. Briand declared that it would be for them “a -nest of vipers” and “poison their budgets”!</p> - -<p>M. Lassies summed up M. Briand’s discourse by these unparliamentary -words: “Vous avez du toupet, vous——” (“You have brass enough, -you——”).</p> - -<p>Not daring to close the churches at present, they have resorted to a -subterfuge (<i>cousu de blanc</i>) in order to avoid doing so. The Republic -having promised religious liberty, they say the faithful and their -priests may come together “accidentally” and “individually” in the -churches. Now the text of the law is formal. Art. I says: “The Republic -guarantees the free exercise of public worship, under <i>the following -restrictions</i>.” Then follow the restrictions, i.e. articles regarding -the associations; in other words,<a name="page_200" id="page_200"></a> the constitution of the new -<i>by-law-established</i> churches, which were to inherit all the patrimony -of the ancient Church and take its place.</p> - -<p>M. Briand himself, before the encyclical, had openly proclaimed that -there could be no public worship without these associations. The efforts -made by M. des Houx of the <i>Matin</i> (alias “Mirambeau”), M. Decker David -(a deputy mayor), and other agents of the lodges or of the Republic, to -form these associations have been ludicrously pathetic. Failing these, -the Government has decided to leave the churches open for another year, -nevertheless. To storm them, and hold them after they had been stormed, -would be too perilous an enterprise, judging by the troubles caused by -the inventories. Therefore they have resolved to reduce the clergy by -famine, by military conscription, the suppression of seminaries, and -other vexatory measures. Moreover, the closing of the churches is the -one measure that would convince the masses that something had happened, -and that their religion was really persecuted. To the extreme Left, -clamouring for the immediate confiscation of Church edifices and -property, M. Briand said, “You want to strangle the Catholics right -away; we do not wish to do so” (November 9th, 1906). Precisely. What -they do wish is to empty the churches by every means, then close them, -one by one.</p> - -<p>On December 11th, 1906, state receivers are to be<a name="page_201" id="page_201"></a> appointed for all -Church property, movable and immovable. The very sacred vessels and -ornaments, chasubles, etc., are all appropriated, and merely lent to the -Catholics, temporarily, at the Government’s good pleasure. There has -been of late years a dearth of treasures of ancient religious art in the -Salles Drouots of Paris, Frankfort, Munich, etc. But soon Jew -<i>brocanteurs</i> will be in clover. All that escaped the revolutionists of -1790 will be scattered to the four winds ere long. This is one of the -by-products, duly discounted, of this “law of liberty” called -“Separation.”</p> - -<p>But they still have a latent hope that the inextricable difficulties -will force Catholics to capitulate and form associations. M. Briand’s -circular, 31st August, 1906, ordered his prefects to report to him any -<i>subreptice</i> associations not in conformity with the law of 1905. -Cardinal Lecot’s society for the support of aged priests (their old age -pension fund being taken like everything else) is certainly of this -category. It conforms to none of the requirements of the law of 1905, -nevertheless M. Briand gives it a clean bill of health (November 9th). -His speech in the Chambers is a complete repudiation of his circular of -August 31st, and is a tissue of misrepresentation and tergiversation. He -harps upon Article 4 (“the associations must be formed according to the -general rules of worship”), which he declares “places all the -associations under the control of the bishops<a name="page_202" id="page_202"></a> and of the Holy See.” -Article 8 of the law provides, it is true, for endless schisms, all -subject to the decisions of the Conseil d’Etat, alone competent to judge -if an association is or is not orthodox, i.e. “formed according to the -general rules of worship.” In this Article 8, also, he finds a guarantee -which should satisfy all reasonable Catholics!</p> - -<p>Now this same M. Briand, as Minister and reporter of the law, combated -(April 6th, 1905) in the Chambers a proposed amendment tending to -safeguard ecclesiastical authority in this matter. “You wish to turn -over to the Pope, by means of the bishops (<i>la haute discipline</i>), the -government of these associations. We cannot subject the faithful to this -discipline.”</p> - -<p>In the Senate, too, this same minister declared “that even after one -association had been legally formed, dissensions might arise, not only -in matters of dogma, but also of administration; we must allow those, -who do not wish to submit, to form another independent association if -they wish to use the same church.”<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a></p> - -<p>If the intentions of the Government were so benevolent as M. Briand -pretends, why did they not accept the insertion of the word “bishop” in -Article 4?<a name="page_203" id="page_203"></a> It would have rendered the associations tolerable; but this -they strenuously opposed, and the keystone of their law was demolished -by the <i>non possumus</i> of Pius X, August 15th. In the Chambers (November -9th) M. Briand admitted that “the law had been made in view of the -organization of <i>Associations cultuelles</i>.” This I have affirmed since -nearly two years, and it is in vain that, elsewhere, M. Briand seeks to -make-believe that the law has accomplished its purpose, which, in -reality, it has just missed.</p> - -<p>Even to-day, if the intentions of the Government are as candid and -benignant as M. Briand pretends, why do they not insert one little -amendment in the text of the law which would make it possible for the -Church to form these associations? No, not so. They wish the Holy See to -accept the word of some irresponsible minister, or some declaration of -the Conseil d’Etat, equally valueless.</p> - -<p>In 1901 Waldeck Rousseau solemnly declared in the Chambers that Article -13 of the Associations Bill in no wise affected the parochial schools, -and two days after the law was voted three thousand of these schools -were summarily closed. He had also assured the Vatican that authorized -Congregations had nothing to fear. Even M. Delcassé and the Ambassador -at Rome had given similar assurances to the Vatican before the law of -1901 was deposed in the Chambers. With these and similar precedents it -would be idle indeed to attach any faith to M.<a name="page_204" id="page_204"></a> Briand’s dulcet, fair, -feline, fallacious utterances in the Chambers (November 9th). They are -merely “words, words,” and <i>verba volant</i>. Moreover, how long will M. -Briand and the Clemenceau Cabinet be able to resist the Socialist impact -of the advance guard?</p> - -<p>More than a year ago, I wrote that any interpretation could be given to -some of the ambiguous terms in which the law was couched, and that this -ambiguity was deliberate and intentional.</p> - -<p>By his own authority. M. Briand (Chambers, November 12th, 1906) has -offered the Catholics one year more in which to form associations under -the Separation Bill. Thereupon M. Puech, a deputy of the Left, flung -these biting words at the Government: “The law without the associations -is void ... it has fallen to pieces.... And you have no associations. In -1907 you will not have them any more than in 1906.... Void, nothingness, -chaos, behold your law.” “In 1790,” said the same deputy, “as to-day, -the struggle was engaged between two principles, between dogma and -science.... The Constituante was not firm. Camille Desmoulins spoke like -M. le Ministre Briand.... Three succeeding assemblies were forced -logically to extreme measures—death and transportation.”</p> - -<p>The astute guile that characterizes M. Briand’s declarations in the -Chambers can only be compared to that of Julian the Apostate, who began -his reign by a<a name="page_205" id="page_205"></a> grand edict of toleration. Or rather it recalls those -deliberations of that council in Pandemonium (Book II, <i>Paradise Lost</i>): -“Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood, the fiercest spirit, now -fiercer by despair, spoke thus: My sentence is for open war of wiles I -boast not.” But he was overruled by Beelzebub, who “pleaded devilish -counsel first devised by Satan,” and which consisted in “seducing the -puny habitants of Paradise to our party” by guile and fraud.</p> - -<p>These associations of the law of 1905, which ignorant or malevolent -writers continue to represent as being the same as those of Prussia and -other half-Protestant countries, were a most ingenious device for -inducing the Church to commit suicide by the repudiation of her divinely -given constitution.</p> - -<p>The point, that essentially differentiates associations for public -worship in Prussia and elsewhere from those of the law of 1905, is that, -in the former, the Catholic hierarchy was respected. In them the curate -is by right president, episcopal authority is paramount, and the State -cannot intervene if dissensions arise. Now Articles 8, 9, etc., of the -French law are the very antipodes of all this.<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a><a name="page_206" id="page_206"></a></p> - -<p>The fact is that there can be no real accord between the Church and the -French atheocracy, whose openly avowed object is the radical destruction -of the religious idea, even of natural religion.</p> - -<p>Never perhaps, in the history of humanity, has there been such a -monstrosity as a distinctly atheistic state. Pagan antiquity, even the -Grecian Republics, had a cult of some kind. The First Republic, under -Robespierre, having decreed the abolition of Christianity, immediately -substituted theo-philanthropy. But the Third Republic proclaims itself -atheist, and insists that the nation shall be made atheist by means of -public schools.</p> - -<p>Hitherto the words lay, layman, meant in French as in English, simply, -not of the clergy; to-day, <i>laïque</i> in France means atheist. <i>L’école -laïque</i> means, not a school taught by laymen, but a school of -infidelity. Catholic lay or secular schools are still holding their own -against the state schools, which are nearly empty in some communes.<a name="page_207" id="page_207"></a></p> - -<p>Not satisfied with having suppressed twenty-seven thousand religious or -congregational schools, the annual September convent of the Grand Orient -has decided that all these Christian lay schools, primary and secondary, -must disappear. It also finds that the State <i>lycées de filles</i> “are not -sufficiently laicized,” meaning of course not sufficiently atheized and -depraved. Yet the work seems to be well under way, if we are to judge by -the following extracts from the discourse pronounced on the grave of a -child of twelve by one of her companions of an <i>école laïque</i> near -Allevard, in presence of the whole school. “For thee infinite -nothingness has begun, as it will begin for all of us. Thy death, or -rather the supposed Being who caused it, must be very wicked or very -stupid.... He made thee the victim of a society refractory to society -solidarity.... We really cannot excuse this celestial iniquity.” I -transcribe from the anti-clerical <i>Dépêche Dauphinoise</i>. The spectacle -of this free-thought funeral, and of a little schoolgirl blaspheming -over the grave of a playmate, is simply hideous. Poor hapless victims of -a pagan state, that nevertheless enlists the sympathies of Christians -who spend millions on missions to the heathen Chinese!</p> - -<p>This Masonic convent has also decided “that the means of production and -exchange must be restituted to the collectivity.” Therefore we know in -advance what the new Chambers will accomplish: State monopoly of -instruction, and State<a name="page_208" id="page_208"></a> Socialism prepared and accomplished as rapidly -as possible.</p> - -<p>Under these circumstances it really does not matter very much if the -churches remain open or not, for the present. As an English ecclesiastic -recently observed, “We can do without our churches, but we cannot do -without our schools.”</p> - -<p>It is by means of Christian schools that Europe was redeemed from -barbarism, and preserved from relapsing into its first estate. Each -generation, in turn, must be redeemed from barbarism, as were our -forefathers, by the Christian upbringing of the young, otherwise -retrogression must inevitably ensue. Every gardener understands this. It -is natural law in the spiritual world. To descend and retrograde is so -much easier than to ascend.</p> - -<p>To-day, the eternal enemy of God and man seeks to wrest from the Church -the great fulcrum by which Christendom was upraised from barbarism, and -to use her own arms against the Church, by converting schools into -nurseries of infidelity and immorality.</p> - -<p>In vain secularists would tell us that history, geography, and grammar -are neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Mohammedan. The venom of -infidelity and vice can be conveyed by the conjugation of a verb. -Physical geography may be used as a catapult against the very notion of -right and wrong. As to the misuse of history, its possibilities are -unlimited. Moreover, the Church, that has received the divine<a name="page_209" id="page_209"></a> -commission to “teach all nations,” needs the aid of all the arts and -sciences to accomplish this mission. The Catholic Church, that is -essentially, and <i>jure divino</i>, <i>Ecclesia docens</i>, will never forego her -right to teach them all, as she has been doing for two thousand years. -In the sixteenth century China seemed hopelessly closed against -Christian missionaries. But where apostles failed to penetrate, a man of -science, who was also a saint, succeeded. Mathew Ricci, the Jesuit -savant, was welcomed by mandarin <i>literati</i>, and founded the first -Christian mission in China in 1581.</p> - -<p>All the old universities of Europe were founded by the Church. The arts -and sciences grouped themselves around the Chair of Theology, as -hand-maidens around their mistress. Religion is, indeed, the aromat -which alone preserves them from becoming corrupt and corrupting. -Already, society is beginning to discover the evil effects of separating -religion from learning. The knowledge and uses of fire form one of the -main lines of demarcation that separate us from animals. Monkeys -appreciate the kindly blaze, but the smartest of them has never -attempted to light a fire.</p> - -<p>When men, with this distinctive and dangerous knowledge of fire, shall -have degraded their mentality to that of the simian by atheism or -secularism, and its concomitant materialism, the social order will no -longer be possible. A few rudely constructed,<a name="page_210" id="page_210"></a> diminutive bombs can lay -the proudest city in ruins.</p> - -<p>To-day, as in 1790, France is the field on which another great battle is -to be fought between Christianity and paganism, and its results will be -far-reaching. The French atheocracy has “said unto God, Depart from us; -for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways” (Job <span class="smcap">XXI.</span> 14). Churches, -here and there, have already been profaned by Masonic revelry, the cross -has been demolished on every highway, and removed from every school and -hospital. The State, disposing of all the power and all the riches of -the nation, is at the command of a secret society that is the sworn and -avowed enemy of religion. If the Church again come forth victorious from -the struggle, stronger and purer through poverty and persecution, “if -the Christian Hercules uplift Antæus, son of the earth, into the air and -stifle him there, then—<i>patuit Deus</i>.<a name="page_211" id="page_211"></a>”</p> - -<h2><a name="LIBERTY_AND_CHRISTIANITY" id="LIBERTY_AND_CHRISTIANITY"></a>LIBERTY AND CHRISTIANITY</h2> - -<p class="nind">L<small>IBERTY</small> is, pre-eminently and indisputably, a product of Christianity -and must diminish with every diminution of the faith. “Other -influences,” writes Lecky, “could produce the manumission of many -slaves, but Christianity alone could effect that profound change of -character that rendered the abolition of slavery possible, and there -are,” he says, “few subjects more interesting than the history of that -great transition” (<i>History of Rationalism</i>, II, 258).</p> - -<p>There is, indeed, no grander spectacle than that of the Catholic Church -proclaiming, in ages of barbarism, a divine “Thou shalt not” to masters, -whose power over their slaves was unlimited by any law, and even -assuming jurisdiction over them in virtue of a moral law, above all -human laws.</p> - -<p>Ecclesiastical jurisprudence enacted penalties against “masters who took -from their theows (Saxon slaves) the money they had earned; against -those who slew their theows without just cause; against mistresses who -beat their theows so that they died within three days.... Above all, the -whole machinery of ecclesiastical discipline was set in motion to -shelter the otherwise unprotected chastity of the female slaves<a name="page_212" id="page_212"></a>” -(Wright’s <i>Political Condition of the English Peasantry in the Middle -Ages</i>). “That Church which seemed so haughty and so overbearing in its -dealings with kings and nobles,” writes Lecky, “never failed to listen -to the poor and the oppressed, and for many centuries their protection -was the foremost of all the objects of its policy” (<i>History of -Rationalism</i>, II, 260). Simultaneously with the gradual abolition of -slavery, we find the elevation of woman, and her redemption from -polygamy, a natural concomitant of slavery. “No ideal,” writes Lecky, -“has exercised a more salutary influence than the mediæval conception of -the Virgin [he means devotion to]. For the first time, woman was -elevated to her rightful position and the sanctity of weakness was -recognized. No longer the slave, the toy of man, no longer associated -only with ideas of degradation and sensuality, woman rose, in the person -of the Virgin Mother, into a new sphere, and became the object of a -reverential homage of which antiquity had no conception. Love was -idealized. The moral character and beauty of female excellence was for -the first time felt ... a new kind of admiration was fostered. Into a -harsh, and ignorant, and benighted age this ideal type infused a -conception of gentleness and purity, unknown to the proudest -civilizations of the past.... In the millions who have sought with no -<a name="page_213" id="page_213"></a>barren desire to mould their characters into her image ... in the new -sense of honour, in the softening of manners in all walks of society, in -this, and in many ways, we detect its influence. All that was best in -Europe clustered around it [the devotion to Mary], and it is the origin -of many of the purest elements of our civilization” (<i>History of -Rationalism</i>, I, 231).</p> - -<p>These are striking words from the pen of a rationalist, and would that -all women understood that the laws of divorce, the first-fruits of the -weakening of the Christian principle, and the pagan renaissance in -Europe, mark also the first steps of their retrogression to the -condition, from which they were uplifted by Christianity.</p> - -<p>After centuries of judicious preparation, the emancipation of all -Christians was proclaimed by Pope Alexander III. “This law alone,” -writes Voltaire, “should render his memory precious to all, as his -efforts on behalf of Italian liberty should endear him to Italians” -(<i>Essai sur les mœurs</i>).</p> - -<p>Mr. Hallam has satirically remarked in his <i>History of the Middle Ages</i>, -page 221, that “though several popes and the clergy enforced manumission -as a duty on laymen, the villeins on church lands were the last to be -emancipated.” But he well knows, for he has told us himself on page 217 -of the same work, that “the mildness of ecclesiastical rule and the -desire to obtain the prayers of the monks induced many to attach -themselves as serfs to monasteries.” An old German proverb, too, says: -“It is good to live under the crozier.” When the monasteries were -suppressed<a name="page_214" id="page_214"></a> by Henry VIII, we know by Strype’s <i>Chronicles</i>, that misery -and vagrancy reached terrible proportions.</p> - -<p>But while freely admitting that “in the transition from slavery to -serfdom, and from serfdom to liberty, the Catholic Church was the most -zealous and the most efficient agent” (II, 234), Lecky is loath to admit -that her action in the sphere of political liberty was equally -efficacious, and that this second emancipation could have been -accomplished slowly, and judiciously, as was the first, without the -upheavals, the violence, and the excesses of the sixteenth and the -eighteenth centuries. Yet on page 158, vol. II, he reminds us that “St. -Thomas Aquinas, the ablest theologian of the Middle Ages, distinctly -asserts the right of subjects to withhold obedience from rulers who were -usurpers or unjust.” “To the scholastics of those days also,” he says, -“we chiefly owe the doctrine of the mediate rights of kings, which is -very remarkable as the embryo of the principles of Locke and Rousseau.” -Authority considered in the abstract is of divine origin; but still the -direct and immediate source of regal power is the nation, according to -Suarez. Apparently, the noisy standard-bearers of civil liberties and -political rights, in the eighteenth century, were not exactly pioneers, -but mere plagiarists.</p> - -<p>“As long,” continues Lecky, “as the object was not so much to produce -freedom, as to mitigate servitude,<a name="page_215" id="page_215"></a> the Church was still the champion of -the people.... The balance of power created by the numerous corporations -she created or sanctioned, the reverence for tradition, which created a -network of unwritten customs with the force of public law, the -dependence of the civil on the ecclesiastical power, and the right of -excommunication and deposition, had all contributed to lighten the -pressure of despotism” (II, 235).</p> - -<p>We must array Mr. Lecky against himself, and conclude that the Church -did more than “mitigate servitude”; she also produced freedom by the -institution of these numerous guilds and unwritten laws, many of which -still existed until they were swept away by the Revolution of 1790, -which left nothing standing but an omnipotent tyrant, called the State, -and a defenceless people, <i>corvéable</i>, <i>taillable</i>, and guillotinable, -at mercy. These “unwritten customs with the force of public law” made -Spain the freest country in Europe, until the seventeenth century. To -suppress these <i>fueros</i> of the commons, or unwritten constitutional -liberties, was one of the chief objects of the Spanish Inquisition, -established by royal authority, and aimed chiefly at the bishops, as -champions of popular rights. One of its first victims was the saintly -Archbishop of Toledo. The Basque provinces retain their <i>fueros</i> intact -to this day.</p> - -<p>In France too liberty succumbed with the Public Law of Europe (1648).<a name="page_216" id="page_216"></a></p> - -<p>In 1314 Philippe le Bel, in order to obtain subsidies, convoked the -States General (Les Trois Etats). From that time to 1359, they were -convoked seven times. In the first half of the fifteenth century there -were fourteen convocations. From 1506 to 1558 there was an interruption -of fifty-two years. From Henry II to the minority of Louis XIII, the -States met six times. In 1614 was held the last convocation of the Trois -Etats, until 1789.</p> - -<p>Under the despotic Louis XI (1401-83), Philippe de Commines still dared -to write with impunity: “Il n’y a roi ni seigneur qui ait pouvoir, outre -son domaine, de mettre un denier sur ses sujets sans octroi et -consentement, sinon par tyrannie et violence.” (“It would be tyranny and -violence for any king or lord to raise a penny of taxation on his -subjects, without their leave and consent.”)<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p> - -<p>“Nevertheless,” writes de Tocqueville, “the elections were not abolished -till 1692 ... the cities still preserved the right to govern themselves. -Until the end of the seventeenth century we find some which were small -republics, in which the magistrates were freely elected by the citizens -and answerable to them, and in which public spirit was active and proud -of its independence” (<i>Ancien Régime</i>, p. 83).<a name="page_217" id="page_217"></a></p> - -<p>Mr. Lecky is pleased to attribute to the papal power “some of the worst -calamities—the Crusades, religious persecutions, the worst features of -the semi-religious struggle that convulsed Italy.... It is not -necessary,” he continues, “to follow in detail the history of [what he -is pleased to call] the encroachments of the spiritual on the civil -power” (II, 155), though it would be more correct to say the -encroachments of the civil on the religious power.</p> - -<p>But it is very necessary to do so, because though the main object of -these struggles of the spiritual power with despotic kings was the -independence of the Church, it cannot be gainsaid that personal and -civil liberty were thereby enhanced, as Lecky himself admits (p. 235).</p> - -<p>It would be too long to discuss here the Crusades, which merely saved us -from the fate now enjoyed by Islamic countries, or the alleged -persecution of the Manichæans, who, under the name of Albigenses, -menaced to disrupt the incipient civilization of Europe by their -subversive tenets of anarchy and collectivism, equally opposed as they -were to ecclesiastical and to civil government.</p> - -<p>The “semi-religious wars,” or the so-called “wars of investiture,” which -both he and Montesquieu disingenuously confound with the wars of Italian -independence, eminently contributed to the cause of civil liberty in -England, not less than in Italy, and elsewhere. Anselm, Becket, and -Stephen Langton<a name="page_218" id="page_218"></a> were worthy coadjutors of the policy of St. Gregory VII -and the pioneers of political liberty. No one understands this better -than Mr. Wakeman, the Anglican author of a recent History of the English -Church.</p> - -<p>“It is true,” he says, “that Anselm could not have maintained the -struggle [against clerical investiture by laymen] at all if he had not -had the power of Rome at his back. Englishmen quickly saw that the -question between Anselm and Henry was part of a far wider question. They -felt that bound up with the resistance of the archbishop was the sacred -cause of their own liberty. The Church was the one power in England not -yet reduced under the iron heel of the Norman kings. The clergy was the -one body which still dared to dispute their will. To them belonged the -task of handing on the torch of liberty amid the gloom of a tyrannical -age. The despotism of the crown was the special danger to England in the -eleventh and twelfth centuries. It was the Church that, in that time of -crisis, rescued England from slavery. Had there been no Becket, Stephen -Langton, Archbishop of York, would have failed to inspire the barons to -wrest the Charter from John” (p. 105). And on page 108 he continues: -“From the Conquest to the time of Simon de Montfort two great dangers -threatened England, the uncontrolled will of unjust, wicked kings and -the grinding administrative despotism of the government. From both she<a name="page_219" id="page_219"></a> -was saved by the Church. In her own canon law she opposed to the king’s -laws a system which claimed a higher sanction, was based on principles -not less scientific, and was already invested with the halo of -tradition.”</p> - -<p>It is this same canon law that the Church in France is, to-day, opposing -to the tyranny of an omnipotent State or parliamentary majority, <i>alias</i> -Grand Orient, which has, since four years, crushed out two of the most -sacred liberties—the right to live in community and the right to -educate one’s children in the Christian faith, the faith of our fathers, -“once delivered to the saints.”</p> - -<p>The long struggle, between the Popes and the German rulers, who sought -to establish their despotic rule in Italy and enslave the whole Church -by making the bishops of Rome their domestic chaplains, resulted in the -glorious Congress of Venice, 1177, confirmed by the Peace of Constance, -which is the first instance in history of peoples wresting political -liberties from regal tyrants. The Magna Charta is the second in point of -time.</p> - -<p>After a long and seemingly hopeless struggle with Frederick Barbarossa, -Alexander III, to whom this Hohenstaufen had opposed a series of servile -anti-popes, triumphed, and with him triumphed the League of the Italian -Cities, of which he was the unarmed chief. Milan, Brescia, Pavia, and -other cities, which<a name="page_220" id="page_220"></a> had been razed to the ground by the tyrant, thanked -the Pope for having rendered them their liberty. Alexandria, an -important city of the Piedmont, bears the name of this peaceful -liberator. Voltaire refers to these events in the following terms: -“Barbarossa finished the quarrel by recognizing Pope Alexandria III, -kissing his feet, and holding his stirrup.” (Le maître du monde se fit -le palefrenier du fils d’un gueux qui avait vécu d’aumônes.) “God has -permitted,” exclaimed the Pope, “that an old man and a priest should -triumph, without fighting, over a terrible and powerful emperor” (<i>Essai -sur les mœurs</i>, II, 82).<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a></p> - -<p>In the Eastern or Byzantine Empire, the clergy, at an early date, and -long before the schism of 1054, began to succumb to Cæsaro-papism, a -revival of the ancient pagan system, in which the temporal ruler was -also the high-priest of his realm, and we well know that neither -personal nor civil liberty ever found foothold in this <i>Bas Empire</i>.</p> - -<p>“While the ecclesiastical monarchy of the West,” writes a Protestant -historian, “could lead onward the mental development of the nations to -the age of majority, could permit and even promote freedom and variety -within certain limits, the brute force of the Byzantine despotism -stifled and checked every<a name="page_221" id="page_221"></a> free movement” (Neander, <i>History of the -Church</i>, VIII, 244).</p> - -<p>The French kings, even more than the English before Henry VIII, strove -hard to establish the same system, and above all to exempt themselves -from the Christian law of monogamy, which, with personal freedom, -constitutes the great line of demarcation between Eastern, and Western -or Latin civilization. Montesquieu assures us that a neighbour’s wife, -unlawfully taken, or their own unjustly repudiated, caused all, or -nearly all, the troubles between the Papacy and the French kings.</p> - -<p>On the whole, however, civil liberty in Europe had reached an advanced -stage in the fifteenth century. Cities and provinces really had more -self-government then, than during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and -eighteenth centuries, more than they have now in some countries, notably -in France.</p> - -<p>The neo-paganism of the Renaissance was one of those periodical revolts -of what St. Paul calls the “carnal mind, which is enmity with God.” -“Sapientia carnis inimica est Deo” (Rom. VIII). It was a conjuration -against Christianity and culminated in the Protestant revolt, which for -ever destroyed the unity of Christendom, and set in motion a progressive -scepticism or rationalism, which is Protestantism in its last analysis.</p> - -<p>For more than three centuries English writers have repeated that the -Protestant revolt was a<a name="page_222" id="page_222"></a> struggle for liberty of conscience, -notwithstanding the incontrovertible fact that all its foremost leaders -were bitterly opposed to religious toleration, and that the sects -relentlessly persecuted each other, as well as the adherents of the -ancient faith.</p> - -<p>Protestantism being, intrinsically, the nursery of rationalism, was -necessarily a diminution of Christianity, and produced a corresponding -diminution of liberty, both personal and civil. At the Congress of -Westphalia, 1648, where, as Macaulay states, “Protestantism reached its -highest point, a point it soon lost and never regained” (<i>Essay on -Ranke</i>), was formulated the monstrous axiom <i>Cujus regio ejus religio</i>, -which became the common law of Europe in lieu of the hitherto prevailing -rule of One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism. Henceforth, as in pagan days, -each ruler assumed the right to dictate the religious beliefs of his -subjects in the new system of national churches. The “territorial -system” it was called, and represented the net result of a century of -Protestantism.</p> - -<p>There were, indeed, no fiercer despots over men’s consciences than the -so-called “reformers.” If any doubt let him read their lives. Let him -read of the bloody strife that rent the Netherlands after they had -shaken off the Spanish yoke; how the great Barneveldt fell a victim to -miserable oppression of Gomarists by followers of Arminius, and vice -versa; how Remonstrants persecuted contra-Remonstrants,<a name="page_223" id="page_223"></a> all on account -of some metaphysico-religico distinctions neither understood clearly.</p> - -<p>Then let us consider the embarkation of the Pilgrim Fathers from -Holland, where they had sought asylum from the rigid conformity enforced -by reformed England. Finding themselves no better off in the republic, -which had emancipated itself, simultaneously, from Spain and Rome, the -Pilgrim Fathers shook the dust of the old world from their feet and -sought a new hemisphere. Surely in the primeval forests men might hope -to interpret Scripture and serve God each according to his own lights. -Not so. No sooner were the camp fires lighted, and the barest -necessities of life provided for, than we find a theocracy of the most -hard and fast type established by the Argonauts of the Golden Fleece of -religious toleration. A veritable office of the Holy Inquisition was -instituted “to search out and deliver to the law” all who “dared to set -up any other exercises than what authority hath set up.” While it was -gravely affirmed that “these cases were not a matter of conscience, but -of a civil nature,” Sir John Saltonstall wrote from England to the first -Puritan Grand Inquisitors, Wilson and Cotton, remonstrating “at the -things reported daily of your tyranny, as that you fine, whip, and -imprison men for their consciences.”</p> - -<p>The acts of the Inquisition dwindle into insignificance if we place in -the other balance the excesses<a name="page_224" id="page_224"></a> committed, and the penal laws enacted -from 1530 to 1829 against Dissenters and against English Roman Catholics -in England. The Toleration Act of William and Mary, 1701, relieved -Protestant “Recusants,” but the penal laws against Catholics were -maintained till 1829, though many had fallen into desuetude. The -principal were: For hearing Mass a fine of 66 pounds and one year’s -imprisonment; they were debarred from inheriting or purchasing lands; -they could hold no office nor bring any action in law; they could not -teach under pain of perpetual imprisonment; they could not travel five -miles without a licence, nor appear within ten miles of London under -penalty of 100 pounds; while the universities were closed against them -by test acts. Catholics having been thus deprived of all means of -obtaining a liberal education and raising their voice on behalf of the -truth, Protestant writers, since three hundred years, have been able to -travesty and misrepresent, unchallenged, all the facts connected with -the Reformation.</p> - -<p>In France Louis XIV persecuted the Huguenots in virtue of the <i>Cujus -regio ejus religio</i> (Whose the kingdom his the religion), and in spite -of the protests of Innocent XI, who instructed his legate d’Adda to beg -James II to intercede for them, declaring that “men must be led, not -dragged to the altar.”</p> - -<p>The German, Swiss, and Scandinavian rulers made,<a name="page_225" id="page_225"></a> modified, and changed -the religion of their subjects at will. Of the intolerance of the -Calvanistic Republic of Geneva less said the better. Oppenheim, often -pawned by its needy electors, is said to have changed its form of -Protestantism fifteen times in twenty-one years. In Denmark, where -Lutheranism was paramount and unadulterated, we find, writes Dollinger, -“that the nobility made use of the Reformation to appropriate not only -the Church lands, but that owned by the peasants.” “A dog-like servitude -weighs down the Danish peasants, and the citizens, deprived of all -representative power, groan under oppressive burdens” (<i>Geshicte von -Rugen</i>, p. 294, quoted by Dollinger).</p> - -<p>“The dwellers on the great estates of the Church were now obliged to -exchange the mild rule of the clergy for the oppressive rule of the -nobility,” writes Allen, page 313. “By these laws and enforced compacts -the spoliation and the degradation of once free peasants were -accomplished.” In 1702 Frederick IX abolished slavery, but glebe -serfdom, as in Russia, continued till 1804. Until 1766 the education of -the people stood at the lowest grade, and it was not till 1804 that -freedom was conferred on 20,000 families who had been in a state of -serfdom since the Reformation.</p> - -<p>In Sweden we find the great Protestant hero, Gustavus Vasa, -appropriating all the commonage lands of the villages, and even the -weirs, the mines,<a name="page_226" id="page_226"></a> and all uncultivated lands. Gustavus was, of course, -obliged to share the spoils with his henchmen, whose rule was even more -oppressive, and the peasants became wholly impoverished and degraded.</p> - -<p>In Germany we find the same record of spoliation and oppression of the -peasantry, whose rights there was none to defend since bishops no longer -sat in the Diet. In 1663, 1646, 1654, the personal liberty of the -peasants was progressively annihilated. “Then was forged that slave -chain,” writes Boll, “which our peasantry have had to drag within a few -decades of the present day” (<i>Mecklenburg Geschichte</i>). In 1820 this -glebe serfdom was abolished by the Grand Duke.</p> - -<p>In Pomerania, united with Brandenburg since the Reformation, -Protestantism was paramount already in 1534, and the fate of the -peasantry was the same. The oppression was so intolerable that even -those whose farms had not been appropriated or turned into grazing -grounds, as in Ireland, fled the country. In the peasant ordinance of -1616 they were declared “serfs without any civil rights,” and preachers -were compelled to denounce fugitives from the pulpit.</p> - -<p>The Elector of Brandenburg, it will be recalled, was the first to abjure -Catholicism, and founded what became in 1701 the Prussian monarchy.</p> - -<p>There was no general Diet since 1656. The Estates no longer met, and the -rulers imposed taxes at their will. Peasants fled to Poland, or became -mendicant vagrants or brigands.<a name="page_227" id="page_227"></a></p> - -<p>The Lutheran clergy were mere puppets in the hands of their tyrannical -rulers, who even dictated or revised their sermons at times. Prussian -despotism reached high-water mark under Frederick the Great, but he -being a frank and consistent rationalist, who believed “in letting every -man be blessed in his own way,” religious persecution ceased.</p> - -<p>In Brunswick and Hanover the spoils of the Church appeased for a time -the greed of reformation princes, but habits of luxury were engendered -by their ill-gotten wealth, and they soon resorted to “money clipping.” -The towns lost all their inherited independence. For the decisions of -municipal councils were substituted governmental decrees and circulars, -as in France to-day, and ere long all trace of the ancient freedom of -the Estates was lost. “The clergy,” writes Havemann, “had long since -sunk into dependence.... The cities were languishing from lack of public -spirit.... The power of modern states was unfolding itself over the sad -remains of the ancient life and liberty of the Estates.”</p> - -<p>In Saxony there was a nip-and-tuck struggle between Lutheranism and -Calvinism in which the rack and the scaffold were freely used by -Lutheran princes, who enforced their form of Protestantism according to -the axiom <i>Cujus regio ejus religio</i>.</p> - -<p>On the Church lands in England had lived a dense population of tenant -farmers. When these lands were confiscated by Henry VIII, thousands of -these<a name="page_228" id="page_228"></a> peasantry became helpless paupers under the new regime. Vagrancy -and mendicancy reached alarming proportions. It was enacted that vagrant -beggars should be enslaved. If they tried to escape they were to be -killed.</p> - -<p>It appeared to Burnet (<i>History of Reformation</i>) that the intention of -the nobility was to restore slavery. According to Lecky there were -72,000 executions in the reign of Henry VIII; vagrant beggars furnishing -a large contingent.</p> - -<p>Under Elizabeth charity by taxation or poor rates was resorted to for -the first time in the history of Christendom.</p> - -<p>I think we must admit that liberty, both civil and religious, made -shipwreck at the Reformation, and that the champions of the Protestant -revolt were not exactly actuated by a desire for the well-being and -freedom of conscience of their fellow-men.</p> - -<p>In England all was laboriously reconquered till 1829, when Catholics -were <i>emancipated</i> on their native soil.<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a><a name="page_229" id="page_229"></a></p> - -<p>Some Catholic countries, Spain and Italy, were saved from the horrors of -religious wars, but all felt the effects of the new rationalistic -spirit, which, being a diminution of Christianity, was also a diminution -of liberty. They lost many civil liberties, and despotism strengthened -its bands, till the great upheaval of 1790 destroyed the whole fabric of -Europe and inaugurated a system of constitutional representative -government.</p> - -<p>Representative government, our modern fetish, was not unjustly rated by -J. J. Rousseau, when he said “that a people with a representative -government were slaves except during the period of elections, when they -were sovereigns.” France to-day is a striking illustration.<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a><a name="page_230" id="page_230"></a></p> - -<p>An amusing incident is related by Leroy Beaulieu of a Neapolitan who -hired donkeys to tourists. He was an eager advocate of representative -government in 1869. Questioned as to his reasons, he said that since -twenty-one years he had been hiring donkeys to English, French, and -American tourists, who enjoyed representative governments and were all -rich. Some years later the eminent economist met him again, and -congratulated him on Italy’s having acquired a representative -constitution. The disabused peasant bitterly denounced the new regime in -that the burden of taxation had trebled, and that the very donkey he -hired out was taxed.</p> - -<p>If the laws, or at least all important ones, were submitted to -untrammelled public vote, then only might we say that the government was -truly representative.</p> - -<p>In many cases universal suffrage means the tyranny of ignorant, -unprincipled majorities, while nowhere can it oppose an effective -barrier against the accumulation of immense wealth in a few hands, and -the creation of all-powerful oligarchies. When the majorities and the -oligarchies come into collision, liberty will succumb. There will be -more than one Bridge of Sighs.</p> - -<p>It is in vain that false philosophers would persuade us that altruism, -some vague “moral element of Christianism,” will combine with -rationalism and perpetuate our Christian civilization in some -transcendent form.<a name="page_231" id="page_231"></a></p> - -<p>Christian civilization and morality are intimately and indissolubly -connected with Christian dogma. The Fatherhood of God, Jupiter Optimus, -was not unknown to the ancients, but the brotherhood of man, involving -personal liberty and also civil liberty by extension, is essentially a -Christian predicate, and is based on the dogma of the Incarnation.</p> - -<p>The lofty contempt our modern rationalists express for the fierce -controversy waged over two Greek vowels by the partisans of <i>Homoousion</i> -and <i>Homoiousion</i> merely betrays their ignorance of its vital -importance. On that dogma, so nobly maintained by the See of Peter and -Athanasius, rests our whole fabric of Christian civilization, the -brotherhood of man, and its logical sequence, freedom from slavery.</p> - -<p>It is as absurd to suppose that the “moral element of Christianity” will -continue to exist after the erosion of Christian dogma, as to expect -that a tree we have hewn down will continue to bear fruit. It may indeed -for a time remain verdant, and even put forth new shoots, just as we -often see the loveliest flowers and fruits of Christianity in the lives -and characters of individuals with whom the Christian faith has almost -ceased to exist. But let us not be deceived. The lingering sap will -cease to flow, and the last semblance of life will fade away. “The -elements of dissolution have been multiplying all around us,” writes -Lecky. And when rationalism or secularism, or neo-paganism in other -words, which<a name="page_232" id="page_232"></a> has already corroded Christendom to so great an extent, -shall have accomplished its work of disintegration with the aid of -godless schools and gross literature, society will, I repeat, be -compelled to restore Christianity, or slavery, or perish.<a name="page_233" id="page_233"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHRISTIANITY_AND_CIVILIZATION" id="CHRISTIANITY_AND_CIVILIZATION"></a>CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION</h2> - -<p class="nind">“A<small>T</small> the end of the fourth century,” writes Guizot, “the Church saved -Christianity ... resisted the internal dissolution of the Empire and the -barbarians, and became the bond, the medium, and the principle of -civilization.... Had the Church not existed the whole world must have -been abandoned to purely material force” (<i>History of Civilization</i>, I, -38).... “When all was chaos, when every great social combination was -vanishing, the Church proclaimed the unity of her doctrine and the -universality of her right; this is a great and powerful fact which has -rendered immense service to humanity” (<i>ibid.</i>, II, 19).</p> - -<p>This unity was indeed the great factor in European civilization. On it -the new civil societies, like wild olive branches, were grafted, so to -speak. It became the bond of political unity, a kind of centripetal -force, we may say, and the redemption from that inordinate love of -independence which characterized the barbarians.</p> - -<p>Consequently the new civil societies made the maintenance of religious -unity the foremost object of their policy. It became the public law of -all<a name="page_234" id="page_234"></a> Europe and the common law of each state. To impugn this unity was -considered a most heinous offence not against God only, but against the -nation and against all Christendom.</p> - -<p>“Thus,” writes another great Protestant, “Christianity became -crystallized into a single bond embracing all nations, and giving to all -life, civilization, and all the riches of the mind” (Hurter, <i>Life of -Innocent III</i>, I, 38).</p> - -<p>A corollary of this system of an universal Christian society was the -recognition of a supreme tribunal. “One of the most elevated principles -of the age,” writes the same eminent German, “was that, in the struggles -between the peoples and their rulers, there should be a superior -authority charged to recall laws not made by men, though their -interpreter were himself a man.” Referring to the fiercely contested -election of Othon, he continues: “Othon was the first to have recourse -to Rome, the tribunal with whom rested the decision in these matters, -when the parties did not wish to resort to the arbitrament of war.”</p> - -<p>In France we find the great Suger, Abbot of St. Denis, remonstrating -with the Bishop of the free chartered city of Beauvais, brother of the -King, with whom he was often at odds.</p> - -<p>“I beseech you not to raise a guilty hand against the King ... for you -must see the consequences of armed insurrection against the King, -especially if it be without consulting the Sovereign Pontiff....<a name="page_235" id="page_235"></a> If the -King, drawn aside by evil counsellors, has not acted rightly, it was -proper to have informed him by the bishops and notables, or rather by -our Holy Father the Pope, who is at the head of the whole Church, and -could easily have reconciled all differences.”</p> - -<p>In England we have many instances of both laymen and clergy appealing to -the arbitrament of the Papacy.</p> - -<p>“The recognition of some principle of right, powerful enough to form a -bond of lasting concord, has always been the dream of statesmen and -philosophers,” writes Lecky. “Hildebrand sought it in the supremacy of -the spiritual power, and in the consequent ascendency of moral law” -(<i>History of Rationalism</i>, 245).</p> - -<p>Voltaire pays homage to this public policy of the Middle Ages. “The -interests of the human race required a controlling power to restrain -sovereigns and protect the lives of peoples. This controlling power of -religion could well be placed in the hands of the Papacy. The Sovereign -Pontiffs warning princes and people of their duties, appeasing quarrels, -rebuking crimes, might always have been regarded as the images of God on -earth. But men, alas, are reduced to the protection of laws without -force” (<i>Essai sur les mœurs</i>, II).</p> - -<p>He describes what really did exist for centuries, though, of course, -papal arbitration was not always<a name="page_236" id="page_236"></a> efficacious. Every great institution -needs time to develop and mature. It would not be great were it -otherwise. Moreover there were, unfortunately, many troublous times -between the sixth and the fifteenth century, in which the Papacy itself -was captive, buffeted, demeaned, and exiled by the struggles and -ambitions of turbulent political factions in Rome itself. The very day -on which Gregory VII excommunicated the German Emperor, he was seized -and imprisoned by a noble Roman bandit, until his people were able to -deliver him by main force.</p> - -<p>“Another corollary of this universal Christian Society was that right -found a protector in the common Father of the faithful; in the grand -idea of a supreme chief who without employing material force judged in -last resort.... What great misfortunes would France and all Europe have -been spared if, in the reign of Louis XVI, an Innocent III had been -Pope. His rôle would have been to save the lives of the people” -(Hurter’s <i>Innocent III</i>, II, 200-23). To German Protestant writers like -Hurter, Voigt, Neander, etc., is due the honour of vindicating the true -rôle of the Papacy in the Middle Ages.</p> - -<p>The rights of suzerainty exercised by the Papacy also formed part of the -public law of Europe. In those wild, lawless days, when robber barons -enjoyed the privilege of being highwaymen on their own estates, and -often extended their depredations to those of their neighbours, property -rights had no<a name="page_237" id="page_237"></a> sanction, and the weaker succumbed to the stronger in -virtue of the “fist right,” which we now translate variously by “the -right of the strongest,” political “majorities,” and the “survival of -the fittest.”</p> - -<p>The practice then arose among weak owners of dedicating their lands to -the Church, in order to obtain spiritual or moral protection against the -brute force of stronger neighbours. What private owners did in a small -way was done by princes on a larger scale.</p> - -<p>Referring to the peculiar incidents when roving Norman pirates, in -possession of Sicily and Naples, seized the person of the Pope and -insisted on becoming his vassal, Voltaire writes as follows:—“Robert -Guiscard, wishing to be independent of the German Emperor, resorted to a -precaution which private owners took in those days of trouble and -rapine. The latter gave their property to the Church under the name of -Oblata, and, paying a slight tax, continued to enjoy the use of it. The -Normans resorted to this custom, placing under the protection of the -Church in the hands of Nicholas II (1059) not only what they held, but -also their future conquests (on the Saracens). This homage was an act of -political piety like Peter’s Pence; the two pence of gold paid by the -Kings of Portugal; like the voluntary submission of so many kingdoms” -(<i>Essai sur les mœurs</i>, II, 44).</p> - -<p>It was thus that England became a fief of the Holy See, a most -unfortunate circumstance, as the temporal<a name="page_238" id="page_238"></a> pecuniary obligations arising -therefrom were exploited to estrange the English from the See of Peter, -in the following centuries.</p> - -<p>“In 1329,” continues Voltaire, “the King of Sweden, who wished to -conquer Denmark, addressed the Pope as follows: ‘Your Holiness knows -that Denmark depends on the Roman See and not on the German Emperor.’ -... I only wish to show,” Voltaire adds, “how every prince who wished to -recover or usurp a domain appealed to the Pope.... In this case the Pope -defended Denmark, and said he could only decide on the justice of the -case when the parties had appeared before his tribunal, according to the -ancient usage.”</p> - -<p>Nor did Christians alone appeal to this spiritual tribunal. The bull of -Innocent III, cited by Hurter, is an excellent exponent of the mind of -the Church in all times. “As they (the Jews) claim our succour against -their persecutors, we take them under our special protection, following -in this the example of our predecessors, Calixtus, Eugenius, Alexander, -Clement, and Celestin. We forbid every one to force a Jew to be -baptized, for he who is compelled cannot be said to have the faith. No -Christian must dare commit any violence against them, nor seize their -property, without a legal judgment. Let no one trouble them on their -feast days by striking or throwing stones at them,” etc.</p> - -<p>It will be objected that the fulcrum of Western civilization was a -spiritual despotism. But these<a name="page_239" id="page_239"></a> terms exclude each other. Can we call an -authority despotic which had no material force, and rested only on a -divine commission and the common sense of prince and people, recognizing -its credentials—on public opinion in fact?</p> - -<p>It was a fundamental law of every state that any one, no matter what his -rank, who impugned the Unity of the Faith, or committed offences so -heinous as to justify the supposition that he was no longer a Christian, -fell under the ban of the Church and became outlawed, if at the end of a -year he had not been absolved. In his <i>Historia Imperatorum</i> Schafnaburg -explains the wintry flight of Henry IV across the Alps to Canossa by his -eagerness to be absolved before the year had revolved, because otherwise -he would have forfeited his crown. <i>Ut ante hanc diem non absolveretur, -deinceps juxta Palatinas leges indignus regio honore habeatur.</i></p> - -<p>Three causes were generally admitted as sufficient for the -excommunication of a sovereign. First, if he fell from the faith. -Second, if he ravaged or seized ecclesiastical lands or desecrated -churches. Third, if he repudiated his own wife or appropriated his -neighbour’s. This latter point, as Voltaire and Montesquieu have pointed -out, was the cause of nearly all the quarrels between the French kings -and the Papacy, a fact which our Jacobins, in the Chambers and -elsewhere, deliberately ignore, when they mendaciously misrepresent the -Church as having constantly<a name="page_240" id="page_240"></a> encroached on the civil power. The case of -Philippe Augustus and the hapless Ingleburge of Denmark was a test case, -so to speak.</p> - -<p>“It was not,” writes Hurter, “a question of contested claims of the -Papacy, but of this great question, Is the sovereign subject to the laws -of Christianity? It had to be decided whether the royal will should -triumph or not over the force regarded as constituting the unity of -Christendom” (<i>Life of Innocent III</i>). Montesquieu’s testimony is -unimpeachable when he testifies that this Public Law of Europe was -universally recognized. “All the sovereigns,” he writes, “with -inconceivable blindness, themselves accredited and sanctioned, in public -opinion, which had no force except by it.”</p> - -<p>If the laws against heretics, who were to our forefathers what the -anarchists are to us, were oppressive, some of the blame should surely -be apportioned to the laymen who sat in the mixed assemblies in which -they were made. “Almost all Europe, for many centuries, was deluged in -bloodshed at the direct instigation or with the full approval of the -ecclesiastical authorities.” It is in this disingenuous way that Lecky -refers to the operations of the Public Law of Europe against the -Albigenses or Manichæans of Provence, and probably to the wars of -Italian independence and the Thirty Years War. Until the thirteenth -century he assures us that practically no persecutions (prosecutions) -against heretics occurred.<a name="page_241" id="page_241"></a> It was then that the Public Law of Europe -began to be trampled on by sectarians who adopted and propagated -Gnostic, Paulician, Manichæan, and other subversive theories, imported -from the East by Semitic-Islamic settlers in the fair lands of Provence. -Spain and Italy, the countries in which the Public Law of Europe was -maintained, were the only ones who were spared the horrors of civil -religious wars. They were saved by inquisitions, it will be retorted.