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.