Chapter V: Appendix: 249 (4)

Now M. Combes declares that “in deliberately separating the diplomatic convention (Concordat) from the organic articles, Pius VII and his successors have destroyed its efficacy.” Napoleon himself understood this and, for seven years, he held Pius VII a close prisoner, hoping to break his spirit and wring from him another Concordat which would be an abdication. Fortunately, the tide of war turned against Napoleon, and the new Concordat was never ratified. M. Combes recognizes that no Government since a century has been able to enforce the “organic articles,” and that the only course left is “divorce,” and by this unstatesmanlike term he means the repudiation of thirty or forty million francs of the national debt. The payment in perpetuity of suitable subsidies to the Catholic clergy is stipulated for by Article 14 of the Concordat. It is a _quid pro quo_ of Article 13, by which the Holy See consented to give a clear title to all the Church property confiscated by the Revolution. The payment of these subsidies was inscribed on the national debt by the spoliators themselves, the Conventionals of 1792, and it was solemnly recognized as part of this debt in 1816, 1828, 1830, and 1848. The salaries paid to Jewish and Protestant clergymen are purely gratuitous. Their property was not stolen by the Revolution in 1792. They had no part in the Concordat.

But the projected spoliation of the Catholic clergy is a mere detail, and would be an insignificant ransom, if at this price the French Catholics could have liberty such as we enjoy in England and the United States. “Separation” means strangulation in Jacobin parlance. They would infinitely prefer Erastianism. But the defection of the Bishops of Dijon and Laval, on whom they counted, and the spontaneous and unanimous adhesion of the episcopate to the Holy See, which provoked the thunders of M. Combes against the Vatican in July, have shown the impossibility of a schism. It was tried for four years a century ago and failed. The “Separation” plan was also tried in 1795 for two or three years, and was an epoch of virulent persecution. History will repeat itself, though not exactly in the same words.

ALCOHOLISM IN FRANCE

_July 10th, 1905._

The Chambers continue the discussion of the Bill of alleged separation in a perfunctory, apathetic way, and it is curious that M. Rouvier, the successor of M. Combes, has never once condescended to speak or even to be present at these sessions.

The utter lack of interest in these debates is misinterpreted to mean indifference on the part of the French public. This is not correct. It is, as I have often repeated, the great misfortune of France that people will not concern themselves with politics, and they only begin to interest themselves in a law when it is applied.

Even I, who have followed the phases of the religious persecution with keen interest since four or five years, can hardly wade through these tedious, irksome columns, in which ambiguity reigns supreme. Even M. Briand, the reporter of the law and spokesman of the Government, being questioned closely as to the sense of certain passages, replied “It is” and “It is not” in the same breath. He is evidently of the opinion that language is a convenient means of disguising thought.

This Bill is, I repeat, a law of guile, spoliation, and tyranny from first to last. There is a general impression that it will never be executed entirely. They will content themselves with spoliation, for the present at least. It is hard to persuade a people who have had religious worship gratis for fifteen centuries, that they must now pay for the privilege of attending Mass, while their Government subsidizes opera dancers and singers, of whose services not one in a million ever avails himself.

While the Socialist majority, or _bloc_, are revelling over perspective spoliation and sacrilegious confiscations, the handwriting on the wall is dimly perceived. The enemy is at the gates--nay, within the walls--while legislators are discussing “with what sauce they will eat the curés,” though they have not yet digested their copious repast of congregations.

Yesterday the reports of the Chambers on Separation were unusually tedious, and the _rendu compte_ ended with this phrase: “To-morrow amnesty for the _bouilleurs de cru_ and wine frauders.” This heartless Government, that flings aged and infirm _congréganists_ out of their homes without mercy for age or sex, has, at least, one tender spot in its make-up. It is for the liquor traffic in all its forms. Falsification of wine is carried on to such an extent that it is impossible for grape growers to make a living. I dilated recently in these columns on the anti-clerical propaganda by means of an immoral, irreligious Press, and the multiplication of these drink-stands to an extent which is simply appalling.[8]

New York, with three millions, has 10,000 liquor saloons. Paris, with two-and-a-half millions, has 30,000 _debits de boissons_.

The _Gaulois_ recently published some figures which I think are accurate.

Fifty years ago 735 hectolitres of absinthe were consumed in France; to-day 133,000 are consumed.

Fifty years ago 600,000 hectolitres of alcohol were consumed; to-day 2,000,000 hectolitres are consumed.

The intermediate figures show that the increase has been in almost geometric progression in recent years.

In 1880 the consumption had increased from 735 hectolitres of absinthe to 13,000. In 1885 it was still only 112,000.