</p> - -<p>Without seeking to defend the system, we may be permitted to inquire -whether it were not preferable, at that time, to execute some -ringleaders of religious revolt (30,000 in three centuries is a fair -estimate), than to deluge whole countries in blood for many decades, -about controversies which not one in a million could possibly grasp? -Lecky the rationalist assures us that “the overwhelming majority of the -human race, necessarily, accept their opinions from authority. Avowedly -like Catholics, or unconsciously like Protestants. They have neither -time nor opportunity (nor capacity) to examine for themselves” (<i>History -of Rationalism</i>, I, 101).</p> - -<p>Does any one seriously believe that the Camisards were fighting for -predestination and infant damnation, which have been shelved recently by -Presbyterians in the United States?</p> - -<p>In England, France, Germany, everywhere, greed and political ambition -were the incentives; the passions of ignorant masses were merely used as -a<a name="page_242" id="page_242"></a> means. Back of both, and behind all, we descry secret societies, the -true pandemoniums, where these revolts are organized, and whence Mammon, -“the least-erected spirit that fell,” Moloch, “horrid king besmeared -with blood,” Belial, and all that crew, described by Milton, are sent -forth to execute the behests of the eternal enmity between “the -serpent’s seed and the seed of the woman.”</p> - -<p>In this unholy struggle “all the bonds of cohesion on which political -organization depended were weakened or destroyed,” writes Lecky. “The -spirit of private judgment had descended to those totally incapable of -self-government, and lashed their passions into the wildest fury” -(<i>History of Rationalism</i>, p. 239). Voltaire is even less complimentary. -He describes the Hussites as “wild beasts whom the severity of the -emperor had roused to furor.”</p> - -<p>In Germany, apostate ecclesiastical and secular electors were seeking -their own aggrandizement. Bishoprics with their manses were converted -into hereditary principalities. As to their Swedish ally, Gustavus -Adolphus, I refer my readers to the judgment of a Protestant admirer of -this doughty champion of the Reformation. On page 329 of <i>Thirty Years -War</i> Schiller writes as follows:—</p> - -<p>“The last, the greatest service, Gustavus Adolphus could render to -religious and civil liberty was to die (1632, at battle of Lutzen).... -It was no longer possible to doubt that he was seeking to establish -himself<a name="page_243" id="page_243"></a> in Germany, not as a protector, but as a conqueror. Already -Augsburg boasted that it had been chosen as the capital of the new -monarchy. The Protestant princes, his allies, made claims which could -only be satisfied by despoiling the Catholics. It is then permitted to -conclude that like the barbarian hordes of yore, he intended to divide -the conquered provinces of Germany among the Swedish chiefs of his army. -His conduct towards the unfortunate Elector Palatine, Frederick V, is -unworthy of a hero. The Palatinate was in his hands, justice and honour -required that he return it to the legitimate sovereign. But to avoid -doing so he had recourse to subtleties which make us blush for him.”</p> - -<p>It is only fair to add that Gustavus did finally restore the Palatinate -to Frederick, but as a fief of the Swedish crown.</p> - -<p>What, I ask, has been gained by the overthrow of the Public Law of -Europe? For this was waged the Thirty Years War, one of the most cruel -the world has known. Atrocities were committed on both sides, and the -<i>tu quoque</i> argument is very foolish. But if it be admitted that -defensive war is always just and righteous, we must allow that the -Catholics were justified in fighting for their public law. They were in -possession since more than twelve centuries, and were resisting -assailants who showed no quarter, and who robbed them of their churches -and persecuted them, relentlessly, whenever they gained<a name="page_244" id="page_244"></a> the upper hand, -just as the Puritans did in Maryland. And what was the net result of the -Thirty Years War? The loss of liberty both civil and religious. The -German electors, ecclesiastical as well as secular, had been but -administrators of free citizens, who now became subjects with little or -no voice in the government. As to religious liberty, the new axiom -<i>Cujus regio ejus religio</i> was substituted for One Lord One Faith. The -ruler of each realm became the infallible Pontiff of his subjects. “If -any gratitude from this scandalous and accursed world were to be gained, -and I, Martin Luther, had taught and done nothing else than this, that I -have enlightened and adorned the temporal authority, for this alone -should it be thankful to me, since even my worst enemies know that a -like understanding as to the temporal authority was completely concealed -under the Papacy” (Walch’s <i>Augs.</i>, XIV, p. 520).</p> - -<p>In this same connexion Schiller makes the following statement. “No -country changed religion oftener than the Palatinate. Unhappy -weathercock of the political and religious versatility of its -sovereigns, it had twice been forced to embrace the doctrines of Luther -and then to abandon them for those of Calvin. Frederick III deserted the -Confession of Augsburg, but his son re-established it by most violent -and unjust measures. After closing all the Calvinist temples and exiling -the ministers and school teachers, he ordered by his will that his son -should be brought up by<a name="page_245" id="page_245"></a> Lutherans; his brother, however, annulled this -will and became regent under the young Frederick IV, who was confided to -Calvinists with strict orders to destroy in his mind the “heretical -doctrines of Luther by all means, by beating and whipping even.” It is -easy to guess how subjects were treated when the heir to the throne was -thus tyrannized over” (<i>Thirty Years War</i>, p. 40).</p> - -<p>What, I ask, has Europe gained by the overthrow of its public law? -Strife, anarchy, nihilism in religion as in philosophy. After centuries -of dabbling, floundering, and blundering, we are again seeking to devise -some principle of unity, some Amphictyonic Council to supplement the -illusory balance of power; to set up a Court of Arbitration to replace -the one that really did exist in the Middle Ages and functioned as well -as could be expected in those days of liquescence.</p> - -<p>All in vain. The grand Peace Congress from which the Papacy was excluded -was followed, almost immediately, by two most cruel wars which were -pre-eminently subjects for arbitration. Men will submit to this court -questions about which they do not care enough to fight about them, but -these subjects only will they submit to arbitration. Unless the Lord -build the house, in vain they labour who build.</p> - -<p>There is only one tribunal that can ever arbitrate efficaciously, and -this is the one which presided at the Genesis of Christendom.<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a><a name="page_246" id="page_246"></a></p> - -<p>Socialists and anarchists, without having pondered the passage from -Guizot I quoted in beginning this chapter, understand perfectly that our -Western or Christian civilization is grounded on the unity of one Holy -Catholic Church, and the destruction of the social structure being the -object of their ambition, they very logically direct all their efforts -to destroying this foundation.</p> - -<p>The work of disintegration was begun in the sixteenth century. -“Socinius, the most iconoclastic of Protestants, predicted that the -seditious doctrines by which Protestants supported their cause would -lead to the disintegration of society” (<i>History of Rationalism</i>, II, -239).</p> - -<p>This work of disintegration has made rapid progress since the eighteenth -century in virtue of the law of accelerated movement. The French -Revolution, like the Protestant revolt, was essentially a work of -disintegration. The successors of the Masonic Jacobins of 1790 openly -proclaim their set purpose of completing the work begun by the <i>grands -ancêtres</i> of bloody memory.</p> - -<p>“The Revolution,” wrote Renan (in the preface to <i>Questions -contemporaines</i>), “has disintegrated everything, broken up all -organizations, excepting only<a name="page_247" id="page_247"></a> the Catholic Church. The clergy alone -have remained organized outside the State. As the cities, in the days of -the ruin of the Roman Empire, chose bishops for their representatives, -so in our provinces the bishops will soon be the only leaders left in a -dismantled society.”</p> - -<p>The object of the Separation Law was to accomplish the disintegration of -the Church, the only organized body, outside the State, which the -Revolution failed to disintegrate, because Pius VI rejected, <i>in toto</i>, -the civil constitution of the clergy. These noble French priests were -drowned, guillotined, proscribed, and imprisoned by tens of thousands, -but the Church in France maintained the principle of life strong within -her, and on the third day she rose again.</p> - -<p>What violence failed to accomplish a century ago, the Third Republic -hoped to compass by guile and fraud, labelled liberty and legality.</p> - -<p>The true purpose of the Law of Separation was to break up the Church -into an ever-increasing number of viviparous <i>Associations cultuelles</i>, -independent of all ecclesiastical control.</p> - -<p>The successor of Pius VI, Ithuriel-like, has pierced the thin disguise -of the toad lurking in the purlieus of Eden.<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> Instead of a divided -demoralized clergy, the Masonic Jacobins are confronted by the serried -ranks of an invincible phalanx.<a name="page_248" id="page_248"></a></p> - -<p>“At the end of the fourth century,” writes Guizot, “it was the Church -with its magistrates, its institutions, and its power that vigorously -resisted the internal dissolution of the empire and of the barbarians, -and became the bond, the medium, and the principle of civilization -between the Roman and the barbarian worlds” (<i>History of Civilization</i>).</p> - -<p>Now, as in the fourth century, we are menaced with social dissolution. -The barbarians are at our gates, nay, in our midst, and not in France -alone, by any means. A ferocious, self-seeking atheistic materialism is -disrupting Christendom. And let us not be deceived. Societies are never -saved and regenerated except by their generating principle; and the -generating principle of Western civilization is Christianity.</p> - -<p>Therefore, I repeat, that society will be compelled, in self-defence, to -restore Christianity or slavery, in some form; State Socialism -perhaps—or perish.</p> - -<p class="r"> -<i>21st November, 1906.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p><a name="page_249" id="page_249"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="APPENDIX" id="APPENDIX"></a>APPENDIX</h2> - -<p class="c"><span class="smcap">Page 29</span></p> - -<p class="c"><span class="smcap">Séance du 28 Decembre, 1906.</span></p> - -<p class="c">Au <i>Sénat Journal Officiel</i>, page 1236.</p> - -<p class="nind">M. D<small>ELAHAYE</small>: “M. Briand’s law is older than himself. We find traces of -it in all the Masonic convents.... Gentlemen, why are we going to vote -this additional law, as we did the first Separation Law, without -changing an iota?... Because the lodges have so decided.</p> - -<p>“The Convent, the public should be told, is the general assembly of the -lodges.... The Convent, called during the Revolution <i>La Convention</i>, is -the source of all our evils. On 12 November, 1904, brother Lafferre (a -senator), thirty-third degree, read the following <i>ordre du jour</i>: ‘The -general assembly of the Grand Orient addresses to M. Combes warm -assurances of sympathy and confidence, and begs him to persevere -courageously in the struggle to defend the Republic against clericalism, -and accomplish social, military, and fiscal reforms. The Assembly -demands that at the session of January, 1905, Separation and the -<i>retraites ouvrières</i> be discussed simultaneously.’”</p> - -<p>M. Lafferre and the reporter of the new Separation Law here applauded -ironically.</p> - -<p>M. Delahaye continued: “Let us pass to the Convent of 1905, séance 23 -September, 1905. -<a name="page_250" id="page_250"></a> -“Le Frère Roret, reporter (of the Masonic Commission): ... A wish more -important, and which will be adopted without discussion, emanates from -the Congress of the region of Paris. It regards the Separation and has -been slightly modified by the (Masonic) Commission (of political and -social studies). The Congress demands that the Separation Law voted in -the Chambers be amended by the Senate. Your Commission judges that it is -most important that this law be voted immediately and promulgated before -the legislative elections (May, 1906), so that the country may see that -it is a liberal law and not at all vexatious.... Your Commission -proposes the following vote: ‘The Convent emits the wish that the law, -imperfect but perfectible, be adopted by the Senate as rapidly as -possible and promulgated before the elections, but that it be amended -later by the Republican Parliament and rendered more distinctly -<i>laïque</i>.’”</p> - -<p>M. Delahaye continued: “It is well to notice that laic has two meanings. -For us it means not ecclesiastic; for Freemasons it means atheistic, -anti-Catholic.... I have proved, incontestably, that M. Briand is here -as the mouthpiece of Freemasonry, to which he says he does not -belong.... There is a privileged Congregation in France which holds -property as a <i>société immobilière</i> of the Grand Orient by ‘interposed -persons.’ This Congregation is about to sell its real estate of the Rue -Cadet (Paris). It received an offer of 1,250,000 francs. The State -offers to buy it for 1,300,000 francs, to be used as a telephone -office.... I wish to know why the State does not simply expropriate this -Congregation, seeing that it is illegal, because this <i>société -immobilière</i> is simply a <i>personne interposée</i>?... Gentlemen, the book -just published by one of your former friends, M. Flourens (ex-minister), -<i>La France Conquise Edward VII and Clemenceau</i>, is going to enlighten -rulers<a name="page_251" id="page_251"></a> deaf to the voice of the Pope (who had condemned Masonry since -1728). The Bourbons and the French nobility, whom Freemasonry had doomed -to death, were dancing on the first floor of the lodges, while overhead -sentence was being passed on them.... In spite of many changes of -government since a century, we are descending steadily, because your -principles, destructive of family, country, and private property, have -entered into our legislation.... We have a fine army, but at your touch -it becomes no more than a national guard. We have many vessels, but no -navy.... Ere long kings and emperors, who now utilize Freemasonry, will -end by saying, ‘This instrument is very dangerous.’”</p> - -<p>There were cries of “<i>Clôture, clôture</i>.” The discussion <a name="page_252" id="page_252"></a>was closed. No -one replied to M. Delahaye.</p> - -<p class="c"> -<span class="smcap">Pages 113-125</span><br /> -</p> - -<p>Commenting on the annual Convent of the Grand Orient, September, 1906, -the <i>Journal de Génève</i>, the leading Swiss Protestant daily, made the -following statements:—</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p class="c"> -“LE RÔLE DE LA MAÇONNERIE<br /> -</p> - -<p class="r"> -“<i>Septembre, 1906.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p>“Il ne faut pas se dissimuler que la franc-maçonnerie tient entre -ses mains les destinées du pays (la France). Quoiqu’elle ne compte -que vingt-six mille adhérents, elle dirige à sa guise la politique -française. Toutes les lois dont le catholicisme se plaint si -amèrement ont été d’abord élaborées dans ses convents. Elle les a -imposées au gouvernement et aux Chambres. Elle dictera toutes les -mesures qui seront destinées à en assurer l’application. Nul n’en -doute, et personne, non pas même les plus indépendants, n’oserait -heurter de front sa volonté souveraine. Il serait aussitôt brisé, -celui qui se permettrait seulement de la méconnaître.</p> - -<p>“Jamais, depuis l’époque où Rome commandait aux rois et aux -princes, on ne vit pareille puissance. Et cette puissance est -d’autant plus forte, à cette heure, qu’elle vient de subir -victorieusement une crise redoutable. Après l’affaire des fiches, -on croyait la maçonnerie morte, tout au moins bien malade; mais, à -force d’audace, elle a triomphé de ses ennemis, qui déjà sonnaient -joyeusement l’hallali. Les deux tiers des membres de la Chambre -actuelle sont francs-maçons.<a name="page_253" id="page_253"></a></p> - -<p>“La volonté de la franc maçonnerie, nul ne l’ignore plus, c’est de -détruire le catholicisme en France. Elle se dresse comme une Eglise -contre l’Eglise de Rome. Elle n’aura ni cesse ni répit, qu’elle ne -l’ait jetée bas, qu’elle n’en ait semé les poussières au vent. Tous -ses ressorts sont uniquement tendus vers ce but. Les autres -religions, si même elle ne les ignore momentanément, elle paraît -les ménager. Elle se dit sans doute que, le catholicisme ayant -rendu l‘âme sous son étreinte, l’anéantissement des autres -confessions ne serait pour elle que jeu d’enfant.</p> - -<p>“Mais l’adversaire n’est pas encore terrassé, auquel elle s’était -attaquée. Il est comme Antée, qui, toutes les fois qu’il touchait -le sol, retrouvait de nouvelles forces. Elle s’en rend bien compte. -C’est pourquoi, crainte que d’un tour de reins désespéré il ne se -dresse dans toute sa vigueur, elle n’a point poussé jusqu’ici la -lutte à fond. Parfois même elle semble accorder une trêve; elle -rentre dans ses quartiers. Mais, dès que la vigilance des -catholiques lui paraît suffisamment endormie, elle se jette de -nouveau sur sa proie. Elle continuera cette tactique jusqu’au -triomphe définitif.</p> - -<p>“Ce triomphe est-il prochain ou lointain? Pour le moment, la -défiance de Rome est bien éveillée, et Pie X n’est peut-être pas de -ces hommes qui se laissent prendre aux feints désarmements.</p> - -<p>“Quelques-uns se demanderont comment il peut se faire qu’une -minorité si faible gouverne ainsi tout un pays. C’est pourtant très -simple. D’abord les maçons sont étroitement unis; et l’union fit -toujours la force. Ensuite, appartenant tous aux classes moyennes, -ils exercent par leur situation personnelle, par leurs -fonctions—tous les gros bonnets de l’administration sont affiliés -à la franc-maçonnerie—une influence très grande. L’on peut dire<a name="page_254" id="page_254"></a> -qu’ils disposent de toutes les faveurs gouvernementales; et ces -faveurs, ils ne les distribuent qu’à bon escient. Non seulement -donc ils tiennent à leur discrétion tous ceux qui occupent un poste -quelconque de l’Etat, mais encore tous ceux qui aspirent à en -occuper un, et ils sont légion. Ça leur fait une armée formidable, -disciplinée par l’intérêt.</p> - -<p>“On comprend que, dans ces conditions, la franc-maçonnerie n’ait -qu’à faire un signe aux pouvoirs publics pour qu’elle soit -immédiatement obéie. Quoi qu’elle décide, ce sera exécuté sur -l’heure.</p> - -<p>“La franc-maçonnerie, dit-il, sait mieux que le gouvernement -lui-même, quelle somme de résistance, en ce moment, le catholicisme -peut opposer à un assault décisif. Elle n’ignore pas que, quoiqu’il -soit très ébranlé, il serait très hasardeux de le vouloir abattre -d’un dernier coup. Elle craint surtout que, si elle ne parvenait -pas à lui faire exhaler le soupir suprême, il ne retrouvât une -nouvelle vie, la volonté et l’énergie de vaincre à son tour.</p> - -<p>“La franc-maçonnerie se gardera de compromettre, dans une lutte -chanceuse, les fruits de longs efforts. Elle a emprunté sa devise à -Rome: ‘Patiens quia æterna,’ et elle attendra qu’elle puisse -frapper à coup sûr. Les probabilités sont donc pour que, tout en -s’opposant à ce que des relations soient renouées avec le -Saint-Siège, elle ne chassera pas les catholiques de leurs derniers -retranchements, c’est-à-dire de leurs églises; elle les y laissera -tranquilles, jusqu’au jour où, par un nouveau coup d’audace, elle -s’en emparera.</p> - -<p>“Un de ses orateurs a prophétisè qu’avant peu on entendrait des -‘batteries d’allégresse’ sous les voûtes de Notre-Dame; et les -prophéties maçonniques ne se sontelles pas souvent réalisées?<a name="page_255" id="page_255"></a>”</p> - -<p class="c"> -<span class="smcap">Page 204</span><br /> -</p> - -<p>On November 9th, 1906, M. Briand described the Status of the Church -in France as follows (<i>Officiel</i>, 2459): “The churches are affected -to public worship and must remain so indefinitely.... It is our -duty to leave them open.... Reunions are possible, you may have -them. The priest may live in direct communication with the people, -he may receive manual gifts. Perhaps the Catholic hierarchy about -which you are so much concerned will suffer. Perhaps this faculty -left to the faithful to live with their priest haphazard (<i>au -hasard de la rencontre</i>) will soon dry up the revenues of the -priests; it will certainly dry up those of the bishops.”</p> - -<p>It is well also to recall here the words pronounced by M. Briand, -October 17th, 1905 (<i>Journal Officiel</i>, 1223), regarding the -<i>Associations cultuelles</i>: “They will be hardly born on the 11th -December, 1906. They will not have had time to obtain funds. If we -deprive them of the patrimony of the <i>fabriques</i> and <i>menses -episcopales</i> it will be impossible for them to maintain public -worship, and the faithful will be unable to practise their -religion.”</p> - -<p>Yet the Government impudently declares to-day that the Catholics -are hard to please!</p> - -<p>On December 1st, 1906, M. Briand sent forth an ukase commanding -every priest to consider public worship assimilated to public -meetings, and to make a declaration to the mayor according to the -law of 1881.</p> - -<p>Now the law of 1905 says that public worship cannot be regulated by -the law of 1881. Moreover, this law requires the constitution of a -bureau, and that a declaration be<a name="page_256" id="page_256"></a> made before each meeting -twenty-four hours in advance. M. Briand took upon himself to modify -the law (<i>l’assouplir</i>) and to say no bureau was necessary, and -that one declaration would do for a year! The clergy made no -declarations. A few were made by Anarchists and Freemasons.</p> - -<p>From the 12th to the 20th December the police were kept busy making -thousands of <i>procès verbaux</i> all over France. This idea of making -65,000 prosecutions every day was soon found to be grotesque and -impracticable. Moreover, under the law of 1881 it is the owner of -the public hall or the café or cabaret who is prosecuted for not -making the required declaration. The State and the communes being -now the alleged owners of the churches since December 11th, 1906, -<i>they</i> should have been prosecuted and not the priests. This same -M. Briand, who thus modified the law of 1881, had declared in the -Chambers: “Common right no longer exists if you interpret it -otherwise than the law” (November 9th, <i>Journal Officiel</i>, p. -2438).</p> - -<p>Since December 11th, 1906, the Church in France is very much in the -condition of the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho.</p> - -<p>On December 29th, 1906, a new Law of Separation was passed. It -confers on 36,000 mayors the right to invest 36,000 priests with a -precarious use of Church edifices, <i>sauf désaffection</i>. The -time-limit is to be decided, <i>à l’amiable</i>, between the mayors and -their nominees. Truly this is the <i>reductio ad absurdum</i> of -separation.</p> - -<p>M. Briand assures us “that the mayor will accord the church to the -<i>curé</i> most capable of keeping it in good condition” (<i>Journal -Officiel</i>, p. 3398, December 21st, 1906). This is lay orthodoxy. -“As to the period of enjoyment, it is impossible to fix it by law,” -says M. Briand,<a name="page_257" id="page_257"></a> “to one, two, or three years” (<i>Officiel</i>, p. -3407), “‘ce sont des questions d’espèce qui seront tranchées selon -les communes’; it will vary in each commune.”</p> - -<p>To this M. Ribot replied: “‘C’est l’anarchie dans 36,000 communes.’ -At every election this question will be raised, Shall we leave the -church to the <i>curé</i> or not? You are making of this question, -eminently a governmental one, a municipal question, given over to -dissensions, competitions, and coteries” (<i>Officiel</i>, p. 3407).</p> - -<p>The new Law of Separation (December 29th) abolishes the -sequestration ordered on December 11th of all Church revenues, -etc., till December, 1907. It turns over immediately to the -communes and to lay institutions all the property of the Church. -Yet on November 9th (<i>Journal Officiel</i>, p. 2461) M. Briand stoutly -resisted the Left, clamouring for this very thing. “We must not -raise illusory hopes,” he said.</p> - -<p>“No,” cried a deputy, “it will be like the milliard of the -Congregations.”</p> - -<p>“There are fourteen millions of revenue,” continued M. Briand,” -...but are they ‘liquid,’ free of charges? The communes are -stretching out their hands to receive. You will give them what? -Nests of lawsuits. Yes, nests of vipers that will poison the -communes with their venom.”</p> - -<p>To explain this change of policy M. Briand said: “We have acquired -the certitude that the situation is without issue. It was -impossible to expect that during the next year regular associations -(of 1905) will be constituted to claim this property of the -<i>fabriques</i>. We cannot remain another whole year in this -uncertainty” (<i>Journal Officiel</i>, p. 3396, December 21st). A French -proverb says: “Souvent femme varie bien fou qui s’y fie.”</p> - -<p>And in the same session M. Briand, to explain why it<a name="page_258" id="page_258"></a> was not -possible to lend the churches to <i>curés</i> under the new law for any -definite time, said: “In fixing no term the Government is logical. -Having a law to execute (that of 1905), and having the conviction -that the Church will end by accepting it, we could not give to -uncontrolled associations under the law of 1901, which are a -concession to the Church, the same advantages as to <i>Associations -cultuelles</i>” (1905) (<i>Journal Officiel</i>, p. 3407, December 21st, -1906).</p> - -<p>The new law of December 28th, 1906, says the use of the churches -can be obtained by the declaration of the <i>curé</i> individually, or -of an association formed according to the law of 1901, or rather -according to <i>certain</i> articles of this law <i>only</i>. The Church may -not avail herself of the articles which permit the formation of -associations called “of public utility”—like the S.P.A., for -instance.</p> - -<p>This is what these Jacobins understand by combating the Church. A -<i>coup de liberté</i> by dint of liberty! They speak of giving <i>droit -commun</i>, common right. But they never do so. The Church is excluded -from the right of forming <i>Associations d’utilité publique</i> -conferred by the law of 1901, though placed under this law since -December 28th, 1906. The new law is only a makeshift. M. Briand -said (21st December, p. 3398, <i>Journal Officiel</i>): “Evidently this -legislation is not definitive. Turn the pages of history up to the -Revolution; you will see that the Convention had the same -difficulties as we to-day. See the number of laws voted in the year -1795 alone” (there were eleven Laws of Separation). Just so. France -stands where she did in 1795.<a name="page_259" id="page_259"></a></p> -</div> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p class="c">P<small>AGE</small> 228</p> - -<p class="c">RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN CATHOLIC MARYLAND</p> - -<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary=""> -<tr valign="top"><td><p>Confirmed by the Lord<br /> -Proprietary by an instrument<br /> -under his hand & seale.</p></td> -<td><p>Enacted & made at a<br /> -Geñall Session held 1 &<br /> -20 day of Aprill Anno Dm̃<br /> -1649 as followeth viz.</p></td></tr> -<tr valign="top"><td><p>P<small>HILLIP</small> C<small>ALVERT</small>.<br /> -26th August 1650.</p></td> -<td><p>An act concerning Religion.</p></td></tr> -</table> - -<p class="rt">fforasmuch as in a well</p> -<p class="nind">governed & Xpian Com̃on Wealth matters concerning Religion and -the honor of God ought in the first place to bee taken into serious -consideracon & endeavoured to bee settled. Be it therefore ordered -and enacted by the Right Ho<sup>ble</sup> Cecilius Lord Baron of Baltemore -absolute Lord Proprietary of this Province with the advice & -consent of this Generall Assembly. That whatsoever ‘pson or ‘psons -within this province & the Islands thereunto belonging shall from -henceforth blaspheme God that is curse him or deny our Saviour -Jesus Christ to be the sonne of God, or shall deny the holy Trinity -or the unity of the Godhead, or shall use or utter any reproachfull -speeches concerning the said Holy Trinity shal be punished with -death & confiscation to the lord Proprietary and his heirs....</p> - -<p>And bee it also further enacted by the same authority advise and -assent that whatsoever ‘pson or ‘psons shall from henceforth uppon -any occasion of offense or otherwise in a reproachful manner or way -declare call or denominate any ‘pson or ‘psons whatsoever, -inhabiting residing or traffiqueing or commerceing within this -Province or within any of the Ports Harbors Creeks or Havens to the -same belonging, an heritik, Scismatick Idolater, puritan, -Independent, Calvenist, Anabaptist Brownist Antimmoniam, Barrowist -Roundhead, Sepatist Presbiterian, popish prest,<a name="page_260" id="page_260"></a> Jesuite, Jesuited -papist or any other name or terme in a reproachful manner relating -to matter of Religion shall for every such offense, forfeit and -loose the some of tenne shillings one half thereof to be paid unto -the person of whom such reproachfull words are or shall be spoken -and the other half thereof to the Lord Proprietary.... And whereas -the inforceing of the Conscience in matters of religion hath -frequently fallen out to be of dangerous Consequence in these -Commonwealths where it hath been practised. And for the more quiet -and peacable gov<sup>t</sup> of this Province & the better to pserve -mutuall Love & Amity amongst the inhabitants thereof. Be it -therefore also by the L[-o] Proprietary with the advice and consent -of this Assembly Ordeynd & enacted that noe persons whatsoever -within this province or the Islands Ports Harbors Creeks thereunto -belonging professing to believe in Jesus Christ shall from -henceforth bee any waies troubled Molested or discountenanced for -or in respect of his or her religion nor in the free exercise -thereof within this province ... nor any way compelled to the -beliefe or exercise of any other Religion against his or her -consent soe as they be not unfaithfull to the Lord Proprietary or -molest or conspire against the Civill Gov<sup>t</sup> established.... And -that all & every person that shall presume contrary to this act -directly or indirectly either in person or Estate wilfully to wrong -disturb or molest any person ... in respect to his or her Religion -shall be compelled to pay trebble damages to the party soe wronged -or molested & for every such offence shall also forfeit 20<sup>s</sup> -sterling ... or if the ptie soe offending as aforesaid shall refuse -or be unable to recompense the party soe wronged ... then such -offender shall be severely punished by publick whipping & -imprisonm<sup>t</sup> without baile or maineprise....</p> - -<p class="r"> -The ffreemen have assented.<br /> -</p> - -<p><a name="page_261" id="page_261"></a></p> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<p class="c">BY THE SAME AUTHOR</p> - -<p class="c"><i>SLAV AND MOSLEM</i></p> - -<p class="c">SOME OPINIONS</p> - -<p>“<i>Slav and Moslem</i> does you the greatest honour, for I quite understand -how difficult it is for foreigners to comprehend so correctly as you do -the origin, the value, and the destinies of our institutions.</p> - -<p class="r"> -<span class="smcap">Prince Cantacuzene.</span><br /> -</p> - -<p>“<i>Russian Imperial Legation, Washington.</i>”</p> - -<hr /> - -<p>“The perusal of your valuable and interesting book on the historical -relations of Slav and Moslem has afforded the keenest pleasure.</p> - -<p class="r"> -<span class="smcap">A. Iswolzy.</span><br /> -</p> - -<p>“<i>Légation Impériale de Russe près le Saint Siège.</i>”</p> - -<hr /> - -<p>“We are separated from the Western world by difference of race, culture, -and history, and the Western mind is very hard in understanding us. -Therefore the testimony of a just and unprejudiced mind is always -gratefully appreciated in Russia.</p> - -<p class="r"> -<span class="smcap">C. Pobedonostzeff</span>,<br /> -</p> - -<p class="c"> -“<i>Petersburg.</i> <i>Président du Saint Synod</i>.”<br /> -</p> - -<hr /> - -<p>“I was not only pleased with <i>Slav and Moslem</i>, but acknowledge a large -accretion to my knowledge of the subject.</p> - -<p class="r"> -Your friend,<br /> -<span class="smcap">Lew Wallace</span>,<br /> -<i>Author of ‘Ben Hur,’ and formerly Ambassador<br /> -of U.S. to Constantinople</i>.”<br /> -</p> - -<p><a name="page_262" id="page_262"></a></p> - -<hr /> - -<p>“I consider <i>Slav and Moslem</i> the clearest exposition on the Eastern -Question I have ever met with.</p> - -<p class="r"> -<span class="smcap">J. Hughes</span>,<br /> -<i>Author of the “Dictionary of Islam</i>.”<br /> -</p> - -<hr /> - -<p>“I regard <i>Slav and Moslem</i> as a very valuable contribution to the -history of Russia. You are entitled to great credit for your -comprehensive view of the Russian Government and people.</p> - -<p class="r"> -<span class="smcap">John Sherman</span>,<br /> -</p> - -<p class="c"> -“<i>Washington.</i> <i>Senator and Diplomat, U.S.</i>”<br /> -</p> - -<hr /> - -<p>“Your development of the historical relations of Russia and Turkey is -admirable and full of interest. In vigorous and picturesque language you -have presented the other side.</p> - -<p class="r"> -<span class="smcap">John A. Kasson</span>,<br /> -</p> - -<p class="c"> -“<i>Washington.</i> <i>Senator and Diplomat</i>.”<br /> -</p> - -<hr /> - -<p>“I find no words to express the historic breadth of your political -summary, and the deep and genuine philosophy and truth of your treatment -of this great drama.</p> - -<p class="r"> -<span class="smcap">Cassius Marcellus Clay</span>,<br /> -<i>Ten years Minister of the U.S. at St. Petersburg</i>.”<br /> -</p> - -<hr /> - -<p>“I have read <i>Slav and Moslem</i> with much interest, as it contains many -suggestions to fruitful thought regarding this great empire.</p> - -<p class="r"> -<span class="smcap">Andrew D. White.</span><br /> -<br /> -<i>Legation of the U.S., St. Petersburg.</i>”<br /> -</p> - -<hr /> - -<p>“<i>Slav and Moslem</i> is written with justice, clairvoyance, and talent.</p> - -<p class="r"> -<span class="smcap">Juliette Adam.</span>”<br /> -</p> - -<p><a name="page_263" id="page_263"></a></p> - -<p>“I have read many books on Russia, but none met with my approval to such -an extent as <i>Slav and Moslem</i>.... The statements and descriptions of -the Russians are so correct.... During the years of my official stay I -studied the people, their history and language, and know what I am -talking about.</p> - -<p class="r"> -<span class="smcap">John Karel</span>,<br /> -<i>U.S. Consul at St. Petersburg</i>.”<br /> -</p> - -<hr /> - -<p>“For the chapter on the Crimea alone your book deserves the thanks of -all who would study the present century.</p> - -<p class="r"> -<span class="smcap">Geo. J. Lemmon</span>,<br /> -<i>Lecturer and Publicist</i>.”<br /> -</p> - -<p class="c"> -SOME PRESS NOTICES<br /> -</p> - -<p>“Vivid historical sketches.... Eminently worthy of careful -perusal.”—<i>The Press</i> (Philadelphia).</p> - -<hr /> - -<p>“The author shows an intelligent mastery of his subject.”</p> - -<p class="r"> -<i>Herald</i> (Boston).<br /> -</p> - -<p>“Its every sentence is clear-cut and positive.... The subjects are all -treated with a vigour and boldness that rivet the attention from first -to last.”</p> - -<p class="r"> -<i>The American</i> (Baltimore).<br /> -</p> - -<hr /> - -<p>“The author has a surprisingly firm grasp on his subject.... Vivid, -thorough, original.”</p> - -<p class="r"> -<i>The Tribune</i> (Salt Lake City, Utah).<br /> -</p> - -<p><a name="page_264" id="page_264"></a></p> - -<p>“Intensely readable.... It is one of the notable books of the -day.”—<i>Commercial Gazette</i> (Cincinnati).</p> - -<hr /> - -<p>“From first to last the book is one of unusual interest.”</p> - -<p class="r"> -<i>The Chronicle</i> (Augusta, Ga.).<br /> -</p> - -<hr /> - -<p>“A sober and trenchant defence of Russia.”</p> - -<p class="r"> -<i>Times Star</i> (Cincinnati)<br /> -</p> - -<hr /> - -<p>“Mr. Brodhead writes lucidly and discriminatingly.... Interesting and -suggestive throughout.”</p> - -<p class="r"> -<i>The Churchman</i> (New York).<br /> -</p> - -<hr /> - -<p>“J. Brodhead’s work on the Eastern is creating a more and more favorable -impression throughout the country.”</p> - -<p class="r"> -<i>The Press</i> (New York).<br /> -</p> - -<p> </p> - -<p class="c"> -<small>PLYMOUTH<br /> -WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS</small><br /> -</p> - -<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> I transcribe the following from <i>Le Lyon Republicain</i> -(ministerial anti-clerical), 1905:—“The criminality of youths from -sixteen to twenty-five is increasing in shameful and overwhelming -proportions. This collection of beardless scoundrels, cynically vicious, -murderers, thieves, <i>souteneurs</i>, is the curse of our large cities.... -It is only since fifteen or eighteen years at most that criminalists -notice this remarkable depravation of youths almost children.... May we -not ask if the State that has done the most for instruction has not done -the least for education? Truly this frightful development of youthful -criminality, of alcoholism, and anti-socialism must make us reflect.” -</p><p> -“<i>Fifteen years or eighteen at most.</i>” The scholar anti-Christian laws -of Jules Ferry, Goblet, Paul Bert, date from 1882 to 1895, and by their -fruits they are judged.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> In January, 1906, M. Poincaré, minister of finance, in -reply to M. Grousseau, admitted that up to February, 1905, the State had -advanced the sum of 4,551,319 frs. to the liquidators of the -Congregations.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> “Vel Judam non videtis, quomodo non dormit, sed festinat -tradere me Judæis?” (Feria V in Cœna Domini—“See ye not Judas, how -he sleeps not, but makes haste to betray me into the hands of the -Jews?”)</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> According to a recent article in the <i>Figaro</i>, 8th October, -1906, among the conscripts sent this month to the army by Paris, ninety -could neither read nor write; seventy-nine could read only.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> It was only at the annual September Convent of the Grand -Orient, 1904, that it was decided to rush the assault on the Church -itself by the law of alleged separation. “Il nous reste un rude coup de -collier à donner ... la separation figurera en Janvier prochain a -l’ordre du jour de la chambre.”</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> At the Free-Thought Congress.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> His native city recently hoisted the French flag and -proclaimed its annexation to the Third Republic, 1906. Of course it was -only a platonic demonstration on the part of Sicilian Freemasons.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> M. Rouvier had obtained a law obliging every one without -exception who distilled anything to pay the usual tax on alcohol. This -law was made and repealed by the same Parliament, so that now every one -who has a peach or a plum tree can manufacture any kind of alcohol of -poor quality, and retail it in the <i>buvettes</i> or drink-stands which are -found at every step almost; in every little vegetable and grocery shop, -even in Government tobacco stores where stamps are sold. These -<i>buvettes</i> are the curse of France to-day. They have caused far greater -ravages than the Franco-Prussian war.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> “We do not wish to see the secular arm placed at the -service of free-thought,” said a deputy of the “bloc” not long since. -“Meanwhile the secular arm in the service of free-thought has closed all -our schools and colleges,” retorted a deputy of the Right.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> On November 17th, 1906, the Bishop of Nancy wrote as -follows to M. Briand, Minister of Cults, regarding the sad plight of the -Sisters du Saint Cœur de Marie at Nancy: “In 1902, 56 of them were -huddled together in a small house situated at the extremity of their -grounds.... Their spacious chapel was razed to the ground and in its -place three private houses have been built. The property was sold for -527,000 francs. The liquidator promised that in conformity with the law -the sisters should receive pensions. Out of the 56 there remain to-day -but 44. Of these 10 are over seventy, and 22 of them are over sixty.... -In these last four years they have received out of the 527,000 francs -only 12,000 in three instalments.... They owe 17,800 to their baker, -butcher, etc., and are threatened with starvation if further credit be -denied them.... Are these aged women, who have devoted their lives to -the instruction of the poor, to die of cold and hunger, M. le Ministre?” -And these things happen in the twentieth century under a Government that -proclaims the rights of man and of the poor!</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> There is no such thing as proportional representation in -France, and the whole electoral machinery is manipulated to give the -Government a majority.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Recently in the Chambers (November 13th, 1906), M. Lassies -criticized that part of M. Clemenceau’s declaration in which he referred -to the Holy See “as a foreigner subject to foreign influences.” “Foreign -influences,” said M. Lassies, turning pointedly to M. Delcassé, “we find -them here in the person of the ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs, who fell -from power without our knowing why. Whence came the gust which caused -his fall? From which frontier?”</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> The Bill was adopted by the French Senate early in -December.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Everything except the <i>encyclique</i> of August 15th, 1906.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> M. Lefas, deputy of the Right, maintained in the Chambers -(Nov. 9th, 1906, <i>Journal Officiel</i>, p. 2448) that “the churches could -not form part of the Communal domain when Communes did not exist in -France. Communal domain only began with the existence of the Communes; -that is to say, a hundred years ago.” Therefore these Church edifices -cannot be said to belong to the Communes to-day. Formerly France was -divided into parishes, and each parish had its parish church. -</p><p> -As to the cathedrals, if kings and nobles, like other Catholics, -contributed to their embellishment or construction, they did so as -Catholics. All the guilds and corporations, too, contributed, not only -money, but personal labour. Would this entitle the syndicates of masons, -goldsmiths, etc., of to-day to claim these cathedrals? But the chief -factor in the construction of these noble edifices were the freely given -toil and humble labours of the multitudes of Catholics who raised these -monuments of faith. It is well known that a Catholic church cannot be -dedicated as long as any one has a lien on it, that is, not until the -Church’s proprietorship of the building is undisputed. Therefore the -assumption that these edifices belong to the State and the Communes can -only be justified on the theory of the men who, seeing a trunk lying in -the hall of a hotel, said, “This trunk belongs to no one; let us say it -belongs to us.” -</p><p> -The recent judgment of the highest court of England in the case of the -“wees and the frees” of the Scotch Presbyterian Kirk is eminently -applicable in this question of Jacobin appropriations and spoliations.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> These inventories, left incomplete after the fall of the -Rouvier Ministry (February), are being completed now (November, 1906).</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> When the daily Press is constantly recording the exploits -of <i>cambrioleurs</i> picking locks and bursting open <i>coffres forts</i> with -dynamite, it is very piquant to see the Government doing the same thing, -flanked by <i>gens d’armes</i> and the regular army. Yesterday at Nantes 1500 -soldiers, with two generals and one colonel, surrounded the cathedral at -5 a.m. Forty locks were picked before noon! In <i>cambrioleur</i> slang this -would be called a “record haul.” Thanks to the injunctions of Pius X, -there was no bloodshed, and M. Clemenceau and his friends proclaim that -these inventories are made <i>sans incident</i>.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> This Protestant senator seems to have been inspired by an -eloquent passage in Bossuet, “Une voix nous crie, <i>Marche, Marche</i>.”</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> The founder and owner of <i>La Lanterne</i> is said to be a -Frankfort Jew, and it is an open secret that all the advanced Socialist -and anti-clerical dailies are owned or controlled by the princes of -Israel. And it is from these that English and American papers seem to -derive all their information regarding the Church in France.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> LES CAISSES D’ÉPARGNE. -</p><p> -Voici le relevé des opérations des Caisses d’épargne ordinaires avec la -Caisse des dépôts et consignations du 1<sup>er</sup> au 10 octobre, 1906:— -</p><p> -Dépôts de fonds 2.830.949 fr. 72. Retraits de fonds 6.576.856 fr. 30. -Excédent des retraits 3.745.906 fr. 58. -</p><p> -Excédent des retraits du 1<sup>er</sup> janvier au 10 octobre, 1906, 26.784.318 -fr. 60.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> Thus Notre Dame might witness a Catholic Mass in the -morning, a theosophical reunion at noon, and a positivist conference in -the evening. The Swiss Catholics, 1872-6, had some such experiences: a -venerable priest died recently at Berne who had refused to give up the -keys of his church for other uses, and was imprisoned for many years; -while the last prisoner of Chillon was the Catholic Bishop of Fribourg, -another victim of the Swiss Kulturkampf.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> When public men and editors in France and elsewhere -descant on German <i>Associations cultuelles</i> accepted by the Holy See -that rejects them in France, they stand accused of ignorance or -malevolence. M. Briand basely insinuated (Chambers, 9th November) that -the Church in Germany was being ransomed by France: “Notre situation à -nous est-elle la rançon de la situation d’un pays voisin? Je me borne à -poser la question.” The fact is there is no such thing as <i>German -Associations cultuelles</i>, each State of the Confederation has its own -regulations. Bavaria has a concordat and a papal nuncio at Munich. The -Governments of Würtemberg and the Grand Duchy of Baden made special -conventions with the Holy See, 1857 and 1859. Alsace-Lorraine is still -under the French Concordat of 1801 between Pius VII and the First -Republic. Prussia and Hesse in 1873 and 1875 made special conventions -with the Vatican. Prussia has a Legation to the Holy See at Rome. -Moreover, in none of the German states is there separation of Church and -State. They all recognize and subsidize the Catholic Church and one form -of Protestantism. In Prussia several bishops are appointed senators by -the King. In Alsace-Lorraine the Bishop of Strasburg is member of the -Council of State. In Bavaria, Baden, Würtemberg, the prelates are -members of the Upper House.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> What would Philippe de Commines have said had he heard of -the little <i>coup de main</i> (November 20th, 1906), by which deputies and -senators in <i>quasi huis clos</i> voted themselves an increase of 6000 -francs without any “<i>octroi or consentement</i>” of the sovereign people, -delivered from tyranny and servitude by the Revolution?</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> There is in the Palace of the Doges at Venice an immense -picture commemorating this Congress, where the Peace of Constance was -prepared.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> In refreshing contrast with this record of persecution is -the proclamation of religious liberty in Maryland, 1650. “The Catholics -took quiet possession [of Maryland], and religious liberty obtained a -home, its only home in the wide world ... every other country had -persecuting laws.... Protestants were sheltered against Protestant -intolerance. The disfranchized friends of Prelacy in Massachusetts and -the Puritans from Virginia were welcomed to equal liberty of conscience -and political rights as Roman Catholics in the province of Maryland.... -In 1649 the General Assembly of Maryland passed an Act to this effect, -yet five years later, when the Puritans obtained the ascendency there, -they rewarded their benefactors by passing an Act forbidding that -liberty of conscience be extended to ‘popery,’ ‘prelacy,’ and -‘licentiousness of opinion’” (Bancroft’s <i>History of the United States</i>, -I, VII.). -</p><p> -Lecky corroborates this statement: “Hôpital and Lord Baltimore were the -two first legislators who uniformly maintained liberty of conscience, -and Maryland continues the one solitary home for the oppressed of every -sect till Puritans succeeded in subverting Catholic rule, when they -basely enacted the whole penal code against those who had so nobly and -so generously received them” (<i>History of Rationalism</i>, II, 58). -</p><p> -An abridged copy of the Act of 1650, the first Act of religious -toleration, will be found in the Appendix. The original from which I -copied is in the archives of the Maryland Historical Society, -Baltimore.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> On November 9th, 1906, the Socialist minister Viviani, -after “putting out the lights in heaven,” exclaimed, “What shall we say -to these sovereigns who are slaves economically speaking, to these men -who enjoy universal suffrage yet suffer in servitude? How shall we -appease them?”</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> Hall Caine, explaining the title of his book, <i>The Eternal -City</i>, expressed himself as follows: “In the new methods of settling -international disputes, the old mother of the Pagan and the Christian -worlds will have her rightful rank.... Her religious and historical -interest, her artistic charm, above all the mystery of eternal life seem -to point to Rome as the seat of the great court of appeal which the -future will see established.”</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> <i>Paradise Lost</i>, Book IV.</p></div> -</div> - -<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="" -style="padding:2%;border:3px dotted gray;"> -<tr><th align="center">Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:</th></tr> -<tr><td align="center">their <span class="errata">precedessors</span>=> their predecessors {pg 97}</td></tr> -<tr><td align="center"><span class="errata">evacute</span> Rome=> evacuate Rome {pg 111}</td></tr> -<tr><td align="center">public <span class="errata">shools</span>=> public schools {pg 206}</td></tr> -</table> - -<hr class="full" /> - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Religious Persecution in France -1900-1906, by Jane Milliken Napier Brodhead - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION *** - -***** This file should be named 42434-h.htm or 42434-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/4/3/42434/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: The Religious Persecution in France 1900-1906 - -Author: Jane Milliken Napier Brodhead - -Release Date: March 29, 2013 [EBook #42434] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - THE - RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION - IN FRANCE - - 1900-1906 - - - _Nihil Obstat_: - JOSEPH WILHELM, S. T. D., - CENSOR DEPUTATUS. - - _Imprimi potest_ - + GULIELMUS, - EPISCOPUS ARINDELENSIS, - VICARIUS GENERALIS. - - WESTMONASTERII, - _Die 6 Aprilis, 1907_. - - - - - THE RELIGIOUS - PERSECUTION - IN FRANCE - - 1900-1906 - - BY - - J. NAPIER BRODHEAD - AUTHOR OF "SLAV AND MOSLEM" - - _LONDON_ - KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUeBNER & CO., LTD. - 43 GERRARD STREET, SOHO, W. - 1907 - - - - -PREFACE - - -These Considerations, written during the last six years' residence in -France, have already appeared in the Press of the United States. They -were written from year to year without any thought of republication, -which seems justified to-day by the acuity of the conflict between the -Church and the French atheocracy, a conflict which cannot but interest -Christians everywhere. - -J. N. B. - - - - -CONTENTS - - - PAGE - -FIRST IMPRESSIONS 1 - -THE TWO CAMPS 7 - -THE ASSOCIATIONS BILL 13 - -THE ASSOCIATIONS BILL 18 - -ARBITRARY INCONSISTENCY 29 - -A PAGAN RENAISSANCE 33 - -INCONSISTENT JACOBINISM 40 - -UNAUTHORISED CONGREGATIONS 46 - -A COMBES _COUP DE MAIN_ 50 - -LEGALIZED DESPOTISM 57 - -DESPOTISM PLUS GUILE 63 - -UNCHANGING JACOBINISM 71 - -DEATH OF WALDECK ROUSSEAU 78 - -LIBERTY AND STATE SERVITUDE 82 - -THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 91 - -A PAPAL NOTE 105 - -FREEMASONRY 112 - -FREEMASONRY 118 - -PART SECOND 125 - -ALCOHOLISM IN FRANCE 131 - -THE LAW OF SEPARATION 135 - -CATHOLICISM IN GERMANY 144 - -PSEUDO-SEPARATION 147 - -THE PROGRESS OF ANARCHY 160 - -THE ABOLITION OF THE CONCORDAT 170 - -THE INVENTORIES 177 - -DUC IN ALTUM 185 - -THE LATEST PHASE OF SEPARATION 197 - -LIBERTY AND CHRISTIANITY 211 - -CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION 233 - -APPENDIX 249 - - - - -THE RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION IN FRANCE - - - - -FIRST IMPRESSIONS - - -LYON, _March 17th, 1900_. - -There seems to be considerable misapprehension in the United States as -to the status of the Catholic Church in France. "One iniquitous -arrangement in France," writes the _Central Baptist_, "is the support of -the priesthood out of public funds." In receiving stipends from the -State the French clergy, however, are no more its debtors, nor its -functionaries, than holders of French 3 per cents who receive the -interest of their bonds. When that essentially satanic movement, known -as the French Revolution, swept over this fair land, deluging it in -blood, the wealth of the Church, the accumulation of centuries, was all -confiscated by the hordes who pillaged and devastated, and killed in the -name of Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality, until Napoleon restored order -with an iron hand. A born ruler of men, this Corsican understood that -the principal feature of the work of restoration must be the -reorganization of the Catholic Church in France. Accordingly he -concluded with the Pope the convention known as the Concordat. It was -not possible in the dilapidated state of the country to restore the -millions that had been stolen by those "champions of liberty who," -according to Macaulay, "compressed into twelve months more crimes than -the kings of France had committed in twelve centuries." Still less was -it possible to rebuild many noble structures, and recover works of art -sold by sordid harpies or destroyed by impious vandals. It was -accordingly agreed (Arts. 13 and 14, Concordat) that in lieu of this -restitution the State should henceforth pay to the Church, annually, the -stipends of so many archbishops, bishops, curates, etc. - -The Concordat constitutes an organic law of the State. The clergy -receive their stipends, not as a salary, but as the payment of a debt -due to them by the State. It is in vain, therefore, that efforts are -made now to represent the Catholic clergy as salaried functionaries of -the State. The act by which Waldeck Rousseau recently decreed the -suppression of the stipends of certain bishops was wholly arbitrary, -and, moreover, the violation of an organic law. It was the partial -repudiation of a public debt, quite as dishonourable as if the payment -of interest of three per cent bonds were withheld from certain -bondholders. - -The position of Protestant and Jewish ministers in France is entirely -different. They do receive salaries which are purely gratuitous. The -Revolutionists did not trouble them, and they had no part in the -Concordat of 1801. We may say that the French Revolution was appeased, -but it is not over by any means. No nation less well founded and -grounded could have withstood as France has done the shocks and -upheavals of a century. - -To this day France is still profoundly Catholic, in spite of the -millions of public money expended in so-called non-sectarian primary -schools and colleges. Travellers stroll into French churches, in summer, -at High Mass on Sundays at 9.30 or 10.30 generally, and because they -find a very small congregation at this service they report that the -churches are deserted and religion fast dying out. They ignore the fact -that in these churches low masses have been said hourly since 5 a.m., so -that people may comply with their duty, and then go off on their outing. -Lyon has many large beautiful old churches, and many handsome new ones. -Yet not one of them could contain all their parishioners if they wished -to attend the same service. - -For nearly twenty-five years the Government has been running its -educational machine at immense cost, compelling the French to support -schools they will not patronize, as well as those of their own choice. -Nevertheless, State colleges and primary schools are so neglected that -laws are being devised to compel parents to send their children to them. -If all other means fail, the congregations of both sexes occupied in -teaching will be suppressed. This is the Government's programme. There -is nothing so bad as the corruption of that which is best. France is -still profoundly Catholic, and it is only natural that the struggle -between good and evil should be sharp here. The forces of reaction and -action are always proportionate. Hence it is that France has always been -"the centre of Masonic history," and of the Goddess Reason's supreme -efforts against Christianity. Her temperament, too, makes her a choice -field for experiments. - -We can therefore understand M. Waldeck Rousseau's indignation when so -many bishops openly expressed their sympathy with and admiration for the -Assumptionist Fathers who were condemned recently--and condemned for -what crime? For being an unauthorized association of more than twenty -persons, when there are hundreds of other similar associations at the -present moment. - -Briefly stated, the present phase of the Church in France is simply the -nineteenth-century phase of the struggles of Investiture in the Middle -Ages; the secular power seeking to have and to dominate a national -Church, whose ministers are to be nothing but state functionaries, -bound to serve and to support the Government. This was the old pagan -ideal, and every portion of the Church that has renounced allegiance to -Rome has fallen into this condition. In England, in Russia, in the -Byzantine Empire, in Turkey, in Africa--wherever there is a national -Church--it is little better than a department of State. The Gallican -Church narrowly escaped a similar fate in the days of Louis XIV. The -Civil Constitution of the Clergy was another desperate and abortive -attempt to nationalize and secularize the Church in France. Gloriously, -too, her clergy expiated their momentary Gallican insubordination. All -over France they were guillotined, drowned, and exiled, and imprisoned, -_en masse_, rather than submit to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. -There is nothing more admirable in the history of Christianity than the -conduct of the victims massacred in the convent of the Carmelites, -converted into a prison by the Jacobins. Martyrs and confessors were as -numerous as in the first centuries of the Church, and from their ashes -arose a new French Church purified by poverty and suffering. - -Never have institutions of learning and charity under religious -direction been so numerous. No country has a clergy more zealous, more -learned, more united with the Holy See than that of France to-day. No -wonder then that the powers of darkness are devising means to destroy -the new structure, so zealously and so laboriously raised on the ruins -accumulated by the Revolution of 1790. - -"Not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar among the people." -Violent measures would rouse French Catholics from their political -apathy. The Government cannot afford to do this. Religious liberty must -be destroyed by degrees--and herein lies the danger. - - - - -THE TWO CAMPS - - -_May 25th, 1900._ - -To the thoughtful and sympathetic observer, France presents a singular -spectacle of duality--two camps and two standards are confronting each -other, neo-paganism and Christianity. By Christianity I mean, of course, -Catholicism, for though there may be good Protestants, who adhere to -some of the truths of revealed religion, such a thing as a good pervert -French Protestant is a _lusus naturae_, practically non-existent. It is a -notorious fact that Protestants in France as elsewhere in Europe are, as -a rule, absolutely indifferent in religious matters since they have -ceased to be persecuted, and in many cases they have become the enemies -of revealed religion. - -All civilization, all redemption from barbarism, is fostered and -developed around a sanctuary. Consecrated hands have, in every instance, -laid the corner stone of the social edifice. The Church, the -school-house, the university, the courts of justice--these are the -normal steps by which societies, cities, and nations have advanced in -the Old World out of barbarism and chaos since the overthrow of the -Roman Empire. Of France this is pre-eminently true. Hundreds of -villages and towns bear the names of holy missionary monks who built -first a cell, and then a monastery around a chapel, which became the -centre of a village, that grew in time to be a city. We see the same -thing all over Europe and in the British Isles. Gibbon says that the -French bishops made the French monarchy as bees construct a honeycomb. -Like every institution that bears a religious imprint, this monarchy was -long-lived. Those who descant so volubly on the flightiness of the -French people, always overturning their government and never satisfied -with the one they have, would do well to reflect that the French -monarchy lasted some fourteen centuries. When this monarchy was -overthrown by the assassination of Louis XVI there was formed a vortex -in which were engulfed millions of human lives. Not that I consider a -monarchical or any special form of government indispensable to France's -prosperity. There is, however, one essential condition. The generating -principle of the French nation was the Catholic Faith. Without it, -France would no longer be herself. She would disintegrate interiorly, -and dismemberment and decadence would follow. France is still profoundly -Catholic, in spite of the prodigious efforts made since the days of -Voltaire and Tom Paine by numerous native and alien religious vandals, -whose prostituted intellects were garnished from the storehouse of -centuries of Christian culture. She will always be this or nothing. For -any one who knows France, historically and psychologically, it is -preposterous to think of a substitute creed, corresponding to any of the -various shreds of Christianity, which do duty for religion under the -name of some one or other of the multitudinous Protestant sects. - -France, I repeat, will always be Catholic or nothing. But the Government -is on the verge of apostasy. For the first time in French history the -usual religious observances on Good Friday were suppressed in all the -naval ports. "What thou doest do quickly," and on this occasion the -order was sent by telegraph on Thursday evening. As I stated in my last -letter, irreligious education is doing its work, and the increase of -juvenile criminals is appalling.