sional denegations and protestations, it has set down the republic as a personal adversary.

The essential hostility between Clericalism and the republic has been remarkably embittered by the toleration which our institutions extend to one form of dissent. It is a fact too much overlooked, but which deeply affects our politics, that a great part of modern thought that a large proportion, at all events, of our populationhas broken with all forms of religion. Liberty of conscience formerly had only to do with different faiths; it was merely claimed on behalf of the sects which dissented from the State creed and the Established Church. Catholic orthodoxy itself, in the course of time, had been brought to adjust its natural intolerance to the irksome fact that one half of Europe, at the Reformation, had broken loose from its allegiance to Rome. Rome tried long and hard to ignore the fact; she protested against it; she used all the forms of persecution to put out a schism which gave a practical denial to her pretensions, but without success; the right of dissent had, in some shape or other, to be recognized at last. France, for her part, resorted to that irrational, absurd, but all the more significaut arrangement whereby three religions which damn each other-the Romish, the Protestant, and the Jewish-were equally salaried out of the public purse. Habit and the uselessness of all efforts to the contrary had gradually reconciled the most sectarian to this state of things, when another stubborn fact, and much more troublesome still, came in for recognition. The sixteenth century had broken up the religious unity of Europe, but the eighteenth century had done worse; it had set up human reason and the so-called light of nature against supernatural religion. Modern science has gone on deepening the opposition, and it has come to this at last, that incredulity has become a power in its turn, that it demands to be not merely tolerated, but in some sense recognized. My readers will remember the melancholy controversy which rose a few years ago among us as to the right of a man to be buried without any religious rites at all. Everything was tried by the Clericals to put a stop to those, in their eyes, impious manifestations; they never mentioned them but with expressions of contempt and abhorrence; the reactionary party then in power subjected civil burials, as they were called, to all sorts of vexatious restrictions. All this has ceased naturally since Marshal MacMahon has resigned and the republic has passed into the hands of the Republicans, and the victory of these has had this momentous, though hardly yet realized, consequence-the liberty of unbelief. A sufficient cause of distrust and disgust to the Catholic Church, if others had been wanting.

The last grievance of the Church against the republic which I shall mention is of a peculiar nature, and although deeply resented,

remains, for obvious reasons, a silent wrong. The republic has no tenderness for the sores of Catholicism, and even if it had it would be unable to conceal them. The liberty which the press enjoys leaves no means of protecting any man or class of men against publicity. The consequence is that French newspapers are now daily chronicling and French tribunals daily punishing a number of deeds exceedingly damaging to the good fame of the clergy, and which in former times would never have come to light. The Church, in such cases, cannot do without the protection, not to say the complicity, of the State, and this is, besides other reasons, why her natural affinities are with irresponsible and discretionary power. The hostility of the Catholic Church against the republic is not a matter of inference or surmise. It could not but break out in spite of that worldly wisdom for which the priesthood was famed of old, but which the eagerness of hatred is apt to neglect. The clergy had its share in the intrigues which, in October, 1873, four months after the fall of M. Thiers, so nearly succeeded in delivering up France into the hands of a legitimate monarch. There had been, however, no occasion at that time for an actual and visible clerical intervention. The case was different with the last move of the monarchists, when Marshal MacMahon was induced to dismiss the cabinet headed by M. Jules Simon, to form a reactionary ministry under the Duc de Broglie, to dissolve the Chambe of Deputies, and to call upon the electors to decide between the contending principles and parties. As the supreme decision was lodged with the constituencies, the Conservatives brought to bear upon them all the pressure which administrative centralization commands, all the influence which the aristocracy and the clergy put at their disposal. So decisive appeared the struggle, so generally was it viewed as the supreme effort of conservatism against revolution, as the last hope of monarchy against the republic, that all considerations of prudence or decency were forgotten. The upholders of the good cause threw all they had and all they were into the contest. The clergy, in particular, made it a question of life or death. Pio Nono, with characteristic rashness, set them the example. Receiving a band of pilgrims from the diocese of Angers, he spoke of the peril which threatened France and society, and expressed his hope that the new deputies would support the Government and triumph over all enemies at home and abroad. He went farther, and at the request of the Association de Notre Dame du Salut, he granted indulgences to such as should take part in a neuvaine or triduum on behalf of the elections; three hundred days for each day of prayer, and plenary indulgence to those who should receive the holy communion at the close. Marshal MacMahon, in the mean while, was making a tour in the provinces to stir up the loyalty of the populations. At Bordeaux he visited the cathedral,

where he was received by the archbishop, Cardinal Donnet. The prel ate addressed the marshal as the supreme hope of France," ex pressing a belief that God had chosen him for purposes of " repar ation," and declaring that his undertaking would be attended with the blessing of the Pope. This, however, was deemed too much for the temper of the country. The ministers throughout these manifestations were sadly perplexed between the advantage of having the clergy with them, and the apprehension of disgusting many of the voters if they appeared in too close an alliance with the Church. The consequence was that the speech of Cardinal Donnet was omitted in the account which the Journal Officiel gave of the jour ney of the President. The same anxiety betrays itself in telegrams sent in all directions by M. de Fourtou, the Minister for Home Affairs, enjoining the local authorities to keep down the zeal of the bishops and prevent publicity being given to their pastoral letters. Too late in many cases, for the newspapers of the time record a number of those episcopal charges, and give the text of some of them. The Archbishop of Bourges was the first in the field, warning the faithful against what he called "the revolutionary programme," recommending prayers for the union of all Conservatives at the ballot-box, ordering a triduum, and proclaiming the indulgences vouchsafed by the Pope. The Archbishop of Chambéry declared the contest to be a battle pro aris et focis. The Bishop of Tarentaise went so far as to say that voting for an opposition can didate was as guilty an act as a sacrilegious communion." This intemperance, as foreseen, produced in many cases the reverse of the effect which was intended. There is a telegram from the Prefect of the Creuse expressing to the minister his fear that such pastoral effusions should indispose the population of his department, which, he says, are above all anti-clerical."

