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.