[1] - -If the projected law regarding religious associations is voted, it will -be tantamount to the abolition of all religious teaching, as the -existence of these congregations will be rendered impracticable. England -and the United States will be the gainers, as they were when the -Revolution dispersed the priesthood in 1790. - -The French Government is on the verge of apostasy, as I have said. Is -this a cause, a presage, or a symptom of national decadence? All three, -I fear. Nations stand or fall with their governments. They have the -government they merit and they are punished for the evil doings of their -rulers. "I gave them a king in my wrath," it was written. Is there -sufficient vitality left in the French constitution to reject the poison -that is undermining it, and of which alcoholism, unknown in France fifty -years ago, is but the outward and visible sign? The assertion I make -that the greatness of the French people and their very national -existence is bound up with the Christian Faith is unquestioned by every -thinker in France, even by those who, for diverse reasons, do not -practise their religion, though they all bank on the last sacraments and -would be very sorry to see their wives and children neglect their -religious duties. - -The governments which have succeeded each other since 1880 have -flattered themselves that they could govern without the Church and -against the Church. Bismarck tried it and failed. The Catholic party -triumphed. It still holds the balance of power in Germany, and the -nation is growing daily more powerful and prosperous. In France, alas! -it is quite the contrary. In order to crush what they are pleased to -call the "clerical" party, the Government has allied itself with -Socialists of the reddest streak. Indeed, we may say that anarchy and -socialism, or collectivism as it is called, are sitting in high places. - -Any president or minister who dared to stem the tide would fall. They -must temporize, resign, or die. Carnot was assassinated. Casimir-Perier -resigned; Faure, who steadily opposed the revision of the Dreyfus case, -was poisoned, I am told--at any rate, it is said that he died almost -immediately after swallowing a cup of tea at a soiree. Though the public -has no means of forming a correct judgment regarding the guilt of the -notorious Dreyfus, the most important evidence having been secret, I -have never doubted that he was justly condemned. At any rate, he -accepted the Presidential pardon, and withdrew his appeal, a strange -thing for an innocent man to do. This alone, it would seem, ought to -estop him from a new trial. But unfortunately the whole thing is to be -gone over again, though it is a perfect nightmare for four-fifths of the -French nation. - -I know France intimately since thirty years, and it is with infinite -sorrow that I diagnose her present condition and its perils. - -According to custom, the Imperial Court of Russia retired to Moscow for -Holy Week, and while the Czar, laying aside court etiquette, was -kneeling humbly on the bare floor among his peasant subjects, holding -his lighted candle like them, his allies, the rulers of France, were -desecrating Easter Vigil by inaugurating the Paris Exhibition with -speeches, which seemed to have been compiled from those made by -Robespierre and his companions on that very Champs de Mars a century -ago, when they inaugurated their theo-philanthropy and the worship of -the Goddess of Reason. - -I presume Holy Saturday was selected because it is a high festival among -the Jews; otherwise Easter Monday would surely have been more -appropriate in a country where there are thirty-five million Catholics. -This was on the 9th April, and the Exposition they were in such a hurry -to inaugurate on that particular day is far from ready even now. - - - - -THE ASSOCIATIONS BILL - - -_May 4th, 1901._ - -A year ago I wrote in these columns as follows: "For twenty years the -Government has been running its educational machine at immense loss, -compelling the French to support their own schools as well as those they -will not patronize. Nevertheless, State schools and colleges are so -neglected that laws are being devised to compel parents to send their -children to them. If all other means fail, the congregations of both -sexes occupied in teaching will be suppressed." - -Now this is the true object of the Associations Bill; all the rest is -merely padding. Liberty of association for Freemasons, Socialists, and -all friends of the Third Republic will be untrammelled as heretofore. -The blow aimed at religious teachers is of peculiar interest at this -hour, when Christians, all over the world, are recognizing the immense -importance of the religious education of the young, if we would preserve -the structure of Western civilization, so laboriously built up during -2000 years, and save its deep foundations from being sapped by the -returning tide of barbarism and paganism. For the revolutionary spirit -of to-day is simply another version of that renaissance of paganism -which culminated in the Protestant revolt. As in the past, it will be -met by a great Catholic revival like that of the sixteenth century, -which Macaulay has so eloquently described in his Essay on Ranke's -_Papacy_. This is the counter-revolution against which the self-styled -government of "Defense Republicaine" is dressing its batteries. Already -the effects of this revival are felt and, as Macaulay has pointed out, -revivals of the religious spirit, this everlasting factor in the history -of humanity which our pseudo-scientists so unscientifically ignore, -always redound to the benefit of Catholicism. When men like Brunetiere, -Bourget, Lemaitre, Francois Coppee, become standard-bearers of truth, we -are consoled for the vociferations of any number of Vivianis, -Trouillots, etc., in and outside the French Chambers, for whom "the -eternal decalogue" is but an antiquated superstition that must be swept -away. - -The law against the Congregations has been opposed in the Chambers by -many Republicans who have no religious scruples, and one may safely -affirm that there is not a respectable Frenchman, outside the coterie in -power, who does not condemn the Bill. - -A few days before its passage, a mass meeting of many trade unions, -presided over by Leroy Beaulieu, was held in Paris to protest against -the projected suppression of the Congregations. The eminent economist -declared that the proposed legislation was one of "national suicide." -If the law is so repugnant to the French in general, how is it that the -Government always obtains a majority? it may be asked. - -The explanation lies in the fact that while honest Frenchmen have been -attending to their business and leaving politics strictly alone, this -anti-religious campaign has been carefully prepared since many years by -the enemies of Christianity. Like all notable persecutions, it is the -work of secret societies. The Boxers of China are a congeries of these -societies. In the days of Julian the chief instigators and abettors of -persecution were the secret societies of Mithra, whom Renan declared to -have been "veritable Masonic lodges with their initiations, passwords," -etc. - -Since 1875 the "Grand Orient," in which the Jewish element predominates, -has gradually been gathering into its hands all the reins of government; -not a very difficult task, seeing that as a rule respectable, -industrious Frenchmen will not touch politics, while the emissaries of -the lodges go out into the slums of mining and industrial centres, and -organize primaries and Socialist clubs that defeat any respectable -candidate who dares to enter the lists against the candidate of the -Government. Jules Lemaitre, in the _Echo de Paris_, states that there -are 400 deputies and 10 ministers who are Freemasons. As these latter -number about 25,000 in France, it follows that there is one -representative in Parliament for every 50 Freemason electors, whereas -there is only one representative for every 1800 votes who are not -affiliated to the "Grand Orient." With a house packed in this way, any -legislation is possible. Madame Sorgues, lately sub-editor of Jaures' -Socialist organ, _La Petite Republique_, has published some interesting -revelations, showing how the Judeo Freemasons have made tools of the -Socialists in order to seize the reins of government. "In combating the -combats of Dreyfus," she writes, "Jaures and his friends brought about a -singular _rapprochement_ of the two most irreconcilable camps ... the -presents of the kings of capital were accepted. The first service -rendered was to restore the tottering Socialist Press.... All the -advanced [meaning anti-clerical Socialist] dailies have passed into the -hands of the great barons of finance; they are _their_ journals now, not -the journals of the workers.... Then they cast their eyes on Waldeck -Rousseau, the clever rescuer of the Panamists.... The agent of the -Dreyfus politics had the happy thought of introducing into the Cabinet, -Millerand, the Socialist leader, with the consent of his party. -Socialism become ministerial would be _domestique_, and rendered -inoffensive against capital," etc. Last fall, the President, Loubet, -when at Lyons, dared to be the guest of the Chamber of Commerce, in -spite of the Socialist mayor, Augagneur, and his gang. Immediately, the -_Aurore_, a Socialist organ of Paris, clamoured for his suppression in -these terms: "As he is not subject to the same accidents as Felix -Faure, we must defend ourselves without waiting for the good offices of -Judith." M. Faure, M. Loubet's predecessor, it will be remembered, is -said to have died suddenly after a cup of tea at a soiree given by a -rich Jewess, and the present ministry of the Dreyfus revision, to which -he had been steadfastly opposed, came into power almost before the -country knew what had happened, bringing in their political wallet -another Dreyfus trial and this notorious Associations Bill. - -If I insist, it is because I wish that it may be clearly understood that -the French people are not guilty of the criminal legislation of which -they are the victims, owing to their incurable reluctance to touch the -mire of politics, left, as a rule, to the most unworthy and -unscrupulous. - -M. Waldeck Rousseau is a smart, wily politician; so was Camille -Desmoulins, an obscure, ambitious lawyer, who saw in the Revolution of -1790 a grand opportunity of reaching a proud eminence. This -accomplished, he had no further use for Revolutionists. "The Revolution -is over," he said; but it went on and on, until his own head rolled into -the fatal basket. - -How long will all this last? How long will the mad dogs of Socialist -anarchy be held in leash? - - - - -THE ASSOCIATIONS BILL - - -_3rd April,_ 1901. - -Few persons in the United States have the leisure or the means of -following the debates of the French Chambers, and appreciating the Law -on Associations, of which many garbled and falsified versions appear in -metropolitan and other dailies. - -It is pre-eminently a project of tyranny and religious persecution. The -sympathy of sectarian antagonism with anti-Catholic measures, in any -part of the world, is always a foregone conclusion. It does not concern -itself with the arbitrary tyranny involved, alleging, perhaps, that now -the tables are turned, and thirty-five millions of Catholics are being -treated as were the Huguenots from 1685 to 1790. But when former -governments strove to maintain national unity, founded on "One Lord, one -Faith, one Baptism," their position was that of a man defending his own -house against assailants, while the position of this Government is that -of a small armed band who have taken forcible possession, and mean to -coerce and outlaw the owners by imprescriptible right. But neither -Elizabeth nor Louis XIV ever invoked liberty to palliate their coercive -policy in order to establish, or maintain unity or uniformity. - -As Bodley says in his excellent work on France (1898): "The intolerant -system under the Third Republic differs from all persecutions known to -history in that it is not only practised in the name of liberty, but is -aimed against an established religion"--in possession since fifteen -centuries. - -It is a curious fact that the Huguenots, so clamorous for toleration and -the rights of conscience in the past, have during a century of absolute -liberty and equality, 1793-1900, dwindled from 2,000,000 in a population -of 27,000,000 to 600,000 in a population of 38,000,000. They have -evolved, in the usual process of Protestant disintegration, into the -deistical and atheistical minority who, with the Jews, are now so -determined to restore national unity in national infidelity. For it is a -notorious fact that France is ruled and oppressed by a small coalition -of Freemasons, chiefly Protestants and Jews, who are using the -Socialists as cats' paws. - -Waldeck Rousseau clearly stated the Government's programme in his -political speech at Toulouse, and its scope is unmistakable, no matter -what affectation of tolerance and amity for the secular clergy may -accompany it. He is an astute lawyer, and his unruly band of Socialist -henchmen in the Chambers often try his patience sorely by calling a -spade a spade. - -The suppression of religious orders and the confiscation of their -property is no new thing. St. Paul reminds the Hebrews of their -neophyte fervour, and how they accepted being despoiled with joy. -_Rapinam_ is the word used in the Vulgate; modern euphemism eschews the -unsavoury word robbery, and says "_secularization_," "_liquidation_." -Julian the Apostate, like the Rousseaus and the Trouillots of to-day, -was also of opinion that the "Clericals" must be impoverished and -discredited in order to crush out Christianity. Henry VIII robbed and -suppressed English monasteries simply because he saw no other means of -replenishing the empty treasury he had inherited. Moreover the religious -orders were not likely to sustain him in his new character of supreme -head of the Anglican Church. Suffering, crime, and ignorance reached -unprecedented proportions in the century that followed, as we learn from -Strype's _Chronicles_. Lecky asserts that 75,000 vagrant beggars were -hanged in Henry's reign. - -Suppressions and confiscations have always been a prominent feature in -all revolutions, and they have been numerous in the nineteenth century. -The reason is twofold. Everything that has a religious stamp is -essentially and very properly conservative. It requires infinite pains, -patience, and wisdom to build up or to reconstruct. Any fool or madman -can tear down. _Quieta non movere._ The religious congregations, -therefore, were always the last to abandon the mother country or the -regime under which they had existed for centuries. On the other hand, -revolutionists always have a crying need for money to furnish the -sinews of rebellion, and also, incidentally, to feather the nests of -patriots. What can be more handy, too, than church property, and the -untold wealth of the religious orders! It is true that these gold mines -are sometimes found to be 'salted,' as they are in the fantastical -statistics put forth by the Rousseau ministry.[2] They seldom justify -the brilliant expectations of the populace lured by the perspective of -rich spoils, as they are to-day--pensions for the veterans of toil, etc. - -These spoliations have always been followed by an immense recrudescence -of popular misery. It was so in France, in Italy, in Spain--everywhere. - -The twofold motive that instigated these spoliations does not excuse -them, but it explains and perhaps palliates to some extent. In France, -to-day, there is no extenuating circumstance. The Holy See loyally lent -its support to the Third Republic when the second president, M. Grevy, -humbly solicited it at a precarious moment. Leo XIII distinctly -requested the clergy and the faithful to rally to the Republic in the -interest of peace. With very few exceptions the regular and the secular -clergy have strictly abstained from politics. The inquisition of which -the Assumption Fathers were recently the object only succeeded in -incriminating two or three members of the order. - -Of course the regular and secular clergy cannot urge their flocks and -their pupils to embrace the atheistical and pagan ideals of the -coalition in power. If this be disloyalty they are all disloyal. - -Considering that since 1888 not less than 20,000,000 have been added -every year to the public expenditure, one might suppose that the -Government would think twice before depriving itself of this army of -some 180,000 self-sacrificing men and women who minister to the poor, -the sick, the maimed, the blind, the insane, the orphan, and the -outcast. Recently the Prefect of the Department of Bouches du Rhone was -summoned by the anti-clericals to secularize all the hospitals. He -refused to accede to their request, alleging that the budget of charity -was totally inadequate already, and that many indigent sufferers were -turned away from lack of accommodation. This is only one item; what will -it be when the Government has to pay an army of hirelings to minister to -the poor all over the land? But the Congregations do not concern -themselves with bodily wants only. Many of them are devoted to the -education of all classes. This is the head and front of their offending, -and the true reason of their taking off. Every one knows that the -godless scholastic institutions devised by Paul Bert, Ferry, and Jules -Simon are repugnant to the nation, and have been a complete failure. In -spite of the millions of public money lavished upon them, they have -never been able to hold their own against the religious schools of the -Congregations, which are supported entirely by private initiative, and -at the cost of great pecuniary sacrifices on the part of Catholic -parents, who support two sets of schools--those they patronize and those -for which they have no use. Not content with imposing these sacrifices, -as in the United States, the Third Republic now proposes to crush out -all competition by suppressing the teaching congregations, and indeed -all congregations, with the proviso of retaining for the present such as -shall be deemed of public utility--meaning, of course, those who bring -surcease to the straining budget by rendering gratuitous service to -thousands, who would be a burden to the State, in a country already -taxed to its utmost capacity. The tyrannical and arbitrary character of -a measure which declares all conventual institutions "against public -order" on account of their vows, which are likened to "personal -servitude," and yet utilizing some of them, does not trouble these -modern Dracos. Still less are they concerned with the iniquity of -depriving thousands of citizens of the right to dispose of their lives -as they see fit, and of preventing millions of parents from educating -their children as they choose. - -About the middle of the last century, representative men like -Montalembert, Lacordaire, Berryer, Dupanloup, entered the political -arena to fight the battle of free education against the tyranny of the -State University. They won the day, and freedom in educational matters -seemed henceforth the inalienable appanage of France and of all -communities boasting of Western civilization. - -The aim of the projected Law of Associations is to crush out this -liberty. It is no question of Church and State, but of Christianity and -liberty against atheism and tyranny. All the rest is mere padding. It is -a reversion to Lacedaemonian state tyranny and an odious anachronism. No -wonder, then, that the present Dreyfus-Rousseau ministry should seek to -throw dust in the eyes of the public, even subsidizing press syndicates -to mislead public opinion abroad. - -In a nutshell, the Trouillot Bill amounts to just this: No association -can exist without government authorization, which will never be given to -any religious congregation formed for educational purposes. None need -apply but those who work with the Government. "We will give our money -only to those who please us," said the Socialist mayor of Lyons -recently. "Our money," forsooth--considering that the taxpaying portion -of the community of Lyons is strongly Catholic and Conservative. Yet -this municipal autocrat declared that destitute children, who went to -any but state schools, should not be assisted by civic funds. - -It is the true Jacobin spirit that permeates this Republican organism. -The stamping out of religious education is itself but a means to an end. -That arch-traitor Renan declared "that religion would die hard; primary -education and the substitution of scientific for literary studies were -the only means of killing it." - -The final purpose of this Republic is to establish national unity in -national atheism, with perhaps a creedless church administered by -servile state functionaries--a modified form of the worship of the -Goddess of Reason. In saying this I do not calumniate the Republic, as -Waldeck Rousseau himself clearly stated the governmental programme at -Toulouse. A small coalition of Jews, Protestants, and other Freemasons -have gained control of the country by capturing the Socialist vote. The -latter do not yet see that they are being used as cats' paws. For what -fellowship can there be between Jew capitalists and collectivists? All -honest, industrious Frenchmen despise politics as a rule. The great -mining and industrial centres and the slums of large cities furnish -practically all the voters, and this proletariat is lured on by -brilliant prospects of the collectivist Utopia that is coming, when the -Congregations and the Church have been abolished. Respectable Frenchmen, -who do try to serve their country by taking a hand in politics, usually -withdraw in disgust, and thus the scum comes to the top and is utilized -by unscrupulous ambition. If any one wants to enjoy a clever, graphic -pen-picture of French politics, let him read _Les morts qui parlent_, by -M. de Vogue. - -The purpose of those in power is, I repeat, to break away completely and -for ever from the Catholic religion, with which the French nation is so -bound up that its fibres can only be torn out with the last palpitating -remnants of national life. "Few greater calamities can befall a nation," -wrote Lecky, "than to cut herself off as France has done from her own -past in her great Revolution." To consummate this calamity is the avowed -purpose of this Government. A hue and cry is raised by its Socialist -henchmen at papal _ingerence_ in French affairs, though the Concordat -surely gives the Pope a right to protest against the ostracism and -proposed suppression of the Congregations, as being a violation of -Article I of the Concordat, which guarantees the "free exercise of the -Catholic religion in France." - -Meanwhile "_The Jewish Alliance_" and the "_Internationale_" operate -freely and openly, causing strikes in every direction, and disorganizing -the industrial conditions here for the benefit of other countries. -During the last few months immense sums are being taken out of the -country, not by the Congregations only by any means. The boom in the New -York Stock Market, which redounds to the credit of the McKinley -administration, may be connected with this migration of personal -property from France. - -It has been France's glory and misfortune to be a great purveyor of -ideas, ideals, and fashions. She is essentially missionary, and was in -the vanguard of Christianity from the beginning. In the early centuries -of the Church, her monastic missionaries peopled the islands that lie -around this beautiful Riviera. St. Vincent de Lerins, St. Tropez, St. -Aygulf, St. Maxim, have left indelible footprints in these regions. In -her terrible Revolution France was an object-lesson to the nations, -whose intervention saved her from self-extermination. Foreign war was a -boon and a safety-valve. The Commune of 1870 was another warning to the -nations. Again to-day she is being made a spectacle to men and -angels--to men who are, with secret rejoicing, applauding the Waldeck -Rousseau ministry, and all for which it stands. They known full well -that decadence and doom are near. There will be another Sedan, another -Commune. The colonies, Indo-China in particular, will be the first to -fall away in the general dismemberment. - -I know France intimately since more than thirty years, and it is with -infinite sorrow that I diagnose her condition. Her recuperative powers -are very great. I fear, however, that they will prove inadequate after -the next great shock. - -But France's admirable gift of apostleship, her lofty idealism, which no -number of Voltaires could abase or abate, will not perish with her -territorial integrity, nor even with her national life. Like the -deathless masterpieces of Greece and Rome, her immortal genius will -inform and inspire countless unborn generations, long after France -herself shall have become a mere geographical reminiscence. "I will move -thy candlestick," it is written--not extinguish. - - - - -ARBITRARY INCONSISTENCY - - -_16th February, 1901._ - -The attitude of the Jacobin government in France towards the religion -professed by nine-tenths of the inhabitants is truly instructive. After -prating about liberty, fraternity, and equality, and the rights of man -for a hundred years, the successors of the revolutionary _Constituante_ -are preparing to deal a deathblow at the most sacred rights of the -individual, to overstep the most arbitrary acts of any regime, nay of -the Inquisition itself. These, at least, only concerned themselves with -outward manifestations of personal idiosyncrasies tending to disturb the -social order. But the successors of the Jacobins of the _Constituante_, -so proud of their blood-stained origin, direct their attacks, to-day, -against that most intangible thing the Vow, which has no existence -except in the inner conscience of the individual, seeing that monastic -vows which involved "civil death" were abolished by law in 1790, and all -religious are, to-day, free to exercise the rights of citizens--to buy, -sell, contract, or vote. The vow cannot even be considered a convention -or a contract binding together the members of a religious association. - -The ground on which it is proposed to declare religious congregations -illegal without interfering with Masonic and other associations is, said -Waldeck Rousseau, that "our public right [_droit public_] and that of -other States proscribes all that constitutes an abdication of the rights -of the individual, right to marry, to possess, all, in fact, that -resembles personal servitude." - -Thus in the name of liberty and the famous rights of man, I am denied -the right to exercise my freewill by electing to remain single, because -not to marry would be an abdication of one of the rights of the -individual, and resemble "personal servitude." Anything more grotesquely -inconsistent cannot well be imagined, and this project of law has been -in process of elaboration in the lodges since twenty years! In 1880, -when the decree against the Jesuits and all congregations of men was -promulgated, it was declared illicit and unconstitutional by 1500 -jurists, and 400 of the higher magistrates, who refused their -connivence, were removed from office. One of my best friends was among -these victims. The decree was enforced _manu militari_, but the current -of public opinion was so strong that, ere long, these establishments -were reopened and continued their good works unmolested. - -It was next proposed to crush out the Congregations by fiscal measures. -This also has proved inadequate, and the present project of law is the -supreme effort of a most paternal and absolute Republic to secure the -liberty of thousands of unappreciative subjects, by preventing them from -exercising it in the choice of a mode of life. Truly a strange -aberration of liberty, equality, and fraternity! - -Of course it is an open secret that what is aimed at is the destruction -of the Catholic Church in France, and the establishment, if possible, of -a national church with a "civil constitution of the clergy" as was -attempted in 1792. - -Before attacking the citadel it is proposed to demolish the two great -ramparts of the Church, Christian education and Christian charity, by -disbanding the noble men and women who man these ramparts. - -It is a notorious fact, well established by Taine, that the French -Revolution, with all its saturnalia of carnage and nameless tyranny, was -the work of a handful, some ten thousand in all, and even many of these -were foreigners. They carried all before them, and I fear that history -will repeat itself. - -The moral unity of France was destroyed for ever by the Huguenots in the -seventeenth century. Louis XIV sought in vain to restore it by the -Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The Revolution also tried to -enforce moral unity by the unlimited practice of the "_Sois mon frere ou -je te tue_." It is in the name of this lost moral unity that the -coalition in power now propose to crush out all educational and -religious liberty. French Protestantism can hardly be said to exist any -longer. In 1799, when their religious and civil liberties were restored, -Rabaut de St. Etienne, then president of the _Constituante_, stated -their number to be 2,000,000 in a population of 26,000,000. After a -century of complete liberty and equality, the _Agenda Protestant_ of -Lyons states their number to be 650,000 in a population of 37,000,000. -In the usual process of Protestant disintegration, the Huguenots, -erstwhile so zealous for Calvinistic purity of doctrine, have evolved -into the freethinking materialists, who form an important contingent in -the anti-religious Masonic coalition I referred to some months ago. - -The situation in France painfully recalls that of Constantinople some -forty years before the fall of the Eastern Empire. A house divided -against itself cannot stand. - - - - -A PAGAN RENAISSANCE - - -_10th August, 1901._ - -In a previous article I asserted that the revolutionary spirit so -rampant to-day is a new version of that renaissance of Paganism in the -fourteenth century which culminated in the Protestant revolt. I find the -same view expressed in Goldwin Smith's recently published work on the -United Kingdom. In a chapter on the Renaissance he writes as follows: -"Our generation may look upon this period with interest, since it is -itself threatened with an interregnum between Christian morality and the -morality of science." - -"Much learning maketh thee mad" might be said to our generation, that -seems to be science mad and blissfully unconscious of the paradoxes of -its programme. We are promised a scientific religion or a religion of -science, meaning probably a religion worthy of men of science, unmindful -of the fact that men of the highest attainments have been nurtured in -the Church in every century, and that the supernatural must always be an -indispensable element of religion. - -Now Mr. Goldwin Smith raises our expectations to a future era in which -"the morality of science" is to succeed to the hiatus or interregnum -with which we are threatened to-day, as in the fifteenth century, when -the Church was "drugged," he says. - -In his excellent work on _Social Evolution_, Kidd accentuates the fact -that our Western civilization, the highest yet attained, has been wholly -religious and not scientific; that in intellectual capacity and -attainments we are, even now, far below the average Greek mind of -centuries ago. This civilization of ours, marvellous in spite of all its -shortcomings and blots, is founded on abnegation and self-sacrifice -which are wholly irrational, scientifically speaking. It is indeed -scientifically impossible for science to have any other morality than -the law of brute force and the survival of the strongest, whether it be -on the battlefield, the mart, or on 'change. The law of supply and -demand is a corollary of this law. - -Complacency for the weak and the lowly, that characterized Christianity -from the beginning, and found expression in the legend of the Holy -Grail, is all folly, the sublime folly of the Cross. The equality and -brotherhood of man is also part of this "foolishness," so repulsive to -the cultured Greek mind. Nay, all our much-vaunted "free institutions" -have grown out of this mustard seed, to which our Lord compared His -kingdom on earth. "When the tree falls the shadow will depart," as -Tennyson wrote in another connexion. Nothing will be left to our poor -science-ridden humanity but the cruel glare of human egoisms, passions, -and ambitions. - -In one of those sonorous paradoxes which his soul loved, J. J. Rousseau -assures us that "all men are born free, and everywhere they are in -chains." That all men are born free is as false as that all men are born -upright and virtuous. History and experience give the lie to both -assertions. It is an incontrovertible fact that before Christ slavery -was the normal status of the masses in every age and clime, and Lucanus -only expressed an universally accepted axiom when he cynically declared -that the human race only existed for a few: _Humanum paucis vivit -genus_. - -The doom of slavery was sealed when Peter began his memorable discourse, -saying "Men and brethren" to circumcised and uncircumcised alike. On -that day the Church began her mission of liberation by subjugation to -the Christian law. - -But so ancient and deeply-rooted an institution as slavery could not -wisely nor safely be felled suddenly. It was not till 1167 that Pope -Alexander III published the charter of Christian liberty. "This law -alone," writes Voltaire (_Essai sur les moeurs_, chap. LXXXIII), -"should render his memory precious to all people, as his efforts on -behalf of liberty for Italy should endear him to Italians." - -Wherever Christianity permeates, even in an emaciated form, slavery must -disappear, and wherever Christianity has not penetrated slavery is and -always will be a standing institution, with its concomitant degradation -of women. - -Another proposition, a corollary of the first, is equally true. If, and -when, and where Christianity disappears, liberty, which is bound up with -and inseparable from the Christian law, will also diminish and -disappear, _tantum quantum_. - -The world, in my opinion, has never adequately laid to heart the -terrible lessons taught by the French Revolution. They are not laid bare -in their naked hideousness. The glamour of those much-violated -principles of 1789, and the catchwords of liberty, equality, and -fraternity are used to cover up the dire significance of that event. In -a moment of wild delirium, the most illustrious of nations allowed its -government to pass into the hands of a band of atheists prepared by -Voltaire and his ilk. Christianity was solemnly abjured in the name of -the whole nation, and the worship of Reason inaugurated with all the -paraphernalia of ritual and the pomp of worship. What was the immediate -result? In the twinkling of an eye all liberty vanished. Terror reigned -supreme. The most sacred rights of the individual were proscribed. Men -could no longer call their lives their own under the law of _Suspects_. -From my window at Lyons, I could see the monument to the victims of -1793. This city had at first submitted to the Revolutionary government, -but the Lyonnais revolted when they found themselves deprived of civil -and municipal liberties they had enjoyed under the most despotic kings. -Lyons was besieged by those singular champions of liberty who, according -to Macaulay, "crowded into a few months more crimes than had been -committed by the French kings in as many centuries." - -Lyons succumbed after a gallant resistance of ten months. This quarter, -where stands the monument to the victims, was then swampy ground, and it -was literally soaked that year, not with the overflow of the Rhone, but -with human gore. On the beautiful Place Bellecour two guillotines -functioned day and night, but they were inadequate to the bloody task, -and the citizens were mown down in batches on the Place des Jacobins. -The successors of these Freemason Jacobins control the destinies of -France to-day, by means of a Socialist parliamentary majority, obtained -by the means I described in a previous article. They lost no time in -ostracising tens of thousands of France's noblest sons and daughters, -who may not live as they see fit, nor exercise a profession which is -open to all by law. The law Falloux of 1852 confers on all citizens duly -qualified the right to teach or open schools, and it is still -unrepealed. Millions of parents are deprived of the right to educate -their children as they see fit in their native land. Exile is the price -of liberty. This is the beginning of that diminution of liberty which -must always accompany the elimination of the Christian principle on -which our civilization reposes. - -With stupendous cynicism Waldeck Rousseau calls the Associations Bill a -"law of liberty and of appeasement." One or two passages will exemplify -the character of this infamous Act. - - ART. I - - All associations can be formed freely and without authorization. - - ART. XIII - - No religious association can be formed without authorization given - by a law which will determine how it is to function. - -One of M. Waldeck Rousseau's henchmen stated the truth squarely, a few -days ago, when he said "the enemy is God," improving on Gambetta's -maxim, "Le clericalisme voila l'ennemi." - -Already there are symptoms that the Premier is being carried away by his -Socialist advance guard. When they now demand the suppression of the -Concordat he no longer protests as earnestly as he did, affirming his -devotion to the secular clergy, whose interests, he used to declare, -were the main object of the Trouillot or Associations Bill. - -The trial of Comte Lur Saluce by a so-called "High Court," composed of -senators, was a most peculiar episode. Accused of plotting to restore -the monarchy, his defence was one long, incisive, itemized arraignment -of the Third Republic and all its works and ways. His judges listened -with much interest, fascinated, no doubt, by the truth of his -statements, after which they found him guilty with extenuating -circumstances--a tacit admission apparently that his enmity to the Third -Republic was justified. Meanwhile, poor France is threatened with all -the horrors of another revolution, if the same elements compose the next -parliament, as they most certainly will, if opposition candidates are -not even allowed to hold meetings unmolested, as at Toulouse and Lyons -recently. - -Religious liberty has however found a new home in a most unexpected -quarter, none other than the realm of the Grand Llama of Tibet, who is -sending a special embassy to the Czar. The latter may follow the good -example and proclaim religious liberty in all the Russias, at the same -time as the Calendar reforms which are being prepared. The two questions -are not as irrelevant to each other as one might suppose at first -sight. - - - - -INCONSISTENT JACOBINISM - - -_11th November, 1901._ - -In 1894, 1895, and 1896 I contributed several papers on the Eastern -Question to the _Progress_. At that time public opinion was much excited -and indignant over the massacres in Armenia, but none of the Powers who -signed the Berlin Treaty thought fit to interfere. Massacres on a small -scale were renewed from time to time, and a few months ago they reached -considerable proportions; but nothing was done to punish the culprits, -or to protect the victims of Turkish barbarity. - -This week a mild surprise has been caused by the sending of the French -fleet to Turkish waters. The callous lethargy, which a sense of duty, a -chivalrous sympathy with the weak and the oppressed, could not dispel, -has yielded to a financial exigency. Two naturalized citizens are -creditors of the Sultan for a large sum. It is true they have been -receiving most usurious interest these last fifteen years, but now -Lorando and Turbini wish to recover their capital; and lo! the might of -France is put forth on their behalf! It is said that M. Waldeck -Rousseau, the Premier, is professionally interested in the matter, and -will receive a fee even bigger than the one he earned when he saved his -clients in the Panama scandal, who are now in the seats of the mighty. -The long-suffering French taxpayer will grudgingly pay the expenses of -this naval demonstration, and the Porte will promptly pay up in order to -be rid of his unwelcome visitors. But France does not mean to be a -simple collector for MM. Lorando and Turbini. - -The elections of 1902 are at hand, and the semi-Jacobins in power are -anxious to obtain the suffrages of the better element, and not be -entirely carried away captive by their Socialist and ultra-Jacobin -supporters, through whom they have seized the reins of government. - -The Crimean war, as I have shown in _Slav and Moslem_, was partly -brought about by a similar preoccupation on the part of Napoleon III, -who had just made himself emperor by an infamous _coup d'etat_. -Voltairean France had allowed her protectorate over the Eastern -Christians to fall into desuetude, and Russia supplanted her. But when -the latter exercised her treaty-acquired rights, France and England -combined against her. - -To-day with impudent inconsistency the Third Republic, which has done -its utmost, these thirty years, to dechristianize France, sees fit to -exact from the Porte that French religious schools be allowed to -multiply freely, and that its protectorate over Eastern Christians be -distinctly recognized. - -What is more, the Republic demands that the Catholic University of -Beyruth deliver diplomas entitling the recipients to practise medicine -in all parts of the Turkish empire. Now, considering that the Third -Republic has just made a most iniquitous law against religious -congregations, depriving French parents of the means of educating their -children in accordance with their faith, it is a grotesque incongruity -that the Turks should be compelled to harbour these congregations and -their schools, which are being closed in France with a latent view to -establishing a Government monopoly of education. - -This university of Beirut, and practically all the French schools and -hospitals in Turkey, are under the direction of Jesuits, Dominicans, -Assumptionists, etc., and they are of great importance to French -influence, as they implant this language and the love of a nation that -has such admirable sons and daughters. - -I have no doubt that railroad concessions will also be demanded, and -that all details were discussed during the Czar's recent visit to Paris. -Russia is using France to checkmate Germany in her Bagdad railway -scheme, and to undermine her influence with the Sultan. - -The deaths of Abdul Hamid and the Emperor of Austria may at any moment -precipitate the European crisis which all expect and fear. - -Meanwhile, neither China nor the Moslems have said their last word. In -the heart of China, Tung-fu-Siang and Prince Tuan may, even now, be -engaged in founding a new Mohammedan power. A China galvanized by that -dangerous vitality of Islam would mean the extinction of Europe in -China. And if any great Moslem chief should succeed in combining the -interests of the faithful in Africa and Turkey, the European nations may -all look to their laurels. - -The self-conceit and self-complacency of the white races are simply -immense. This self-complacency is unparalleled, except perhaps by that -which distinguished the Jewish people. Because Providence had chosen -them for the accomplishment of certain designs which were to embrace the -whole human race in their ultimate scope, the Hebrews flattered -themselves that the Gentiles only existed for their benefit, as the -yellows, browns, and blacks do for us to-day. When the chosen people had -filled their cup of iniquity, heedless of that last pathetic appeal, -"Jerusalem, Jerusalem," etc., there came that terrible siege (A.D. 70) -which made them henceforth a people without an altar, without a country. - -Another proud empire arose, intoxicated with material and military -greatness, and we all know how the barbarians, our forefathers, -overthrew the mighty empire of the Caesars. - -We, their descendants, flatter ourselves that because we wield the -sceptre of civilization and science, we do so in virtue of some inherent -race-qualities, and that our candlestick can never be moved, whatever -may have happened to the rushlights of antiquity. But if we have been -in the vanguard of civilization and science since many centuries, it is -merely because we were Christendom. To-day Protestantism has devoured, -one by one, all the vital truths of Christianity, till it is strictly -true to say of many so-called Christian peoples and individuals, "Thou -hast a name"--for Christian beliefs with their practical sides have been -almost eliminated. - -When the apostasy of the governments of Christian peoples shall have -been consummated, when unlimited divorce, which is successive polygamy, -shall be generalized; when monogamy shall vanish from our codes, which -forms, with freedom from slavery, the line of demarcation between -Western and Eastern civilization--then indeed shall we be ready for the -burning. - -The modern barbarians are at our gates, nay, in our midst. Godless -education and the peculiar political methods of unscrupulous, educated -proletariat are rapidly preparing what may be termed government by -anarchy. - -Yesterday I spent a few hours at Nice, and was waiting for a tramway to -return home, when a youth of about fifteen, with a candid, ingenuous -countenance, waved his newspapers just out with the cry: "Voila la lutte -sociale. Buy _La lutte sociale_." I took the extended copy, asking the -youth if he believed in the _lutte sociale_. - -"Oh yes, of course I do," he replied with a most convinced air. - -"What is this _lutte sociale_?" I inquired. This he "did not know." - -Glancing through the leading article, I read a virulent denunciation of -the clergy, and a most contemptuous diatribe against the masses, _a la -Voltaire_. "They [the masses] are formed of vicious, ignorant, covetous -individuals.... What writers call 'the soul' of the multitude is in -general nothing but an immense horrible cry of wild beasts, an -accumulation of the lowest instincts of the human brute ... they do not -reason, they howl and they strike." - -It is these masses that unscrupulous politicians and secret societies -are preparing to hurl against organized society as in 1789, after having -destroyed in them from infancy all reverence for God or man: _Ni Dieu ni -maitre_--neither God nor master. - -In self-defence, society will be compelled to restore Christianity, or -slavery--or perish. - - - - -UNAUTHORIZED CONGREGATIONS - - -_25th April, 1902._ - -I hesitate to write anything more on religious conditions at the present -time, because I shall have to repeat what I have written in these -columns since two years. My worst previsions have been realized. The -Budget of Cults which I had hoped would be thrown as another sop to -Cerberus, has been voted by a compact Ministerial majority. - -If the clergy of France, with the Holy See, do not themselves reject all -connexion with a distinctly pagan government, and hold their own as the -Church did in the first three centuries, I fear this fair land may -revive the experiences of the Byzantine or Bas Empire, as it is aptly -called, for there is a distinct determination to enslave or to destroy -the Church. - -The French are an optimistic people. From year to year they keep -repeating that matters will soon improve, that the next elections will -make everything right and restore liberty. - -France's great misfortune is, I repeat, that respectable people will -not, as a rule, touch politics, or soon give them up in disgust, while -denaturalized Frenchmen and naturalized foreigners do nothing else for a -living. - -In 418 the Emperor Honorius wished to establish a representative -government in Southern Gaul. "But," writes Guizot, "no one would send -representatives, no one would go to Arles." This same state of mind is -working the ruin of France to-day. - -On March 17th, 1900, I wrote: "Thus the bad element captures the votes -of the labouring masses by the circulation of vile newspapers and -brilliant promises of the Social Utopia that is coming. Consequently -both Houses are packed with this element, whose war cry is _Vive la -Sociale_, and whose emblem is the red flag of anarchy which was waved -under the very nose of President Loubet at a recent Republican fete. -With a parliament and a ministry like this any legislation is possible. -If other means fail, all the Congregations engaged in teaching will be -suppressed.... But Waldeck Rousseau is no fool," I added. "He and his -Freemason employers know that there are some thirty odd millions of -French Catholics.... The Government cannot afford to rouse them from -their political lethargy by violent measures.... Religious liberty must -be destroyed by degrees." - -Two years have elapsed since the notorious Associations or Trouillot -Bill has been passed; and the law Falloux (1850), which guarantees -liberty of teaching, may already be considered as abrogated in favour of -a state monopoly of education. - -Never since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), strongly -reproved by Pope Innocent, has so great a blow been dealt at liberty of -conscience and the rights of free citizens. The pendulum of progress has -been set back at least two hundred years; nay, we witness an odious -reversion to Lacedaemonian state tyranny. And this crime against liberty, -this liberticide, is committed in the twentieth century, amid the -plaudits of all sectarian haters of the Catholic Church, and in a -country which unceasingly flaunts its catchwords of "Liberty, Equality, -Fraternity." - -The general elections of May, 1902, will not, I fear, modify the -situation. I doubt, indeed, if any efforts, however earnest and -well-concerted, could now retrieve the political situation. - -Waldeck Rousseau, whose wily effrontery is something more than human, -knows this, and begins to throw off his mask of Liberalism. - -His recent political speech in the mining centres near Lyons was bold -enough, judging by a stenographic report, for the _Officiel_ and _Havas_ -toned it down somewhat. - -He gave it to be understood that only those congregations who relieved -the State in caring for the maimed, the halt, the blind, and the insane -were to be tolerated. In other words, the souls of her children are to -become the prey of a pagan State, but their diseased bodies are to be -left to the care of the Church! - -Eight Jesuits are being prosecuted for preaching Advent sermons, though -they have closed their establishments and dispersed. The proper course, -apparently, would be to arraign the bishops and cures who had invited -these Jesuits to occupy their pulpits. Waldeck Rousseau is too wily for -that. His policy is to make a fine distinction between the secular and -regular clergy--to divide and conquer. - -Three other Jesuits, who profess theology at the Institut Catholique, -obtained from Rome dispensation of their vows, in order to be able to -retain their chairs at the Institut. They, too, are being prosecuted for -alleged violation of the Associations Bill. - -I think the situation is clear, and that if any Catholics here or -elsewhere still misapprehend the true purport and scope of this law of -1901, their purblindness is no longer admissible. - - - - -A COMBES COUP _DE MAIN_ - - -_23rd August, 1902._ - -The elections of May, 1902, have not improved the situation in France. -No efforts, as I said, however earnest, could now retrieve the political -situation. For twenty-five years the "Grand Orient" has been gathering -into its hands all the threads of power; ministers, presidents, cabinets -are made, unmade, remade, as it suits the well-conceived plans of this -band of sectarian Jacobins, who differ from other Freemasons in that -with them God is both non-existent and _l'ennemi_ to be vanquished, -while at the same time they are strictly a political organization, whose -object is to control the country and conform it to their own image. - -The Associations Bill, or to speak more accurately, the law against all -Christian education, was decreed by the lodges in 1877. An abortive -attempt was made to carry it through in 1880. That attempt was -premature, because the "Grand Orient" had not yet gained complete -control over the judiciary. To-day very nearly every part of the -administration is in their power. - -People wondered why Waldeck Rousseau resigned immediately after the -elections, which seemed a tribute to the success of his administration. -The reason of this shuffling of the cards is evident. It had been -resolved, as soon as the elections were assured, to make a _coup de -main_, and close, summarily, 3000 primary schools, frequented by -hundreds of thousands of children of the poorer classes, and this a few -weeks before the holidays, without the slightest regard to the fact that -state lay schools were already inadequate, while in many places there -were none but congregational schools. - -Now Waldeck Rousseau, speaking for the Government, had most formally -declared that these schools were in no wise affected by the law of 1901 -(Associations Bill), and continued to be regulated by the law of 1885 on -primary education. It was by making this solemn declaration that Waldeck -Rousseau obtained votes enough to carry Art. XIII of the Associations -Bill, which is now being flagrantly violated by the closing of these -3000 primary schools. - -Many of these schools were conducted by a few Sisters in buildings owned -by private individuals, and the sealing up of these premises was a -distinct violation of property rights. In one instance, the proprietor -resorted to the use of a ladder to go in and out of his house; in -another the local tribunal removed the seals and restored the house to -the owner; but the Government had the premises sealed again. I cannot -say who had the last word, but it is certain that there is open -conflict between the judiciary and the executive. The tribunals have not -yet been sufficiently _epures_, nor the magistrates sufficiently -_domestiques_. It is consoling to think that there are still a few -magistrates in France who have not "bowed the kneel to Baal, nor kissed -his image." - -But a complete _epuration_ of the army and of the judiciary is going on. -All the "suspects" are being displaced, from the humblest _garde -champetre_ to the highest prefect and magistrate. It will then be smooth -sailing for the coalition in power. - -The _coup de main_ against the primary schools having been resolved -upon, it is easy to understand how desirable it was that Waldeck -Rousseau should not be on the Ministerial bench to undergo -interpellations and eat his own words. A quondam Seminarist was put in -his place, and bore the brunt of the interpellations. He contented -himself with saying that "M. Waldeck Rousseau had made a -mistake"--_voila tout!