We will not waste time (it says) in once more refuting the incomprehensible theory of Free Will. We believe, with scientific men, that the will of man depends upon a multitude of external causes; that a man is not guilty when he commits an act with which our conscience finds fault, but which his physical or moral organization renders inevitable, and we proclaim that that man should not be punished for his act, that there are no guilty men, that there are only the ignorant or the weak.*

But it will be said this is one of the journals of the lowest class, a paper inspired by Rochefort. Nevertheless it only represents the consensus of Liberal opinion. What says M. Gambetta's own special organ, owned and edited by himself?

We delude ourselves when we suppose that we think or act according to the determination of our will. The truth is that we cannot direct our ideas in a certain sense or call them up when we wish. And it is needless to say that the mechanism of the will excludes as absolutely contradictory to reason the puerile notion that we possess free will. If the direction of our thoughts is beyond our power, we have still stronger reason for predicating the same thing of our actions.†

On the 2nd of May the same journal informed its readers that morality was essentially relative, and therefore variable. Probably the men who write thus do not weigh their words or for a moment contemplate the inevitable results of their theories being adopted as the basis of popular practice, but (as we believe M. Félix Pyat once remarked) the people are very practically logical, and work out the doctrines they are taught very willingly to their legitimate consequences, especially, we may add, when their natural inclinations and passions tend in the same direction. The Liberal propaganda, then, is anti-Christian when it is not atheistical, and very naturally it regards Christian education as its greatest foe. This is why we see the Liberals straining every nerve to destroy the Catholic universities, and agitating for the closing of the Jesuit colleges and the expulsion of the religious orders from the schools. Amongst the bills which we enumerated as having been introduced by the Liberals in the first session of the new Chamber of Deputies we mentioned a projet de loi for the establishment of compulsory secular education. The promoter of the bill introduced a clause into it providing that the existence of God and the immortality of the soul should be taught in the schools. The Radical press was indignant. Is this, they asked, secular education? If this is to be the

"Droits de l'Homme," April, 1876.

+ "République française," quoted by "Le Français," April 6th, 1876.

programme of the schools, why turn the nuns and monks out of them? Had not the atheist and materialist a right to protest against their conscientious convictions being violated in the education of their children? And if the children were to be taught about a God, what God should it be? Was it to be Allah, or Jesus Christ, or Jehovah, or Vishnu, or the Grand Manitou? In a word, by secular education the French Radicals mean nothing less than atheistical teaching.

Education is, then, for the moment, the main battle-ground in France. The Catholic universities are already assailed, the attack upon the primary schools will follow. The Liberals will not be content with any mere partial success. They openly avow their desire to destroy the Church in France. M. Gambetta, indeed, in his speech at Lille, proclaimed his respect for all religions alike. M. Brisson, replying to the Comte de Mun in the Chamber of Deputies, said that the Republicans had no idea of threatening religion in France; but such disclaimers are of little weight in the presence of the multitude of angry threats against Christianity in France collected by Mgr. Dupanloup from the writings and speeches of prominent men of the Republican party. The young orator who spoke in the name of the students of the Liberal University of Paris at the civil burial of Michelet, aptly summed up the life of the man beside whose grave he stood when he said that his one great object had been "the dechristianization of the Latin races." And what said another man, whom Republican Paris delighted to honour in precisely the same way, Edgar Quinet, the friend and colleague of Michelet ?

Catholicism must fall! (he exclaimed) that is the cry that is now beginning to go up alike from the old world and the new.*

What says M. Gambetta's paper ?

The peasant need only open his eyes to see that clericalism is the source of every evil project, the centre of every conspiracy.

The clericals mourn over the condition of the working man. They have a paternal desire to give him back all the chains and fetters that he enjoyed in the Middle Ages, and from which the deeds of 1789 so harshly liberated him. They wish to restore to him all the beneficent tyranny and tutelary subjection that used to bow him down.

And the same language has been heard in the Chamber. The Republican deputy who introduced the bill for abolishing the chapter of the budget which is allotted to public worship (budget des cultes) urged as the chief reason for such legislative action, that the Catholic Church was a hotbed of rebellion

* See the Introduction to his "Euvres de Marnix.

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[New Series.]

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against the existing form of government and against modern society. The cry is taken up by all the recognized leaders of the party. "To-day," says M. Louis Blanc, "clericalism is, as it ever was, the great obstacle, the supreme source of peril." "In the name of patriotism," says M. Madier de Montjau, "stamp out Ultramontanism." "Wherever we look," says M. Challemel-Lacour, who was M. Gambetta's proconsul at Lyons in 1870, "wherever we look we see this huge spider at work."

As it bears indirectly upon our subject, we may be permitted to take a passing glance at the Liberal press of Belgium. There the Catholics have a majority in the legislature, but their opponents, the Liberals, are singularly active and outspoken. The "Ami du Peuple" of Liége tells its readers :

Christianity should be blotted out of the civilized world. It has had its time and done its work of blood. Citizens, be serious, and do not believe in supernatural beings. The priests tell you that vengeance belongs to God alone. They lie. Vengeance belongs to him who suffers, and if you will it, we are the instruments of vengeance.

And speaking of the Commune of Paris, this infamous journal coolly calculated that to execute an adequate revenge upon the men of Versailles the Communists would want 230,000 heads. Nor does the "Ami du Peuple" stand alone.