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The example set by the episcopate was followed by the lower clergy, the religious orders, and generally by all the good people of the land. There was a so-called "League of the Heart of Jesus," which published a manual of prayers addressed to that divine heart," and to "the immaculate heart of Mary," in order to obtain a favorable issue "to the terrible crisis which Christian society was actually going through." The pulpit resounded with personal denunciations of Liberal candidates; priests distributed bulletins of votes; nuns visited families on behalf of the holy cause; everything, in fact, concurred to give the elections of 1877 the character of a religious contention.

The imprudence with which the Catholic Church committed herself in that desperate attack against the republic would be sufficient to account for the aversion which the Republicans entertain toward her. Political grievances, on the other hand, fail to explain why the aversion to the clergy manifests itself chiefly in

connection with public instruction and against the monastic orders which have set themselves to the task of educating the young. We must, therefore, look about for deeper causes of dislike, nor are they far to seek. In a democracy like ours, with the active struggle for existence that is going on not only between individuals but between nations, with the incessant changes which free discussion and scientific discovery are daily effecting in thought and life, the priest comes unavoidably to be looked upon as a being of a different nature from our own, a stranger to our feelings and concerns, incapable of understanding the ruling passions of our breast, member of another city, child of another fatherland. The representative of infallibility and immutability in an age of perpetual evolution, he is felt to be opposed to all that we care for and live for. Add to this the present awful mediocrity of the clergy. There is not, in France, one man in orders who has attained of late years any distinction either in science or in literature; there is not one book written by a priest that has drawn the attention of the reading public. Mgr. Dupanloup, the Bishop of Orleans, who was made so much of, and died a member of the Académie Française and of the Senate, was nothing more than a clever pamphleteer, and he has had no successor. There is a general feeling that the Church is hopelessly barren, addicted to idle studies, at war with society, and that feeling has been intensified into disgust by the broaching of uncouth or paradoxical dogmas such as the immaculate conception and papal infallibility, by the propagation of such impostures as the miracles of Lourdes and La Salette; by the fanaticism displayed in the pilgrimages to holy places; by the setting up of all sorts of new rites and worships, half silly, half nauseous. There could not be any more doubt of it in the face of such instances of fraud and superstition: instead of accommodating itself to our ways and our wants, of dropping out of its traditions what was not strictly necessary, Catholicism was bent on widening the distance between reason and revelation, the world and the Church. A reconciliation was out of the question, and it remained to see which of the two contending powers would carry the day.

The peculiar morality of Catholicism is not less foreign to the modern mind than its superstitions. Casuistry, indeed, though bound up with the practice of confession, and probably inseparable from it, has been held up to detestation before this, and by the pious themselves. It is owing to the ridicule thrown upon Jesuitism by Pascal, in his "Lettres Provinciales," that the word has remained to this day synonymous with the silencing of honest scruples by the juggle of distinctions. Michelet, the eloquent historian, published in 1844 a book called "Du Prêtre, de la Femme et de la Famille," which denounced in fervid language the influ

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ence of the confessor on women, and the consequent estrangement between husband and wife. I cannot say whether the book is still in the hands of the public, but the impression it produced has subsisted. The present controversy could not fail to turn to account the indignation which the perversity of the casuists excites in all unsophisticated minds. The task was taken up by M. Paul Bert, a member of the Chamber of Deputies, and a man of considerable scientific reputation. M. Bert struck out a new course. Instead of raking up old quotations and commenting upon them, he merely put into French the Compendium Theologiæ Moralis" and the Casus Conscientiæ" of a modern Jesuit, Father Gury. Gury, who died recently, was a professor in the College of the Jesuits at Rome. His works have gone through several editions, they are in general use, they have been commended by high ecclesiastical authority, and here they are now, divested of all disguise, an unsavory reading, "smelling rank to heaven," deepening the horror with which the confessional and its mysteries were already viewed. In spite of all this polemical activity, the controversy against Catholicism seems to me remarkable for one omission. It has set in full light the anti-republican partisanship of the Church, as well as the immoral tendency of her casuistry; but, strange to say, it has neglected what seemed the chief point of the discussion-I mean the particular qualifications, or rather disqualifications, of the clergy as educators of the youth of France. And what makes the oversight stranger still is, that no point was weaker in the case. of the Jesuits, and that on none was it easier to shut them up in their own admissions. Jesuits may refuse to admit the cogency of arguments taken from the history of their order, from the causes of their suppression in the last century; they may, to a certain extent, waive the accusations drawn from the works of their writers; but one testimony they cannot evade, and that is their own rules and statutes. To reject the authority of St. Ignatius, or to attenuate the binding force of the Constitutions,' would be to give up what has ever been accounted by themselves as their distinctive character. How is it, then, that they have not been put to the test in the late discussions, and confronted, as it were, with the text of those fundamental works, the "Exercitia Spiritualia," the "Regulæ Societatis," and the " Constitutiones?" There it is that the Jesuit is depicted as he is and as he ought to be, with his notions of human society, with his principles of conduct, his ideal of perfection, and the end proposed to his zeal. The "Exercitia," drawn up by Ignatius himself, form a course of religious meditations and contemplations which every novice has to go through before entering the order, and which every father must renew as often as he can. And what is the spirit which these exercises tend to excite or to revive? The same which animated