_ The Left meanwhile came to his assistance by -banging their desks and vociferating against the deputies of the Right -and Centre. A free fight was taking place in the hemicycle, when M. -Combes produced the decree, closing the session, and so ended this -disgraceful scene at two o'clock in the morning. - -Of course it is pretended by Ministerialists that all these primary -schools of the poor were closed in virtue of Art. XIII of the law of -1901. This is absolutely false. Jules Laroche, a Liberal who cannot -even be suspected of "clericalism," in his public letter, announcing to -M. Combes an interpellation, expressed himself as follows, quoting M. -Waldeck Rousseau's own words, consigned in the _Officiel_ of March 19th, -1901:-- - -"As to the right to open private schools, the Chamber knows that this is -regulated by a special law; a simple declaration is enough, the school -is then under the State Inspector. Art. XIII [Associations Bill] has -absolutely nothing to do with the legislation on education, and the new -law does not touch it at all." - -"Thus spoke Waldeck Rousseau," continues M. Laroche. "It was on this -formal, categoric, and solemn declaration that we voted Art. XIII. You, -M. le President [Combes], are not applying Art. XIII. You are violating -it, you are transforming the law of 1901 into a trap, and the loyal and -categorical declaration of M. Waldeck Rousseau into the act of a -traitor" (_en oeuvre de trahison_). - -This is enough for any one who cares to know the truth. It is thus that -the French people are fooled and led on, step by step, to their -destruction. - -Nevertheless, many admirers of these sectarian persecutors prefer to -believe that all these primary schools and infant asylums were closed -because they refused to comply with the Associations Bill! Many of these -teachers belonged to amply authorized Congregations. Those of Savoy and -the county of Nice had letters patent from the King of Savoy and -Piedmont, and the treaty of annexation to France, 1860, distinctly -stipulated that the religious congregations and ecclesiastical -properties should never be molested; it was one of the conditions on -which the inhabitants consented to be annexed. Of all this the Third -Republic makes litter. - -The amusing part of M. Combes' _coup de main_ is that his minions even -went around expelling small groups of three to five sisters employed by -the Government in the infirmaries of State Lyceums! In these instances, -however, they neglected to seal up the premises, as they did in the case -of private owners--a fine Jacobin distinction between _mine_ and -_thine_. - -The Socialist Mayor of Reims recently took upon himself to laicize the -civil hospital, which, strange to say, had been served uninterruptedly -for two hundred years by a congregation called "Soeurs de l'hopital," -whom even the Revolutionists of 1793 had spared. - -Ministerial organs like the _Matin_ are now busy assuring the public -that the sick, the blind, the insane, are not all to be cast into the -streets like the children of the poor, until the Government finds time -and money to build schools for them. - -If the Congregations devoted to the sick, the maimed, and the blind -could make common cause with the teaching Congregations, if all refused -to demand authorization, which is merely a trap and a noose, the -Government, I think, would be checkmated. But, of course, Christian -charity will not allow them all to go on strike and throw their poor and -sick and halt upon the hands of the Government. It will be their turn -soon, and meanwhile they are holding the clothes of those who stone -Stephen. No concessions, no pliancy on the part of the persecuted, will -disarm or arrest the Government--the "Grand Orient," I mean. - -The final purpose of these Freemasons is to crush out Christianity by -means of anti-religious education of all classes, and have, if possible, -a national, Republican institution, to be known as the Church of France. -It is said that M. Combes is preparing a formula of the oath to be taken -by the clergy of this institution; it is a revival of the Civil -Constitution of the Clergy of 1793, and we may also look for a renewal -of the persecution of the _non-assermentes_ or non-jurors of that epoch. - -Decidedly these modern Jacobins have no imagination; all their -proceedings have a twang of ancient history. Read in Taine's _Ancien -Regime_, "_La conquete Jacobine_," and it will seem like current -history. You will read how prefects and maires and gens d'armes often -knocked in the dead of night at the doors of peaceful sisters and -ordered them to disperse. At Avignon, recently, the police had to -barricade the streets to prevent thousands of indignant men and women -from manifesting before the Prefecture. Lyons is preparing to resist. -The speech pronounced by the Socialist mayor, M. Augagneur, at the -political banquet on 14th July, would certainly warrant retaliation. - -After the usual stereotyped glorification of that disgraceful -performance known as _La Prise de la Bastille_, M. Augagneur said: "The -new Bastille we must take to-day is that power, far more dangerous, of -the spirit of the past incarnated in the Church, acting by its priests, -its preachers, its monks, its professors, by all its lay accomplices. It -is this Bastille we must destroy, if we do not wish to see wasted the -immense efforts of 113 years ... thus, gentlemen, I invite you to drink -to the success of the campaign being waged by the Government." This is -clear speaking. "No greater misfortune can befall a nation," wrote -Lecky, "than to cut itself away from its own past as France has done." -It is this misfortune that these blinded sectarians are seeking to -consummate in hatred of the Catholic Faith, which is so bound up with -the fibres of the nation that they can only be torn out with the last -palpitating remnants of national life. - - - - -LEGALIZED DESPOTISM - - -_15th February, 1903._ - -A curious feature in the case of the doomed Congregations in France is -that more than nine hundred awards were made to them for educational -work during the Paris Exhibition of 1900. Leroy Beaulieu, who presided -over this international jury, has written several articles, and a most -scathing letter to M. Combes, on the subject of his malicious official -calumnies. He, Brunetiere, Paul Bourget, and many other distinguished -Frenchmen have countersigned a Defence, presented by the Salesian -Fathers, in which not less than thirty-four misstatements made by M. -Combes are rectified. In general, it may said that all these official -statements are as unreliable as those made by the Commissioners of Henry -VIII. The Chambers were supposed by the law of 1901 to decide what -Congregations were to be granted authorization. They really were allowed -no voice in the matter. M. Combes presented only the names of four or -five, Les freres de St. Jean de Dieu and some others, who are to be -spared for the present. The remaining sixty-four were condemned without -a hearing. - -Parents of the richer classes will soon be compelled, like the poor, to -send their children to government schools, keep them at home, or send -them to foreign lands to be educated. - -The true character of the Jacobin policy is becoming every day more -apparent. - -The social body, like our own, has its periods of adolescence and -senility, its maladies and critical periods, while the axiom that -nations have the government they deserve is attested by the fact that -governments correspond to the national pathology. - -The individuals too who dominate in turbulent times are like straws on -an impetuous stream. They merely serve to show the direction of the -current and its force. - -Danton and Robespierre did not make the Revolution. It made them. A -popular fallacy exists that the Revolution ended with the fall of -Robespierre, or at any rate when Napoleon planted his artillery before -the doors of the National Assembly. It is not over yet, and the men in -power to-day are but straws on the surface. - -The French Revolution was an avatar of the revolution of the sixteenth -century, or rather one of the periodical renaissances or revolts of -Paganism against Christianity. No doubt many economical causes were at -work in 1789 and there was an urgent need for readjustment. - -The _corveable_, or what we call to-day the taxpayer, then as now, -groaned and repined against the excessive burdens laid upon him. -Proportion guarded, it is even true to say to-day that all tradesmen, -agriculturists, and shopkeepers, all _except_ the _vendors of alcohol_, -are as much crushed by taxes now as the _corveables_ were in 1789. - -The moving spirit, the genius and soul of the Revolution were the -Jacobin Clubs. There were organized the Civil Constitution of the -Clergy, theo-philanthropy, the worship of the prostitute as Goddess of -Reason, the _noyades_ and the _fusillades_ which made France a vast -charnel-house. - -To-day the Jacobin Clubs have changed their signboards, they are now -Lodges of the Grand Orient. But the spirit is unchanged. The ideal is -always the same--the destruction of all revealed religion, and with it -the noblest fruit of Christianity, Liberty. - -The Jacobin mind, served by organs of political administration, is to -constitute the Omnipotent and Infallible State, the golden image before -which all must bow down and worship and sacrifice--for is not sacrifice -the soul of worship? They must sacrifice all preconceived, congenital, -and inherited notions of honour, morality, and religion, and acquiesce -humbly in those edicted by the Omnipotent Infallible State; for _de -facto_ infallibility is always a concomitant of supremacy. A necessary -corollary of moral unity, established by an omnipotent State, is an -evening up of social and financial conditions. No man may possess more -learning, more wealth, or more prestige than his neighbour. Thus after -having preluded by the assault on personal liberty, depriving thousands -of men and women of the right to live in communities, the Jacobin -Omnipotent State is itself to constitute one vast Congregation in which -all, _nolens volens_, must live and practise _Poverty_ by submitting to -fiscal confiscations for the laudable purpose of equalizing fortunes, -_Chastity_ or unchastity according to new Government formulae regarding -divorce and free love, etc., with a view to procreation under -governmental supervision, and above all _Obedience perinde ut -cadaver_--Obedience to the Omnipotent Infallible State, henceforth the -only regulator of their own and their children's morality. - -Since twenty-five years every law, every constitutional and electoral -manipulation, has been elaborated at the lodges. To-day sixteen -Commissions composed of their most trusted members are masticating the -execution of the Associations Bill, or rather the wholesale executions -of this _guillotine seche_ which are imminent. No congregation of men -engaged in preaching or teaching is to be tolerated, or its members -allowed to exercise these functions even individually. The same rule -will be applied to the congregations of women. Those engaged in primary -schools have nearly all been dispersed by decree, and in violation of -the law, as I have shown. The suppression of those who teach the -children of the rich is only a question of a short lapse of time. - -The rulings of these Commissions will be presented to the Chambers, and -the "bloc" will vote as one man. It is an admirable means of eliminating -all useless discussion on the part of the opposition minority, which -every day grows lesser, and still more less, and will soon reach the -vanishing point. Thus after being governed by decrees and ministerial -circulars, France will be governed by Commissions as under the -Constituante, and the ideal of the Omnipotent State, universal teacher, -preacher, and general purveyor, may be realized ere long. Surely a -strange outcome of a century of Liberalism! - -From whatever point of view we consider the suppression of all religious -Congregations and of educational liberty, we must admit that a grave -violation of personal and civil liberty has been committed and will soon -be consummated. - -The Moslems for a long time levied on the Spaniards and the Venetians a -tax of so many boys and girls a year, but no Government of a free people -has yet called on all parents to stand and deliver, not their purse, but -the souls of their children, that it may sow therein the tares of a -hideous state materialism. The right free citizens have to follow their -inclination and conscience by living in community and practising the -counsels of evangelical perfection to which they feel called is a most -sacred part of personal liberty. - -"Liberalism," writes Taine, "is the respect of others. If the State -exists, it is to prevent all intrusion into the private life, the -beliefs, the conscience, the property of the individual. When the State -does this, it is the greatest of benefactors. When it commits these -intrusions itself, it is the greatest of malefactors." - -Curiously similar was the judgment of an old Spanish peasant with whom -Montalembert conversed during his travels in Spain after one of its -nineteenth-century anti-clerical revolutions and the usual -accompaniment, the suppression of religious Congregations. Pointing with -her bare and scraggy arm to some deserted monastery buildings, she -pronounced these two eloquent words, "_Suma tyrania_," acme of tyranny! - - - - -DESPOTISM PLUS GUILE - - -_6th June, 1903._ - -The true character and scope of the Associations Bill can no longer be -dissimulated. It should have been labelled "An Act for the suppression -of religious congregations and Christian education preparatory to the -suppression of Catholicism in France." - -Nor is this all. It looks as if this Trouillot or Associations Bill, -with its numerous articles, was merely a vulgar trap set by the -Government to extract from the doomed unauthorized Congregations -accurate information regarding their property and members, in order to -seize the former and see to it that the latter are for ever debarred -from teaching. These inventories were a necessary part of all demands -for authorization, without which no Congregation could henceforth exist. -I say "seize," for every one knows that "liquidation" means purely and -simply spoliation and confiscation. - -I have in previous articles dwelt on the bad faith of the Combes -ministry in closing by simple decree some three thousand free parochial -schools, in spite of the solemn assurance given by M. Waldeck Rousseau, -on behalf of the State, that these schools were in no wise affected by -the new law of 1901 (Associations Bill). At the last session of the -Chambers a more monstrous illegality was committed. - -"Both the letter and the spirit of the law of 1901 were violated." These -are the words pronounced at Bordeaux recently by M. Decrais, an -ex-minister, who was thereupon elected senator by an imposing majority. - -The law distinctly provided that the demand for authorization of each -religious order be submitted to the vote of the Chambers, but M. Combes -just bunched them all into three categories--preaching, teaching, -contemplative--and they were sent to execution by cartloads, like the -victims of 1793. - -In vain the Right protested against the illegality of this proceeding. -"What do we care for legality? We have the majority," were some of the -cynical utterances of the Left, who banged their desks, stamped their -feet, and vociferated to drown the voices of speakers of the Right. -Worst of all, M. Combes produced, and used with much effect, a document -purporting to bear the signature of many Superiors of Congregations, -urging all to sell out their government bonds. - -In vain the Right demanded that the authenticity of this document be -proven before taking the final vote. This act of M. Combes speaks for -itself. - -The wholesale suppression of all preaching and teaching orders is, -moreover, a distinct violation of Art. I of the Concordat, which is an -organic law of the French State. This article provides, "that the -Catholic religion shall be freely exercised in France." - -The allegation that this Concordat does not mention religious -Congregations is a mere quibble. - -"No church," declares Guizot, "is free that may not develop according to -its genius and history," and every one knows that preaching and teaching -Congregations have always formed an integral part of the Catholic -Church, her most important organs of expansion in fact. - -This wholesale suppression of preaching and teaching Congregations is a -violation not only of the law of 1901 and of the Concordat, but also of -the law Falloux, 1850, which entitles all persons duly qualified to -teach and open schools. It was then that the great preacher and teacher, -the Dominican Lacordaire, speaking in the Chambers as deputy, pointed to -his white robe, exclaiming, "I am a liberty." - -The Charter of 1830 (under the _Monarchie de Juillet_, as the reign of -Louis Philippe of Orleans was called) conferred this liberty, in theory; -but it remained ineffective until the law Falloux finally abolished the -state monopoly of education, which Napoleon had centred in the -University of Paris. - -But the Third Republic brushes aside Art. I of the Concordat, the loi -Falloux, 1850, the scholar laws of 1885, and its own new-fledged law of -1901, all with the utmost unconcern. - -"What do we care for liberty," as the Left cynically exclaimed. Quite as -little as they care for the wishes of the whole country, expressed by -innumerable petitions, and the votes of 1500 Municipal Councils of -Communes, whom the Government condescended to consult. One thousand and -seventy-five of these voted for the Congregations; about four hundred -voted against them; the others abstained. The attitude of the people in -every place where Congregations were dispersed, with the aid of the -regular army and the police, leaves not the slightest doubt that if a -referendum had been taken as in Switzerland, more than two-thirds of the -nation would have voted for Liberty and the Congregations. - -With the astute hypocrisy that characterizes him, Waldeck Rousseau -professed intense devotion to the secular clergy and declared that the -law of 1901 (Associations Bill) was devised to protect them from the -encroachments of the regular clergy or monks. He thought to divide and -conquer. Now that seventy-two bishops have sent a combined petition to -Parliament on behalf of the Congregations, and the whole secular clergy -have openly identified their cause with that of the Congregations, this -ministerial fiction can no longer be upheld. - -The Left or "bloc" are clamouring already for the suppression of the -secular or parochial clergy, who they say "are all in connivance with -the Congreganists." - -M. Combes has sent a circular to the bishops requiring that all churches -and chapels _non concordataires_ be closed, and threatening to close -even the parish churches which existed already in 1808, if any member of -a dispersed Congregation preached in it. - -Only four bishops, I am happy to say, "had the courage to submit," to -use the words of a ministerial organ. - -The language in which the French prelates have expressed their _non -possumus_ is worthy of the best traditions of the Church, and when these -sectarian persecutors shall have completely thrown off the mask, another -glorious page will be added to her history, I trust. - -Jealous, no doubt, of M. Trouillot's laurels, M. de Pressense, son of a -Protestant pastor, and some others have attached their names to projects -of law for what is mendaciously and hypocritically called "the -Separation of Church and State," meaning a law for the complete -shackling of the Church in France in view to its suppression. - -I think it is very desirable that the lodges should do their worst here -and now. But it is just possible that Waldeck Rousseau may return and a -halt be called. - -M. Combes and _his employers_ the "Grand Orient" must see that they -have gone a little too far. Civil war on a small scale has been raging -on many points of France for two or three weeks; and they would be -running blood if French Catholics carried concealed weapons as people do -in South Carolina and Kentucky. As it is, there have only been -innumerable broken limbs and heads and no end of arrests. M. de Dion, a -deputy wearing his insignia of office, which offered him no immunity, -appeared handcuffed before the police court, and was there and then -condemned to three days' imprisonment for "manifesting." A young lady of -twenty was condemned to eight days' imprisonment for having cried -"Capon" to a justice of the peace, who beat a hasty retreat when he -found himself confronted by a few hundred men in the hall of a convent -into which he had forced an entrance with the aid of state locksmiths, -or _crocheteurs_. Here on my boulevard, Cimiez Nice, two squadrons of -cavalry and numerous infantry were called out to aid the police at 4 -a.m. in beating back the crowds who were "manifesting" against the -expulsion of the Franciscans. At Marseilles, Avignon, etc., the main -streets had to be barricaded, and cavalry charged the crowds, wounding -great numbers. Of course all these grand manifestations of popular -indignation are carefully belittled or suppressed by foreign -correspondents of English and American papers. In the _Evening Post_, -August 25th, M. Othon Guerlac, with lofty affectation of impartiality, -echoes all the commonplaces of ministerial calumnies against the -Congregations, but he has not one word to say about the monstrous -illegalities committed by the Government from first to last. - -The indignant protestations of the foreign colony have suspended for a -time the closing of churches and convents on this Riviera. - -The Ministerials have not even the courage to do evil logically and -consistently, with equal injustice to all. - -Two years ago Waldeck Rousseau, in his famous political speech at -Toulouse, declared religious vows to be contrary to public law; and in -the same breath he introduced the law of 1901, inviting all -Congregations to apply for authorization. His colleague, M. Brisson, at -the session in which fifty-four Congregations of men were executed _in -globo_, loftily declared "that the Republic would never put its -signature to an act alienating human liberty." And at that very moment, -three or four of these Congregations were nestling, securely, under the -protecting wing of M. Combes. That of St. Jean de Dieu has a first-rate -establishment for men in need of surgical treatment, similar to the one -conducted by Augustine nuns, at which Madame Waldeck Rousseau was -operated on recently. None of these will be interfered with, no matter -how heinous their vows may be. - -It would be foolish, I repeat, for Catholics to rejoice at the possible -return of Waldeck Rousseau, or at any _machine en arriere_ policy. - -M. Combes has been hired to do an odious job, when it is done he, too, -will retire or fall. But the well-matured plans of the Grand Orient will -be carried out with long-drawn, unrelenting, satanic astuteness. This is -the peril I noted in my first article from France, March 17th, 1900. - - - - -UNCHANGING JACOBINISM - - -_6th May, 1903._ - -Last August I described the true spirit and scope of the Associations -Bill, as it is called, and which many supposed was a mere matter of -domestic economy. It should have been called an act for the suppression -of all religious associations preparatory to the elimination of -Christianity in France. _L'ennemi c'est Dieu._ It is evident to-day that -the law of 1901 was a mere trap set by the Government to obtain from the -Congregations accurate information regarding their pecuniary resources, -in order to seize their property (for the term "liquidation" is only an -euphemism); and regarding their members, so that they may be marked men -and women, for ever debarred from preaching or teaching. The law -required that demands for authorization of each religious order or -association be submitted to the Chambers. M. Combes just bunched them -all into three categories: preaching, teaching, and contemplative. At -the request of the Government, the majority or "bloc" then sent them to -execution by cartloads, as in 1793. Then the categories were labelled -royalists, _emigres_, and Catholic priests. - -It is much to the credit of these fifty-four Congregations of men that -their lives were so free from reproach that _three_ times the Government -had recourse to the same incident of a certain Superior, said to have -been condemned to hard labour in the year 1868! As another instance, the -case of the Frere Duvain was alleged. Like the Frere Flamidien, the -former had been recently arrested and imprisoned on false charges. For -since then, only a week or so ago, Frere Duvain too was acquitted as -wholly innocent! - -These wholesale executions have been committed not only illegally, but -in spite of the fact that out of 1600 municipal councils consulted on -the subject, 1200 voted for the maintenance of the Congregations. About -100 abstained, and the others voted against. The prefects, being mere -satraps of the Government, were nearly all opposed to the Congregations. - -The Government has been profuse in its protestations that its object in -suppressing the religious Congregations was to protect the secular -clergy against their encroachments. But since seventy-two bishops signed -a petition to the Chambers on behalf of the Congregations, and are daily -raising their voices to denounce the tyranny which has ostracized them, -this mask also falls. The right to preach and to teach are corollaries -of the right of free speech and free thinking. All liberties, indeed, -are inseparably connected, and must stand or fall together. - -Meanwhile the loi Falloux, 1850, is still extant; nevertheless -thousands of citizens are placed _hors la loi_, because they live and -dress in a certain way. - -The Concordat, a solemn pact and contract between the Holy See and the -French Government in 1801, is still supposed to be in vigour, and one of -its most important clauses provides for the "free exercise of the -Catholic religion in France," and Guizot affirms that no Church is free -that may not develop and function according to its genius and -traditions. Teaching and preaching religious associations have, from the -beginning, formed an integral part of the Catholic Church. The -suppression of her schools was one of the first means resorted to by -Julian the Apostate when he undertook to restore paganism. The Third -Republic invents nothing. Its next step will be to attack the secular -clergy and establish a department of State known as the National Church, -ministered to by servile state functionaries, recruited among apostate -excommunicated priests, of whom there are always a few lying around. It -is erroneously supposed that the Catholic Church in France is an -established or state Church; that the clergy receive a salary and are -functionaries. This is absolutely false. Two decisions of the Court of -Cassation have decided that they are not functionaries. - -To understand their position we must recall that the Convention -confiscated all Church property and lands, the pious donations of kings -and people which had accumulated during fifteen centuries of national -progress and prosperity. Not satisfied with this act of spoliation, they -threw these lands on the market with the precipitation and greed that -characterize all revolutionary iconoclasts, fondly believing that the -whole nation had sloughed off Christian superstitions regarding _ipso -facto_ excommunications of all, who seized or even acquired Church -lands. They were mistaken. These holdings became a drug on the market. -From common prudence and honesty, if not from higher motives, few could -be found willing to traffic in the pious gifts and foundations of their -ancestors. Ten years of massacres, of civil and foreign wars, and -anarchy, did not improve matters. Two classes of landed proprietors, two -standards of valuation were created, and civil and religious discord was -perpetuated in this material form. When Napoleon undertook the work of -reconstruction, his first care was to restore normal conditions in the -real estate market by obtaining a clear title to the confiscated lands -of the Church. There was but one person who could give this clear title. -To him Napoleon appealed, and the Concordat was signed. - -Pius VII could not, however, relinquish all claims to the confiscated -lands without compensation. Hence the engagement entered into by the -French Government to pay in perpetuity adequate subsidies for the -maintenance of an adequate number of bishops and parochial clergy. This -was the consideration [the _do ut des_] for which the Pope, as supreme -chief of the Catholic Church, gave a clear title to the confiscated -lands. The payment of these subsidies became henceforth a charge on the -public treasury, a portion of the national debt, just like the payment -of interest on state bonds. - -The suppression, at the present moment, of these subsidies in the case -of the Bishop of Nice and many other bishops and hundreds of parish -priests is a partial repudiation of this part of the public debt. And -there is nothing to prevent the repudiation of the whole. "What do we -care for legality?" "We have the majority," were utterances which passed -unrebuked in the Chambers recently. They can imprison and kill the Roman -Catholic clergy. The First Republic did both most freely. So did Nero -and Bismarck. It also tried the experiment of a national schismatic -Church and failed. The Third Republic openly proclaims its intention of -renewing the experiment in which Abbe Gregoire, with _carte blanche_ -from the Republic, so signally failed a hundred years ago. - -To understand the abnormal conditions prevailing in France, we must -remember that France is in revolution since a century or more. The -Revolution of 1793 was essentially a religious movement, born of the -monstrous alliance of the French ruling classes with the spirit of -libertinage and infidelity. It destroyed the monarchy and all the -institutions of the ancient regime, merely because they were associated -with the Catholic Church, whose destruction was their main object--a -means to an end. The final purpose was the destruction of Christianity -and its noblest fruit, liberty. The ideal, then as now, is the -omnipotent State, sole purveyor, teacher, and preacher. This may seem -exaggerated, but it is strictly the spirit and the tendency of the -Revolution since 1789. Napoleon was the offspring and the incarnation of -the Revolution. After Austerlitz, he threw off the mask, and clearly -showed his intention of establishing state despotism on the ruins of all -civil and religious liberty. There was but one will in Europe that -resisted him. Alone of all the sovereigns of Europe, the aged, -defenceless Sovereign Pontiff refused to enter into his continental -_blocus_ against England, declaring that all Christians were his -children, and we know the story of his long martyrdom at Fontainebleau. -Capefigue, in the third of his ten volumes on the Consulate and the -Empire, comments on the singular fact that the First Republic always -bitterly antagonized the United States, and he explains this "singular -phenomenon" by the reason that the former was a government of tyranny -and anarchy, whereas the Republic of Washington was one of law and -liberty. - -What was true then is equally so to-day. The United States owe their -independence to his most Christian Majesty, the murdered Louis XVI, and -not to any pagan French Republic. Louisiana was ceded by the Emperor -Napoleon, and not by any French Republic, first, second, or third. There -can be no sympathy between the two republics other than that of -sectarian sympathy with persecutors of the Catholic Church. I speak of -the Government, not of the French people, whose genius and high -qualities we must always admire. - -Methods have greatly altered in all departments, but the generating -principle, the inner mind of Jacobinism, is unchanged. We hear no more -about the worship of the Goddess of Reason and theo-philanthropy. -Jacobin clubs have changed their signboards; they are now called Lodges -of the "Grand Orient," but they rule France with an iron hand by means -of the Socialist vote. When the day of reckoning comes with the -Socialist masses, who are now being used as cats' paws, the Revolution -will again enter into one of its acute phases. Millerand and Jaures are -merely politicians who fall into line with the Government quite -gracefully. But, as Lincoln said, you cannot fool all the people all the -time. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church will reap the benefits of -persecution. The Congregations will carry on their work elsewhere, and -she will more than recuperate her losses on this little point of earth -called France. Unhappy country that is committing "national suicide," to -use the expression of Leroy Beaulieu. - - - - -DEATH OF WALDECK ROUSSEAU - - -_August, 1904._ - -I refer my readers to what I wrote on May 4th, 1901, regarding the -advent of the Waldeck Rousseau Cabinet, and its policy after the sudden -and suspicious death of M. Felix Faure, rapidly replaced by M. Loubet. I -then related how Socialist revolutionists were skilfully used to obtain -a majority with which both Houses were packed to carry through the -odious legislation of the last few years. - -The laws of 1901 (Associations Bill), and of July 7th, 1904, suppressing -all teaching religious orders, are measures which represent the closing -of some twenty-seven thousand Christian schools! - -Two days after the law was voted some 3000 _authorized_ institutions -were ordered to close their doors, and almost immediately was -inaugurated the long series of _liquidations_, a genteel euphemism for -wholesale spoliation of the victims, deprived of their homes, and of -their only means of earning a living, as they may no longer teach. - -There is nothing more tragically pathetic than the last appearance in -the Senate of M. Wallon. This veteran republican, called the "Father of -the Constitution," and now a hoary octogenarian, raised his quavering -voice in one last eloquent denunciation of the laws of 1901, 1902, and -1904. Condemning the shameless violation of property rights, he boldly -applied to the Government the Article of the Code which debars the -assassin of the testator from inheriting his property. "Messieurs," he -cried, "on n'herite pas de ceux qu'on a assassines." "Gentlemen, it is -not permitted to inherit from those we have destroyed." - -Equally tragical was the last appearance in the Senate of M. Waldeck -Rousseau, so near his last hour. - -He had risen from his bed of sickness to unburden his conscience by -protesting against the anti-clerical fury of his ci-devant supporters -and instruments. In vain he denounced the violations of his law of 1901, -travestied by that of 1904 suppressing even authorized Congregations. -The verve of the great tribune had abandoned him. His speech was but a -hollow echo of its former eloquence. Twice he reeled and was forced to -steady himself by clinging to the railing. When he rose for the second -time, to reply to the sarcasms of M. Combes, he suddenly lost the thread -of his discourse, and before he had ended, many benches were vacated; -the forum, where his words had so often been greeted with wild applause, -was almost empty. - -"He threw down the thirty pieces of silver, saying, I have sinned. And -they said, What is that to us? See thou to it. And he went forth." - -It is needless to inquire whether the story of attempted suicide be true -or not; to-day he is no more. The last two years of his life were a long -agony, of which the last two hours were passed on the operating table. -While he was dying under the surgeon's knife the minions of his -successor, M. Combes, were invading a convent of Notre Dame Sisters. -They even insisted on going into the infirmary to inventory beds and -blankets. A sick nun was so shaken by the emotion caused by this -unwonted intrusion, that she had a seizure and died before the minions -of the law had left the convent. - -And thus persecutor and persecuted met on the threshold of eternity. - -This sister is only one of the many hundreds of infirm and aged who have -been literally killed by this infamous legislation of 1901 and 1904, and -only one of the thousands who are dying of hardships and privations. -Many of them are living on four sous a day. - -The Government wanted to give M. Waldeck Rousseau a national funeral, -strictly pagan and masonic of course; but he had left instructions to -the contrary, and is to be buried from his parish church, Ste. -Clothilde. Whether he received the last Sacraments of the Church or not -is still a matter of conjecture. The death of Waldeck Rousseau will not -in any way affect the trend of politics. The recent municipal elections -are proclaimed a victory for the Government. As usual not one-third of -those inscribed voted. _A quoi bon?_ Before the law of 1901 was voted, -the immense majority of the municipalities consulted pronounced in -favour of the Congregations. This made no difference. - -Before the law of 1904 suppressing authorized Congregations was voted, -the Right demanded that the municipal councils be consulted again. The -Government peremptorily refused. As I have said before, nothing can -restrain Jacobin tyranny but a national cataclysm which would bring -about a violent reaction. "We have the majority, what do we care for -legality?" as the Left proclaimed recently at the Palais Bourbon. - -They have no other rule of conduct but the "fist right," now known as -"the majority." - - - - -LIBERTY AND STATE SERVITUDE - - -_July, 1904._ - -Modern democracy, which flatters itself that it has shaken off all the -shackles of authority, is itself but an evolution of what it so loftily -contemns. If we are free to-day, it is because our fathers have borne -the yoke of Christ. - -In one of his sonorous paradoxes, Rousseau declared that "men are born -free and everywhere they are in chains." - -That all men are born free is as false a statement as that all men are -born upright and virtuous. History and experience give the lie to both -assertions. Men are not born free. Our rights and liberties are secured -by laws which are a circumscription of the sphere of individual -independence for the benefit of the community, and this in virtue of a -divine "thou shalt not," written on the tablets of the heart, or on -tables of stone. Human laws have no sanction except in divine law, and -no man has a right to command his fellow-men, except within the limits -of natural and of divine law. - -The sum of liberty in every community is the sum of its amenity to law, -both divine and natural. Hence Plato's remark that "republics cannot -exist without virtue in the people," and Montesquieu's assertion that -"the vital principle of democratic government is virtue." All human laws -deriving their sanction from divine and natural laws, it follows that -liberty must diminish when these laws are violated with impunity. - -Plutarch, referring to the Golden Age, which, according to all writers, -even Voltaire, came first, writes that "in the days of Saturn all men -were free." Our data regarding this period are not numerous, -unfortunately; but we learn from the traditions of all peoples, as well -as by revelation, that something momentous happened, which abolished the -Golden Age. Prometheus stole fire from heaven and was chained to a rock. -Sisyphus was compelled to roll a stone uphill all his days. Adam was -condemned to labour in the sweat of his brow, etc. The myths are -various, but the central idea is always the same--a crime punished by a -penalty involving the loss of liberty. - -What the nature of the act of disobedience committed by Adam when he ate -the forbidden fruit we do not know. Probably we should not understand -even if we were told; for the magnitude of a crime is always -commensurate with the intellect of the criminal, and knowledge has -considerably diminished among the sons of men. To name anything as Adam, -or whoever is thereby designated, named all the creatures in the Garden -implies that his knowledge of them was adequate, while the great trouble -with all our up-to-date science is, that back of every phenomenon, of -every fact, stands an inexorable X, an unknown quantity that baffles -research. - -If we could wrest her secret from the Sphinx in any one instance, it is -probable that the whole book of nature would stand revealed. But the -angel with the flaming sword guards the portal. - -With the passing away of the Golden Age, or "the days of Saturn, in -which all men were free," there came a diminution of light, and above -all of liberty. What justice does in individual cases, when malefactors -are incarcerated, seems to have been accomplished on a large scale, when -the masses of a race, nay of the whole species, were reduced to slavery. -For though our data regarding the "days of Saturn when all men were -free" are scant, we do know, beyond a peradventure, that before Christ -slavery was the normal condition of the masses in every age, in every -clime; not alone among barbarous and predatory tribes, who reduced their -captives to this condition, but also among the most stable and cultured -communities--in Assyria, in Babylon, Egypt, Idumea, Rome, Greece, -everywhere. Nor was there found one sage, one legislator, to raise his -voice against an inveterate institution, which one and all deemed a -_sine qua non_ of any society, of any government. Lucanus only expressed -an universally accepted axiom when he wrote that "the human race only -existed for a few"--_Humanum paucis vivit genus._ Towards the end of the -Republic, when Rome numbered a million and a half inhabitants, there -were only some 20,000 proprietors; all the rest were slaves. - -Sages and legislators of antiquity who considered slavery a _sine qua -non_ of government were not wrong. Vast numbers of human wills cannot be -left in freedom without a restraint of some kind. "Christianity alone," -writes the Rationalist Lecky, "could affect the profound change of -character which rendered the abolition of slavery possible" (_History of -Rationalism_, II, 258). - -When Peter the Fisherman proclaimed the brotherhood of man, saying "Men, -brethren" to all alike, the Church began her perennial mission of -liberty by sanctification. Individually, men must be delivered from the -yoke of evil passions by Christianity, so that the masses might be -delivered from servitude. - -The powers of darkness, that are now waging fierce warfare on the -Christian Church, understand perfectly what the legislators of antiquity -understood and practised. Being resolved to uproot Christianity and its -moral teaching, which alone have rendered freedom and government -compatible, they are casting about for some new kind of slavery, which -apparently is to take the form of State Socialism. A coterie is to -concentrate in its hands all the power, all the wealth, all the natural -resources of the country. This coterie will be named the State; the -others, the cringing, crouching millions yclept the Sovereign People, -will have nothing left but to obey the edicts of the Omnipotent -Infallible State, only teacher, preacher, and general purveyor. _Humanum -paucis vivit genus._ - -This reversion to the pagan regime from which Christianity delivered us -will be the just penalty of apostasy from Christianity. - -If, and when, and where Christianity is crushed out, liberty both civil -and personal, which are bound up with and inseparable from it, will -disappear in exact proportion _tantum quantum_. - -We need only turn a few pages of contemporary history and read the -lessons taught by the French Revolution. The most illustrious of -nations, in the zenith of its civilization, allowed the government to -pass into the hands of a band of neo-pagans prepared by Voltaire and his -ilk. Christianity was solemnly abjured; its temples were desecrated; at -Notre Dame a prostitute, posing as the Goddess of Reason, was -worshipped; on the Champ de Mars the new religion of theo-philanthropy -was inaugurated. - -What was the immediate consequence? In the twinkling of an eye all -liberty vanished. The most sacred rights of the individual were -proscribed. Men could no longer call their lives their own under the Law -of Suspects, a time to which Camille Pelletan, _ministre de la marine_, -actually referred, yesterday, as "an hour when under the influence -necessary, but somewhat enervating, of Thermidor, the Republic was in -danger." - -Without going so far back as 1793, we have but to read the records of -the Commune in 1870, which was a phase of the Revolution that is still -marching on. One of the moving spirits of this time was Raul Ripault. M. -Clemenceau was only Mayor of Montmartre, and M. Barrere, now ambassador -at Rome, was an active member. - -To Monseigneur Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, one of the hostages taken -and shot by the Commune, Raul Ripault said, "Ta liberte n'est pas ma -liberte, aussi je te fait fusiller" ("Thy liberty is not my liberty, so -I have you shot"). - -Liberty, I repeat, is bound up with and inseparable from Christianity. -To-day, as in 1793, a coterie of atheists or neo-pagans have captured -all the avenues of power by means of godless schools and the Socialist -vote, and even by hobnobbing with the red flag of anarchy, which waved -unrebuked around M. Loubet at that famous fete called Triomphe de la -Republique. - -They have worked, steadily and intelligently, to this end since -twenty-five years, while two-thirds of the country have been absolutely -indifferent to politics. Some even affect to ignore the name of the -President. Laborious, honest Frenchmen as a rule despise politics, and -cannot be induced to take part in them or be candidates for office. One -has but to consult the electoral returns to see how many hundreds of -thousands abstain from voting. Thus the Government has passed into the -hands of the Judeo-Masonic coterie.[3] - -As in 1793, the first result is the diminution of liberty. It was long -sought to represent the Associations Bill (1901) as a mere measure of -domestic economy. It was the entering wedge of tyranny. The object to be -attained is the suppression of all Christian education, by the -suppression of all religious teachers, preparatory to a state monopoly -of education. - -The indignant protestations and the tumultuous manifestations of men and -women who fill the streets with cries of "Vive la liberte!" "Vivent les -soeurs!" are wholesome signs; but I think it is just as well that the -Jacobins should go on and do their worst. Overvaulting tyranny, like -ambition, doth overleap itself. At the Gare St. Lazare, recently, some -ten thousand people accompanied the expulsed sisters of St. Vincent to -the train with cries of "Liberty! Liberty!" The police were powerless. - -In another place the population unharnessed the horses of the omnibus -that was taking some other sisters to the station. They dragged the -conveyance back and broke down the doors of the convent which had been -sealed by the Government. - -In Paris at least 50,000 children of the poor have been thrown into the -streets; for the state schools were already inadequate, and 30,000 or -more children were waiting for a chance to comply with the law of -compulsory education.[4] In a mining town, a _creche_, or infant asylum, -where 150 babies from six months to four years of age were cared for -while their mothers worked, was closed suddenly. - -When we think of all the suffering and inconvenience caused by these -executions, we are amazed that more blood has not flowed. - -The right parents have to educate their children as they see fit, and -the right all citizens have to live as they see fit, and teach when duly -qualified, are primordial, inalienable rights that cannot be violated -without crime, and a crime which must find its repercussion in all -civilized countries. In general it may be said that every Government has -a right to administer its own affairs as it sees fit. This is precisely -what the Turks assumed when they were massacring the Bulgarians and the -Armenians. But Europe thought differently in 1877. The Jacobins of 1793, -who had conquered France then, as to-day, by cleverly combined -manoeuvres in which fear played a large part, also thought it was -nobody's business, if they saw fit to drown, proscribe, and guillotine -by tens of thousands, in order to enforce their peculiar views of -liberty. But every act of tyranny, every crime against liberty, offends -all Christendom. It cannot be circumscribed by national frontiers. Soon -all Europe was weltering in blood. The First Consul marched rough-shod -over Europe, imposing French liberty on unappreciative nations. And we -all know how the allied armies occupied Paris in 1815 and curbed the -Revolution for a season. History repeats itself. - - - - -THE FRENCH REVOLUTION - - -_27th June, 1904._ - -The Associations Bill, pre-eminently an act of oppression and religious -persecution, has been rendered doubly odious by the many illegalities by -which it has been surrounded, some of which I enumerated in my letter in -the _Evening Post_ of May 6th. Not long since, M. Decrais, ex-Minister -of the Waldeck-Rousseau Cabinet, was elected by a large majority at -Bordeaux, after he had branded the wholesale execution of the religious -orders as "a violation of the spirit and the letter of the law of 1901," -and assured his electors that he had not voted with the Government on -that occasion. Indeed, these Jacobins seem to revel in illegality for -its own sake, and cannot even respect their own enactments. - -Civil war on a small scale has been raging since nearly two months in -various parts of France. It became quite monotonous to read the recital -of all these expulsions _manu militari_ which filled the columns of the -daily Press. The programme was almost the same in every case. The crowds -varied from three hundred to many thousands, according to the locality, -and were more or less violent in their denunciations of the Government; -the police and the regular army, employed to surround the convents and -disperse the crowds of manifestants, were also more or less numerous, -and acted more or less brutally. The troops as a rule left their -barracks at night, arrived on the scene at 2 or 3 a.m., and awaited -daybreak before surrounding the house. Then, the Commissaires ringing in -vain, the doors are battered down, police and soldiers enter the breach -and find a few old monks in the chapel, for as a rule the communities -had dispersed. The delinquents are marched off between two rows of -soldiers, the crowds break out in seditious cries of "Vive la liberte, a -bas les tyrans," numerous arrests of both sexes are made, and the -country is informed that, fanaticized by the monks, men and women have -assailed the representatives of the law. - -It was on one of these occasions that Mlle. de Lambert cried "Capon" to -a justice of the peace because he had beaten a hasty retreat when he -found, in a cloister, two or three hundred angry men instead of a few -old monks. She was condemned to be imprisoned for eight days. On the -expiration of her term some five thousand persons went to the prison to -give her an ovation, but found that she had been removed. - -At Nice there was a small community of Franciscans on the Boulevard -Carabacel. Their chapel was very popular with the humbler classes of -Nicois, as well as with visitors, and manifestations like those that -occurred at the church of La Croix de Marbre, much frequented by -American sailors, were expected. Several companies of infantry and -cavalry were sent to surround the building at 3 a.m.; but hundreds of -persons had spent all night on the premises, and the usual -manifestations and arrests occurred. Even after the premises had been -sealed up, police agents were detailed to guard them night and day. This -was very amusing, considering that policemen are so scarce in Nice that -people are robbed in broad daylight in the most-frequented quarters. - -All these grotesque executions _manu militari_ represent one of the most -recent violations of the law, wholly gratuitous in this instance, seeing -that the Government had itself traced the method of procedure. On -November 28th, 1902, M. Valle, Minister of Justice, said:-- - - "We have to examine if, after refusal of authorization and a decree - closing an establishment, we should continue to have recourse to - armed force, or whether it is not preferable to have recourse to - the tribunals. M. Chamaillard himself recognizes that it is better - to substitute judicial sanction to the sanction of force, always - brutal. It is this substitution we ask you to vote" (_Officiel_, - November 29th). - -Again, December 2nd, the Minister said:-- - - "The Government abandons the right to have recourse to force, and - asks you to substitute judicial for administrative sanction. This - is the object of the proposed law" (_Officiel_, December 3rd, p. - 1221, col. 2). - -On December 4th this law was passed. Therefore all these executions -_manu militari_, before the tribunals had pronounced, were another -flagrant violation of law. But, as I said, these Jacobins seem to revel -in illegality for its own sake. Meanwhile the tribunals, civil and -military, have been kept busy condemning officers who refused to take -part in these degrading, unsoldierlike expeditions, as well as men and -women guilty of manifesting in favour of liberty. - -The fate of the Congregations of women engaged in teaching is a foregone -conclusion. Nay, M. Combes is closing many of these establishments even -before the demands for authorization have been submitted to the Chambers -to be refused _in globo_. I was in Lyons recently when two -establishments of the Society of the Sacred Heart were dispersed in the -middle of the school year, without the slightest regard to the -convenience of the pupils or their teachers. More than three thousand -persons invaded the railway station at 7 a.m. for the departure of the -first group of exiles. An enthusiastic ovation was given them, in which -all the passengers took part, and the bouquets were so numerous that -they had to be piled into a vacant car. In the afternoon there was a -second departure for Turin. This time the police took timely -precautions. The avenues leading to the vast square were barricaded -against all but travellers. These ladies have educated several -generations of Lyonnaises, and were greatly esteemed. - -It would be too long to relate the exploits of the Government's -henchmen, who have distinguished themselves at Paris and elsewhere. It -is simply astounding that such things should happen in any civilized -country and in a century so proud of its progress, liberty, and -enlightenment. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was an offence -against liberty and justice, but it occurred two hundred and fifty years -ago--almost in the Dark Ages. Some time ago, Mr. Bodley, in his -excellent work on France, commented on the extraordinary phenomenon of a -republic persecuting, in the name of liberty, a religion professed by -more than two-thirds of the nation and officially represented in the -State as the dominant religion of the country. To understand this -phenomenon we must bear in mind that French republicanism is not a form -of government, but merely the _modus operandi_ of a secret society. The -Grand Orient has openly proclaimed that there would be no republic but -for them. And all the laws have been elaborated at their convents since -two decades. - -Above all we must remember that France is in revolution since a hundred -years and more. There have been intervals of calm which resembled -convalescence, but these have been followed by new paroxysms, as in -1830, 1848, 1870, and to-day. Madame de Stael's clever saying that -Napoleon was "Robespierre a cheval" is by no means as flippant as might -appear. The genius of the Jacobin Revolution was embodied in the -Convention and the Comites de Salut Public, and the representative of -this dictatorial tyranny was Robespierre. When Napoleon substituted -himself for the Convention and the Directory he abated none of the -pretensions of the Revolution. On the contrary, he consolidated them and -enlarged immensely their field of operation by riding rough-shod, not -over France alone, but over all Europe; hence the happy expression of -Madame de Stael, "Robespierre a cheval." - -Unlike the upheaval known as the Reformation, the French Revolution was -essentially a religious movement, a vast renaissance of paganism -prepared by the atheistic philosophy of the eighteenth century, with -which the ruling classes became so largely imbued. It is a great mistake -to suppose that these philosophers were seeking the welfare of the -masses or the reign of the people, whom no one so thoroughly despised as -did Voltaire. The true object of the Revolution, prepared by the -encyclopedists, was the destruction of Christianity and its noblest -fruit, freedom, in order to establish on the ruins of both the reign of -the Omnipotent Infallible State, the statue of gold before which all -must fall down and worship or perish. "Sois mon frere, ou je te tue." -For it has always been a peculiarity of French free-thinkers that they -could never tolerate any free-thinking but their own. If the -revolutionists of 1793 inflamed the passions of the masses against the -clergy and the nobles, it was merely to use the arms of this Briareus to -batter down the monarchy and all the institutions of the ancient regime, -just as the Jacobin Republicans of to-day are using the Socialists to -accomplish the work begun by their predecessors a century ago. The final -purpose of all is the destruction of Christianity. - -We have but to turn the pages of any reputable French history (Taine, -Capefigue, Guizot) to see that liberty was the last preoccupation of the -Jacobin conquerors. One of the worst Roman emperors is said to have -wished that the people had but one head that he might cut it off. This -also seems to have been the idea of the Revolution, for by abolishing -all social hierarchy, all intermediate classes, all guilds and -associations, provincial parliaments, and local institutions, nothing -was left standing but a defenceless people and the omnipotent State, -which was a coterie composed sometimes of five hundred, sometimes of -four, and finally of one, the first Consul and Emperor. - -Never had the tyranny of the omnipotent State been more completely -realized than by the Jacobins, and their heir-at-law, Napoleon. In the -heyday of his power this great despot found but one opponent. There was -but one force that measured itself with him and vanquished. When -Holland, Prussia, Denmark, all Europe in fact, became tributary to -Napoleon and entered into his continental scheme, in the blockade of all -European seaports, Pius VII alone refused to close Ancona, Ostia, and -Civita Vecchia against British commerce, and to prevent any Englishman -from entering the Papal States. When cabinets and rulers all succumbed -to "Robespierre on horseback," and the inhabitants of every land became -the prey of the victor, the Spanish people alone found, in their -religious faith, the nobility and the energy of a free people, that rose -in their weakness to shake off the octopus that was fastening itself on -their vitals. Napoleon had seized, by guile and treachery, the persons -of the Royal Family of Spain, and had nominated a new tributary king, -his brother Joseph, to the throne of Spain, when the monks, the clergy, -and the peasantry organized that wonderful guerilla war, which is so -little known, and is, nevertheless, one of the most glorious episodes in -the history of liberty. Two signal defeats of the French army destroyed -the prestige of Napoleon and his motley armies, composed of conscripts -from many vassal nations, who now began to ask themselves why they could -not do what Spanish peasants had done in spite of Manuel Godin, the -Prime Minister, who had sold them to the enemy. - -After the restoration of the Bourbons in 1815 it seemed as if the -Revolution were over, but in 1830 it broke out anew. Charles X barely -escaped with his life. The "Monarchy of July," as the reign of Philippe -d'Orleans is called, was merely a phase of the Revolution. In 1848 the -revolutionary fever again seized the nation in an acute form and was not -limited to France. - -It was at this time, strange to say, that a group of resolute Catholics -entered the political arena and fought the battle of liberty in -educational matters against the monopoly of the University. -Montalembert, Dupanloup, Berryer, Lacordaire conquered, inch by inch, a -liberty inscribed in the Charter of 1830, but ineffective so far. La loi -Falloux was not passed till 1850 but long before, Guizot, with unerring -statesmanship, had proclaimed "liberty in teaching to be the only wise -solution," and declared that "the State must accept the free competition -of its rivals, both lay and religious, individuals and corporations" -(_Memoirs_, t. III, 102). St. Marc Girardin, reporter of the Educational -Commission (1847), expressed himself thus:-- - - "Even before the Charter, experience and the interest of studies - required and obtained liberty in teaching. Here certainly we may - say that liberty was ancient and arbitrary despotism new. I do not - need to defend the principle of this liberty, for it is in the - Charter. I only wish to show that it has always existed in some - form. Emulation is good for studies. Formerly the emulation was - between the University and the Congregations, and studies were - benefited. In 1763 Voltaire himself deplored the dispersion of the - Jesuits because of the beneficial rivalry that existed between them - and the University.... A monopoly of education given to priests - would be an anachronism in our day. But to exclude them would be a - not less deplorable anachronism." - -Thus spoke a representative Liberal fifty years ago. Napoleon had -established a state monopoly of education in the hands of the University -of Paris. Villemain and Cousin were educational Jacobins. There was a -state rhetoric, a state history, and a state philosophy, which was, of -course, Cousin's eclecticism. Any professor with leanings to Kant or -Comte was sent to Coventry. This state monopoly was abolished by the loi -Falloux (1850), and its reestablishment is the true purpose of the law -of 1901. During the last fifty years congregational schools multiplied -in proportion to the great demand, i.e. to such an extent that -government schools could not compete with them successfully. Hence the -Trouillot Bill (Associations). - -In 1870 the Revolution again triumphed. This time it was not -"Robespierre on horseback," but Robespierre draped in toga and ermine; -the reign of despotism in the name of law and liberty; praetors and -quaestors dilapidating public funds, and giving and promising largesses. -At one time it seemed as if the Republic would be overthrown. It was -then that M. Grevy appealed to Rome, and Leo XIII, while reproving -certain laws, advised the clergy and the Catholics to rally to the -Republic in the interest of peace. They did so. But no sooner did the -Republic feel secure than it began to enact a series of laws offensive -to Catholics. I refer to the divorce and scholar laws, and unjust fiscal -laws against Congregations. - -Foreigners wonder why thirty million French Catholics allow themselves -to be thus tyrannized over by a handful of Freemasons. I fear it is a -hopeless case of atavism, which will prove the undoing of France, under -the representative system. In 418 the Emperor Honorius wished to -establish this system of government in Southern Gaul, but, writes -Guizot, "the provinces and towns refused the benefit; no one would -nominate representatives, no one would go to Arles" (_History of -Civilization_). This same tendency is operating the ruin of France -to-day. Honest, laborious Frenchmen have an invincible repugnance to -politics and this periodical electioneering scramble. Moreover, it would -mean ruin and famine for hundreds of thousands of functionaries if they -dared to vote against the Government. - -Meanwhile the anti-clericals or lodges of the Grand Orient, largely -composed of Jews, Protestants, and naturalized foreigners, have been -hard at work these twenty years preparing the election of their -candidates and abusing the minds of the working classes by immoral, -irreligious printed stuff, and above all by the multiplication of -drinking-places where adulterated strong drinks are sold for the merest -trifle. The number of these licensed places is simply appalling. Nearly -every grocery, every little vegetable store, and even many tobacco -stores where stamps are sold, have a drinking stand. It is needless to -say that neither Chartreuse nor any decent liqueur is ever sold at such -places. These drink stands supplement the innumerable cabarets and -cafes, in town and country, where elections are engineered. - -Leroy Beaulieu recently related the following incident of his encounter -with one of the habitues of these political institutions. - -In Easter week I was coming out of the chapel of the Barnabites one -morning when I met a workman somewhat the worse for liquor, shaking his -fist against the grated convent window. "Ah! you haven't skedaddled yet, -you dirty skunks." - -And when I asked him why he was so anxious to see them expelled, he drew -himself up proudly and replied: "Because they are not up to the level of -our century!" ("Ils ne sont pas a la hauteur de notre siecle!") - -Meanwhile a crime has been committed against liberty, humanity, and -justice, and it seems to move the world no more than the passing of a -summer cloud, because no blood has been shed. The right which men and -women have to dress and dispose of their lives as they choose is a most -sacred part of personal freedom. - -"Liberalism," says Taine, "is the respect of others. If the State exists -it is to prevent all intrusions into private life, the beliefs, the -conscience, the property.... When the State does this it is the greatest -of benefactors. When it commits these intrusions itself it is the -greatest of malefactors." The young and the strong can begin life anew -elsewhere, in the cloister or out of it, but what shall we say of those -tens of thousands aged and infirm, who, after having passed thirty to -fifty years in teaching or in other good works, find themselves suddenly -thrown into the streets, homeless and penniless? The Associations Bill -entitles them "to apply" for indemnity. But this is merely illusory. -Years will elapse before "the liquidation" is accomplished, and there -will be no assets except for the Government and its friends. Public -subscriptions are being opened all over France for these victims of -Jacobin tyranny. - -Moreover, the right which parents have to give their children teachers -of their own choice is also an inalienable right. The Lacedaemonian State -imposed physical training on all its sons. The Turks for centuries -levied a tax of so many boys and girls a year on the Spaniards and the -Venetians, but no Government has yet called on every parent to "stand -and deliver," not the purse, but the souls of their children, that it -may sow therein, from tenderest infancy, the tares of a hideous state -materialism. With cynical hypocrisy this Government protests that -liberty of teaching is intact, while parents see all the teachers of -their own choice proscribed. The rich can send their sons to be educated -across the border, but the law of _stage scolaire_ is intended to meet -this alternative. Those who have not frequented state schools are to be -made pariahs, ineligible for the army, the navy, or any civil -function--truly a singular application of the words "Compel them to come -in," which should be inscribed on all the scholar institutions of France -to-day. - - - - -A PAPAL NOTE - - -_13th June, 1904._ - -The storm of words aroused the world over by a Papal diplomatic Note is -another proof that the Papacy has lost none of its power and prestige, -and is still, on this threshold of the twentieth century, the -incarnation of moral power opposed to mere brute force, the right of the -strongest. In reading the many silly comments on this Note in different -parts of the globe, we are reminded of the brick thrown into the -frog-pond and the emotion it caused. - -Long before M. Loubet went to Rome it was well known that he would not -be received by the Vatican, and the Papal Note is practically the same -as the one drawn up by Leo XIII on a previous occasion, when it was -sought to obtain a deviation from the policy of the Vatican in favour of -a predecessor of M. Loubet. The protest itself contained nothing new, -and was merely a reiteration of Papal claims to sovereignty in Rome, and -a notice to rulers of other Catholic countries that there was no change -in the policy of the Vatican, that declined to receive the visit of any -such ruler who came to Rome as the guest of Victor Emmanuel. - -The long session devoted to the discussion of the incident was merely a -little anti-clerical diversion to kill time; otherwise the Papal Note -would have remained pigeon-holed in M. Delcasse's desk, where it had -lain unheeded for weeks, when suddenly, at the psychical moment, M. -Jaures' new Ministerial organ, _l'Humanite_ (_commanditee_ by the Jews), -published the copy of the Note which had been addressed, it is said, to -the King of Portugal. Then the little comedy was enacted at the Palais -Bourbon, and the whole Socialist Ministerial Press clamoured, -hysterically, for condign punishment of the Vatican and the vindication -of the national honour. But nothing was done. M. Delcasse declined to -state clearly if the ambassador to the Vatican, M. Nisard, had really -been recalled, while M. Combes loftily sneered at "the superannuated -claims of a sovereignty dispossessed since thirty-five years." Yet he -must have learned at the Seminary that the Papacy was exiled from Rome -for eighty years once upon a time.[5] But all these ferocious Radicals -declined to take advantage of this opportunity to denounce the -Concordat, and M. Combes' best friend, _The Lantern_, is now denouncing -him as a traitor and a fraud. History is repeating itself: _La -Montagne_ (the Extreme Left of 1793) is getting ready to execute the -_Girondins_ called Radicals to-day. No efforts of opportunism will save -them from the _guillotine seche_ which awaits them. - -The silly talk of some of the great dailies who represent the Pope as -"greatly worried" and confronted with the necessity of making an -apology, can only be excused on the ground of ignorance of the whole -situation. Personally I desire to see the Concordat denounced. The -letter and the spirit of its first and most important article, which -provided for liberty and the free exercise of the Catholic religion, -have been flagrantly violated by the laws of 1901 and 1904, and by the -illegalities committed by the executors of these laws. - -All that remains of the Concordat is the indemnity paid yearly to the -Catholic Church, as a very slight compensation for the millions stolen -by the revolutionary government of 1792, known as the First Republic. -Though it must be said to the credit of those Jacobins that when they -instituted the budget of cults they recognized that they had taken the -property of the Church, and that the payment of these yearly subsidies -was part of the National Debt. - -The Jacobins of to-day, less scrupulous than their forefathers of 1790, -are craving for the repudiation of this portion of the National Debt. - -The untold wealth of the Congregations, the billions held out as a -glittering lure by Waldeck Rousseau in 1900 as a nest-egg for _retraites -ouvrieres_, having melted into thin air "the bloc" or Ministerial -majority must be held together by the prospect of some new quarry. -Those, who for years past made a fine distinction between the secular -clergy and the regular or _congreganist_ clergy are now convinced that -there is no distinction to be made between them. When New York dailies -kindly advise the French clergy and Catholics to give up what their -editors are pleased to call "their salaries" and adopt the American -system, they merely proclaim their ignorance of the situation. - -The French would gladly sacrifice everything, even to the noble church -edifices built and endowed by their ancestors during long centuries, if -thereby they could secure liberty and separation from the State, as they -are understood in the United States. But all the alleged projects of -"Separation" are merely projects of strangulation. The articles of all -these projects of law are as unacceptable as were those of the Trouillot -Associations Bill, even if it had not been superseded by the _table -rase_ of the law of 1904 suppressing all teaching orders whatsoever. - -The carrying into execution of any of these projects of "Separation," -even the least Jacobin, would render the normal existence of the -Catholic Church in France impossible. This has been the aim and purpose -of the Third Republic ever since its advent. For, once again, I repeat -that Republicanism in France is not a form of government; it is the -_modus operandi_ of a secret society, of the same secret society which -established a monarchy in Italy, in order to have a pretext for seizing -Rome and destroying, if possible, the prestige of the Papacy. In both -cases the object was the same, the weakening and the destruction of the -Church. - -The Freemasons in France openly proclaim that they founded the Republic. -The scholar and anti-clerical laws since twenty-five years, all the -laws, in fact, have been prepared in the lodges. Of this, too, they make -no secret. To suppose that the Chambers in any way represent the French -nation is an egregious mistake. The lodges prepare the elections; their -candidates people both Houses. In my first letter to the _Review_ in -1900 I showed how the abstention of honest laborious Frenchmen from -politics had thrown the power into the hands of the Freemasons, who are -chiefly Jews, Protestants, and infidels. To-day this coterie of about -twenty-five thousand reigns supreme. - -A few resolute, capable, bigoted Freemasons are the master minds of the -coterie; the others, "the bloc," just follow suit. If a current of -reaction set in to-morrow they would glide with it most gracefully. - -It is simply impossible to retrieve the situation in France to-day by -any ordinary legal means. To suppose that the people are in sympathy -with the Government because they do not overthrow it implies total -ignorance of the situation. The voting machinery of the country is -falsified, and can no more be relied on than a clock out of gear, which -rings out the hours haphazard. Even if every Frenchman inscribed as a -voter did his duty and went to the polls, which they do not, it would -make no difference to-day. - -If death had not cut short Waldeck Rousseau's career we might witness a -_machine en arriere_ policy. It is even possible, now, that a moderate -Rouvier-Ribot ministry may succeed the Combes despotism. - -But I have no confidence in any palliatives. The evil is too -deep-seated. Only by blood and anguish can France be redeemed, and the -sooner the crisis comes the better; a few years later it may be too -late. This is why I desire the denunciation of the Concordat, for with -Gambetta, and all his anti-clerical successors, I think it may be the -ruin of the Third Republic. - -Excommunications and interdicts are no longer published as in former -days, but they operate nevertheless. And, as in the past, there is -always some ruler ready to execute the mandate; though this, too, is not -done in the same way. There is not, necessarily, any invasion of -territory. - -Germany and Italy (yes, and England too) are keenly awaiting the moment -when they may seize France's birthright. Both are assiduous in their -marks of deference to the Holy See. Victor Emmanuel would gladly -evacuate Rome to-morrow if he dared. Thirty-five years are the mere -twinkling of an eye in the lives of nations. Yet there are simple-minded -people who look upon the Piedmontese occupation of Rome as an immutable -fact. - - - - -FREEMASONRY - - -_December, 1904._ - -We cannot adequately appreciate the religious and politico-social -conditions of countries like Italy, France, Spain, Austria, Belgium, -unless we take into account the action of Freemasonry in all its -ramifications--Carbonari, Grand Orient, Mafia, etc. - -There is eternal enmity between them and Christianity. It was said in -the beginning: "I will put enmity between thy seed and the seed of the -Woman," etc. The Catholic Church being the largest, strongest, most -accredited and influential Christian Society, it is against her, -naturally, that all attacks are directed. In Protestant countries people -shrug their shoulders and sneer at the idea of Freemasons militating -against Christianity, or any political order. This is not surprising. A -distinguished atheist of the eighteenth century used to say that -"England was the country where Christianity did the least harm because -it was divided into so many rivulets." Here we have the explanation of -the different attitude of Freemasons in Protestant countries, split up -into innumerable sects, and in Catholic countries, where "One holy -Catholic Church" still holds sway over the whole nation practically. - -The great purpose of the French Revolution in 1792 was to break up the -Church in France. For this purpose the throne and all the institutions -of the ancient regime, some of them very excellent, were all overthrown. - -The revolutions of Italy in the nineteenth century had no other purpose. -The destruction of the Papacy was considered a means of disrupting the -Catholic Church, not in Italy only. Mazzini, Garibaldi, Crispi, Cavour, -etc., were all fierce republican anarchists; the last thing they wanted -was an Italian monarchy. But they were Freemasons, and the "Order" -imposed its will. An Italian monarchy demanded Rome as its capital, -whereas a republican system would, no doubt, have left the Papacy in its -ancient city. "A schism," wrote Renan in 1870, "seems to me more than -probable, or rather it already exists; from latent it will become -effective.... It seems to me inevitable that there will soon be two -Popes, and even three.... The schism being made in the papal person, the -decomposition of Catholicism will follow; a quantity of reforms will -then be possible." - -Napoleon III, a dignitary of the order, entered into the plot, and -received Savoy and the county of Nice. Rome was seized 20 September, and -the Franco-Prussian war brought swift and condign punishment on Napoleon -for his complicity. - -Simultaneously with the establishment of a monarchy in Italy, the Grand -Orient established a republic in France, always with the same purpose, -the disruption of the Church. During the last four years of residence in -Europe I have repeated in the Press of the United States that -Republicanism is not a form of government here, but the _modus operandi_ -of a secret society. The manifesto issued by the Grand Orient (3 -November, 1904) is an irrefutable proof of my allegation. It is the most -astounding document ever made public. They evidently consider that -France is a conquered country which can never shake off their -domination. "Without the Freemasons," says the document, "the Republic -would not exist." The elaborate spy system they had established at the -Ministry of War is defended on the ground that "the head partner, or -_commanditaire_, of a great industrial enterprise in which he has placed -his capital has the right to denounce to the manager the peculations of -his employees." - -Thus France is an industrial company; the ministers are managers -appointed by the head partner, the Grand Orient! But the most revolting -part of this manifesto is the manner in which the deputies of the "bloc" -are whipped into line like a pack of disorderly hounds under the lash of -their keeper. "We denounce to our lodges and to all masons present and -future the votes of fear, defaillance, cowardice, of a certain -number.... We shall have our eyes on them ... and they will find -themselves treated as they would have treated those to whom they were -bound by interest if not by loyalty." - -The revolutions which have convulsed Spain during the last century, down -to the recent Republican riots in Madrid and Brussels, are all traceable -to the "Order" which issued this manifesto. Among the rioters killed -were Frenchmen. The visit of M. Chaumie, Minister of Public Instruction, -to Italy, and the famous Congres de Libre Pensee, are all manifestations -of the Grand Orient, which will never rest until it has destroyed the -stability and peace of other Catholic countries, as it has done in -France. When I arrived at Innsbruck in July last, I saw many students -with bandaged heads and arms. An Italian student had knocked the book -out of the German professor's hand with his cane. This was the origin of -that last riot. What has occurred recently at Innsbruck is far more -serious, and was undoubtedly prepared at Rome in September.[6] A band of -Italian anarchist students were sent to the University of Innsbruck to -cause trouble. One hundred and thirty-eight of them were arrested, -yesterday, with revolvers and other weapons on their persons. - -Two years ago I was in Venice when there was a monster international -gathering of students. The Marseillaise and the Hymn of Garibaldi were -vociferated by these thousands on the Place of St. Mark. Why the -national anthems of other nations were not given is clear. The whole was -a Freemason demonstration of the Grand Orient like the Congres de Libre -Pensee at Rome, presided over by M. Brisson, the President of the French -Chambers. - -The revolutionary strikes at Milan, Genoa, Venice, etc., which were made -to coincide with the birth of the heir of the House of Savoy, are -symptomatic. The Grand Orient undoubtedly find that they have been -marking time long enough in Italy. They have not been able to carry -their divorce law there yet. - -There is a Socialist party in Italy which is not anarchist and Freemason -as in France, but sincerely desires the good of Italy. One of its -leaders declared, recently, that they would lend their aid even to the -Papacy for the common weal. Between this party and the secret societies -and their henchmen, the position of Victor Emmanuel is not enviable. Ere -long, therefore, we may see the aid of the Pope and of the Catholic -vote, now in abeyance to a great extent, solicited both by the monarchy -and the reforming Socialists. - -There is really no insuperable difficulty in reconciling the -independence of the Papacy and the integrity of the Italian kingdom. The -Principality of Monaco has surely never been considered an obstacle to -the integrity of France, nor the Republic of San Marino to that of -Italy. Why should not the Pope be left in peaceful possession of the -Trastevere and the port of Ostia, for instance? There is no difficulty -except with the Grand Orient, this _imperium in imperio_. - -All through the centuries, "the Papacy has had to negotiate, -simultaneously, with each of the republican cities of Italy, with -Naples, Germany, France, England, and Spain. They all had contests -(_demeles_) with the Popes, and these latter always had the advantage" -(Voltaire, _Essai sur les moeurs_, II, 87). - -In the same work, page 81, Voltaire relates the Congress held at Venice, -where Barbarossa made his submission. "The Holy Father," he says, -"exclaimed: 'God has willed that an aged man and priest triumph without -fighting over a terrible and powerful emperor.'" The triumph over the -machinations of the Grand Orient will be no less striking. - - - - -FREEMASONRY - - -_21st January, 1905._ - -In these columns (_The Progress_, December 10th, 1904), I referred to -the recently published Manifesto of the Grand Orient of France (November -4th, 1904), defending its attitude with regard to the elaborate spy -system, a veritable _regime des suspects_ which they had established, -not in the War Office only, but in every Department of State. The Press, -both in England and in the United Sates, has been singularly reticent -regarding this most remarkable document, whose authenticity cannot be -gainsaid. - -It is, however, the key to the whole politico-religious situation in -France, and more or less in other Catholic countries. - -Republicanism in Catholic countries will always be the _modus operandi_ -of this secret society in some one or other of its ramifications. The -Carbonari, who engineered all the Italian revolutions in the nineteenth -century, sent their emissary, Orsini, to remind Napoleon III of his -obligations and duties. The gentle reminder was a bomb, and Orsini paid -the death penalty, but not without leaving a letter with certain behests -which were soon complied with. The Italian campaign against Austria was -undertaken ere long. - -In the _Evening Post_, November 8th, 1904, I find in a review of Count -Hubner's _Memoirs_ the following extract: "The Emperor of the French, -placed at the summit of greatness, had forgotten the pledges made in his -youth to those who dispose of the unknown dark powers. Orsini's bomb -came to remind him. A ray of light suddenly struck his mind. He must -have understood that his former associates never forgot or forgave, and -that their implacable hatred would be appeased only when the renegade -returned to the bosom of the sect." - -An example of the power wielded by these secret societies is the case of -the ex-Minister of Public Instruction in Italy. Prosecuted for -misdemeanour and extensive peculations while in office, the Freemasons -compassed his escape to Geneva. He was condemned by default, when, lo -and behold, he quietly returns to Italy in triumph and is elected -deputy.[7] - -Since eight weeks the French papers (non-Ministerial of course) are -daily printing _fiches_ or spy documents stolen from the Grand Orient. -No end of duels and prosecutions for slander have been the result. Nor -were army officers the only victims. Even Monsieur and Madame Loubet -have come in for their share! In some cases the spies of the Grand -Orient have denied the authenticity of these documents. Thereupon M. de -Villeneuve has printed photographed copies of the letters in question. - -Brother Bedderide, an advocate of the bar at Marseilles, an active spy -on magistrates and other civil functionaries, has been expelled from the -Order of Advocates. The Grand Orient will no doubt amply compensate him, -for they are as generous to their friends as they are implacable to -their foes. - -Read this passage from the Manifesto of the Grand Orient, 4th November, -1904: "All our workshops know the campaign waged against us by the -reaction, nationalist, monarchical, and clerical. They seek to travesty -acts in which we justly glory and thanks to which, we have saved the -Republic. A traitor, a felon, bribed by the Congregations [poor -congregations recently shorn of all] lived in our midst since ten -years.... As sub-secretary he gained the confidence of our very dear -brother Vadecard [Secretary of G. O.] and became the confidant of all -our secrets. He projected to steal from our archives documents confided -to us ... new Judas, he sold them to the irreconcilable enemies of our -brethren. Brother Bidegain is in flight like a malefactor. We signal him -to Masons all over the world. In waiting the just punishment of his -crime, the Council of the Order summons him before masonic justice, and -until the final sentence is rendered, we suspend all his titles and -prerogatives.... And now we declare to the whole Freemason body that in -furnishing these documents [spy denunciations] the Grand Orient has -accomplished only a strict duty. We have dearly conquered the Republic -and claim the honour of having procured its triumph.... Without the -Freemasons the Republic would not be in existence.... Pius X would be -reigning in France." - -Then follows the menace quoted in my last to the tricky, cowardly -deputies who voted against the Government, which was saved by two votes -more than once. The memorable slap administered by M. Syveton to General -Andre compelled M. Combes to throw the Minister of War overboard, though -the latter protested to the last, "They want my skin, but they shall not -have it." The Minister of Public Instruction also nearly succumbed. He -declared that if a certain _ordre de jour_ were not voted he would throw -down his portfolio there and then. The votes were not forthcoming but he -clung to his portfolio and contented himself with another _ordre de -jour_. - -All the performances at the Palais Bourbon are indeed a most amazing -comedy. - -Meanwhile M. Syveton, who negotiated the purchase of the purloined -documents from the Grand Orient, and slapped General Andre on the -ministers' bench, got his quietus in a very mysterious way on the very -day on which he was to have retaken his seat in the Chambers (after his -thirty days' punitive exclusion), and on the eve of his appearance -before the Cours d'Assise for that famous slap. His defence, carefully -prepared by himself, was published in the papers next day. It is a long -incisive arraignment of the Government in imitation of Cicero's -_Catalina_. All the witnesses, who were to have appeared in his defence, -were also witnesses against the Government. In fact the trial was to -have been a great political manifestation, and the Government had every -interest in its not taking place. Since two weeks public opinion is on -tenter-hooks regarding the death of M. Syveton. It was declared at first -to be a vulgar accident by the Ministerial organs. While M. Jaures, -strange to say, published in _Humanity_ a most remarkable brief, -establishing clearly the guilt of Madame Syveton, and, still more -strange, the latter did not prosecute him for it. Then the suicide -theory was adopted, and the most odious, baseless, and unproven -calumnies were launched against the memory of the dead man. His widow -even accused him of having stolen funds of the Nationalist party. All -this in order to explain his suicide on the eve of what was expected to -be a great political triumph of the Nationalists, and for which M. -Syveton was preparing with the ardour of a fighter by temperament, just -forty years old. - -The autopsy, made before the twenty-four legal hours had elapsed, -revealed seventeen per cent of oxide of carbon in the blood. The lungs, -brain, and viscera, strange to say, were not examined at all, but -placed under seals for eleven days! They are now to be examined. -Meanwhile the last person who must have seen M. Syveton alive, must have -been the emissary of the Government, who, according to custom, served -the writ on the dead man, commanding his presence in court in -twenty-four hours. Who was he, and why was he never heard of again? - -No one believes seriously that M. Syveton committed suicide. His father -and brother-in-law have begun a prosecution for murder against X, in -which the Mutual Life is also interested. - -As to Brother Bidegain, the traitor, he was at Salonica when last heard -of. His sudden death there was announced; but I think the rumour is -false. It would be very imprudent, coming so soon after the other. But -he will have to make his peace with the G. O. or beware. He cannot be -prosecuted for stealing these documents, as they represent no monetary -value, and, moreover, the Grand Orient has no legal existence or civil -personality. They are said to have millions of _main morte_, but they -simply ignore the Associations Bill. - -In conclusion, I hope it will be understood that I do not accuse many -honest Freemasons of England and the United States of being _particeps -criminis_ in all or any of the doings of the Grand Orient, Carbonari, -Mafia, Cimorra, Senuisi, or the secret societies of Islam or in China. - -Freemasonry assumes different aspects in different circumstances, but it -is the eternal enemy of militant organized Christianity. It does not -trouble itself with Christianity "divided into many rivulets," and -consequently harmless, according to the saying of Lord Shaftesbury, who -was of opinion that "England was the country in which Christianity did -the least harm because it was divided into so many rivulets." - -The Catholic Church alone is an enemy worthy of its steel, and wherever -these two foes meet there must be war--latent or overt. - -This war is on in France, and must be fought to the finish. - - - - -PART SECOND - - -_October, 1904._ - -M. Combes, who proclaimed at the Chambers two years ago that he had -taken office only to wage war on Clericalism, enumerated his deeds of -prowess recently in a political speech at Auxerre. Fifteen thousand -scholar establishments, strongholds of the ghostly enemy, had been -demolished! "Gentlemen, you will grant that this is a great deal for a -ministry obliged to fight at every instant for its own existence," he -exclaimed. - -We are now coming to the second part of the Jacobin programme. As I -wrote last year in the _Evening Post_ (June 27th), the true object of -the Revolution in 1790, as to-day, is the destruction of Christianity -and its offspring, Liberty, in order to establish on the ruins of both, -the reign of the Omnipotent Infallible State, before which all must fall -down and worship or disappear. To-day the State is M. Combes and his -"bloc," a very poor avatar of the Titanic Corsican who measured himself -with all Europe. There was but one force that resisted him, and against -this obstacle M. Combes stumbled when he demanded, peremptorily, that -the Vatican withdraw letters addressed to two bishops needing to be -disciplined. The Holy See was acting in the plenitude of its spiritual -jurisdiction. M. Combes curtly demanded that Pius X send in his -resignation, as "the political system of the Republic consists in the -subordination of all institutions, whatever they may be, to the -supremacy of the State." - -This is the latest phase of a very old struggle which began in the days -of the Apostles. In the history of all the nations of antiquity, the -problem of Church and State and their correlations existed, and was -solved, easily and summarily, by the system proclaimed by M. Combes. The -ruler of each nation was the Pontifex Maximus of his realm. This system, -with its necessary concomitant of national religions, reached its -culminating point in the worship of the "divine Caesars," the acme of -human servitude. - -Now Christianity was a profound and radical innovation. Never had the -supremacy of the ruler or the State been questioned before the Apostles -proclaimed the Creed in "One Holy Catholic Church," destined to -transcend all natural and political boundaries, without distinction of -class or colour. Not less radical was the second innovation, a necessary -corollary of the first, viz. the ecclesiastical autonomy and -independence of the new spiritual society or Church, one, Catholic. -"Never," writes J. B. Martineau, "until the Church arose did faith -undertake the conquest alone, and triumph over diversities of speech and -antipathies of race." - -But Paganism, with its system of state absolutism in spiritual as well -as in temporal matters, has never accepted its defeat by the Catholic -Church, a spiritual, autonomous society, distinct from the State. The -tale of Byzantine heresies, from the fourth to the eighth century, were -all efforts of each successive Emperor of Constantinople to shake off -the spiritual supremacy of Rome, and be again the Pontifex Maximus of -his dominions. The long struggle of the Investitures, the Constitutions -of Clarendon, statutes of Praemunire, State Gallicanism, the Civil -Constitution of the Clergy, 1792, Josephism in Austria, the Kultur-Kampf -laws in Germany and Switzerland, 1870-76 were all episodes of this -struggle, between the new dispensation and the ancient system of -national religions under state supremacy. In the sixteenth century there -was a vast renaissance of this latter system in a new dress called -Erastianism. Lord Clarendon declared that this spiritual supremacy of -rulers was "the better moiety of their sovereignty." The old pagan, or -Erastian system, triumphed in the eastern empire with the Schism of -Photius, in Russia under Peter the Great, in England under Elizabeth, in -all the Protestant States of northern Europe. - -The well-defined purpose of the Revolution and of Napoleon, its -heir-at-law, was to establish this system in France. After long and -arduous negotiations the Concordat of 1801 was concluded with Pius VII. -It was a bilateral contract between two sovereignties, the French -Republic, as party of the first part, and the Holy See as party of the -second part. It contains seventeen articles. To these, Napoleon, without -the knowledge of the Pope, added seventy-six articles, and published -both documents, in conjunction, as the law of Germinal l'an X. Great was -the indignation, and loud were the protestations of the party of the -second part, as we may well suppose. Nor is this surprising when we -consider that one of these "organic articles" (24th) requires that all -professors in ecclesiastical seminaries shall "submit to teach the -doctrine of the Declaration of 1682, and the bishops shall send act of -this submission to the Council of State." In other words, the Catholic -Church in France was to turn Protestant. Even Louis XIV, who had had -this famous Declaration drawn up to spite Pope Innocent, who alone in -Europe had dared to oppose him, never exacted that it should be taught, -and had practically suppressed it before he died. Since the Council of -the Vatican the subscribing to and teaching the Declaration of 1682 -would be an act of formal heresy and apostasy. The fifty-sixth of the -organic articles renders obligatory the use of the Republican calendar -to the exclusion of the Gregorian. There are other articles equally -absurd, which have never been observed. - -Now M. Combes declares that "in deliberately separating the diplomatic -convention (Concordat) from the organic articles, Pius VII and his -successors have destroyed its efficacy." Napoleon himself understood -this and, for seven years, he held Pius VII a close prisoner, hoping to -break his spirit and wring from him another Concordat which would be an -abdication. Fortunately, the tide of war turned against Napoleon, and -the new Concordat was never ratified. M. Combes recognizes that no -Government since a century has been able to enforce the "organic -articles," and that the only course left is "divorce," and by this -unstatesmanlike term he means the repudiation of thirty or forty million -francs of the national debt. The payment in perpetuity of suitable -subsidies to the Catholic clergy is stipulated for by Article 14 of the -Concordat. It is a _quid pro quo_ of Article 13, by which the Holy See -consented to give a clear title to all the Church property confiscated -by the Revolution. The payment of these subsidies was inscribed on the -national debt by the spoliators themselves, the Conventionals of 1792, -and it was solemnly recognized as part of this debt in 1816, 1828, 1830, -and 1848. The salaries paid to Jewish and Protestant clergymen are -purely gratuitous. Their property was not stolen by the Revolution in -1792. They had no part in the Concordat. - -But the projected spoliation of the Catholic clergy is a mere detail, -and would be an insignificant ransom, if at this price the French -Catholics could have liberty such as we enjoy in England and the United -States. "Separation" means strangulation in Jacobin parlance. They would -infinitely prefer Erastianism. But the defection of the Bishops of Dijon -and Laval, on whom they counted, and the spontaneous and unanimous -adhesion of the episcopate to the Holy See, which provoked the thunders -of M. Combes against the Vatican in July, have shown the impossibility -of a schism. It was tried for four years a century ago and failed. The -"Separation" plan was also tried in 1795 for two or three years, and was -an epoch of virulent persecution. History will repeat itself, though not -exactly in the same words. - - - - -ALCOHOLISM IN FRANCE - - -_July 10th, 1905._ - -The Chambers continue the discussion of the Bill of alleged separation -in a perfunctory, apathetic way, and it is curious that M. Rouvier, the -successor of M. Combes, has never once condescended to speak or even to -be present at these sessions. - -The utter lack of interest in these debates is misinterpreted to mean -indifference on the part of the French public. This is not correct. It -is, as I have often repeated, the great misfortune of France that people -will not concern themselves with politics, and they only begin to -interest themselves in a law when it is applied. - -Even I, who have followed the phases of the religious persecution with -keen interest since four or five years, can hardly wade through these -tedious, irksome columns, in which ambiguity reigns supreme. Even M. -Briand, the reporter of the law and spokesman of the Government, being -questioned closely as to the sense of certain passages, replied "It is" -and "It is not" in the same breath. He is evidently of the opinion that -language is a convenient means of disguising thought. - -This Bill is, I repeat, a law of guile, spoliation, and tyranny from -first to last. There is a general impression that it will never be -executed entirely. They will content themselves with spoliation, for the -present at least. It is hard to persuade a people who have had religious -worship gratis for fifteen centuries, that they must now pay for the -privilege of attending Mass, while their Government subsidizes opera -dancers and singers, of whose services not one in a million ever avails -himself. - -While the Socialist majority, or _bloc_, are revelling over perspective -spoliation and sacrilegious confiscations, the handwriting on the wall -is dimly perceived. The enemy is at the gates--nay, within the -walls--while legislators are discussing "with what sauce they will eat -the cures," though they have not yet digested their copious repast of -congregations. - -Yesterday the reports of the Chambers on Separation were unusually -tedious, and the _rendu compte_ ended with this phrase: "To-morrow -amnesty for the _bouilleurs de cru_ and wine frauders." This heartless -Government, that flings aged and infirm _congreganists_ out of their -homes without mercy for age or sex, has, at least, one tender spot in -its make-up. It is for the liquor traffic in all its forms. -Falsification of wine is carried on to such an extent that it is -impossible for grape growers to make a living. I dilated recently in -these columns on the anti-clerical propaganda by means of an immoral, -irreligious Press, and the multiplication of these drink-stands to an -extent which is simply appalling.[8] - -New York, with three millions, has 10,000 liquor saloons. Paris, with -two-and-a-half millions, has 30,000 _debits de boissons_. - -The _Gaulois_ recently published some figures which I think are -accurate. - -Fifty years ago 735 hectolitres of absinthe were consumed in France; -to-day 133,000 are consumed. - -Fifty years ago 600,000 hectolitres of alcohol were consumed; to-day -2,000,000 hectolitres are consumed. - -The intermediate figures show that the increase has been in almost -geometric progression in recent years. - -In 1880 the consumption had increased from 735 hectolitres of absinthe -to 13,000. In 1885 it was still only 112,000. - -In 1905 it was 133,000. - -Sixty years ago there were only 10,000 demented in France. To-day there -are more than 80,000. - -Belgium has just made a law prohibiting not only the manufacture, but -all traffic in absinthe, which cannot even be transported through the -country. In this admirably governed commonwealth there is, it is said, -but one saloon _brasserie_ to every two thousand inhabitants. Formerly -the number of drinking-places was limited and restricted in France; -to-day the highest of high licence prevails. - -Recently I counted not less than fourteen places where alcoholic drinks -were sold in a charming little seaside village of four or five hundred -inhabitants. - - - - -THE LAW OF SEPARATION - - -_June 3rd, 1905._ - -There is still a persistent tendency in the Press to believe or -make-believe that the Bill of alleged Separation, still pending in the -French Chambers, means Separation as it is understood in England and the -United States, and that the whole question is only one of dollars and -cents, or of the suppression of the Budget of Cults. It is true that -there is to be a partial repudiation of the National Debt by the -suppression of the few paltry millions paid yearly to the French clergy -as a slight indemnity for the vast amount of property confiscated by the -Jacobins of 1792, but this is a mere detail, and would be considered but -a small ransom, if, thereby, the Church could enjoy the same liberty as -in the United States. - -The Associations Bill was proclaimed to be a "law of liberty," and we -know to-day that it was only a vulgar trap set by the Government to -betray the Congregations into furnishing exact inventories of all their -property so that it might be more easily confiscated. - -The Separation Bill is also a law of perfidious tyranny aimed at the -very existence of the Church in France. M. Briand caused great hilarity -in the Chambers when, by a slip of the tongue, he declared that in every -part of it "could be seen the hand of our spirit of Liberalism."