Let others (says the "Organe de Namur "*) let others, who think themselves more clever than we are, veil their real thoughts, and protest that they do not wish to attack the "holy religion of our fathers." We say plainly with Voltaire: "Il faut écraser l'infame." Away with all these absurd and worn-out beliefs.

The duty of every true Liberal (says the "Flandre Libéral "+) is to snatch away souls from the Church.

And the "Gazette de Liége"‡ points to churches, convents, Catholic schools and colleges, presbyteries, and seminaries as so many fortresses of obscurantism and superstition,-" dens of theocracy," that ought to be swept away at the first opportunity; and then the writer coolly describes the method of setting fire to a large building by the use of straw and petroleum, and bids his readers profit by the instruction whenever they have a chance. This, and the cry of the "Ami du Peuple," sound like the language of madness, the empty threats of a fool. But many a Communist refugee is a writer in the Belgian press, and these wild words assume an ominous aspect when we think of the murderous volleys that strewed the

*September, 1875.

† June, 1876.

February, 1876.

courtyard of La Roquette with the corpses of the hostages, and the red flames that were devouring all central Paris on that terrible May evening only five years ago.

No less ominous are the words of M. de Levaleye, a leading Professor of the University of Liége, whose writings are not unknown to the readers of the "Fortnightly Review" and the "Revue des Deux Mondes," and whose essay on the causes of war in Europe made him the beloved of Peace Societies. This scientific exponent of Liberal politics edits a review under the title of the "Revue de Belgique," and on the occasion of the late elections it thus sketched out the future policy of Belgian and of European Liberalism :

To think that free discussion will suffice to give us victory is a dangerous and fatal chimera. Therefore let us not waste time in endeavouring to convince our adversaries. We know we are right: that is enough for us. And indeed this tendency to cast aside liberty as an auxiliary in the social conflict is daily making more and more progress. No! if the Belgian Liberals wish to save their country and their ideas they must have recourse to more vigorous means. Of course we do not want to make martyrs: but imprisonment, fines, and banishment are legal weapons, and why not adopt them? We repeat it: liberty, tolerance, free discussion, and all the harmless jests of the Voltairians will not enable us to gain one inch of ground in this struggle. We must be able to bring some pressure to bear. It is we who create truth, it is we who define social necessities. And how? By force. It is that which fixes social necessities and the rules of right. For a right without might is only an empty word; and, whatever men may say, not only might takes precedence of right (which after all means very little) but might is right."*

Is not this the real keystone of the policy of Liberalism, in assailing the Church all over Europe by means of the machinery which persecuting cabinets place at its disposal, and is there not too much reason to believe that in France the victorious Liberals will not hesitate to adopt the watchword of the "Revue de Belgique," La force c'est le droit? Nay, have they not done so already? On what else but its mere numerical force does the Republican majority rely when it assails Christian education, and proposes the wholesale spoliation of the Church? In the van of the Republican army, indeed, we see M. Thiers protesting that the Republic is conservatrice," and M. Gambetta declaring that he respects all religions. But what say the ranks behind? There is citizen and deputy Clemenceau, who was maire of Montmartre,

surtout

* Quoiqu'on en dise non seulement la force prime le droit-ce qui du reste ne signifie pas grand-chose-mais la force c'est le droit.

when the 200 guns of the Federated National Guard were on the hill just before the Commune. He speaks in the name of the vast majority of the Left, and he tells us that :

The Conservative Republicans want the Republic at its minimum, but we want the maximum. We, the Radical Republicans, as we have already said, want the Republic, for the sake of its natural consequences, for the sake of the great social reforms which must result from it.*

And what are these reforms ?-the destruction of Christianity in France; for what else is meant by the secularization of the education of the young from the universities down to the primary schools, the spoliation of the Church, the expulsion of the religious orders?-the destruction of society; for what but this would result from the disappearance of religion, and the substitution of a code of ethics which preaches the Irresponsabilité des Criminels, the necessity of individual acts of crime, and destroys at once the bond of the family and the right of property? If Liberalism really obtains a lasting triumph in France, this must be the inevitable result. M. Pyat was quite right when he said "Le peuple c'est un grand logicien qui ne manque jamais de conclure." Between France and this hideous chaos stands the Catholic party, now happily at once united and energetic, and not without leaders worthy of more auspicious and more illustrious days. Never could it be said with greater truth than now, that the Catholics of France in defending their religion are at the same time battling in defence of their country and their God, the hearth and the altar, the nation and the family, society and civilization, and the legitimate rights and the property of every Frenchman, from the Marshal President down to the poorest mechanic at the looms of Lyons or in the ateliers of Paris, the poorest peasant that reaps the Norman harvest or gathers the vintage in Languedoc or Champagne. The Republicans have thrown off the mask, and their words and deeds cannot fail to swell the ranks of the Catholic party by startling into action men who stood in silent apathy when the danger seemed a remote or a doubtful one. Already the Liberals of France are preparing for the centenary, or, as they call it, the "apotheosis," of Voltaire and Rousseau. Their busts are being erected in numbers of the communes of France, with fêtes which recall the days of the first Republic. Thus, in Vaucluse, the busts of the two patriarchs of the Revolution were solemnly unveiled, the newly-appointed maire presiding over the proceed

* "Le Rappel," 16 pluviose, an 84 (1876).