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:—

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.