[9] What -is evident throughout is the hand of the secret society which has -governed France since twenty-five years, and in whose lodges and -convents all the anti-religious laws have been elaborated. - -The Chambers are merely its _bureaux d'enregistrement_, and not even -that. Under the _ancien regime_ the Parliament could and often did -refuse to enregister royal acts and decrees. - -It was two years before the Parliament of Paris consented to enregister -the Concordat of 1516. But the Chambers to-day are merely the executive -of the Grand Orient. This is the plain unvarnished truth, which is -corroborated by all who have any knowledge of French politics. - -I have repeated many times in the Press of the United States that -Republicanism in France is not a form of government, but the _modus -operandi_ of a secret society. Before me are _verbatim_ reports of their -assemblies and the speeches made at their political banquets in 1902. At -that time only unauthorized Congregations had been suppressed. This, it -was declared, "was not enough.... The Congregations must be operated on -with a vigorous scalpel, and all this suppuration must be thrown out of -the country; only thus will the social body, still very sick with acute -clericalism, be cured." In July, 1904, all the authorized Congregations, -too, were suppressed, as we know. Even this was not enough. - -At the general "convent" of the Grand Orient, January, 1904, it was -said: "We have yet a great effort to make.... The separation of Church -and State will be in the order of the day in the Chambers in January, -1905.... The Cabinet and the Republican Parliament will end the conflict -between the two contracting parties of the Concordat. The destruction of -the Church will open a new era of justice and goodness." - -M. Combes, then in power, was notified of the wishes of the Grand -Orient, and he telegraphed back that he would conform thereto. - -The sensation caused by the publication of the spy documents, or -_fiches_, stolen from the Grand Orient by M. Syveton and de Villeneuve -nearly overthrew the Republic last November. The assassination of M. -Syveton saved the Government and struck terror into the Nationalist -camp. The publication of the spy documents ceased, and the lodges -continued their work with a new figure-head, M. Rouvier instead of M. -Combes. - -On 4th November, 1904, the Grand Orient published a political manifesto -which is a most important document from an historical and sociological -standpoint. - -It is simply amazing that the government of a once great nation should -have passed into the hands of a secret society which, though it has no -legal standing, treats France as if it were a great business concern of -which the Freemasons are the _commanditaires_, the ministers "the -managers," and the deputies and functionaries the employees. - -Already in 1902, at the closing banquet of the "convent," Brother -Blatin, a "venerable," had declared: - -"The Government must not forget that Masonry is its most solid -support.... - -"But for our Order neither the Combes Cabinet nor the Republic itself -would exist. M. and Mme. Loubet would still be simple little bourgeois -in the little town of Montelimar.... But the Government must remember -that we are only at the opening of hostilities. Until we have destroyed -every congregation, denounced the Concordat, and broken with Rome, -nothing is done." In conclusion, these remarkable words were pronounced, -of which the manifesto of 4th November, 1904, is only an echo: "In -drinking to French Freemasonry I really drink to the Republic, because -the Republic is Freemasonry operating outside its temples; and -Freemasonry is the Republic under cover of our traditions and symbols." -Is this clear enough? - -The Revolution of 1790 was undoubtedly due to Freemasonry, which about -that time began to appear openly for the first time, and almost -simultaneously, in France, Great Britain and America, etc. The Palladian -Rite, established in France in 1769, found a congenial field of -operation in the corrupt society of the _Regence_ and Louis XV. - -Its aim then, as to-day, is the same--the destruction of Christianity. -The Jacobin Clubs of 1792 were simply Masonic lodges. M. Waite, an -eloquent apologist of the fraternity, makes the following statement in -_Devil Worship in France_, page 322: "There is no doubt that it -[Masonry] exercised an immense influence upon France during the century -of quakings which gave birth to the great Revolution. Without being a -political society, it was an instrument eminently adaptable to the -subsurface determination of political movements.... At a later period it -contributed to the formation of Germany, as it did to the creation of -Italy. But the point and centre of masonic history is France in the -eighteenth century." - -This explains the outbreak of _Kulturkampf_ in Germany and Switzerland -soon after 1870, and the wave of anti-religious furor which swept over -Italy at the same period. To-day Catholicism has repulsed Freemasonry in -Germany, and the victory is not far distant in Italy. The Liberal -Socialist party is waning, and it is always with these elements of -socialistic anarchy that Freemasonry operates under a guise of liberty. - -The efforts being made to break up the Austro-Hungarian and the Russian -Empire are undoubtedly traceable to these Judeo-Masonic secret -societies. But France remains the great battlefield. Christianity and -Freemasonry are about to fight a decisive duel. One or the other must -perish. "Si nous ne tuons pas l'Eglise, elle nous tuera," said a -prominent Mason recently. The suppression of the Congregations and their -27,000 schools was, as they said, "only the opening of hostilities." The -battle must be fought to the finish. I have repeatedly affirmed that -France was held firmly in the coils of the Grand Orient, which has -packed both Houses with its creatures, thanks to the political apathy of -respectable Frenchmen. - -The Separation Bill is merely a blind, a slip-knot which can be drawn at -any moment to strangle the victim around whose neck it is cast. When his -Socialist accomplices of the Left reproached M. Briand with being too -liberal, he replied, "If necessary we can always amend the law or make -another." Only two short years ago M. Combes openly pronounced against -any project of separation. M. Rouvier was of the same opinion, but the -masters of France have spoken! - -In vain it was pleaded that the country be consulted before taking so -important a step. The perfidious feature of the Bill is just this--that -nothing will be changed until two years (1907) hence, when the "bloc" -will probably have gained a new lease of life by this manoeuvre; for -in May, 1906 they will be able to say to their electors, "You see the -law is voted, and nothing is changed." - -Article I sounds sweetly liberal: "The Republic assures liberty of -conscience and guarantees the free exercise of worship under the -following restrictions" (contained in some forty more articles). In my -opinion these numerous little "_restrictions_" will render the normal -existence of the Church in France impracticable. Of course she will -continue to exist, as she existed during the Terror, and under the -_Directoire_ and Diocletian. - -Another article, not yet voted, provides for the final disposition of -church buildings twelve years hence. That, apparently, is the allotted -span of life meted out to us by Masonic Jacobins. - -Article II with sweet inconsistency declares that "the Republic neither -recognizes nor subsidizes any cult," and immediately after it inscribes -on the Public Budget the service of _aumoniers_ of state lyceums and -colleges. - -Peasants and poor struggling tradesmen and artisans must pay for the -luxury of religious worship or go without, but the sons of the rich, who -frequent these state schools, are to be provided for, gratis, by this -liberal Republic, which neither "recognizes nor subsidizes any -worship," except, of course, Islamism in Algeria, which is now, _ipso -facto_, the religion of the State. - -It is very pitiful to see so momentous a question treated with such -flippancy and indecent haste. - -All their utterances in the Chambers and in their Press show that the -Freemasons are convinced that they would be defeated if the next -elections were made on this issue. Therefore they must "do quickly." - -Alone of all the nations of Christendom, France totally disregarded Good -Friday this year. The Stock Exchange remained open and the Chambers met -as usual. The apostasy of the State will soon be complete. - -In Spain, where I spent Holy Week, the young king has taken a decided -stand against the Revolution. He has caused vehement enthusiasm by -reviving Christian customs fallen into desuetude during a century of -revolutions. On Holy Thursday he washed and kissed the feet of twelve -poor men whom he afterwards served at table, aided by the grandees of -Spain. On Friday he returned from church alone and on foot, and was -wildly acclaimed. We are so accustomed to see the menus of the banquets -of the rich, that it was refreshing to read, for once in the daily -papers, the menu of a banquet of some poor old men served by a king. - -This is the counter-revolution, and M. Salmeron and his Republican -Socialist Freemasons, French and Spanish, who recently caused riots in -many cities, might as well suspend operations. Only the assassination of -Alphonse XIII can prevent Spain from recuperating steadily. In Italy, -too, the counter-revolution is setting in. The Socialists, _alias_ -Freemasons, are succumbing to the Conservative or clerical party. The -Quirinal is steering for Canossa. France must bear the brunt till she, -too, can have her counter-revolution. - - - - -CATHOLICISM IN GERMANY - - -GERMANY, _August, 1905_. - -While Freemasonry in France seems on the point of triumphing over -Christianity by the destruction of all religious education and a law of -alleged Separation of Church and State, it is interesting to recall that -only thirty-five years ago Catholicism in Germany was as much menaced as -it is in France to-day. Churches were closed, prisons were full of -priests, bishops, and archbishops, and Bismarck, like M. Briand of -France, swore he would never, never go to Canossa. - -In 1871 there were only fifty-eight Catholics in the Reichstag, -representing 720,000 electors; in 1903 there were more than a hundred, -representing 1,800,000 electors; and to-day this Catholic Centre forms -the ruling majority in the country. The Emperor understands this -perfectly, and hence his amenities towards the Church and the Holy See. - -I have no doubt that the great Catholic Congress was held recently at -Strasburg with his knowledge and approval, not to say at his suggestion. -The event is significant coming so soon after his own investiture, at -Metz, with the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, conferred upon him by the -papal legate in the presence of the German cardinals and archbishops, -and the highest military dignitaries of the empire. - -At this Catholic Congress of Strasburg, forty thousand delegates of the -federated societies of Germany paraded the streets with banners and -music. The whole city was decorated, papal colours being most -conspicuous. These popular federated societies count half a million -members, grouped in nine hundred associations, that have 350 press -organs of their own. - -What makes the strength of these Catholic organizations in Germany is -that they represent all classes of society--princes, peasants, artisans, -nobles, and bourgeois--whereas Socialism finds its recruits almost -exclusively, amongst the proletariat, cultured and uncultured, chiefly -the latter. - -At the Congress, Prince d'Arenberg renewed the usual protestations -against the Piedmontese occupation of Rome, and the Bishop of Strasburg -rejoiced that, "in spite of the devastations of the French Revolution, -the ancient faith was still flourishing in Alsace, whence he hoped it -_might soon extend its salutary influence_." - -These events are significant following the diplomatic humiliation -inflicted on France when M. Delcasse, Minister of Foreign Affairs, was -peremptorily dismissed at the behest of Germany. - -Not long since the Socialist Bebel saucily told M. Jaures the French -would never have a pension for old age until the Germans gave it to -them. Nothing, too, would please William more than to play the role of a -paladin of religious liberty to the oppressed French Catholics. - -Nor is there anything to prevent the resuscitation of the Germanic -Confederation as it existed in the Middle Ages. The Habsburgs and the -Austrian Empire might never have arisen, and the Hohenstauffens might -still be reigning, if they had had sense enough to keep their hands off -the Papacy. Napoleon, too, might have founded a dynasty as long-lived as -that of the Bourbons, had he not also fallen into the same evil ways, -and sought to dominate the whole Church by enslaving the Sovereign -Pontiff. His nephew, the third Napoleon, in his youth, unfortunately -became the bondsman of secret societies, whom he aided and abetted in -the spoliations of 1870 which preluded his fall. - -The Third Republic, too, will be shattered on the same rock, though not -before having caused irretrievable wrong to France, I fear. - - - - -PSEUDO-SEPARATION - - -_19th August, 1905._ - -In the past, marauding kings and robber barons bound to themselves their -fighting lieges by investing them with vast tracts of stolen lands which -they, in turn, distributed among their leal followers. - -The Third Republic has found a better way. To say nothing of the -extensive network of electoral strongholds that they have established -all over the country by unlimited and most abusive high licence, the -masters of France have enlisted the enthusiastic support of myriads of -pettifogging lawyers and all the nondescript red-tapers of law by the -unlimited supply of lucrative jobs, pickings, and perquisites, furnished -by the notorious laws of 1901 and of 1904, and their bandit operations -called "liquidation." - -They do not all pocket a few hundred thousands, like the millionaire -Socialist, M. Millerand, appointed by M. Waldeck Rousseau, but all have -a share in the carving up of the quarry. Not content with devoting to -this novel kind of graft all the holdings of the hapless Congregations, -who fell into its trap and asked for authorization, the Government has -kindly put up more than four millions and a half of public money, thus -far, to cover the cost of innumerable lawsuits, expropriations, etc., -going on all over the country since four years. The mobilizing of the -regular army for the expropriations was in itself an important item. All -this reckless, thriftless expenditure, joined to the continuous drain of -millions from the _Caisses d'Epargne_ and the exodus of capital, will -lead up to national bankruptcy as in 1795. - -To throw dust in the eyes of the public, domestic and foreign, a most -elaborate document has been published regarding pensions and retreats -for aged _congreganists_ ruthlessly thrown into the streets. - -This document is a huge farce, seeing that these pensions are only -conditional to there being funds enough, and there will be no assets -left. The Chartreux of Grenoble had some hundreds of their aged workmen -on their pension list. These were, in common justice, creditors of the -order, and should have received compensation from the _liquidateur_. But -the latter repudiated their claims absolutely.[10] - -What a fall was there from the billions of the Congregations, held out -as a glittering lure by Waldeck Rousseau in 1900, to bait his Socialist -majority with promises of pensions for workmen, etc. - -The Bill of alleged Separation, eminently calculated to bring Church and -State into constant contact and collision, holds out another golden -perspective. To use an expressive slang term, there is in it unlimited -_poil a gratter_, fur to scratch, for years to come--nay, as long as the -Republic lasts. - -A few days after it was voted, 200 "venerables" of the Grand Orient -offered a banquet to M. Briand, the reporter of the Law of Separation, -while at a Socialist Congress presided over by M. Combes, the President -of the Commission of Separation, referring to this law, declared "that -the war against the Church must be carried on without intermission." - -Commenting thereon, the _Temps_ sarcastically wrote: "If the clerical -spectre is still to haunt us, was it worth while to be turning like -squirrels in a cage for the past five years?" - -The gist of the law is in the articles that regard "_Associations -cultuelles_," which are aimed at the destruction of Catholic hierarchy -and unity. M. Ribot sought, in vain, to obtain that religious edifices -and property should be attributed only to associations approved by the -bishop in each diocese. The words _bishop_ and _diocese_ are most -carefully eschewed throughout the law. The attribution of property is to -be made to "associations formed in conformity with the rules of general -organization of the cult whose exercise they are to assure" (Art. 4). -The formula is most perfidious, and intentionally so, whereas the -amendment of M. Ribot and the one little word bishop might have rendered -the law supportable. - -What are "the rules of general organization"? The seventy-six Organic -Articles, perfidiously added by Napoleon to the Concordat, purported to -be "rules of general organization of Catholic worship." Some of these -are rankly heretical, and have of course never been observed. These -Organic Articles are abrogated together with the Concordat by the new -law (Art. 37), but what is to prevent the Conseil d'Etat, composed -exclusively of Freemasons, from deciding that these articles are still a -criterion, being the _statu quo ante_? - -By similar means all their church property was taken from the Catholics -of Geneva (1872-5) and turned over to apostate French priests, Loyson, -Carrere, etc. - -A like contingency is foreseen by Art 8. It is anticipated that rival -associations may claim the same church property, and that scissions may -arise in associations, regularly formed and invested. - -Now in these cases the decision does not lie with the bishop, nor even -with the ordinary civil courts. Decrees of Conseil d'Etat are suspended -everywhere like swords of Damocles, or rather like the blades of the -_guillotine seche_, which has replaced the bloody guillotine of "the -grand ancestors of 1793," whom these up-to-date Jacobins invoke so -complacently. We must not forget, too, that Conseil d'Etat means Conseil -du Grand Orient. It is said that the Masons are secretly organizing -_Associations cultuelles_, so-called Catholic. Human nature has not -changed since 1790, and it would be strange, if they could not pick up -another Abbe Gregoire or two, and a Talleyrand to boot. They can always -import some of that ilk from Geneva if necessary. - -Moreover, these _Associations cultuelles_ can be dissolved for so many -reasons (five), at a moment's notice, by a decree of Conseil d'Etat, -that it does not seem worth while to form them. - -The paltry reserve fund the _Associations cultuelles_ are allowed to -have must, like the rest of their funds, be deposited in the -Government's strong-box, and can only be used "for building, repairing, -embellishing church edifices." - -Evidently, it is not intended that there shall be any further -ecclesiastical recruitment. Seminaries are eliminated, _ipso facto_, as -they cannot exist on thin air. - -I do not enter into the details regarding pensions of aged priests, as -it is all too contemptible, the sums accorded being just enough to -starve on. But we may note a few violations of liberty and justice. - -1. All church property, movable or immovable, to which are attached -_fondations_ not directly regarding public worship, which are, in other -words, charitable or educational, are to be turned over to civic -institutions. Thus testators who left money for Christian parochial -schools and charities see it applied to the paganizing of the rising -generation and the poor. - -2. All churches and chapels arbitrarily closed by M. Combes are to -remain disaffected, i.e. confiscated. - -3. Ecclesiastical archives and libraries of episcopal sees and grand -seminaries that are claimed by the State are to be immediately -transferred to the State. This reveals the whole Jacobin mind. The -Church is to be deprived of all social action, by education and charity, -which she has exercised since two thousand years, and she must be -mummified like the Photian and Coptic and Nestorian Churches. - -The confiscation of these archives and libraries by a pagan state is, to -my mind, the most serious loss. Money can always be found again, but -when impious vandals have destroyed or dispersed these libraries and -archives, they can never be replaced. All English students deplore the -irreparable loss, caused by the cynical and base uses made of invaluable -manuscripts by reforming vandals in the sixteenth century. - -4. The Law of Separation deprives communes of the right to give any -subventions for religious worship--though the State inscribes on its own -budget the stipends to chaplains of lyceums frequented by children of -the rich, notwithstanding Art. II. - -5. A whole class of citizens are placed _hors la loi_, in that they are -deprived of the right of trial by jury for offences amenable to this -procedure. They (priests) are placed on the same footing as convicted -anarchists. - -6. Divine service is assimilated to any public meeting. A band of -Socialists may fill the church and render prayer impossible by their -irreverent attitude but they cannot be expelled unless they resort to -violence. - -7. The same class of individuals can invade any cathedral at any hour -and insist on inspecting, gratis, all its treasures (_objets mobiliers -classes_). In other words, these venerable edifices, the church of Brou, -Notre Dame, etc., are treated already like public museums, less well in -fact. And all this, we are told seriously, is "Separation." - -Meanwhile the two parties most nearly concerned in this question, the -Holy See and the French people, thirty-five million Catholics, have -never been consulted. - -M. Briand with remarkable impudence asserted that, since thirty-five -years, the country had sighed after "Separation," though he well knows -that no one thought about it but the Grand Orient. He himself admitted, -in the same session, that the question did not exist (_n'etait pas -posee_) at the beginning of this legislature (1902), and was only raised -by the Pope's violations of the Concordat. This lie, which tends to -become historic, was amply exploded, when M. Combes was convicted in the -Chambers of having suppressed a document, which amply justified Pius X's -action in the case of the Bishops of Dijon and Laval, which the lodges -used as a _casus belli_. Moreover, we must remember that the current -Jacobin thesis is that the Seventeen Articles of the Concordat, which -alone were signed by Pius VII, and the Seventy-six Organic Articles, -added _ex parte_ by Napoleon, in violation of every code of honour and -equity, form an intangible whole. Nevertheless, the Seventeen Articles -of the Convention which were alone signed by Pius VII and Napoleon, in -Messidor l'an IX, took effect as soon as the ratifications were -exchanged. The churches, seminaries, etc., were immediately "placed at -the disposal of the Bishops," and the stipulated indemnities were -forthcoming. - -It was not till Germinal l'an X that the Seventy-six Organic Articles -were promulgated, together with the Convention. - -Now no one surely can be accused of violating articles regarding which -he has never been consulted. Yet this is precisely the ground taken by -the Jacobins. - -A senator of the Right alleged, in defence of the Concordat, Art. 1134 -of the Code Civil: "Conventions legally formed are a law to those who -make them. They can only be revoked, by mutual consent, by those who -make them, and for causes which the law recognizes." - -Thereupon the reporter replied: "There was a Convention between Pius VII -and Napoleon; this Convention formed a whole (_un ensemble_) with the -Seventy-six Organic Articles." And as no Government has ever been able -to enforce these articles, some of which are rankly heretical, the -reporter alleged Art. 1184 of the Code against Art. 1134 to defend the -Government's _ex-parte_ denunciation of the Concordat. This Art. 1184 -declares that "a Convention is rescinded when one of the parties does -not keep his engagements." - -In other words, they say Pius VII and his successors have always -protested against the Seventy-six Organic Articles which the former did -not sign, therefore we are justified in denouncing, _ex parte_, the -Convention or Concordat of Seventeen Articles signed by Pius VII and -Napoleon. - -It is by this sophism that the Third Republic justifies the repudiation -of a portion of the National Debt; for the payment of annual indemnities -to the Catholic clergy was undoubtedly placed on the "Grand Livre" of -France by the Constituante, and recognized as part of the National Debt -by succeeding legislatures, before and since 1801. - -Recently, when it was proposed to suppress, without indemnity, the -_Majorats_ of the _ancien regime_, M. Rouvier, President de Conseil, -indignantly rejected the motion, saying, "Il ne faut jamais que la -signature de la France soit protestee." But when it is a question of -mere Catholics, the sense of national honour becomes blunted. They are -_hors la loi_. This form of jurisprudence has been familiar to -highwaymen from time immemorial--for them, the unarmed are always _hors -la loi_. - -M. Raiberti, a deputy from Nice, eloquently protested against the vote -of urgency, declaring that the country had never been consulted. "No -law," he said, "can be just and stable which does not express the wishes -of the people." All in vain. The Socialist voting machine worked -automatically at every turn towards the end. - -It is an incontestable fact that Separation has never appeared on any -programme these thirty-four years, except on that of 181 deputies at the -elections of 1902. Nevertheless, 341 (against 249) have just voted for -this law of Separation that is the negation of fifteen centuries of -national history.[11] - -The _Gazette de France_ calculates the number of electors represented by -these 341 deputies who carried the Separation Bill in the Chambers in -July:-- - - "On a total of 11,219,992 French electors only 2,997,063 pronounced - yesterday by their deputies in favour of the denunciation of the - Concordat and the spoliation of the Church, voted by a so-called - majority. - - "We must bear in mind that at the elections of 1902 the majority - only vanquished by 200,000 votes out of 8,000,000 voters inscribed, - and there are 400,000 functionaries. Thus spoke a senator (de - Cuverville), and he further quoted the declarations of M. Deschanel - in a public speech, July, 1905. - - "A minority, he declared, governs the country, and a law voted by a - certain majority represents 25 to 30 per cent. One deputy is - elected by 22,000, another by 1000. The Department du Nord has - 500,000 more inhabitants than six departments of the south-east, - yet it has five deputies less. Roubaix, with 125,000 inhabitants, - has one deputy, while the Department of Basses Alpes, with 115,000 - inhabitants, has five deputies." - -It is easy to see how a little judicious electoral geometry and -arithmetic will always give the Government a majority. Each -_arrondissement_ having a deputy, it is only necessary to cut up a given -district, notably anti-clerical, into a great many _arrondissements_, in -order to secure an increased number of deputies, _blocards_; and vice -versa the process need only be reversed in districts suspected of -"clericalism." We must also remember that at least one-third of the -electors never vote, and so the Government can always have a majority. - -This Separation Law is, as M. Briand said, only "transitory." It is, I -repeat, eminently perfidious. There is no form of tyranny, vexation, and -spoliation which cannot be legalized by its equivocal articles. It -contains all that is necessary to eliminate Catholicism from France as -far as public worship is concerned. - -On June 3rd I wrote, "What these Jacobins want is to have the law voted -before the elections of May, 1906, and then say to the people, 'You see -the law is voted, and nothing is changed.'" At the final session after -the vote, M. Briand, in a speech now pasted up all over the country, -said, "Our work is done. What have you to say? You tried to trouble the -conscience of the French Catholics, but can you find anything in the -Bill to warrant your grievances? Dare now to tell the people the -churches are to be closed, the priests proscribed." Yet all this, alas! -arrived almost immediately after the first Separation Law made in 1795. - -"No one," echoed M. Deschanel, a smooth-tongued, dainty politician like -M. Rousseau, "can maintain that this law is the work of hatred and -persecution, unless it is travestied by some profoundly dishonest -Government." - -"Like that of M. Combes, who travestied Waldeck Rousseau's Associations -Bill," rejoined a deputy of the Right. - -This Law of Separation bears the same imprint as that of 1901; both -emanated from the same quarter. It is, I repeat, a masterpiece of guile -and arbitrary tyranny. Any sense can be given to the ambiguous language -in which the most important articles are couched, and their -interpretation is not to be left to ordinary civil tribunals. The _jus -et norma_ in all doubtful questions is to be the Conseil d'Etat. In -other words, the Grand Conseil of the Grand Orient is to be the supreme -court of first and last appeal. - -The Church in France might just as well descend into the catacombs here -and now. It will come to this, unless some cataclysm rouse the French to -a violent uprising, in which the Third Republic and all its works and -ways will be swept away. - -The Senatorial Commission is composed of fourteen Jacobin Freemasons. -Their rulings are a foregone conclusion. The Separation Bill may be -considered already voted in the Senate. - -Great crimes against liberty, justice, and humanity cannot be -circumscribed by national frontiers. They offend all Christendom, and -though nations may, supinely, say "Am I my brother's keeper?" they pay -the penalty sooner or later. France in acute revolution will mean Europe -in flames, as in 1792. - - - - -THE PROGRESS OF ANARCHY - - -_12th October, 1905._ - -The stories that are going the rounds of the whole European Press leave -little doubt as to the fact, that a once great, free nation had her -Foreign Minister, M. Delcasse, kept in office by the King of England -while he was in Paris this spring, and that two months later, he was -dismissed at the behest of Germany, who tore up the Anglo-French -Convention regarding Morocco and inaugurated the Congress of Algeciras. -No nation can act as France has done with impunity.[12] - -This is curious too when we consider that France is so sensitive about -the _ingerence_ of even a spiritual sovereign, that the denunciation of -a Concordat and the rupture with the Holy See were ascribed to the fact -that Pius X had taken the liberty of suspending two French bishops! - -It is also interesting to recall that the Bill of alleged Separation -was first voted at the Congress of Free-Thought held at Rome, in -September, 1904. The motion was made by Professor Haeckel, of the -University of Jena, Prussia, that: "We congratulate M. Combes in his -struggle for free-thought against theocratical oppression, and for the -radical separation of Church and State." Allemane, a French Socialist -deputy, exclaimed: "This is not enough. We want the abolition of the -Church." Robin, another French deputy, rejoined: "We are equally opposed -to both. We demand the abolition of Church and State." - -I have already stated how the annual convent of the Grand Orient of -France notified M. Combes (September, 1904) of their wishes regarding -the passage without delay of the Separation Bill. This Bill was voted, -or rather enregistered, by the Chamber of Deputies in July, as it will -be done shortly by the Senate.[13] - -Yesterday in Paris, the bureau of the "Federation of International -Free-Thought" actually intimated to the French Senate its behest that -the Law of Separation of Church and State be voted, without discussion -or amendment, before December 31st. When we consider that this bureau is -composed of one French Socialist Freemason deputy, the others being -German, Belgian, and Italian, it seems preposterous! It would be so, -even if all were Frenchmen, seeing that the Senate is supposed to be a -free deliberative body, having the responsibility of accepting or -rejecting what is done in the lower House. - -The London _Saturday Review_ is almost the only organ in the English -language which seems adequately to appreciate the enormity of the -religious persecution in France. - -"The extraordinary conspiracy of silence on this momentous matter, in -the English Press," writes the _Saturday Review_, London (July 8th, -1905), "is doubtless due to the fact that English Christians and -gentlemen are usually considered unfit to represent English newspapers -on the Continent. The Paris correspondents of our leading journals, -being nearly all men of oriental extraction, cannot, however honourable -and enlightened, be expected to entertain any interest in the fate of -the Christian religion. We are invariably led by these gentlemen to -believe that all is for the best in the best of republics. When, a -fortnight ago, France suddenly realized that she was within sight of a -war with her ancient foe on the other side of the Rhine, a thrill of -terror passed over the land at the mere thought that while engrossed in -the work of dechristianizing France, and hustling monks and nuns up and -down the country, the politicians in power had demoralized the army, -neglected the navy, and left the frontiers almost entirely unprotected. -Things have quieted down since then, but none the less there is a -feeling of unrest which makes people dread the passage of a law that -may lead to internal divisions and disorders even more serious than -those which agitate France at the present time." - -Referring to the Bill of alleged Separation, the _Saturday Review_ -continues: "_La Lanterne_ (the organ of the 'bloc') intimates that 'it -only accepts the Bill as it stands as a preliminary; we must silence the -priests and prevent them from infusing any more of the virus of religion -into the minds of the people.' ... To a thinking foreigner, the -spectacle presented by contemporary France is an amazing one. Here is a -great nation, which for sixteen centuries has proclaimed herself 'eldest -daughter of the Church,' renouncing her great position as protector of -the Catholics in the east and breaking off her connexion with the -Vatican, at a time when Germany is menacing her and proclaiming at Metz, -of all places in the world, her imperial wish to become more friendly -with the Church." - -This is an allusion to the Emperor William's having himself invested by -the papal legate with the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, surrounded by -German cardinals and prelates, as well as the highest military -dignitaries of Alsace-Lorraine. For me, the dismissal of M. Delcasse and -the whole Moroccan incident are the handwriting on the wall which the -French are slow to read. On the Feast of St. Michael, September 29th, -the Minister of Public Worship held high revelry at a banquet of five -hundred Freemasons in the church of the recently expropriated convent of -the Ursuline nuns at Ave-ranche, just opposite that wonderful pile known -as the Mount St. Michel, a mediaeval monastery and church. It is not -stated whether--like Balthazar--he sent for the vessels of the temple. - -The crimes against justice, liberty, and humanity committed in France, -since four years, are without a parallel in Europe since the Revolution -of 1790, if we except, of course, the atrocities in the Turkish Empire. -But most dire racial and religious antagonism may be alleged on behalf -of the Turk. In Spain, too, similar violations of liberty, justice, and -humanity have been committed during the nineteenth century, but this was -done in the heat and turmoil of revolutionary and anarchist upheavals. -In France they were committed in cold blood, under cover of law. Nearly -27,000 Catholic schools, freely patronized by Catholic parents, have -been suppressed, thousands of aged men and women have been dragged out -of their homes and cast into the street, _vi et armis_, the regular army -being employed in a great many cases. Their homes, built up by years of -patient labour, have been confiscated and sold for a trifle. Yet many of -them were authorized and had contracts with the Government. Recently, -convent and school buildings, estimated at 200,000 francs, were sold for -2200 francs. - -Two days ago, forty-three nuns of the Benedictine Order were expelled -from their homes; eleven of them were over seventy, and quite infirm. -The Congregations who were wary enough not to ask for authorization, and -realized what they could before going into exile, are not to be pitied -so much. Unfortunately, the majority fell into the Government's trap and -asked for authorization, which obliged them to declare all their assets, -that have been confiscated, and of which they will never see one cent. -Not only have all the assets been consumed in the process called -"liquidation," but the Government has been obliged to put up over -4,000,000 of the public money to cover the expenses of the -"liquidators." So ends the myth of the "billions of the Congregations," -held out as a glittering lure by Waldeck Rousseau in 1900 to his -Socialist henchmen. - -The terrible inroads, made by anti-patriotism and anarchical Socialism -by means of public-school teachers, are seriously alarming the creators -of this modern Frankenstein. Domiciliary perquisitions are being made -just now, in many cities, to seize the leaders of a conspiracy to -debauch the young conscripts who begin their two years' military service -now. A brochure, called _Crosse en l'air_ (meaning military revolt), has -reached, it is said, the million mark of circulation, in spite of the -Government. - -The conclusion of the Russo-Japanese war is an illustration of what I -wrote in _Slav and Moslem_ ten years ago, page 170: "Henceforth -commerce, not ideas, will rule in the council chambers of the world. -Politics will be forged in counting-houses and warehouses, 'where only -the ledger lives,' in whose dusty atmosphere none but merchantable ideas -are current. Wars will be declared, peace be made, alliances formed or -repudiated, according to their probable effect on the pulse of the -market." - -Without wishing to derogate from the merit of Mr. Roosevelt's good -offices, I am convinced he could not have succeeded if the financial -consideration had not rendered the belligerents docile. Japan was -absolutely at the end of her financial resources; the Russian coffers -were not far from empty. By the intermediary of the President, both -parties were given to understand that not a yen or kopeck more could -they borrow if peace were not concluded there and then. Any prolongation -of that war would have meant financial panic in many countries, chiefly -in France. Israel, by its bankers, has its hand on the throttle in -Christendom, and can make for peace and war more than all the peace -congresses. When we reflect on the three cruel, uncalled-for wars which -followed the Hague Conference in 1898, we can only tremble for the -future, if there is to be a new peace congress. In spite of conferences -and Jew bankers, guns will continue to "go off by themselves." These -Delcasse revelations are not calculated to render the Germans more -friendly to France or England, and the knowledge they have acquired of -France's inability and unwillingness to fight must be a strong -temptation to a nation whose population is increasing at a formidable -rate, in spite of emigration, while that of France is stationary, not to -say steadily decreasing. - -Belgium, that great country in a very small compass, has doubled hers -since 1830. With 7,000,000 inhabitants, the figure of her business -operations is now the same as that of France with 38,000,000. This last -statement was made by M. Leygnes, ex-minister, in a recent political -speech, regarding the steady decadence of France under Jacobin rule -since twenty years. - -No country wants war, but all fear it. The causes of unrest are manifold -and legion. - -In an important political speech made by Lord Beaconsfield (Disraeli) at -Aylesbury, September 20th, 1873, he expressed himself as follows: "I can -assure you, gentlemen, that those who govern must count with new -elements. We have to deal not with emperors and cabinets only. We must -take into consideration secret societies, who can disconcert all -measures at the last moment, who have agents everywhere determined men -encouraging assassinations, and capable of bringing about a massacre at -any given moment." - -The passage is quoted in an article in the _Nineteenth Century_ (1876), -"A History of the 'Internationale.'" The "Internationale," by the way, -is fast superseding the "Marseillaise." The verse of blasphemy against -Christ and His mother is followed by one which ends with these words: -"Our balls are for our generals." A short time ago there were prolonged -riotous strikes on the eastern frontier. A striker was killed -accidentally. Thereupon M. Berteaux, the Minister of War, retired a -general and imprisoned a captain and a lieutenant for the crime of -having allowed the lancer regiments to carry lances when they were sent -out against the strikers! - -To propitiate these rioters the Minister of War went to Longwy, and the -strikers marched past singing the "Internationale," and the Minister of -War actually saluted the red flag! He afterwards protested in the -newspapers that he did not salute the red flag, but the men and women -who were escorting it! This Minister of War began life as dry-goods -commercial traveller. He is to-day a millionaire _agent de change_ at -the Paris Bourse, and is said to ambition the presidential chair. - -Shakespeare wrote: "Motley is the only wear." In France, everything -seems to be running to red. I have witnessed here two "free-thought" -funerals, one last April and another yesterday, in which pall and -banners were red, and even the coffin was draped in flaming red. Red "is -the only wear," though it is not easy to understand why "free-thought" -should necessarily blush--for itself. At the "Free-Thought" convention -held, recently, at Paris, under government patronage, anarchy dominated, -just as it did at Rome last September. Red was the keynote. - - - - -THE ABOLITION OF THE CONCORDAT - - -_February 3rd, 1906._ - -On August 19th, 1905, I described some of the odious features of the -alleged Separation Bill voted by the House of Deputies on July 7th, at -"midnight, the hour of crime." It may truly be ranked in that category -to which Cicero referred when he said, "There are laws which are merely -conventions among thieves." "The vote of the Senate is a foregone -conclusion," I wrote. The order had been given; every amendment (there -were about a hundred) was rejected automatically, and the law was voted, -December 6th, 1905, by a majority of 180 to 101. "The French -Government," I wrote (June 30th, 1900), "is on the verse of apostasy. Is -this a cause, a presage, or a symptom of national decadence? All three I -fear. Nations stand or fall with their governments. They have the -government they deserve, and are punished for the evil doings of their -rulers! 'I gave them a king in my wrath,' was once written of the Jews. -Is there sufficient vitality left in the French national constitution to -reject the poison which is undermining it, and of which alcoholism, -unknown in France fifty years ago, is but the outward and visible sign?" -To-day this apostasy, not of the nation, but of the French State, is -complete. It is the latest, though by no means the last act of a series -of anti-religious laws, elaborated by the Grand Orient and voted by -majorities and cabinets formed by them. I dealt with this subject on -March 17th, 1900, and said, then, that "with a Parliament and Ministry -like this any legislation is possible." - -The pseudo-Separation Bill is the most important legislation -accomplished in France since a century at least, and it has been done in -a manner which would not be tolerated in any free, civilized country. An -Act, which is the repudiation of fifteen centuries of national life, and -is fraught with the gravest consequences both political and religious, -interior and exterior, has been rushed through both Houses with most -unseemly, "scandalous haste." "You are treating it," said a senator, "as -if it were a question of a fourth-rate railroad." There was only one -deliberation in the Chamber of Deputies, and not one in the Senate we -may say. Senators of the Right were allowed to soliloquize eloquently. -Their speeches were admirable from every point of view and might well -have given pause to the Left. But these were dumb, by order. With few -exceptions, the reporter and President of the Separation Commission and -the Minister of Worship alone spoke, to curtly and peremptorily repulse -the proposed amendments. M. Rouvier, Prime Minister and Minister of -Foreign Affairs, who did not speak at all in the House of Deputies, -made but one appearance, on November 9th, at the first session of the -Senate, to declare that "the question was essentially a political one," -and that there was "a primordial and dominant interest for the -Government that this reform should be completed before the Senate went -before the electoral body." He further declared "that the Senate had -given its adhesion in advance ... if it were otherwise the Government -would resign." Surely a singular speech to make to a deliberative -assembly, on a matter that transcends in importance anything that has -been transacted in the French Parliament since 1793. - -If the law were not what Cicero calls "a convention among thieves," how -did M. Rouvier know "that the Senate had given its adhesion in advance"? -Indignant at the systematic refusal of the Left to enter into any -discussion, a senator exclaimed: "You are a deliberative assembly; try -at least to keep up appearances." MM. Monis and Clemenceau spoke on the -Left, not to refute the arguments of the Right, but to travesty history, -to malign and misrepresent, and to discuss subjects wholly irrelevant. -M. Monis entered into a long digression on the Franco-Prussian war in -order to incriminate a French cardinal and Pius IX. He was ably refuted -by M. de Lamarzalle. - -Whence this unseemly haste to vote a measure so important on the ragged -edge of a legislature? Next month one-third of the Senate is to be -renewed, the presidential term expires, and in May general elections are -to take place. In vain the Right, in learned and eloquent speeches, -adjured the Senate to postpone the final vote: (1) till one-third of the -Senators had been replaced; (2) till the Municipal Councils had been -consulted; (3) till the country had been consulted; (4) until after the -general elections of May, 1906. All in vain. "_Motions prejudicielles_" -and a hundred odd amendments all had the same fate. - -The explanation of this "scandalous haste" is very simple. The reporter -of the Commission said: "If you do not vote this liberal law now, you -can say good-bye to it, for you will never see it again." - -The country has never been consulted, and the Government wishes to -confront the people with the _accomplished_ fact, and above all to be -able to say, as I pointed out in my last: "You see the law is voted and -nothing is changed." If this law had been passed two years ago, it would -have gone into operation a year before the general elections and the -people might have been roused. On the other hand, if it hung fire now, -it would certainly have to be placed in all the electoral programmes. -Everything has been planned and foreseen by the lodges since twenty -years.[14] - -Several senators of the Right convincingly established that there was no -adequate reason for this unseemly haste--that no organic law had ever -been passed without a second reading; and they adjured the Senate not to -abdicate. M. de Chamaillard even offered to withdraw all the proposed -amendments (about a hundred) if the Senate would not vote the "urgency" -and give the law a second reading. All in vain. - -No one ignores or denies that the true purpose of the law is to -dechristianize France; even the spokesmen of the Government could not -dissimulate the truth. The coterie of Freemason Jacobins who have ruled -France for the past twenty years have not renounced their scheme of -national schismatic churches; only, instead of having one, which was -seen to be impossible, they propose to establish dozens of them by means -of associations of worship. Articles 4, 6, 8, 19 dealing with these -associations contain the whole venom of the law. In vain the -obscurities, the anomalies, the legal antinomies were pointed out, and -explanations demanded. _Reglements d'organization and Conseil d'Etat_, -it was said, would settle everything later on! In this _Review_, August -19th, I commented on the text of the law--and not one word, not one -comma, has been changed by the Senate! - -To-day, Islamism is, _ipso facto_, the only religion recognized by the -French Government; its ministers and mosques and schools are provided -for, and its ceremonies are often honoured by the presence of state -officials. This, in spite of Article 2, "the Republic recognizes and -subventions no worship." - -Another point worth noticing is that while discussing Article 1, "The -Republic assures liberty of conscience," the Minister of Public Worship, -speaking for the Government, clearly indicated that state functionaries -would never be permitted to send their children to any but government -schools. - -There are three points on which I insist in conclusion: (1) That the -country has not been consulted. At the general elections, 1902, not one -senator, and only 130 deputies out of 580 had "Separation" in their -programmes, and the Budget of Worship was voted in 1902, 1903, 1904 by a -compact majority who would then have been indignant had it been said -that they were acting against the wishes of the country. On January -27th, 1903, M. Combes himself repelled a suggestion of denunciation of -the Concordat thus: "If you do this by an improvised vote ... you will -throw the country into the greatest difficulties, trouble consciences, -and cause a veritable peril to the Republic." Now the country has not -been heard from since 1902. Yet the law was rushed through, on the eve -of a new election, for reasons I have indicated. - -(2) We must remember that when continual violations of the Concordat are -alleged as an excuse for the rupture, the Jacobins constantly confound -the seventy-five Organic Articles with the seventeen articles of the -Convention called Concordat, 1801, which alone was signed by Pius VII. - -(3) The suppression of the indemnity _Concordataire_ is, as far as the -Catholic clergy are concerned, a partial repudiation of the National -Debt. It was recognized as such by laws of 1789, 1790, 1791, 1793, 1801, -etc. - -This law of pseudo-Separation is not only a law of spoliation, but also -of supreme tyranny, in that in the name of Separation, it pretends to -regulate minutely the mode of existence of its victims, in future, by -special codes, and deprives them of the right to have more than the -strictest necessary for a hand-to-mouth existence. - -I am convinced that to acquiesce in regard to these "associations of -worship" will be to fall into the Government's trap as the Congregations -did when they applied for authorization in 1902. It will only mean -retreating before the enemy, and postponing the hour of violent -persecution and combat, which must come before the Jacobin-Freemason -yoke can be broken. - - - - -THE INVENTORIES - - -_12th February, 1906._ - -Year by year, I have foreshadowed and characterized the programme of -persecution, spoliation, and arbitrary tyranny which is that of the -Judeo-Masonic coterie which governs France, by means of the Socialist -vote. We have now reached the second part of this programme. - -In 1901 the Associations Bill was, according to Waldeck Rousseau, -intended to give legal standing and liberty to the unauthorized as well -as to the authorized Congregations. We all know, to-day, how -twenty-seven thousand of their schools have been closed, and how the -Congregations, simple enough to fall into the Government's trap by -asking for authorization and furnishing inventories of their property, -have been robbed of everything and turned adrift. - -The inventories now being made in the churches, amid scenes of violence -and bloodshed, with the cooperation of the regular army, represent the -first step on the road to wholesale spoliation and strangulation. If -only the victims would be docile and resigned there would be no trouble -whatever. Resistance will compel the operators to be drastic, when they -would rather go slowly and surely. The French voters should be -consistent. After giving themselves such law-makers, they ought at least -not to wince when the laws made by them are put into execution. But this -is an incurable idiosyncrasy of the French; they are clear-sighted, -energetic, and practical in the administration of their private affairs, -but when it comes to politics and government, they are absolutely -apathetic and purblind. Any pothouse politician can wheedle them out of -their votes, who would find it difficult to coax a sou out of their -pockets. All they ask is to be left in peace to attend to their business -and pleasures. It is only when the unpleasant practical sides of laws -like those of 1902, 1904, and 1905 are brought home to them that the -peasant seizes his pitchfork, and the bourgeois his cane, and bloody -manifestations occur all over France, as in 1902, 1904, and to-day -(1906). - -Generally speaking, inventories are made only when property is about to -change hands, as in cases of death and bankruptcy. Now the adherents of -the Catholic Church in France are numerous and very much alive, and they -cannot see why their ecclesiastical furniture and property should be -inventoried, quite forgetting that they gave carte blanche to the "bloc" -of Briands, Brissons, Combes, etc., who made the law they are now -resisting. - -If _Associations cultuelles_ are formed, a consummation most devoutly to -be deprecated by every friend of Catholic France, evidently they will -be composed by bishops, cures, and their present _conseils de fabrique_, -and there will not be any transmission of property. - -If there were no _animus furtandi_, no malevolent projects of -strangulation in the background, the Government would have contented -itself with denouncing the Concordat, and repudiating that portion of -the National Debt represented by the _Budget of cults_, instituted by -the Jacobins themselves, in 1790, when they appropriated Church property -and assumed the charge of maintaining Catholic worship in France. -Neither Protestant nor Jewish worship was included, originally, in the -_Budget de Cults_, seeing that their Church property had not been -touched, and they had no part in the Concordat. - -When the Anglican Church was disestablished or separated from the State -in Ireland, it surely never occurred to Mr. Gladstone and his Government -to order inventories to be made in the churches. - -To understand this revolt of the French people just now, we must recall -their past experience with inventories. In 1790 a decree obliged all -cathedral chapters and titulars of benefices to furnish complete -inventories of all their holdings, and in March, 1791, about four -hundred millions of Church property was seized and sold by the State. In -1901 the Congregations were invited to furnish ample inventories with -their demands for authorization; no authorizations were given, but the -inventories were very useful for the wholesale spoliations which -followed, spoliations which still masquerade under the pseudonym of -"liquidations." - -Moreover, the State makes these inventories to-day as proprietor, though -by no sleight of language can its ownership be proven, even as regards -churches existing before the Revolution, while many costly structures -have been erected and endowed since then by private initiative.[15] - -Fierce riots occurred over one of these churches built on private -grounds. The proprietor produced his title deeds, proving that the -commune had not contributed one cent and that he was absolute owner, but -this made no difference. - -The law Mirabeau of 1789 distinctly recognized that all ecclesiastical -property then existing had been "irrevocably given to the Roman Catholic -Church for public worship and charity." The Jacobins of to-day -apparently base their claims (Art. 12 de Separation) on this loi -Mirabeau, which declares, forthwith, that all this Church property is -"placed at the disposal of the nation," ("_mise a la disposition de la -nation_"). But Art. 12 of the Concordat uses exactly the same words in -speaking of what was left, in 1801, of Church property, edifices, -etc.--"_sont mises a la disposition des eveques_"--all was "placed at -the disposal of the bishops"; and the faithful, moreover, were invited -to reconstitute the stolen patrimony by gifts and legacies, which are -now to be confiscated. - -Church edifices and everything pertaining thereto, as well as pious -legacies (_fondations_), are to confiscated, if _Associations -cultuelles_ are not formed before 6th December, 1906, or if said -associations are dissolved for any of the five cases foreseen by the law -ironically called of "Separation." Lineal descendants may claim -_fondations_ made by ancestors, but this liberal provision is illusory, -as all important bequests are made by people who are childless. Thus the -dead are despoiled as well as the living. - -The recitals which fill the daily papers of churches besieged and -assaulted by _gens d'armes_ and the regular army are very sickening, -coming so soon after a similar campaign against convents. There are -places where no workmen will break down doors or pick locks for the -fiscal agents, and they are obliged to carry operators, or official -_crocheteurs_, around with them. - -Recently two thousand soldiers were mobilized against a village church. -In many places the regular army have occupied the churches, -unexpectedly, before daylight, and thus the people were outwitted and -the inventories were made quietly. Though, if we may believe a -functionary interviewed by a reporter of the _Journal de Geneve_, not -one inventory has been made thoroughly, as the Government is very -anxious to have it over. The probability is that the odious work will -soon be suspended entirely, so that all may be forgotten before the -elections of May.[16] - -Yesterday two superior officers of the Engineering Corps at Cherbourg -had their swords broken by the Government, because they manifested their -disgust too openly. Many others are under arrest, because they refused -to lead the assault on Church edifices, and their careers may be -considered at an end.[17] - -The first article of this Law of alleged Separation declares that "the -Republic assures liberty of conscience." Yet surely it is a violation of -liberty of conscience to command a Catholic officer to batter down the -doors of his parish church. Moreover, when this article of the law was -being discussed in the Senate, the Minister of Cults (M. Briand), -speaking for the Government (as M. Rouvier was never present!), gave it -to be clearly understood that functionaries would never be allowed to -send their children to any but government schools! Yet surely it must be -a matter of conscience with any Catholic to send his children to -schools, which are frankly and aggressively materialistic and atheist. - -Article II declares that "the Republic recognizes, salaries, and -subventions no religion." This too must not be taken literally. For, as -I anticipated last year (May 29th), this law, made against thirty-five -million French Catholics, is not applicable to six million Mohammedans -of Algeria. Their mosques, their ulemas, their schools and congregations -will continue to be supported by the Republic which neither recognizes -nor supports any religion. This is just, seeing that the Third Republic -took all their ecclesiastical property, promising annual subsidies -instead, just as the Jacobins of 1790 did with regard to the Catholics, -only in the latter case the capital appropriated is retained, while the -charge is repudiated. - -Meanwhile Islamism is the state religion of France, _ipso facto_; the -only one whose ceremonies and mosques are honoured by government -officials on solemn occasions. Shades of Godfrey de Bouillon and St. -Louis! - -Spoliation and poverty would be endurable if only the Church were truly -separated from the State. But the latter presumes to dictate to the -Church a new organization of its parishes (_Associations cultuelles_), -to limit its financial resources, and decide how these are to be -obtained, how they must be invested, and what use may be made of them. - - - - -DUC IN ALTUM - - -_20th August, 1906._ - -"And the Lord said to Peter, Launch out into the deep," _Duc in altum_. -To-day again the successor of Peter has heard the word of command, _Duc -in altum_. He has exercised that _potentiorem principalitatem_ or -eminent leadership ascribed to the Roman See by St. Irenaeus in the -second century, and the whole leash of anti-clericals are transported -with rage and surprise at this grand act of Pius X, the one contingency -for which they were not prepared. The previous encyclical (_Vehementer_) -had left them indifferent. They treated it as a mere rhetorical -manoeuvre destined to cover a retreat, and as a covert acquiescence in -their law of tyranny and spoliation. - -The whole venom of this law is, as I wrote a year ago (August 19th, -1905), contained in the numerous articles that regard _Associations -cultuelles_--which are aimed at the very life of the Church, by the -destruction of her hierarchy, which is the basis of her constitution. In -the English and American Press it is sought, disingenuously, to -make-believe that these associations were merely "boards of trustees" -to administer Church property, and that similar associations exist in -the United States, England, Germany, etc., with the approbation of the -Holy See. This is not so; French parishes already have _fabriques_ and -_conseils de fabriques_, that correspond to boards of trustees. They are -abolished by the Law of Separation, and for them are substituted these -_Associations cultuelles_, in which the bishops have no standing and no -authority whatever. Any seven, twelve, or twenty-five persons, calling -themselves Catholics, because they happen to be baptized, can form one -of these associations, claim a church and all its revenues, and run the -parish to suit themselves. - -Even after one association has been legally formed "according to the -general rules of worship" (Art. 4), a most ambiguous expression, which -the lawmakers deliberately refused to make explicit, it is anticipated -that scissions may occur, and that rival associations may claim the same -Church property. In all these contentions the bishop has no voice except -incidentally. The Conseil d'Etat, an administrative tribunal composed -exclusively of Freemasons, is the supreme judge of the orthodoxy of -these associations. The phrase "formed according to the general rules of -worship" was supposed to offer ample guarantee to Catholics. Yet -recently the _Journal Officiel_ has officially registered four or five -schismatic associations, formed by already interdicted priests. They are -in insignificant hamlets, it is true, one of them being a parish of -only 175 members, but they are test cases, and show how foolish it would -have been to trust to the illusory guarantee offered by Article 4, -"according to the general rules of organization of worship." - -The discussion raised by M. Combes with the Vatican, regarding the words -_nobis nominavit_ in the canonical investiture of French bishops -presented by the Government as candidates, and then the affair of the -deposition of the Bishops of Dijon and Laval, 1894, convinced them that -a national schismatic church was impossible, so they fell back on this -alternative scheme of _Associations cultuelles_, destined to set in -motion a process of slow disintegration and gradual decomposition. A -noted Freemason said recently, "Twenty years of secular schools have -made us the masters of France; with twenty years of _Associations -cultuelles_ every trace of the Catholic religion in France will be -effaced." - -In the Senate M. Berger, a Protestant Freemason, made the following -interesting statement (_Journal Officiel_, p. 1380): "The law," he said, -"had been slumbering in the Republican programme for the past fifty -years ... but how can a law be perfect that has had only one -deliberation?... Instead of this a voice cries to us, 'Vote, vote.' Here -are articles in disagreement with each other--Vote. They are in -contradiction with the spirit of the law--Vote. They violate existing -rights--Vote, vote. Do your duty as a Republican.... Well, yes, I will -vote this law from a sense of duty."[18] - -This same senator described the true character of the _Associations -cultuelles_ when he said, "They are free associations destined to take -the place of the ancient Church." - -Not less clear was the statement of M. Briand, Minister of Public -Worship: "Dissensions may arise, not in matters of dogma only, but in -questions of administration. We must allow those, who do not wish to -submit, to form independent autonomous associations if they wish to use -the same church." - -If Christians anywhere wonder at the severity of the papal encyclical -rejecting these associations, it is because they have not even scanned -the text of the law, and accept, unchallenged, the misrepresentations of -a Press which seems to derive all its information from organs like _La -Lanterne_, _L'Action_, _Le Siecle_, _Le Temps_, etc. This Law of alleged -Separation presumes to dictate to the Catholic Church, an organization -in which episcopal authority, the basis of her divinely given -constitution, is completely set at naught. The Roman Pontiff, her -supreme head, was not once consulted, and in order to make it impossible -to do so, they began by severing all connexion with the Vatican in 1904. -It is very much as if, after suppressing all their schools and -colleges, the English Government were to pass a law declaring that -Quakers and Presbyterians are to be deprived of all their ecclesiastical -property unless they consent to adopt episcopacy and the Book of Common -Prayer. Would any one under these circumstances hesitate to say that -Quakers and Presbyterians were persecuted? I trow not. - -When Henry VIII had resolved to reduce the Church of England to the -condition of a department of State, his first step was to undermine her -constitution by removing the keystone of the arch. To do this it was -necessary to detach the clergy from Rome, the See of Peter on whom the -Church is founded. In 1530 he compelled them "to acknowledge the king to -be the singular protector and only supreme lord, and, so far as the law -of Christ will allow, supreme head of the English Church and clergy." In -1532 Convocation further abdicated by the elimination of the saving -clause, "as far as the law of Christ will allow." They also consented to -have their canon law revised by a Royal Commission, "with a view to the -elimination of all canons contrary to the laws of God and of the realm." -Their abdication and submission were recorded in an Act of Parliament, -and "henceforth," writes Wakeman, the Anglican author of a history of -the English Church, "the Church of England will be at the mercy of -Parliament." We all know how the schism and apostasy of this great -province of the Church were consummated by Elizabeth. The fate of -Moscow, and that of Constantinople five centuries before, was the same. -Detached from Rome, they fell beneath the tyranny of the State. - -It is this condition that the Judeo-Masonic coterie would fain have -brought about in France. The seventy-six Organic Articles added -surreptitiously to the Concordat of 1801 had no other object in view. -But, as M. Combes admitted in the Chambers, the Papacy never accepted -them, and no government had ever succeeded in enforcing them. The -question of _nobis nominavit_ and that of the Bishops of Dijon and Laval -were the last abortive efforts to bring about a schism. Failing this, -they resolved to reduce the Church in France to the condition of a -Polish Diet, in which the Conseil d'Etat, i.e. the Grand Orient, would -have enjoyed an unlimited _liberum veto_. - -Even legally speaking, these _Associations cultuelles_ could not -function normally, because their situation was anomalous. They were -neither owners, _usufruitiers_, nor simple tenants of the Church -property of which they had the charge and the responsibility. The law -is, as I said before, full of antinomies and obscurities. Senators of -the Right pointed them out one by one. All in vain. Decrees of Conseil -d'Etat will settle every question as it arises was always the -Government's reply. - -The trap was smartly constructed, and neatly baited with the greater -portion of the present patrimony of the Church, some two million -pounds, it is said, and all Church edifices, etc. Everything is to be -confiscated if _Associations cultuelles_ are not formed by December -11th, 1906. - -Considering the disastrous consequences of not forming associations, it -is not surprising that some Catholics, and even some priests, were -disposed, once more, to retreat before the enemy by forming some kind of -Janus-faced association, canonical on one side, and in conformity with -the law on the other. But it is absolutely false that a majority, or -even a minority, of the bishops at the Assembly were in favour of the -acceptation of the Law, _telle quelle_. - -The clergy and the Catholics of France have been retreating before the -enemy for twenty years and more, quite forgetting the "Resist the devil -and he will flee from you." - -Leo XIII, in his profound attachment to France, loyally lent his aid to -the Third Republic when implored by M. Grevy. He begged the clergy and -the Catholics to rally to the new regime in the interest of peace. - -He even discountenanced the formation of a Catholic party in France at -that time, because Catholics being divided, politically, into three -camps--Royalists, Republicans, and Imperialists or Bonapartists--he -feared strife, and did not wish the Catholic religion to be identified -with any form of government. - -At the time of Leo's death the _Journal de Geneve_ (Protestant) declared -that "this Pontiff had at least one miracle to his credit, in that to -the end he had maintained kindly relations with an ungrateful Republic -that repaid his condescendence and friendly aid by reiterated -provocations." This is quite true. The scholar laws of 1886, when this -campaign against religion was begun by irreligious instruction, given -under a mask of _neutralite_, now completely laid aside; unjust fiscal -laws against the Congregations; and finally the laws of 1901, 1902 and -1904 which embittered Leo's last hours, were so many acts of hostility, -leading up to the final assault, all foreseen and prepared in the -Judeo-Masonic lodges since a century we may say. "Il faut serier les -questions," said Gambetta, whose maxim was _Le clericalism c'est -l'ennemi_; and "clericalism," it seems now, means simply _God_. To-day, -they openly proclaim that God is the enemy. - -After destroying the outposts and the ramparts by the destruction of all -her religious orders engaged in teaching, preaching, and ministering to -the poor and the halt, it was resolved to storm the citadel, the Church -of France herself, and the Law of alleged Separation was sprung upon the -nation. - -If any confirmation were needed as to the great hopes the Masonic -coterie had founded on the _Associations cultuelles_, we find it in the -unanimous outburst of surprise and fury which some of their more -moderate Press organs sought in vain to dissimulate. Billingsgate cannot -furnish the _Lanterne_ with terms adequate to the occasion; all the more -so, that from the beginning it has affirmed, in most scurrilous -language, that never, never would the Church refuse the "liberalities" -of the law, by which is meant the permission to keep some of her -property. Three editorials of _La Lanterne_--November 25th, 1905, "Ils -capitulent!"; August 16th, 1906, "C'est la guerre"; and "La folie -supreme," of August 20th--are most interesting revelations of the -contemporary Jacobin mind.[19] Even the millions represented by the -confiscation of the _menses episcopales_, etc., which the law had -assigned to the _Associations cultuelles_, cannot console these -sectarian Jacobins, whose budget shows a deficit of hundreds of -millions. They loudly proclaim that the law must be enforced -_integrally_, forgetting that the numerous articles regarding -_Associations cultuelles_ are already null and void, and that they -themselves propose to annul those regarding pensions to aged priests. If -they had the courage to enforce Article 35 of the law (_police des -cultes_) every French bishop would be in prison for reading the -encyclical of August 15th in the churches. Other articles of the _police -des cultes_ also fall to the ground, as they were aimed at -_Associations cultuelles_, who were to be held responsible if a preacher -used seditious language in the pulpit. - -No _Associations cultuelles_ will be formed except by Freemasons -masquerading as Catholics; but at least there will be no confusion, no -disorganization of the Church, which was the main purpose of the law. -Thus has Pius X unmasked their batteries and spiked their guns. They -will have to resort to other arms, those of undisguised persecution, the -very thing they wished, above all, to avoid. - -Little is left standing of the Law of Separation but the articles of -spoliation and confiscation. If these Jacobins have the courage to -enforce them "integrally," as they say, even to the confiscation of -Church edifices, it will mean, for the present, the most threadbare -poverty. Whether they will dare to do so remains to be seen. - -M. Clemenceau stopped the inventories, because, he said, "it was not -worth while to have riots and bloodshed for the pleasure of counting a -few candelabras." He and his employers may find that it is not worth -while to risk the Republic for the sake of some Church edifices, for -which they have no use. - -They may content themselves for the present with seizing all the -available cash, which will go the way of the "billions" of the -Congregations, and the exchequer will grow poorer and poorer, till the -vanishing point of national bankruptcy is reached as in 1793.[20] - -Referring to the critical condition in which the Church was placed under -the feudal system owing to the abusive practice of investiture by laymen -of ecclesiastical dignitaries, Guizot writes: "There was but one force -adequate to save the Church from anarchy and dissolution, this was the -Papacy" (_History of Civilization_). - -To-day also, the Papacy, alone, could rally the clergy and the faithful -in complete unity, to offer a solid and compact resistance to these -associations of a law of anarchy and dissolution. "That they all may be -one that the world may believe" (John XVI). - -By a stroke of his pen Pius X, whom these anti-clericals affect to -despise as an ignorant peasant, has broken up their cunningly contrived -trap. To reject the associations seemed fraught with dire consequences -and a perilous launching into deep waters. Happily the French episcopate -are worthy and equal to the emergency. My "First Impressions" regarding -them (p. 5) were correct. - -Their addresses to Pius X and to their flocks, form, with the -encyclicals "Vehementer" and "Gravissimo" (15th August), one of the -grandest pages of the annals of the Church. "Satan hath desired to sift -you as wheat"; to sift you in sore persecutions; to sift you by poverty -and by riches; to sift you in the flux and reflux of barbarian -invasions; to sift you in the ruins of crumbling empires, that you, like -them, might become as "dust which the wind scattereth," the dust of -sects and schisms and national churches. "But I have prayed for thee, -Peter, and thou, confirm thy brethren." _Duc in altum._ - - - - -SEPARATION - - -_24th November, 1906._ - -Disguise the fact as they may, there is religious persecution in France. -Never since the days of Julian the Apostate has any war been waged -against Christianity more malign, more insidious. The ancient Faith was -crushed out, by sheer force, in England and in many parts of the -Continent, in the sixteenth century. In France, too, it seemed, in the -eighteenth century, as though Christianity had received its quietus by -the same brutal means. But methods have greatly altered. Masonic -Jacobins, to-day, shudder at the mere suggestion of blood. A senator of -the Right warned the Government that the Separation might lead to -bloodshed. Thereupon the minister Briand made a gesture of deprecation. -"Pray do not speak of blood," he cried. One man was killed during the -inventories; and immediately they were stopped, and the Rouvier Ministry -fell. Yesterday again in the Chambers M. Briand exclaimed, "Du sang, -quelle parole atroce!" ("Blood, what an atrocious word!"). - -They have pondered the words of the Divine Master, "Fear not them that -kill the body"; and they are determined that there shall be no more -martyrs in the usual sense, no more guillotines, no more _noyades_ as in -1790. But they mean to choke out every germ of Christianity by casting -the minds of the rising generation in a mould of atheism, and to quench -every divine spark in the adult by degrading him in his own eyes to the -level of a mere animal, that must seize every fleeting advantage, by -fair means or foul, because there is no hereafter. - -"We have combated the religious chimera, and by a magnificent gesture we -have put out all the lights in heaven, which will never more be -rekindled.... But what then shall we say to the man whose religious -beliefs we have destroyed?" Thus spoke on November 8th, 1906, M. -Viviani, Socialist Minister of Labour. At the same tribune, the very -next day, M. Briand declared that his Government was not anti-religious, -but only irreligious, or neutral. Meanwhile both this Minister of Public -Instruction and M. Clemenceau, in public speeches all over the country, -have been reviling and calumniating the religion of the nation, and -congratulating public instructors on their zeal in emancipating the -minds of their pupils from all religious superstition, thus training up -"true men whose brains are not obstructed by mystery and dogma," whose -"consciences and reason are emancipated." - -In December 1905, this same M. Briand declared that the Government would -never suffer that its hundreds of thousands of public functionaries -send their children to any but state schools, and to make assurance -doubly sure, a law is deposed, and will soon be passed, establishing a -state monopoly of instruction. Disconcerted by the attitude of the -Papacy and the splendid unity of the clergy and their flocks, the one -contingency for which they were not prepared, the French atheocracy has -decided to content itself with spoliation for the present. A receiver is -to be appointed for all the holdings of the Church, _menses -episcopales_, pious and charitable foundations, libraries, etc. The Left -clamoured for the immediate attribution of the property to the communes, -as the law requires. But M. Briand declared that it would be for them "a -nest of vipers" and "poison their budgets"! - -M. Lassies summed up M. Briand's discourse by these unparliamentary -words: "Vous avez du toupet, vous----" ("You have brass enough, -you----"). - -Not daring to close the churches at present, they have resorted to a -subterfuge (_cousu de blanc_) in order to avoid doing so. The Republic -having promised religious liberty, they say the faithful and their -priests may come together "accidentally" and "individually" in the -churches. Now the text of the law is formal. Art. I says: "The Republic -guarantees the free exercise of public worship, under _the following -restrictions_." Then follow the restrictions, i.e. articles regarding -the associations; in other words, the constitution of the new -_by-law-established_ churches, which were to inherit all the patrimony -of the ancient Church and take its place. - -M. Briand himself, before the encyclical, had openly proclaimed that -there could be no public worship without these associations. The efforts -made by M. des Houx of the _Matin_ (alias "Mirambeau"), M. Decker David -(a deputy mayor), and other agents of the lodges or of the Republic, to -form these associations have been ludicrously pathetic. Failing these, -the Government has decided to leave the churches open for another year, -nevertheless. To storm them, and hold them after they had been stormed, -would be too perilous an enterprise, judging by the troubles caused by -the inventories. Therefore they have resolved to reduce the clergy by -famine, by military conscription, the suppression of seminaries, and -other vexatory measures. Moreover, the closing of the churches is the -one measure that would convince the masses that something had happened, -and that their religion was really persecuted. To the extreme Left, -clamouring for the immediate confiscation of Church edifices and -property, M. Briand said, "You want to strangle the Catholics right -away; we do not wish to do so" (November 9th, 1906). Precisely. What -they do wish is to empty the churches by every means, then close them, -one by one. - -On December 11th, 1906, state receivers are to be appointed for all -Church property, movable and immovable. The very sacred vessels and -ornaments, chasubles, etc., are all appropriated, and merely lent to the -Catholics, temporarily, at the Government's good pleasure. There has -been of late years a dearth of treasures of ancient religious art in the -Salles Drouots of Paris, Frankfort, Munich, etc. But soon Jew -_brocanteurs_ will be in clover. All that escaped the revolutionists of -1790 will be scattered to the four winds ere long. This is one of the -by-products, duly discounted, of this "law of liberty" called -"Separation." - -But they still have a latent hope that the inextricable difficulties -will force Catholics to capitulate and form associations. M. Briand's -circular, 31st August, 1906, ordered his prefects to report to him any -_subreptice_ associations not in conformity with the law of 1905. -Cardinal Lecot's society for the support of aged priests (their old age -pension fund being taken like everything else) is certainly of this -category. It conforms to none of the requirements of the law of 1905, -nevertheless M. Briand gives it a clean bill of health (November 9th). -His speech in the Chambers is a complete repudiation of his circular of -August 31st, and is a tissue of misrepresentation and tergiversation. He -harps upon Article 4 ("the associations must be formed according to the -general rules of worship"), which he declares "places all the -associations under the control of the bishops and of the Holy See." -Article 8 of the law provides, it is true, for endless schisms, all -subject to the decisions of the Conseil d'Etat, alone competent to judge -if an association is or is not orthodox, i.e. "formed according to the -general rules of worship." In this Article 8, also, he finds a guarantee -which should satisfy all reasonable Catholics! - -Now this same M. Briand, as Minister and reporter of the law, combated -(April 6th, 1905) in the Chambers a proposed amendment tending to -safeguard ecclesiastical authority in this matter. "You wish to turn -over to the Pope, by means of the bishops (_la haute discipline_), the -government of these associations. We cannot subject the faithful to this -discipline." - -In the Senate, too, this same minister declared "that even after one -association had been legally formed, dissensions might arise, not only -in matters of dogma, but also of administration; we must allow those, -who do not wish to submit, to form another independent association if -they wish to use the same church."[21] - -If the intentions of the Government were so benevolent as M. Briand -pretends, why did they not accept the insertion of the word "bishop" in -Article 4? It would have rendered the associations tolerable; but this -they strenuously opposed, and the keystone of their law was demolished -by the _non possumus_ of Pius X, August 15th. In the Chambers (November -9th) M. Briand admitted that "the law had been made in view of the -organization of _Associations cultuelles_." This I have affirmed since -nearly two years, and it is in vain that, elsewhere, M. Briand seeks to -make-believe that the law has accomplished its purpose, which, in -reality, it has just missed. - -Even to-day, if the intentions of the Government are as candid and -benignant as M. Briand pretends, why do they not insert one little -amendment in the text of the law which would make it possible for the -Church to form these associations? No, not so. They wish the Holy See to -accept the word of some irresponsible minister, or some declaration of -the Conseil d'Etat, equally valueless. - -In 1901 Waldeck Rousseau solemnly declared in the Chambers that Article -13 of the Associations Bill in no wise affected the parochial schools, -and two days after the law was voted three thousand of these schools -were summarily closed. He had also assured the Vatican that authorized -Congregations had nothing to fear. Even M. Delcasse and the Ambassador -at Rome had given similar assurances to the Vatican before the law of -1901 was deposed in the Chambers. With these and similar precedents it -would be idle indeed to attach any faith to M. Briand's dulcet, fair, -feline, fallacious utterances in the Chambers (November 9th). They are -merely "words, words," and _verba volant_. Moreover, how long will M. -Briand and the Clemenceau Cabinet be able to resist the Socialist impact -of the advance guard? - -More than a year ago, I wrote that any interpretation could be given to -some of the ambiguous terms in which the law was couched, and that this -ambiguity was deliberate and intentional. - -By his own authority. M. Briand (Chambers, November 12th, 1906) has -offered the Catholics one year more in which to form associations under -the Separation Bill. Thereupon M. Puech, a deputy of the Left, flung -these biting words at the Government: "The law without the associations -is void ... it has fallen to pieces.... And you have no associations. In -1907 you will not have them any more than in 1906.... Void, nothingness, -chaos, behold your law." "In 1790," said the same deputy, "as to-day, -the struggle was engaged between two principles, between dogma and -science.... The Constituante was not firm. Camille Desmoulins spoke like -M. le Ministre Briand.... Three succeeding assemblies were forced -logically to extreme measures--death and transportation." - -The astute guile that characterizes M. Briand's declarations in the -Chambers can only be compared to that of Julian the Apostate, who began -his reign by a grand edict of toleration. Or rather it recalls those -deliberations of that council in Pandemonium (Book II, _Paradise Lost_): -"Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood, the fiercest spirit, now -fiercer by despair, spoke thus: My sentence is for open war of wiles I -boast not." But he was overruled by Beelzebub, who "pleaded devilish -counsel first devised by Satan," and which consisted in "seducing the -puny habitants of Paradise to our party" by guile and fraud. - -These associations of the law of 1905, which ignorant or malevolent -writers continue to represent as being the same as those of Prussia and -other half-Protestant countries, were a most ingenious device for -inducing the Church to commit suicide by the repudiation of her divinely -given constitution. - -The point, that essentially differentiates associations for public -worship in Prussia and elsewhere from those of the law of 1905, is that, -in the former, the Catholic hierarchy was respected. In them the curate -is by right president, episcopal authority is paramount, and the State -cannot intervene if dissensions arise. Now Articles 8, 9, etc., of the -French law are the very antipodes of all this.[22] - -The fact is that there can be no real accord between the Church and the -French atheocracy, whose openly avowed object is the radical destruction -of the religious idea, even of natural religion. - -Never perhaps, in the history of humanity, has there been such a -monstrosity as a distinctly atheistic state. Pagan antiquity, even the -Grecian Republics, had a cult of some kind. The First Republic, under -Robespierre, having decreed the abolition of Christianity, immediately -substituted theo-philanthropy. But the Third Republic proclaims itself -atheist, and insists that the nation shall be made atheist by means of -public schools. - -Hitherto the words lay, layman, meant in French as in English, simply, -not of the clergy; to-day, _laique_ in France means atheist. _L'ecole -laique_ means, not a school taught by laymen, but a school of -infidelity. Catholic lay or secular schools are still holding their own -against the state schools, which are nearly empty in some communes. - -Not satisfied with having suppressed twenty-seven thousand religious or -congregational schools, the annual September convent of the Grand Orient -has decided that all these Christian lay schools, primary and secondary, -must disappear. It also finds that the State _lycees de filles_ "are not -sufficiently laicized," meaning of course not sufficiently atheized and -depraved. Yet the work seems to be well under way, if we are to judge by -the following extracts from the discourse pronounced on the grave of a -child of twelve by one of her companions of an _ecole laique_ near -Allevard, in presence of the whole school. "For thee infinite -nothingness has begun, as it will begin for all of us. Thy death, or -rather the supposed Being who caused it, must be very wicked or very -stupid.... He made thee the victim of a society refractory to society -solidarity.... We really cannot excuse this celestial iniquity." I -transcribe from the anti-clerical _Depeche Dauphinoise_. The spectacle -of this free-thought funeral, and of a little schoolgirl blaspheming -over the grave of a playmate, is simply hideous. Poor hapless victims of -a pagan state, that nevertheless enlists the sympathies of Christians -who spend millions on missions to the heathen Chinese! - -This Masonic convent has also decided "that the means of production and -exchange must be restituted to the collectivity." Therefore we know in -advance what the new Chambers will accomplish: State monopoly of -instruction, and State Socialism prepared and accomplished as rapidly -as possible. - -Under these circumstances it really does not matter very much if the -churches remain open or not, for the present. As an English ecclesiastic -recently observed, "We can do without our churches, but we cannot do -without our schools." - -It is by means of Christian schools that Europe was redeemed from -barbarism, and preserved from relapsing into its first estate. Each -generation, in turn, must be redeemed from barbarism, as were our -forefathers, by the Christian upbringing of the young, otherwise -retrogression must inevitably ensue. Every gardener understands this. It -is natural law in the spiritual world. To descend and retrograde is so -much easier than to ascend. - -To-day, the eternal enemy of God and man seeks to wrest from the Church -the great fulcrum by which Christendom was upraised from barbarism, and -to use her own arms against the Church, by converting schools into -nurseries of infidelity and immorality. - -In vain secularists would tell us that history, geography, and grammar -are neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Mohammedan. The venom of -infidelity and vice can be conveyed by the conjugation of a verb. -Physical geography may be used as a catapult against the very notion of -right and wrong. As to the misuse of history, its possibilities are -unlimited. Moreover, the Church, that has received the divine -commission to "teach all nations," needs the aid of all the arts and -sciences to accomplish this mission. The Catholic Church, that is -essentially, and _jure divino_, _Ecclesia docens_, will never forego her -right to teach them all, as she has been doing for two thousand years. -In the sixteenth century China seemed hopelessly closed against -Christian missionaries. But where apostles failed to penetrate, a man of -science, who was also a saint, succeeded. Mathew Ricci, the Jesuit -savant, was welcomed by mandarin _literati_, and founded the first -Christian mission in China in 1581. - -All the old universities of Europe were founded by the Church. The arts -and sciences grouped themselves around the Chair of Theology, as -hand-maidens around their mistress. Religion is, indeed, the aromat -which alone preserves them from becoming corrupt and corrupting. -Already, society is beginning to discover the evil effects of separating -religion from learning. The knowledge and uses of fire form one of the -main lines of demarcation that separate us from animals. Monkeys -appreciate the kindly blaze, but the smartest of them has never -attempted to light a fire. - -When men, with this distinctive and dangerous knowledge of fire, shall -have degraded their mentality to that of the simian by atheism or -secularism, and its concomitant materialism, the social order will no -longer be possible. A few rudely constructed, diminutive bombs can lay -the proudest city in ruins. - -To-day, as in 1790, France is the field on which another great battle is -to be fought between Christianity and paganism, and its results will be -far-reaching. The French atheocracy has "said unto God, Depart from us; -for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways" (Job XXI. 14). Churches, -here and there, have already been profaned by Masonic revelry, the cross -has been demolished on every highway, and removed from every school and -hospital. The State, disposing of all the power and all the riches of -the nation, is at the command of a secret society that is the sworn and -avowed enemy of religion. If the Church again come forth victorious from -the struggle, stronger and purer through poverty and persecution, "if -the Christian Hercules uplift Antaeus, son of the earth, into the air and -stifle him there, then--_patuit Deus_." - - - - -LIBERTY AND CHRISTIANITY - - -Liberty is, pre-eminently and indisputably, a product of Christianity -and must diminish with every diminution of the faith. "Other -influences," writes Lecky, "could produce the manumission of many -slaves, but Christianity alone could effect that profound change of -character that rendered the abolition of slavery possible, and there -are," he says, "few subjects more interesting than the history of that -great transition" (_History of Rationalism_, II, 258). - -There is, indeed, no grander spectacle than that of the Catholic Church -proclaiming, in ages of barbarism, a divine "Thou shalt not" to masters, -whose power over their slaves was unlimited by any law, and even -assuming jurisdiction over them in virtue of a moral law, above all -human laws. - -Ecclesiastical jurisprudence enacted penalties against "masters who took -from their theows (Saxon slaves) the money they had earned; against -those who slew their theows without just cause; against mistresses who -beat their theows so that they died within three days.... Above all, the -whole machinery of ecclesiastical discipline was set in motion to -shelter the otherwise unprotected chastity of the female slaves" -(Wright's _Political Condition of the English Peasantry in the Middle -Ages_). "That Church which seemed so haughty and so overbearing in its -dealings with kings and nobles," writes Lecky, "never failed to listen -to the poor and the oppressed, and for many centuries their protection -was the foremost of all the objects of its policy" (_History of -Rationalism_, II, 260). Simultaneously with the gradual abolition of -slavery, we find the elevation of woman, and her redemption from -polygamy, a natural concomitant of slavery. "No ideal," writes Lecky, -"has exercised a more salutary influence than the mediaeval conception of -the Virgin [he means devotion to]. For the first time, woman was -elevated to her rightful position and the sanctity of weakness was -recognized. No longer the slave, the toy of man, no longer associated -only with ideas of degradation and sensuality, woman rose, in the person -of the Virgin Mother, into a new sphere, and became the object of a -reverential homage of which antiquity had no conception. Love was -idealized. The moral character and beauty of female excellence was for -the first time felt ... a new kind of admiration was fostered. Into a -harsh, and ignorant, and benighted age this ideal type infused a -conception of gentleness and purity, unknown to the proudest -civilizations of the past.... In the millions who have sought with no -barren desire to mould their characters into her image ... in the new -sense of honour, in the softening of manners in all walks of society, in -this, and in many ways, we detect its influence. All that was best in -Europe clustered around it [the devotion to Mary], and it is the origin -of many of the purest elements of our civilization" (_History of -Rationalism_, I, 231). - -These are striking words from the pen of a rationalist, and would that -all women understood that the laws of divorce, the first-fruits of the -weakening of the Christian principle, and the pagan renaissance in -Europe, mark also the first steps of their retrogression to the -condition, from which they were uplifted by Christianity. - -After centuries of judicious preparation, the emancipation of all -Christians was proclaimed by Pope Alexander III. "This law alone," -writes Voltaire, "should render his memory precious to all, as his -efforts on behalf of Italian liberty should endear him to Italians" -(_Essai sur les moeurs_). - -Mr. Hallam has satirically remarked in his _History of the Middle Ages_, -page 221, that "though several popes and the clergy enforced manumission -as a duty on laymen, the villeins on church lands were the last to be -emancipated." But he well knows, for he has told us himself on page 217 -of the same work, that "the mildness of ecclesiastical rule and the -desire to obtain the prayers of the monks induced many to attach -themselves as serfs to monasteries." An old German proverb, too, says: -"It is good to live under the crozier." When the monasteries were -suppressed by Henry VIII, we know by Strype's _Chronicles_, that misery -and vagrancy reached terrible proportions. - -But while freely admitting that "in the transition from slavery to -serfdom, and from serfdom to liberty, the Catholic Church was the most -zealous and the most efficient agent" (II, 234), Lecky is loath to admit -that her action in the sphere of political liberty was equally -efficacious, and that this second emancipation could have been -accomplished slowly, and judiciously, as was the first, without the -upheavals, the violence, and the excesses of the sixteenth and the -eighteenth centuries. Yet on page 158, vol. II, he reminds us that "St. -Thomas Aquinas, the ablest theologian of the Middle Ages, distinctly -asserts the right of subjects to withhold obedience from rulers who were -usurpers or unjust." "To the scholastics of those days also," he says, -"we chiefly owe the doctrine of the mediate rights of kings, which is -very remarkable as the embryo of the principles of Locke and Rousseau." -Authority considered in the abstract is of divine origin; but still the -direct and immediate source of regal power is the nation, according to -Suarez. Apparently, the noisy standard-bearers of civil liberties and -political rights, in the eighteenth century, were not exactly pioneers, -but mere plagiarists. - -"As long," continues Lecky, "as the object was not so much to produce -freedom, as to mitigate servitude, the Church was still the champion of -the people.... The balance of power created by the numerous corporations -she created or sanctioned, the reverence for tradition, which created a -network of unwritten customs with the force of public law, the -dependence of the civil on the ecclesiastical power, and the right of -excommunication and deposition, had all contributed to lighten the -pressure of despotism" (II, 235). - -We must array Mr. Lecky against himself, and conclude that the Church -did more than "mitigate servitude"; she also produced freedom by the -institution of these numerous guilds and unwritten laws, many of which -still existed until they were swept away by the Revolution of 1790, -which left nothing standing but an omnipotent tyrant, called the State, -and a defenceless people, _corveable_, _taillable_, and guillotinable, -at mercy. These "unwritten customs with the force of public law" made -Spain the freest country in Europe, until the seventeenth century. To -suppress these _fueros_ of the commons, or unwritten constitutional -liberties, was one of the chief objects of the Spanish Inquisition, -established by royal authority, and aimed chiefly at the bishops, as -champions of popular rights. One of its first victims was the saintly -Archbishop of Toledo. The Basque provinces retain their _fueros_ intact -to this day. - -In France too liberty succumbed with the Public Law of Europe (1648). - -In 1314 Philippe le Bel, in order to obtain subsidies, convoked the -States General (Les Trois Etats). From that time to 1359, they were -convoked seven times. In the first half of the fifteenth century there -were fourteen convocations. From 1506 to 1558 there was an interruption -of fifty-two years. From Henry II to the minority of Louis XIII, the -States met six times. In 1614 was held the last convocation of the Trois -Etats, until 1789. - -Under the despotic Louis XI (1401-83), Philippe de Commines still dared -to write with impunity: "Il n'y a roi ni seigneur qui ait pouvoir, outre -son domaine, de mettre un denier sur ses sujets sans octroi et -consentement, sinon par tyrannie et violence." ("It would be tyranny and -violence for any king or lord to raise a penny of taxation on his -subjects, without their leave and consent.")[23] - -"Nevertheless," writes de Tocqueville, "the elections were not abolished -till 1692 ... the cities still preserved the right to govern themselves. -Until the end of the seventeenth century we find some which were small -republics, in which the magistrates were freely elected by the citizens -and answerable to them, and in which public spirit was active and proud -of its independence" (_Ancien Regime_, p. 83). - -Mr. Lecky is pleased to attribute to the papal power "some of the worst -calamities--the Crusades, religious persecutions, the worst features of -the semi-religious struggle that convulsed Italy.... It is not -necessary," he continues, "to follow in detail the history of [what he -is pleased to call] the encroachments of the spiritual on the civil -power" (II, 155), though it would be more correct to say the -encroachments of the civil on the religious power. - -But it is very necessary to do so, because though the main object of -these struggles of the spiritual power with despotic kings was the -independence of the Church, it cannot be gainsaid that personal and -civil liberty were thereby enhanced, as Lecky himself admits (p. 235). - -It would be too long to discuss here the Crusades, which merely saved us -from the fate now enjoyed by Islamic countries, or the alleged -persecution of the Manichaeans, who, under the name of Albigenses, -menaced to disrupt the incipient civilization of Europe by their -subversive tenets of anarchy and collectivism, equally opposed as they -were to ecclesiastical and to civil government. - -The "semi-religious wars," or the so-called "wars of investiture," which -both he and Montesquieu disingenuously confound with the wars of Italian -independence, eminently contributed to the cause of civil liberty in -England, not less than in Italy, and elsewhere. Anselm, Becket, and -Stephen Langton were worthy coadjutors of the policy of St. Gregory VII -and the pioneers of political liberty. No one understands this better -than Mr. Wakeman, the Anglican author of a recent History of the English -Church. - -"It is true," he says, "that Anselm could not have maintained the -struggle [against clerical investiture by laymen] at all if he had not -had the power of Rome at his back. Englishmen quickly saw that the -question between Anselm and Henry was part of a far wider question. They -felt that bound up with the resistance of the archbishop was the sacred -cause of their own liberty. The Church was the one power in England not -yet reduced under the iron heel of the Norman kings. The clergy was the -one body which still dared to dispute their will. To them belonged the -task of handing on the torch of liberty amid the gloom of a tyrannical -age. The despotism of the crown was the special danger to England in the -eleventh and twelfth centuries. It was the Church that, in that time of -crisis, rescued England from slavery. Had there been no Becket, Stephen -Langton, Archbishop of York, would have failed to inspire the barons to -wrest the Charter from John" (p. 105). And on page 108 he continues: -"From the Conquest to the time of Simon de Montfort two great dangers -threatened England, the uncontrolled will of unjust, wicked kings and -the grinding administrative despotism of the government. From both she -was saved by the Church. In her own canon law she opposed to the king's -laws a system which claimed a higher sanction, was based on principles -not less scientific, and was already invested with the halo of -tradition." - -It is this same canon law that the Church in France is, to-day, opposing -to the tyranny of an omnipotent State or parliamentary majority, _alias_ -Grand Orient, which has, since four years, crushed out two of the most -sacred liberties--the right to live in community and the right to -educate one's children in the Christian faith, the faith of our fathers, -"once delivered to the saints." - -The long struggle, between the Popes and the German rulers, who sought -to establish their despotic rule in Italy and enslave the whole Church -by making the bishops of Rome their domestic chaplains, resulted in the -glorious Congress of Venice, 1177, confirmed by the Peace of Constance, -which is the first instance in history of peoples wresting political -liberties from regal tyrants. The Magna Charta is the second in point of -time. - -After a long and seemingly hopeless struggle with Frederick Barbarossa, -Alexander III, to whom this Hohenstaufen had opposed a series of servile -anti-popes, triumphed, and with him triumphed the League of the Italian -Cities, of which he was the unarmed chief. Milan, Brescia, Pavia, and -other cities, which had been razed to the ground by the tyrant, thanked -the Pope for having rendered them their liberty. Alexandria, an -important city of the Piedmont, bears the name of this peaceful -liberator. Voltaire refers to these events in the following terms: -"Barbarossa finished the quarrel by recognizing Pope Alexandria III, -kissing his feet, and holding his stirrup." (Le maitre du monde se fit -le palefrenier du fils d'un gueux qui avait vecu d'aumones.) "God has -permitted," exclaimed the Pope, "that an old man and a priest should -triumph, without fighting, over a terrible and powerful emperor" (_Essai -sur les moeurs_, II, 82).[24] - -In the Eastern or Byzantine Empire, the clergy, at an early date, and -long before the schism of 1054, began to succumb to Caesaro-papism, a -revival of the ancient pagan system, in which the temporal ruler was -also the high-priest of his realm, and we well know that neither -personal nor civil liberty ever found foothold in this _Bas Empire_. - -"While the ecclesiastical monarchy of the West," writes a Protestant -historian, "could lead onward the mental development of the nations to -the age of majority, could permit and even promote freedom and variety -within certain limits, the brute force of the Byzantine despotism -stifled and checked every free movement" (Neander, _History of the -Church_, VIII, 244). - -The French kings, even more than the English before Henry VIII, strove -hard to establish the same system, and above all to exempt themselves -from the Christian law of monogamy, which, with personal freedom, -constitutes the great line of demarcation between Eastern, and Western -or Latin civilization. Montesquieu assures us that a neighbour's wife, -unlawfully taken, or their own unjustly repudiated, caused all, or -nearly all, the troubles between the Papacy and the French kings. - -On the whole, however, civil liberty in Europe had reached an advanced -stage in the fifteenth century. Cities and provinces really had more -self-government then, than during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and -eighteenth centuries, more than they have now in some countries, notably -in France. - -The neo-paganism of the Renaissance was one of those periodical revolts -of what St. Paul calls the "carnal mind, which is enmity with God." -"Sapientia carnis inimica est Deo" (Rom. VIII). It was a conjuration -against Christianity and culminated in the Protestant revolt, which for -ever destroyed the unity of Christendom, and set in motion a progressive -scepticism or rationalism, which is Protestantism in its last analysis. - -For more than three centuries English writers have repeated that the -Protestant revolt was a struggle for liberty of conscience, -notwithstanding the incontrovertible fact that all its foremost leaders -were bitterly opposed to religious toleration, and that the sects -relentlessly persecuted each other, as well as the adherents of the -ancient faith. - -Protestantism being, intrinsically, the nursery of rationalism, was -necessarily a diminution of Christianity, and produced a corresponding -diminution of liberty, both personal and civil. At the Congress of -Westphalia, 1648, where, as Macaulay states, "Protestantism reached its -highest point, a point it soon lost and never regained" (_Essay on -Ranke_), was formulated the monstrous axiom _Cujus regio ejus religio_, -which became the common law of Europe in lieu of the hitherto prevailing -rule of One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism. Henceforth, as in pagan days, -each ruler assumed the right to dictate the religious beliefs of his -subjects in the new system of national churches. The "territorial -system" it was called, and represented the net result of a century of -Protestantism. - -There were, indeed, no fiercer despots over men's consciences than the -so-called "reformers." If any doubt let him read their lives. Let him -read of the bloody strife that rent the Netherlands after they had -shaken off the Spanish yoke; how the great Barneveldt fell a victim to -miserable oppression of Gomarists by followers of Arminius, and vice -versa; how Remonstrants persecuted contra-Remonstrants, all on account -of some metaphysico-religico distinctions neither understood clearly. - -Then let us consider the embarkation of the Pilgrim Fathers from -Holland, where they had sought asylum from the rigid conformity enforced -by reformed England. Finding themselves no better off in the republic, -which had emancipated itself, simultaneously, from Spain and Rome, the -Pilgrim Fathers shook the dust of the old world from their feet and -sought a new hemisphere. Surely in the primeval forests men might hope -to interpret Scripture and serve God each according to his own lights. -Not so. No sooner were the camp fires lighted, and the barest -necessities of life provided for, than we find a theocracy of the most -hard and fast type established by the Argonauts of the Golden Fleece of -religious toleration. A veritable office of the Holy Inquisition was -instituted "to search out and deliver to the law" all who "dared to set -up any other exercises than what authority hath set up." While it was -gravely affirmed that "these cases were not a matter of conscience, but -of a civil nature," Sir John Saltonstall wrote from England to the first -Puritan Grand Inquisitors, Wilson and Cotton, remonstrating "at the -things reported daily of your tyranny, as that you fine, whip, and -imprison men for their consciences." - -The acts of the Inquisition dwindle into insignificance if we place in -the other balance the excesses committed, and the penal laws enacted -from 1530 to 1829 against Dissenters and against English Roman Catholics -in England. The Toleration Act of William and Mary, 1701, relieved -Protestant "Recusants," but the penal laws against Catholics were -maintained till 1829, though many had fallen into desuetude. The -principal were: For hearing Mass a fine of 66 pounds and one year's -imprisonment; they were debarred from inheriting or purchasing lands; -they could hold no office nor bring any action in law; they could not -teach under pain of perpetual imprisonment; they could not travel five -miles without a licence, nor appear within ten miles of London under -penalty of 100 pounds; while the universities were closed against them -by test acts. Catholics having been thus deprived of all means of -obtaining a liberal education and raising their voice on behalf of the -truth, Protestant writers, since three hundred years, have been able to -travesty and misrepresent, unchallenged, all the facts connected with -the Reformation. - -In France Louis XIV persecuted the Huguenots in virtue of the _Cujus -regio ejus religio_ (Whose the kingdom his the religion), and in spite -of the protests of Innocent XI, who instructed his legate d'Adda to beg -James II to intercede for them, declaring that "men must be led, not -dragged to the altar." - -The German, Swiss, and Scandinavian rulers made, modified, and changed -the religion of their subjects at will. Of the intolerance of the -Calvanistic Republic of Geneva less said the better. Oppenheim, often -pawned by its needy electors, is said to have changed its form of -Protestantism fifteen times in twenty-one years. In Denmark, where -Lutheranism was paramount and unadulterated, we find, writes Dollinger, -"that the nobility made use of the Reformation to appropriate not only -the Church lands, but that owned by the peasants." "A dog-like servitude -weighs down the Danish peasants, and the citizens, deprived of all -representative power, groan under oppressive burdens" (_Geshicte von -Rugen_, p. 294, quoted by Dollinger). - -"The dwellers on the great estates of the Church were now obliged to -exchange the mild rule of the clergy for the oppressive rule of the -nobility," writes Allen, page 313. "By these laws and enforced compacts -the spoliation and the degradation of once free peasants were -accomplished." In 1702 Frederick IX abolished slavery, but glebe -serfdom, as in Russia, continued till 1804. Until 1766 the education of -the people stood at the lowest grade, and it was not till 1804 that -freedom was conferred on 20,000 families who had been in a state of -serfdom since the Reformation. - -In Sweden we find the great Protestant hero, Gustavus Vasa, -appropriating all the commonage lands of the villages, and even the -weirs, the mines, and all uncultivated lands. Gustavus was, of course, -obliged to share the spoils with his henchmen, whose rule was even more -oppressive, and the peasants became wholly impoverished and degraded. - -In Germany we find the same record of spoliation and oppression of the -peasantry, whose rights there was none to defend since bishops no longer -sat in the Diet. In 1663, 1646, 1654, the personal liberty of the -peasants was progressively annihilated. "Then was forged that slave -chain," writes Boll, "which our peasantry have had to drag within a few -decades of the present day" (_Mecklenburg Geschichte_). In 1820 this -glebe serfdom was abolished by the Grand Duke. - -In Pomerania, united with Brandenburg since the Reformation, -Protestantism was paramount already in 1534, and the fate of the -peasantry was the same. The oppression was so intolerable that even -those whose farms had not been appropriated or turned into grazing -grounds, as in Ireland, fled the country. In the peasant ordinance of -1616 they were declared "serfs without any civil rights," and preachers -were compelled to denounce fugitives from the pulpit. - -The Elector of Brandenburg, it will be recalled, was the first to abjure -Catholicism, and founded what became in 1701 the Prussian monarchy. - -There was no general Diet since 1656. The Estates no longer met, and the -rulers imposed taxes at their will. Peasants fled to Poland, or became -mendicant vagrants or brigands. - -The Lutheran clergy were mere puppets in the hands of their tyrannical -rulers, who even dictated or revised their sermons at times. Prussian -despotism reached high-water mark under Frederick the Great, but he -being a frank and consistent rationalist, who believed "in letting every -man be blessed in his own way," religious persecution ceased. - -In Brunswick and Hanover the spoils of the Church appeased for a time -the greed of reformation princes, but habits of luxury were engendered -by their ill-gotten wealth, and they soon resorted to "money clipping." -The towns lost all their inherited independence. For the decisions of -municipal councils were substituted governmental decrees and circulars, -as in France to-day, and ere long all trace of the ancient freedom of -the Estates was lost. "The clergy," writes Havemann, "had long since -sunk into dependence.... The cities were languishing from lack of public -spirit.... The power of modern states was unfolding itself over the sad -remains of the ancient life and liberty of the Estates." - -In Saxony there was a nip-and-tuck struggle between Lutheranism and -Calvinism in which the rack and the scaffold were freely used by -Lutheran princes, who enforced their form of Protestantism according to -the axiom _Cujus regio ejus religio_. - -On the Church lands in England had lived a dense population of tenant -farmers. When these lands were confiscated by Henry VIII, thousands of -these peasantry became helpless paupers under the new regime. Vagrancy -and mendicancy reached alarming proportions. It was enacted that vagrant -beggars should be enslaved. If they tried to escape they were to be -killed. - -It appeared to Burnet (_History of Reformation_) that the intention of -the nobility was to restore slavery. According to Lecky there were -72,000 executions in the reign of Henry VIII; vagrant beggars furnishing -a large contingent. - -Under Elizabeth charity by taxation or poor rates was resorted to for -the first time in the history of Christendom. - -I think we must admit that liberty, both civil and religious, made -shipwreck at the Reformation, and that the champions of the Protestant -revolt were not exactly actuated by a desire for the well-being and -freedom of conscience of their fellow-men. - -In England all was laboriously reconquered till 1829, when Catholics -were _emancipated_ on their native soil.[25] - -Some Catholic countries, Spain and Italy, were saved from the horrors of -religious wars, but all felt the effects of the new rationalistic -spirit, which, being a diminution of Christianity, was also a diminution -of liberty. They lost many civil liberties, and despotism strengthened -its bands, till the great upheaval of 1790 destroyed the whole fabric of -Europe and inaugurated a system of constitutional representative -government. - -Representative government, our modern fetish, was not unjustly rated by -J. J. Rousseau, when he said "that a people with a representative -government were slaves except during the period of elections, when they -were sovereigns." France to-day is a striking illustration.[26] - -An amusing incident is related by Leroy Beaulieu of a Neapolitan who -hired donkeys to tourists. He was an eager advocate of representative -government in 1869. Questioned as to his reasons, he said that since -twenty-one years he had been hiring donkeys to English, French, and -American tourists, who enjoyed representative governments and were all -rich. Some years later the eminent economist met him again, and -congratulated him on Italy's having acquired a representative -constitution. The disabused peasant bitterly denounced the new regime in -that the burden of taxation had trebled, and that the very donkey he -hired out was taxed. - -If the laws, or at least all important ones, were submitted to -untrammelled public vote, then only might we say that the government was -truly representative. - -In many cases universal suffrage means the tyranny of ignorant, -unprincipled majorities, while nowhere can it oppose an effective -barrier against the accumulation of immense wealth in a few hands, and -the creation of all-powerful oligarchies. When the majorities and the -oligarchies come into collision, liberty will succumb. There will be -more than one Bridge of Sighs. - -It is in vain that false philosophers would persuade us that altruism, -some vague "moral element of Christianism," will combine with -rationalism and perpetuate our Christian civilization in some -transcendent form. - -Christian civilization and morality are intimately and indissolubly -connected with Christian dogma. The Fatherhood of God, Jupiter Optimus, -was not unknown to the ancients, but the brotherhood of man, involving -personal liberty and also civil liberty by extension, is essentially a -Christian predicate, and is based on the dogma of the Incarnation. - -The lofty contempt our modern rationalists express for the fierce -controversy waged over two Greek vowels by the partisans of _Homoousion_ -and _Homoiousion_ merely betrays their ignorance of its vital -importance. On that dogma, so nobly maintained by the See of Peter and -Athanasius, rests our whole fabric of Christian civilization, the -brotherhood of man, and its logical sequence, freedom from slavery. - -It is as absurd to suppose that the "moral element of Christianity" will -continue to exist after the erosion of Christian dogma, as to expect -that a tree we have hewn down will continue to bear fruit. It may indeed -for a time remain verdant, and even put forth new shoots, just as we -often see the loveliest flowers and fruits of Christianity in the lives -and characters of individuals with whom the Christian faith has almost -ceased to exist. But let us not be deceived. The lingering sap will -cease to flow, and the last semblance of life will fade away. "The -elements of dissolution have been multiplying all around us," writes -Lecky. And when rationalism or secularism, or neo-paganism in other -words, which has already corroded Christendom to so great an extent, -shall have accomplished its work of disintegration with the aid of -godless schools and gross literature, society will, I repeat, be -compelled to restore Christianity, or slavery, or perish. - - - - -CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION - - -"At the end of the fourth century," writes Guizot, "the Church saved -Christianity ... resisted the internal dissolution of the Empire and the -barbarians, and became the bond, the medium, and the principle of -civilization.... Had the Church not existed the whole world must have -been abandoned to purely material force" (_History of Civilization_, I, -38).... "When all was chaos, when every great social combination was -vanishing, the Church proclaimed the unity of her doctrine and the -universality of her right; this is a great and powerful fact which has -rendered immense service to humanity" (_ibid._, II, 19). - -This unity was indeed the great factor in European civilization. On it -the new civil societies, like wild olive branches, were grafted, so to -speak. It became the bond of political unity, a kind of centripetal -force, we may say, and the redemption from that inordinate love of -independence which characterized the barbarians. - -Consequently the new civil societies made the maintenance of religious -unity the foremost object of their policy. It became the public law of -all Europe and the common law of each state. To impugn this unity was -considered a most heinous offence not against God only, but against the -nation and against all Christendom. - -"Thus," writes another great Protestant, "Christianity became -crystallized into a single bond embracing all nations, and giving to all -life, civilization, and all the riches of the mind" (Hurter, _Life of -Innocent III_, I, 38). - -A corollary of this system of an universal Christian society was the -recognition of a supreme tribunal. "One of the most elevated principles -of the age," writes the same eminent German, "was that, in the struggles -between the peoples and their rulers, there should be a superior -authority charged to recall laws not made by men, though their -interpreter were himself a man." Referring to the fiercely contested -election of Othon, he continues: "Othon was the first to have recourse -to Rome, the tribunal with whom rested the decision in these matters, -when the parties did not wish to resort to the arbitrament of war." - -In France we find the great Suger, Abbot of St. Denis, remonstrating -with the Bishop of the free chartered city of Beauvais, brother of the -King, with whom he was often at odds. - -"I beseech you not to raise a guilty hand against the King ... for you -must see the consequences of armed insurrection against the King, -especially if it be without consulting the Sovereign Pontiff.... If the -King, drawn aside by evil counsellors, has not acted rightly, it was -proper to have informed him by the bishops and notables, or rather by -our Holy Father the Pope, who is at the head of the whole Church, and -could easily have reconciled all differences." - -In England we have many instances of both laymen and clergy appealing to -the arbitrament of the Papacy. - -"The recognition of some principle of right, powerful enough to form a -bond of lasting concord, has always been the dream of statesmen and -philosophers," writes Lecky. "Hildebrand sought it in the supremacy of -the spiritual power, and in the consequent ascendency of moral law" -(_History of Rationalism_, 245). - -Voltaire pays homage to this public policy of the Middle Ages. "The -interests of the human race required a controlling power to restrain -sovereigns and protect the lives of peoples. This controlling power of -religion could well be placed in the hands of the Papacy. The Sovereign -Pontiffs warning princes and people of their duties, appeasing quarrels, -rebuking crimes, might always have been regarded as the images of God on -earth. But men, alas, are reduced to the protection of laws without -force" (_Essai sur les moeurs_, II). - -He describes what really did exist for centuries, though, of course, -papal arbitration was not always efficacious. Every great institution -needs time to develop and mature. It would not be great were it -otherwise. Moreover there were, unfortunately, many troublous times -between the sixth and the fifteenth century, in which the Papacy itself -was captive, buffeted, demeaned, and exiled by the struggles and -ambitions of turbulent political factions in Rome itself. The very day -on which Gregory VII excommunicated the German Emperor, he was seized -and imprisoned by a noble Roman bandit, until his people were able to -deliver him by main force. - -"Another corollary of this universal Christian Society was that right -found a protector in the common Father of the faithful; in the grand -idea of a supreme chief who without employing material force judged in -last resort.... What great misfortunes would France and all Europe have -been spared if, in the reign of Louis XVI, an Innocent III had been -Pope. His role would have been to save the lives of the people" -(Hurter's _Innocent III_, II, 200-23). To German Protestant writers like -Hurter, Voigt, Neander, etc., is due the honour of vindicating the true -role of the Papacy in the Middle Ages. - -The rights of suzerainty exercised by the Papacy also formed part of the -public law of Europe. In those wild, lawless days, when robber barons -enjoyed the privilege of being highwaymen on their own estates, and -often extended their depredations to those of their neighbours, property -rights had no sanction, and the weaker succumbed to the stronger in -virtue of the "fist right," which we now translate variously by "the -right of the strongest," political "majorities," and the "survival of -the fittest." - -The practice then arose among weak owners of dedicating their lands to -the Church, in order to obtain spiritual or moral protection against the -brute force of stronger neighbours. What private owners did in a small -way was done by princes on a larger scale. - -Referring to the peculiar incidents when roving Norman pirates, in -possession of Sicily and Naples, seized the person of the Pope and -insisted on becoming his vassal, Voltaire writes as follows:--"Robert -Guiscard, wishing to be independent of the German Emperor, resorted to a -precaution which private owners took in those days of trouble and -rapine. The latter gave their property to the Church under the name of -Oblata, and, paying a slight tax, continued to enjoy the use of it. The -Normans resorted to this custom, placing under the protection of the -Church in the hands of Nicholas II (1059) not only what they held, but -also their future conquests (on the Saracens). This homage was an act of -political piety like Peter's Pence; the two pence of gold paid by the -Kings of Portugal; like the voluntary submission of so many kingdoms" -(_Essai sur les moeurs_, II, 44). - -It was thus that England became a fief of the Holy See, a most -unfortunate circumstance, as the temporal pecuniary obligations arising -therefrom were exploited to estrange the English from the See of Peter, -in the following centuries. - -"In 1329," continues Voltaire, "the King of Sweden, who wished to -conquer Denmark, addressed the Pope as follows: 'Your Holiness knows -that Denmark depends on the Roman See and not on the German Emperor.' -... I only wish to show," Voltaire adds, "how every prince who wished to -recover or usurp a domain appealed to the Pope.... In this case the Pope -defended Denmark, and said he could only decide on the justice of the -case when the parties had appeared before his tribunal, according to the -ancient usage." - -Nor did Christians alone appeal to this spiritual tribunal. The bull of -Innocent III, cited by Hurter, is an excellent exponent of the mind of -the Church in all times. "As they (the Jews) claim our succour against -their persecutors, we take them under our special protection, following -in this the example of our predecessors, Calixtus, Eugenius, Alexander, -Clement, and Celestin. We forbid every one to force a Jew to be -baptized, for he who is compelled cannot be said to have the faith. No -Christian must dare commit any violence against them, nor seize their -property, without a legal judgment. Let no one trouble them on their -feast days by striking or throwing stones at them," etc. - -It will be objected that the fulcrum of Western civilization was a -spiritual despotism. But these terms exclude each other. Can we call an -authority despotic which had no material force, and rested only on a -divine commission and the common sense of prince and people, recognizing -its credentials--on public opinion in fact? - -It was a fundamental law of every state that any one, no matter what his -rank, who impugned the Unity of the Faith, or committed offences so -heinous as to justify the supposition that he was no longer a Christian, -fell under the ban of the Church and became outlawed, if at the end of a -year he had not been absolved. In his _Historia Imperatorum_ Schafnaburg -explains the wintry flight of Henry IV across the Alps to Canossa by his -eagerness to be absolved before the year had revolved, because otherwise -he would have forfeited his crown. _Ut ante hanc diem non absolveretur, -deinceps juxta Palatinas leges indignus regio honore habeatur._ - -Three causes were generally admitted as sufficient for the -excommunication of a sovereign. First, if he fell from the faith. -Second, if he ravaged or seized ecclesiastical lands or desecrated -churches. Third, if he repudiated his own wife or appropriated his -neighbour's. This latter point, as Voltaire and Montesquieu have pointed -out, was the cause of nearly all the quarrels between the French kings -and the Papacy, a fact which our Jacobins, in the Chambers and -elsewhere, deliberately ignore, when they mendaciously misrepresent the -Church as having constantly encroached on the civil power. The case of -Philippe Augustus and the hapless Ingleburge of Denmark was a test case, -so to speak. - -"It was not," writes Hurter, "a question of contested claims of the -Papacy, but of this great question, Is the sovereign subject to the laws -of Christianity? It had to be decided whether the royal will should -triumph or not over the force regarded as constituting the unity of -Christendom" (_Life of Innocent III_). Montesquieu's testimony is -unimpeachable when he testifies that this Public Law of Europe was -universally recognized. "All the sovereigns," he writes, "with -inconceivable blindness, themselves accredited and sanctioned, in public -opinion, which had no force except by it." - -If the laws against heretics, who were to our forefathers what the -anarchists are to us, were oppressive, some of the blame should surely -be apportioned to the laymen who sat in the mixed assemblies in which -they were made. "Almost all Europe, for many centuries, was deluged in -bloodshed at the direct instigation or with the full approval of the -ecclesiastical authorities." It is in this disingenuous way that Lecky -refers to the operations of the Public Law of Europe against the -Albigenses or Manichaeans of Provence, and probably to the wars of -Italian independence and the Thirty Years War. Until the thirteenth -century he assures us that practically no persecutions (prosecutions) -against heretics occurred. It was then that the Public Law of Europe -began to be trampled on by sectarians who adopted and propagated -Gnostic, Paulician, Manichaean, and other subversive theories, imported -from the East by Semitic-Islamic settlers in the fair lands of Provence. -Spain and Italy, the countries in which the Public Law of Europe was -maintained, were the only ones who were spared the horrors of civil -religious wars. They were saved by inquisitions, it will be retorted. - -Without seeking to defend the system, we may be permitted to inquire -whether it were not preferable, at that time, to execute some -ringleaders of religious revolt (30,000 in three centuries is a fair -estimate), than to deluge whole countries in blood for many decades, -about controversies which not one in a million could possibly grasp? -Lecky the rationalist assures us that "the overwhelming majority of the -human race, necessarily, accept their opinions from authority. Avowedly -like Catholics, or unconsciously like Protestants. They have neither -time nor opportunity (nor capacity) to examine for themselves" (_History -of Rationalism_, I, 101). - -Does any one seriously believe that the Camisards were fighting for -predestination and infant damnation, which have been shelved recently by -Presbyterians in the United States? - -In England, France, Germany, everywhere, greed and political ambition -were the incentives; the passions of ignorant masses were merely used as -a means. Back of both, and behind all, we descry secret societies, the -true pandemoniums, where these revolts are organized, and whence Mammon, -"the least-erected spirit that fell," Moloch, "horrid king besmeared -with blood," Belial, and all that crew, described by Milton, are sent -forth to execute the behests of the eternal enmity between "the -serpent's seed and the seed of the woman." - -In this unholy struggle "all the bonds of cohesion on which political -organization depended were weakened or destroyed," writes Lecky. "The -spirit of private judgment had descended to those totally incapable of -self-government, and lashed their passions into the wildest fury" -(_History of Rationalism_, p. 239). Voltaire is even less complimentary. -He describes the Hussites as "wild beasts whom the severity of the -emperor had roused to furor." - -In Germany, apostate ecclesiastical and secular electors were seeking -their own aggrandizement. Bishoprics with their manses were converted -into hereditary principalities. As to their Swedish ally, Gustavus -Adolphus, I refer my readers to the judgment of a Protestant admirer of -this doughty champion of the Reformation. On page 329 of _Thirty Years -War_ Schiller writes as follows:-- - -"The last, the greatest service, Gustavus Adolphus could render to -religious and civil liberty was to die (1632, at battle of Lutzen).... -It was no longer possible to doubt that he was seeking to establish -himself in Germany, not as a protector, but as a conqueror. Already -Augsburg boasted that it had been chosen as the capital of the new -monarchy. The Protestant princes, his allies, made claims which could -only be satisfied by despoiling the Catholics. It is then permitted to -conclude that like the barbarian hordes of yore, he intended to divide -the conquered provinces of Germany among the Swedish chiefs of his army. -His conduct towards the unfortunate Elector Palatine, Frederick V, is -unworthy of a hero. The Palatinate was in his hands, justice and honour -required that he return it to the legitimate sovereign. But to avoid -doing so he had recourse to subtleties which make us blush for him." - -It is only fair to add that Gustavus did finally restore the Palatinate -to Frederick, but as a fief of the Swedish crown. - -What, I ask, has been gained by the overthrow of the Public Law of -Europe? For this was waged the Thirty Years War, one of the most cruel -the world has known. Atrocities were committed on both sides, and the -_tu quoque_ argument is very foolish. But if it be admitted that -defensive war is always just and righteous, we must allow that the -Catholics were justified in fighting for their public law. They were in -possession since more than twelve centuries, and were resisting -assailants who showed no quarter, and who robbed them of their churches -and persecuted them, relentlessly, whenever they gained the upper hand, -just as the Puritans did in Maryland. And what was the net result of the -Thirty Years War? The loss of liberty both civil and religious. The -German electors, ecclesiastical as well as secular, had been but -administrators of free citizens, who now became subjects with little or -no voice in the government. As to religious liberty, the new axiom -_Cujus regio ejus religio_ was substituted for One Lord One Faith. The -ruler of each realm became the infallible Pontiff of his subjects. "If -any gratitude from this scandalous and accursed world were to be gained, -and I, Martin Luther, had taught and done nothing else than this, that I -have enlightened and adorned the temporal authority, for this alone -should it be thankful to me, since even my worst enemies know that a -like understanding as to the temporal authority was completely concealed -under the Papacy" (Walch's _Augs._, XIV, p. 520). - -In this same connexion Schiller makes the following statement. "No -country changed religion oftener than the Palatinate. Unhappy -weathercock of the political and religious versatility of its -sovereigns, it had twice been forced to embrace the doctrines of Luther -and then to abandon them for those of Calvin. Frederick III deserted the -Confession of Augsburg, but his son re-established it by most violent -and unjust measures. After closing all the Calvinist temples and exiling -the ministers and school teachers, he ordered by his will that his son -should be brought up by Lutherans; his brother, however, annulled this -will and became regent under the young Frederick IV, who was confided to -Calvinists with strict orders to destroy in his mind the "heretical -doctrines of Luther by all means, by beating and whipping even." It is -easy to guess how subjects were treated when the heir to the throne was -thus tyrannized over" (_Thirty Years War_, p. 40). - -What, I ask, has Europe gained by the overthrow of its public law? -Strife, anarchy, nihilism in religion as in philosophy. After centuries -of dabbling, floundering, and blundering, we are again seeking to devise -some principle of unity, some Amphictyonic Council to supplement the -illusory balance of power; to set up a Court of Arbitration to replace -the one that really did exist in the Middle Ages and functioned as well -as could be expected in those days of liquescence. - -All in vain. The grand Peace Congress from which the Papacy was excluded -was followed, almost immediately, by two most cruel wars which were -pre-eminently subjects for arbitration. Men will submit to this court -questions about which they do not care enough to fight about them, but -these subjects only will they submit to arbitration. Unless the Lord -build the house, in vain they labour who build. - -There is only one tribunal that can ever arbitrate efficaciously, and -this is the one which presided at the Genesis of Christendom.[27] - -Socialists and anarchists, without having pondered the passage from -Guizot I quoted in beginning this chapter, understand perfectly that our -Western or Christian civilization is grounded on the unity of one Holy -Catholic Church, and the destruction of the social structure being the -object of their ambition, they very logically direct all their efforts -to destroying this foundation. - -The work of disintegration was begun in the sixteenth century. -"Socinius, the most iconoclastic of Protestants, predicted that the -seditious doctrines by which Protestants supported their cause would -lead to the disintegration of society" (_History of Rationalism_, II, -239). - -This work of disintegration has made rapid progress since the eighteenth -century in virtue of the law of accelerated movement. The French -Revolution, like the Protestant revolt, was essentially a work of -disintegration. The successors of the Masonic Jacobins of 1790 openly -proclaim their set purpose of completing the work begun by the _grands -ancetres_ of bloody memory. - -"The Revolution," wrote Renan (in the preface to _Questions -contemporaines_), "has disintegrated everything, broken up all -organizations, excepting only the Catholic Church. The clergy alone -have remained organized outside the State. As the cities, in the days of -the ruin of the Roman Empire, chose bishops for their representatives, -so in our provinces the bishops will soon be the only leaders left in a -dismantled society." - -The object of the Separation Law was to accomplish the disintegration of -the Church, the only organized body, outside the State, which the -Revolution failed to disintegrate, because Pius VI rejected, _in toto_, -the civil constitution of the clergy. These noble French priests were -drowned, guillotined, proscribed, and imprisoned by tens of thousands, -but the Church in France maintained the principle of life strong within -her, and on the third day she rose again. - -What violence failed to accomplish a century ago, the Third Republic -hoped to compass by guile and fraud, labelled liberty and legality. - -The true purpose of the Law of Separation was to break up the Church -into an ever-increasing number of viviparous _Associations cultuelles_, -independent of all ecclesiastical control. - -The successor of Pius VI, Ithuriel-like, has pierced the thin disguise -of the toad lurking in the purlieus of Eden.[28] Instead of a divided -demoralized clergy, the Masonic Jacobins are confronted by the serried -ranks of an invincible phalanx. - -"At the end of the fourth century," writes Guizot, "it was the Church -with its magistrates, its institutions, and its power that vigorously -resisted the internal dissolution of the empire and of the barbarians, -and became the bond, the medium, and the principle of civilization -between the Roman and the barbarian worlds" (_History of Civilization_). - -Now, as in the fourth century, we are menaced with social dissolution. -The barbarians are at our gates, nay, in our midst, and not in France -alone, by any means. A ferocious, self-seeking atheistic materialism is -disrupting Christendom. And let us not be deceived. Societies are never -saved and regenerated except by their generating principle; and the -generating principle of Western civilization is Christianity. - -Therefore, I repeat, that society will be compelled, in self-defence, to -restore Christianity or slavery, in some form; State Socialism -perhaps--or perish. - -_21st November, 1906._ - - - - -APPENDIX - - - PAGE 29 - - SEANCE DU 28 DECEMBRE, 1906. - - Au _Senat Journal Officiel_, page 1236. - -M. DELAHAYE: "M. Briand's law is older than himself. We find traces of -it in all the Masonic convents.... Gentlemen, why are we going to vote -this additional law, as we did the first Separation Law, without -changing an iota?... Because the lodges have so decided. - -"The Convent, the public should be told, is the general assembly of the -lodges.... The Convent, called during the Revolution _La Convention_, is -the source of all our evils. On 12 November, 1904, brother Lafferre (a -senator), thirty-third degree, read the following _ordre du jour_: 'The -general assembly of the Grand Orient addresses to M. Combes warm -assurances of sympathy and confidence, and begs him to persevere -courageously in the struggle to defend the Republic against clericalism, -and accomplish social, military, and fiscal reforms. The Assembly -demands that at the session of January, 1905, Separation and the -_retraites ouvrieres_ be discussed simultaneously.'" - -M. Lafferre and the reporter of the new Separation Law here applauded -ironically. - -M. Delahaye continued: "Let us pass to the Convent of 1905, seance 23 -September, 1905. - -"Le Frere Roret, reporter (of the Masonic Commission): ... A wish more -important, and which will be adopted without discussion, emanates from -the Congress of the region of Paris. It regards the Separation and has -been slightly modified by the (Masonic) Commission (of political and -social studies). The Congress demands that the Separation Law voted in -the Chambers be amended by the Senate. Your Commission judges that it is -most important that this law be voted immediately and promulgated before -the legislative elections (May, 1906), so that the country may see that -it is a liberal law and not at all vexatious.... Your Commission -proposes the following vote: 'The Convent emits the wish that the law, -imperfect but perfectible, be adopted by the Senate as rapidly as -possible and promulgated before the elections, but that it be amended -later by the Republican Parliament and rendered more distinctly -_laique_.'" - -M. Delahaye continued: "It is well to notice that laic has two meanings. -For us it means not ecclesiastic; for Freemasons it means atheistic, -anti-Catholic.... I have proved, incontestably, that M. Briand is here -as the mouthpiece of Freemasonry, to which he says he does not -belong.... There is a privileged Congregation in France which holds -property as a _societe immobiliere_ of the Grand Orient by 'interposed -persons.' This Congregation is about to sell its real estate of the Rue -Cadet (Paris). It received an offer of 1,250,000 francs. The State -offers to buy it for 1,300,000 francs, to be used as a telephone -office.... I wish to know why the State does not simply expropriate this -Congregation, seeing that it is illegal, because this _societe -immobiliere_ is simply a _personne interposee_?... Gentlemen, the book -just published by one of your former friends, M. Flourens (ex-minister), -_La France Conquise Edward VII and Clemenceau_, is going to enlighten -rulers deaf to the voice of the Pope (who had condemned Masonry since -1728). The Bourbons and the French nobility, whom Freemasonry had doomed -to death, were dancing on the first floor of the lodges, while overhead -sentence was being passed on them.... In spite of many changes of -government since a century, we are descending steadily, because your -principles, destructive of family, country, and private property, have -entered into our legislation.... We have a fine army, but at your touch -it becomes no more than a national guard. We have many vessels, but no -navy.... Ere long kings and emperors, who now utilize Freemasonry, will -end by saying, 'This instrument is very dangerous.'" - -There were cries of "_Cloture, cloture_." The discussion was closed. No -one replied to M. Delahaye. - - - PAGES 113-125 - -Commenting on the annual Convent of the Grand Orient, September, 1906, -the _Journal de Geneve_, the leading Swiss Protestant daily, made the -following statements:-- - - - "LE ROLE DE LA MACONNERIE - - "_Septembre, 1906._ - - "Il ne faut pas se dissimuler que la franc-maconnerie tient entre - ses mains les destinees du pays (la France). Quoiqu'elle ne compte - que vingt-six mille adherents, elle dirige a sa guise la politique - francaise. Toutes les lois dont le catholicisme se plaint si - amerement ont ete d'abord elaborees dans ses convents. Elle les a - imposees au gouvernement et aux Chambres. Elle dictera toutes les - mesures qui seront destinees a en assurer l'application. Nul n'en - doute, et personne, non pas meme les plus independants, n'oserait - heurter de front sa volonte souveraine. Il serait aussitot brise, - celui qui se permettrait seulement de la meconnaitre. - - "Jamais, depuis l'epoque ou Rome commandait aux rois et aux - princes, on ne vit pareille puissance. Et cette puissance est - d'autant plus forte, a cette heure, qu'elle vient de subir - victorieusement une crise redoutable. Apres l'affaire des fiches, - on croyait la maconnerie morte, tout au moins bien malade; mais, a - force d'audace, elle a triomphe de ses ennemis, qui deja sonnaient - joyeusement l'hallali. Les deux tiers des membres de la Chambre - actuelle sont francs-macons. - - "La volonte de la franc maconnerie, nul ne l'ignore plus, c'est de - detruire le catholicisme en France. Elle se dresse comme une Eglise - contre l'Eglise de Rome. Elle n'aura ni cesse ni repit, qu'elle ne - l'ait jetee bas, qu'elle n'en ait seme les poussieres au vent. Tous - ses ressorts sont uniquement tendus vers ce but. Les autres - religions, si meme elle ne les ignore momentanement, elle parait - les menager. Elle se dit sans doute que, le catholicisme ayant - rendu l'ame sous son etreinte, l'aneantissement des autres - confessions ne serait pour elle que jeu d'enfant. - - "Mais l'adversaire n'est pas encore terrasse, auquel elle s'etait - attaquee. Il est comme Antee, qui, toutes les fois qu'il touchait - le sol, retrouvait de nouvelles forces. Elle s'en rend bien compte. - C'est pourquoi, crainte que d'un tour de reins desespere il ne se - dresse dans toute sa vigueur, elle n'a point pousse jusqu'ici la - lutte a fond. Parfois meme elle semble accorder une treve; elle - rentre dans ses quartiers. Mais, des que la vigilance des - catholiques lui parait suffisamment endormie, elle se jette de - nouveau sur sa proie. Elle continuera cette tactique jusqu'au - triomphe definitif. - - "Ce triomphe est-il prochain ou lointain? Pour le moment, la - defiance de Rome est bien eveillee, et Pie X n'est peut-etre pas de - ces hommes qui se laissent prendre aux feints desarmements. - - "Quelques-uns se demanderont comment il peut se faire qu'une - minorite si faible gouverne ainsi tout un pays. C'est pourtant tres - simple. D'abord les macons sont etroitement unis; et l'union fit - toujours la force. Ensuite, appartenant tous aux classes moyennes, - ils exercent par leur situation personnelle, par leurs - fonctions--tous les gros bonnets de l'administration sont affilies - a la franc-maconnerie--une influence tres grande. L'on peut dire - qu'ils disposent de toutes les faveurs gouvernementales; et ces - faveurs, ils ne les distribuent qu'a bon escient. Non seulement - donc ils tiennent a leur discretion tous ceux qui occupent un poste - quelconque de l'Etat, mais encore tous ceux qui aspirent a en - occuper un, et ils sont legion. Ca leur fait une armee formidable, - disciplinee par l'interet. - - "On comprend que, dans ces conditions, la franc-maconnerie n'ait - qu'a faire un signe aux pouvoirs publics pour qu'elle soit - immediatement obeie. Quoi qu'elle decide, ce sera execute sur - l'heure. - - "La franc-maconnerie, dit-il, sait mieux que le gouvernement - lui-meme, quelle somme de resistance, en ce moment, le catholicisme - peut opposer a un assault decisif. Elle n'ignore pas que, quoiqu'il - soit tres ebranle, il serait tres hasardeux de le vouloir abattre - d'un dernier coup. Elle craint surtout que, si elle ne parvenait - pas a lui faire exhaler le soupir supreme, il ne retrouvat une - nouvelle vie, la volonte et l'energie de vaincre a son tour. - - "La franc-maconnerie se gardera de compromettre, dans une lutte - chanceuse, les fruits de longs efforts. Elle a emprunte sa devise a - Rome: 'Patiens quia aeterna,' et elle attendra qu'elle puisse - frapper a coup sur. Les probabilites sont donc pour que, tout en - s'opposant a ce que des relations soient renouees avec le - Saint-Siege, elle ne chassera pas les catholiques de leurs derniers - retranchements, c'est-a-dire de leurs eglises; elle les y laissera - tranquilles, jusqu'au jour ou, par un nouveau coup d'audace, elle - s'en emparera. - - "Un de ses orateurs a prophetise qu'avant peu on entendrait des - 'batteries d'allegresse' sous les voutes de Notre-Dame; et les - propheties maconniques ne se sontelles pas souvent realisees?" - - - PAGE 204 - - On November 9th, 1906, M. Briand described the Status of the Church - in France as follows (_Officiel_, 2459): "The churches are affected - to public worship and must remain so indefinitely.... It is our - duty to leave them open.... Reunions are possible, you may have - them. The priest may live in direct communication with the people, - he may receive manual gifts. Perhaps the Catholic hierarchy about - which you are so much concerned will suffer. Perhaps this faculty - left to the faithful to live with their priest haphazard (_au - hasard de la rencontre_) will soon dry up the revenues of the - priests; it will certainly dry up those of the bishops." - - It is well also to recall here the words pronounced by M. Briand, - October 17th, 1905 (_Journal Officiel_, 1223), regarding the - _Associations cultuelles_: "They will be hardly born on the 11th - December, 1906. They will not have had time to obtain funds. If we - deprive them of the patrimony of the _fabriques_ and _menses - episcopales_ it will be impossible for them to maintain public - worship, and the faithful will be unable to practise their - religion." - - Yet the Government impudently declares to-day that the Catholics - are hard to please! - - On December 1st, 1906, M. Briand sent forth an ukase commanding - every priest to consider public worship assimilated to public - meetings, and to make a declaration to the mayor according to the - law of 1881. - - Now the law of 1905 says that public worship cannot be regulated by - the law of 1881. Moreover, this law requires the constitution of a - bureau, and that a declaration be made before each meeting - twenty-four hours in advance. M. Briand took upon himself to modify - the law (_l'assouplir_) and to say no bureau was necessary, and - that one declaration would do for a year! The clergy made no - declarations. A few were made by Anarchists and Freemasons. - - From the 12th to the 20th December the police were kept busy making - thousands of _proces verbaux_ all over France. This idea of making - 65,000 prosecutions every day was soon found to be grotesque and - impracticable. Moreover, under the law of 1881 it is the owner of - the public hall or the cafe or cabaret who is prosecuted for not - making the required declaration. The State and the communes being - now the alleged owners of the churches since December 11th, 1906, - _they_ should have been prosecuted and not the priests. This same - M. Briand, who thus modified the law of 1881, had declared in the - Chambers: "Common right no longer exists if you interpret it - otherwise than the law" (November 9th, _Journal Officiel_, p. - 2438). - - Since December 11th, 1906, the Church in France is very much in the - condition of the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. - - On December 29th, 1906, a new Law of Separation was passed. It - confers on 36,000 mayors the right to invest 36,000 priests with a - precarious use of Church edifices, _sauf desaffection_. The - time-limit is to be decided, _a l'amiable_, between the mayors and - their nominees. Truly this is the _reductio ad absurdum_ of - separation. - - M. Briand assures us "that the mayor will accord the church to the - _cure_ most capable of keeping it in good condition" (_Journal - Officiel_, p. 3398, December 21st, 1906). This is lay orthodoxy. - "As to the period of enjoyment, it is impossible to fix it by law," - says M. Briand, "to one, two, or three years" (_Officiel_, p. - 3407), "'ce sont des questions d'espece qui seront tranchees selon - les communes'; it will vary in each commune." - - To this M. Ribot replied: "'C'est l'anarchie dans 36,000 communes.' - At every election this question will be raised, Shall we leave the - church to the _cure_ or not? You are making of this question, - eminently a governmental one, a municipal question, given over to - dissensions, competitions, and coteries" (_Officiel_, p. 3407). - - The new Law of Separation (December 29th) abolishes the - sequestration ordered on December 11th of all Church revenues, - etc., till December, 1907. It turns over immediately to the - communes and to lay institutions all the property of the Church. - Yet on November 9th (_Journal Officiel_, p. 2461) M. Briand stoutly - resisted the Left, clamouring for this very thing. "We must not - raise illusory hopes," he said. - - "No," cried a deputy, "it will be like the milliard of the - Congregations." - - "There are fourteen millions of revenue," continued M. Briand," -...but are they 'liquid,' free of charges? The communes are - stretching out their hands to receive. You will give them what? - Nests of lawsuits. Yes, nests of vipers that will poison the - communes with their venom." - - To explain this change of policy M. Briand said: "We have acquired - the certitude that the situation is without issue. It was - impossible to expect that during the next year regular associations - (of 1905) will be constituted to claim this property of the - _fabriques_. We cannot remain another whole year in this - uncertainty" (_Journal Officiel_, p. 3396, December 21st). A French - proverb says: "Souvent femme varie bien fou qui s'y fie." - - And in the same session M. Briand, to explain why it was not - possible to lend the churches to _cures_ under the new law for any - definite time, said: "In fixing no term the Government is logical. - Having a law to execute (that of 1905), and having the conviction - that the Church will end by accepting it, we could not give to - uncontrolled associations under the law of 1901, which are a - concession to the Church, the same advantages as to _Associations - cultuelles_" (1905) (_Journal Officiel_, p. 3407, December 21st, - 1906). - - The new law of December 28th, 1906, says the use of the churches - can be obtained by the declaration of the _cure_ individually, or - of an association formed according to the law of 1901, or rather - according to _certain_ articles of this law _only_. The Church may - not avail herself of the articles which permit the formation of - associations called "of public utility"--like the S.P.A., for - instance. - - This is what these Jacobins understand by combating the Church. A - _coup de liberte_ by dint of liberty! They speak of giving _droit - commun_, common right. But they never do so. The Church is excluded - from the right of forming _Associations d'utilite publique_ - conferred by the law of 1901, though placed under this law since - December 28th, 1906. The new law is only a makeshift. M. Briand - said (21st December, p. 3398, _Journal Officiel_): "Evidently this - legislation is not definitive. Turn the pages of history up to the - Revolution; you will see that the Convention had the same - difficulties as we to-day. See the number of laws voted in the year - 1795 alone" (there were eleven Laws of Separation). Just so. France - stands where she did in 1795. - - PAGE 228 - - RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN CATHOLIC MARYLAND - - Confirmed by the Lord - Proprietary by an instrument - under his hand & seale. - - PHILLIP CALVERT. - 26th August 1650. - - Enacted & made at a - Genall Session held 1 & - 20 day of Aprill Anno D[~m] - 1649 as followeth viz. - - An act concerning Religion. - - fforasmuch as in a well - governed & Xpian Co[~m]un Wealth matters concerning Religion and - the honor of God ought in the first place to bee taken into serious - consideracon & endeavoured to bee settled. Be it therefore ordered - and enacted by the Right Hoble Cecilius Lord Baron of Baltemore - absolute Lord Proprietary of this Province with the advice & - consent of this Generall Assembly. That whatsoever 'pson or 'psons - within this province & the Islands thereunto belonging shall from - henceforth blaspheme God that is curse him or deny our Saviour - Jesus Christ to be the sonne of God, or shall deny the holy Trinity - or the unity of the Godhead, or shall use or utter any reproachfull - speeches concerning the said Holy Trinity shal be punished with - death & confiscation to the lord Proprietary and his heirs.... - - And bee it also further enacted by the same authority advise and - assent that whatsoever 'pson or 'psons shall from henceforth uppon - any occasion of offense or otherwise in a reproachful manner or way - declare call or denominate any 'pson or 'psons whatsoever, - inhabiting residing or traffiqueing or commerceing within this - Province or within any of the Ports Harbors Creeks or Havens to the - same belonging, an heritik, Scismatick Idolater, puritan, - Independent, Calvenist, Anabaptist Brownist Antimmoniam, Barrowist - Roundhead, Sepatist Presbiterian, popish prest, Jesuite, Jesuited - papist or any other name or terme in a reproachful manner relating - to matter of Religion shall for every such offense, forfeit and - loose the some of tenne shillings one half thereof to be paid unto - the person of whom such reproachfull words are or shall be spoken - and the other half thereof to the Lord Proprietary.... And whereas - the inforceing of the Conscience in matters of religion hath - frequently fallen out to be of dangerous Consequence in these - Commonwealths where it hath been practised. And for the more quiet - and peacable govt of this Province & the better to pserve - mutuall Love & Amity amongst the inhabitants thereof. Be it - therefore also by the L[-o] Proprietary with the advice and consent - of this Assembly Ordeynd & enacted that noe persons whatsoever - within this province or the Islands Ports Harbors Creeks thereunto - belonging professing to believe in Jesus Christ shall from - henceforth bee any waies troubled Molested or discountenanced for - or in respect of his or her religion nor in the free exercise - thereof within this province ... nor any way compelled to the - beliefe or exercise of any other Religion against his or her - consent soe as they be not unfaithfull to the Lord Proprietary or - molest or conspire against the Civill Govt established.... And - that all & every person that shall presume contrary to this act - directly or indirectly either in person or Estate wilfully to wrong - disturb or molest any person ... in respect to his or her Religion - shall be compelled to pay trebble damages to the party soe wronged - or molested & for every such offence shall also forfeit 20s - sterling ... or if the ptie soe offending as aforesaid shall refuse - or be unable to recompense the party soe wronged ... then such - offender shall be severely punished by publick whipping & - imprisonmt without baile or maineprise.... - -The ffreemen have assented. - - - - -BY THE SAME AUTHOR - - -_SLAV AND MOSLEM_ - -SOME OPINIONS - -"_Slav and Moslem_ does you the greatest honour, for I quite understand -how difficult it is for foreigners to comprehend so correctly as you do -the origin, the value, and the destinies of our institutions. - -PRINCE CANTACUZENE. - -"_Russian Imperial Legation, Washington._" - -"The perusal of your valuable and interesting book on the historical -relations of Slav and Moslem has afforded the keenest pleasure. - -A. ISWOLZY. - -"_Legation Imperiale de Russe pres le Saint Siege._" - -"We are separated from the Western world by difference of race, culture, -and history, and the Western mind is very hard in understanding us. -Therefore the testimony of a just and unprejudiced mind is always -gratefully appreciated in Russia. - -C. POBEDONOSTZEFF, - -"_Petersburg._ _President du Saint Synod_." - -"I was not only pleased with _Slav and Moslem_, but acknowledge a large -accretion to my knowledge of the subject. - -Your friend, -LEW WALLACE, -_Author of 'Ben Hur,' and formerly Ambassador -of U.S. to Constantinople_." - -"I consider _Slav and Moslem_ the clearest exposition on the Eastern -Question I have ever met with. - -J. HUGHES, -_Author of the "Dictionary of Islam_." - -"I regard _Slav and Moslem_ as a very valuable contribution to the -history of Russia. You are entitled to great credit for your -comprehensive view of the Russian Government and people. - -JOHN SHERMAN, - -"_Washington._ _Senator and Diplomat, U.S._" - -"Your development of the historical relations of Russia and Turkey is -admirable and full of interest. In vigorous and picturesque language you -have presented the other side. - -JOHN A. KASSON, - -"_Washington._ _Senator and Diplomat_." - -"I find no words to express the historic breadth of your political -summary, and the deep and genuine philosophy and truth of your treatment -of this great drama. - -CASSIUS MARCELLUS CLAY, -_Ten years Minister of the U.S. at St. Petersburg_." - -"I have read _Slav and Moslem_ with much interest, as it contains many -suggestions to fruitful thought regarding this great empire. - -ANDREW D. WHITE. - -_Legation of the U.S., St. Petersburg._" - -"_Slav and Moslem_ is written with justice, clairvoyance, and talent. - -JULIETTE ADAM." - -"I have read many books on Russia, but none met with my approval to such -an extent as _Slav and Moslem_.... The statements and descriptions of -the Russians are so correct.... During the years of my official stay I -studied the people, their history and language, and know what I am -talking about. - -JOHN KAREL, -_U.S. Consul at St. Petersburg_." - -"For the chapter on the Crimea alone your book deserves the thanks of -all who would study the present century. - -GEO. J. LEMMON, -_Lecturer and Publicist_." - -SOME PRESS NOTICES - -"Vivid historical sketches.... Eminently worthy of careful -perusal."--_The Press_ (Philadelphia). - -"The author shows an intelligent mastery of his subject." - -_Herald_ (Boston). - -"Its every sentence is clear-cut and positive.... The subjects are all -treated with a vigour and boldness that rivet the attention from first -to last." - -_The American_ (Baltimore). - -"The author has a surprisingly firm grasp on his subject.... Vivid, -thorough, original." - -_The Tribune_ (Salt Lake City, Utah). - -"Intensely readable.... It is one of the notable books of the -day."--_Commercial Gazette_ (Cincinnati). - -"From first to last the book is one of unusual interest." - -_The Chronicle_ (Augusta, Ga.). - -"A sober and trenchant defence of Russia." - -_Times Star_ (Cincinnati) - -"Mr. Brodhead writes lucidly and discriminatingly.... Interesting and -suggestive throughout." - -_The Churchman_ (New York). - -"J. Brodhead's work on the Eastern is creating a more and more favorable -impression throughout the country." - -_The Press_ (New York). - -PLYMOUTH -WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS - - * * * * * - - -FOOTNOTES: - -[1] I transcribe the following from _Le Lyon Republicain_ (ministerial -anti-clerical), 1905:--"The criminality of youths from sixteen to -twenty-five is increasing in shameful and overwhelming proportions. This -collection of beardless scoundrels, cynically vicious, murderers, -thieves, _souteneurs_, is the curse of our large cities.... It is only -since fifteen or eighteen years at most that criminalists notice this -remarkable depravation of youths almost children.... May we not ask if -the State that has done the most for instruction has not done the least -for education? Truly this frightful development of youthful criminality, -of alcoholism, and anti-socialism must make us reflect." - -"_Fifteen years or eighteen at most._" The scholar anti-Christian laws -of Jules Ferry, Goblet, Paul Bert, date from 1882 to 1895, and by their -fruits they are judged. - -[2] In January, 1906, M. Poincare, minister of finance, in reply to M. -Grousseau, admitted that up to February, 1905, the State had advanced -the sum of 4,551,319 frs. to the liquidators of the Congregations. - -[3] "Vel Judam non videtis, quomodo non dormit, sed festinat tradere me -Judaeis?" (Feria V in Coena Domini--"See ye not Judas, how he sleeps not, -but makes haste to betray me into the hands of the Jews?") - -[4] According to a recent article in the _Figaro_, 8th October, 1906, -among the conscripts sent this month to the army by Paris, ninety could -neither read nor write; seventy-nine could read only. - -[5] It was only at the annual September Convent of the Grand Orient, -1904, that it was decided to rush the assault on the Church itself by -the law of alleged separation. "Il nous reste un rude coup de collier a -donner ... la separation figurera en Janvier prochain a l'ordre du jour -de la chambre." - -[6] At the Free-Thought Congress. - -[7] His native city recently hoisted the French flag and proclaimed its -annexation to the Third Republic, 1906. Of course it was only a platonic -demonstration on the part of Sicilian Freemasons. - -[8] M. Rouvier had obtained a law obliging every one without exception -who distilled anything to pay the usual tax on alcohol. This law was -made and repealed by the same Parliament, so that now every one who has -a peach or a plum tree can manufacture any kind of alcohol of poor -quality, and retail it in the _buvettes_ or drink-stands which are found -at every step almost; in every little vegetable and grocery shop, even -in Government tobacco stores where stamps are sold. These _buvettes_ are -the curse of France to-day. They have caused far greater ravages than -the Franco-Prussian war. - -[9] "We do not wish to see the secular arm placed at the service of -free-thought," said a deputy of the "bloc" not long since. "Meanwhile -the secular arm in the service of free-thought has closed all our -schools and colleges," retorted a deputy of the Right. - -[10] On November 17th, 1906, the Bishop of Nancy wrote as follows to M. -Briand, Minister of Cults, regarding the sad plight of the Sisters du -Saint Coeur de Marie at Nancy: "In 1902, 56 of them were huddled together -in a small house situated at the extremity of their grounds.... Their -spacious chapel was razed to the ground and in its place three private -houses have been built. The property was sold for 527,000 francs. The -liquidator promised that in conformity with the law the sisters should -receive pensions. Out of the 56 there remain to-day but 44. Of these 10 -are over seventy, and 22 of them are over sixty.... In these last four -years they have received out of the 527,000 francs only 12,000 in three -instalments.... They owe 17,800 to their baker, butcher, etc., and are -threatened with starvation if further credit be denied them.... Are -these aged women, who have devoted their lives to the instruction of the -poor, to die of cold and hunger, M. le Ministre?" And these things -happen in the twentieth century under a Government that proclaims the -rights of man and of the poor! - -[11] There is no such thing as proportional representation in France, -and the whole electoral machinery is manipulated to give the Government -a majority. - -[12] Recently in the Chambers (November 13th, 1906), M. Lassies -criticized that part of M. Clemenceau's declaration in which he referred -to the Holy See "as a foreigner subject to foreign influences." "Foreign -influences," said M. Lassies, turning pointedly to M. Delcasse, "we find -them here in the person of the ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs, who fell -from power without our knowing why. Whence came the gust which caused -his fall? From which frontier?" - -[13] The Bill was adopted by the French Senate early in December. - -[14] Everything except the _encyclique_ of August 15th, 1906. - -[15] M. Lefas, deputy of the Right, maintained in the Chambers (Nov. -9th, 1906, _Journal Officiel_, p. 2448) that "the churches could not -form part of the Communal domain when Communes did not exist in France. -Communal domain only began with the existence of the Communes; that is -to say, a hundred years ago." Therefore these Church edifices cannot be -said to belong to the Communes to-day. Formerly France was divided into -parishes, and each parish had its parish church. - -As to the cathedrals, if kings and nobles, like other Catholics, -contributed to their embellishment or construction, they did so as -Catholics. All the guilds and corporations, too, contributed, not only -money, but personal labour. Would this entitle the syndicates of masons, -goldsmiths, etc., of to-day to claim these cathedrals? But the chief -factor in the construction of these noble edifices were the freely given -toil and humble labours of the multitudes of Catholics who raised these -monuments of faith. It is well known that a Catholic church cannot be -dedicated as long as any one has a lien on it, that is, not until the -Church's proprietorship of the building is undisputed. Therefore the -assumption that these edifices belong to the State and the Communes can -only be justified on the theory of the men who, seeing a trunk lying in -the hall of a hotel, said, "This trunk belongs to no one; let us say it -belongs to us." - -The recent judgment of the highest court of England in the case of the -"wees and the frees" of the Scotch Presbyterian Kirk is eminently -applicable in this question of Jacobin appropriations and spoliations. - -[16] These inventories, left incomplete after the fall of the Rouvier -Ministry (February), are being completed now (November, 1906). - -[17] When the daily Press is constantly recording the exploits of -_cambrioleurs_ picking locks and bursting open _coffres forts_ with -dynamite, it is very piquant to see the Government doing the same thing, -flanked by _gens d'armes_ and the regular army. Yesterday at Nantes 1500 -soldiers, with two generals and one colonel, surrounded the cathedral at -5 a.m. Forty locks were picked before noon! In _cambrioleur_ slang this -would be called a "record haul." Thanks to the injunctions of Pius X, -there was no bloodshed, and M. Clemenceau and his friends proclaim that -these inventories are made _sans incident_. - -[18] This Protestant senator seems to have been inspired by an eloquent -passage in Bossuet, "Une voix nous crie, _Marche, Marche_." - -[19] The founder and owner of _La Lanterne_ is said to be a Frankfort -Jew, and it is an open secret that all the advanced Socialist and -anti-clerical dailies are owned or controlled by the princes of Israel. -And it is from these that English and American papers seem to derive all -their information regarding the Church in France. - -[20] LES CAISSES D'EPARGNE. - -Voici le releve des operations des Caisses d'epargne ordinaires avec la -Caisse des depots et consignations du 1er au 10 octobre, 1906:-- - -Depots de fonds 2.830.949 fr. 72. Retraits de fonds 6.576.856 fr. 30. -Excedent des retraits 3.745.906 fr. 58. - -Excedent des retraits du 1er janvier au 10 octobre, 1906, 26.784.318 -fr. 60. - -[21] Thus Notre Dame might witness a Catholic Mass in the morning, a -theosophical reunion at noon, and a positivist conference in the -evening. The Swiss Catholics, 1872-6, had some such experiences: a -venerable priest died recently at Berne who had refused to give up the -keys of his church for other uses, and was imprisoned for many years; -while the last prisoner of Chillon was the Catholic Bishop of Fribourg, -another victim of the Swiss Kulturkampf. - -[22] When public men and editors in France and elsewhere descant on -German _Associations cultuelles_ accepted by the Holy See that rejects -them in France, they stand accused of ignorance or malevolence. M. -Briand basely insinuated (Chambers, 9th November) that the Church in -Germany was being ransomed by France: "Notre situation a nous est-elle -la rancon de la situation d'un pays voisin? Je me borne a poser la -question." The fact is there is no such thing as _German Associations -cultuelles_, each State of the Confederation has its own regulations. -Bavaria has a concordat and a papal nuncio at Munich. The Governments of -Wuertemberg and the Grand Duchy of Baden made special conventions with -the Holy See, 1857 and 1859. Alsace-Lorraine is still under the French -Concordat of 1801 between Pius VII and the First Republic. Prussia and -Hesse in 1873 and 1875 made special conventions with the Vatican. -Prussia has a Legation to the Holy See at Rome. Moreover, in none of the -German states is there separation of Church and State. They all -recognize and subsidize the Catholic Church and one form of -Protestantism. In Prussia several bishops are appointed senators by the -King. In Alsace-Lorraine the Bishop of Strasburg is member of the -Council of State. In Bavaria, Baden, Wuertemberg, the prelates are -members of the Upper House. - -[23] What would Philippe de Commines have said had he heard of the -little _coup de main_ (November 20th, 1906), by which deputies and -senators in _quasi huis clos_ voted themselves an increase of 6000 -francs without any "_octroi or consentement_" of the sovereign people, -delivered from tyranny and servitude by the Revolution? - -[24] There is in the Palace of the Doges at Venice an immense picture -commemorating this Congress, where the Peace of Constance was prepared. - -[25] In refreshing contrast with this record of persecution is the -proclamation of religious liberty in Maryland, 1650. "The Catholics took -quiet possession [of Maryland], and religious liberty obtained a home, -its only home in the wide world ... every other country had persecuting -laws.... Protestants were sheltered against Protestant intolerance. The -disfranchized friends of Prelacy in Massachusetts and the Puritans from -Virginia were welcomed to equal liberty of conscience and political -rights as Roman Catholics in the province of Maryland.... In 1649 the -General Assembly of Maryland passed an Act to this effect, yet five -years later, when the Puritans obtained the ascendency there, they -rewarded their benefactors by passing an Act forbidding that liberty of -conscience be extended to 'popery,' 'prelacy,' and 'licentiousness of -opinion'" (Bancroft's _History of the United States_, I, VII.). - -Lecky corroborates this statement: "Hopital and Lord Baltimore were the -two first legislators who uniformly maintained liberty of conscience, -and Maryland continues the one solitary home for the oppressed of every -sect till Puritans succeeded in subverting Catholic rule, when they -basely enacted the whole penal code against those who had so nobly and -so generously received them" (_History of Rationalism_, II, 58). - -An abridged copy of the Act of 1650, the first Act of religious -toleration, will be found in the Appendix. The original from which I -copied is in the archives of the Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore. - -[26] On November 9th, 1906, the Socialist minister Viviani, after -"putting out the lights in heaven," exclaimed, "What shall we say to -these sovereigns who are slaves economically speaking, to these men who -enjoy universal suffrage yet suffer in servitude? How shall we appease -them?" - -[27] Hall Caine, explaining the title of his book, _The Eternal City_, -expressed himself as follows: "In the new methods of settling -international disputes, the old mother of the Pagan and the Christian -worlds will have her rightful rank.... Her religious and historical -interest, her artistic charm, above all the mystery of eternal life seem -to point to Rome as the seat of the great court of appeal which the -future will see established." - -[28] _Paradise Lost_, Book IV. - - * * * * * - -Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: - -their precedessors=> their predecessors {pg 97} - -evacute Rome=> evacuate Rome {pg 111} - -public shools=> public schools {pg 206} - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Religious Persecution in France -1900-1906, by Jane Milliken Napier Brodhead - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION *** - -***** This file should be named 42434.txt or 42434.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/4/3/42434/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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