In 1905 it was 133,000.

Sixty years ago there were only 10,000 demented in France. To-day there are more than 80,000.

Belgium has just made a law prohibiting not only the manufacture, but all traffic in absinthe, which cannot even be transported through the country. In this admirably governed commonwealth there is, it is said, but one saloon _brasserie_ to every two thousand inhabitants. Formerly the number of drinking-places was limited and restricted in France; to-day the highest of high licence prevails.

Recently I counted not less than fourteen places where alcoholic drinks were sold in a charming little seaside village of four or five hundred inhabitants.

THE LAW OF SEPARATION

_June 3rd, 1905._

There is still a persistent tendency in the Press to believe or make-believe that the Bill of alleged Separation, still pending in the French Chambers, means Separation as it is understood in England and the United States, and that the whole question is only one of dollars and cents, or of the suppression of the Budget of Cults. It is true that there is to be a partial repudiation of the National Debt by the suppression of the few paltry millions paid yearly to the French clergy as a slight indemnity for the vast amount of property confiscated by the Jacobins of 1792, but this is a mere detail, and would be considered but a small ransom, if, thereby, the Church could enjoy the same liberty as in the United States.

The Associations Bill was proclaimed to be a “law of liberty,” and we know to-day that it was only a vulgar trap set by the Government to betray the Congregations into furnishing exact inventories of all their property so that it might be more easily confiscated.

The Separation Bill is also a law of perfidious tyranny aimed at the very existence of the Church in France. M. Briand caused great hilarity in the Chambers when, by a slip of the tongue, he declared that in every part of it “could be seen the hand of our spirit of Liberalism.”[9] What is evident throughout is the hand of the secret society which has governed France since twenty-five years, and in whose lodges and convents all the anti-religious laws have been elaborated.

The Chambers are merely its _bureaux d’enregistrement_, and not even that. Under the _ancien régime_ the Parliament could and often did refuse to enregister royal acts and decrees.

It was two years before the Parliament of Paris consented to enregister the Concordat of 1516. But the Chambers to-day are merely the executive of the Grand Orient. This is the plain unvarnished truth, which is corroborated by all who have any knowledge of French politics.

I have repeated many times in the Press of the United States that Republicanism in France is not a form of government, but the _modus operandi_ of a secret society. Before me are _verbatim_ reports of their assemblies and the speeches made at their political banquets in 1902. At that time only unauthorized Congregations had been suppressed. This, it was declared, “was not enough.... The Congregations must be operated on with a vigorous scalpel, and all this suppuration must be thrown out of the country; only thus will the social body, still very sick with acute clericalism, be cured.” In July, 1904, all the authorized Congregations, too, were suppressed, as we know. Even this was not enough.

At the general “convent” of the Grand Orient, January, 1904, it was said: “We have yet a great effort to make.... The separation of Church and State will be in the order of the day in the Chambers in January, 1905.... The Cabinet and the Republican Parliament will end the conflict between the two contracting parties of the Concordat. The destruction of the Church will open a new era of justice and goodness.”

M. Combes, then in power, was notified of the wishes of the Grand Orient, and he telegraphed back that he would conform thereto.

The sensation caused by the publication of the spy documents, or _fiches_, stolen from the Grand Orient by M. Syveton and de Villeneuve nearly overthrew the Republic last November. The assassination of M. Syveton saved the Government and struck terror into the Nationalist camp. The publication of the spy documents ceased, and the lodges continued their work with a new figure-head, M. Rouvier instead of M. Combes.

On 4th November, 1904, the Grand Orient published a political manifesto which is a most important document from an historical and sociological standpoint.

It is simply amazing that the government of a once great nation should have passed into the hands of a secret society which, though it has no legal standing, treats France as if it were a great business concern of which the Freemasons are the _commanditaires_, the ministers “the managers,” and the deputies and functionaries the employees.

Already in 1902, at the closing banquet of the “convent,” Brother Blatin, a “venerable,” had declared:

“The Government must not forget that Masonry is its most solid support....

“But for our Order neither the Combes Cabinet nor the Republic itself would exist. M. and Mme. Loubet would still be simple little bourgeois in the little town of Montélimar.... But the Government must remember that we are only at the opening of hostilities. Until we have destroyed every congregation, denounced the Concordat, and broken with Rome, nothing is done.” In conclusion, these remarkable words were pronounced, of which the manifesto of 4th November, 1904, is only an echo: “In drinking to French Freemasonry I really drink to the Republic, because the Republic is Freemasonry operating outside its temples; and Freemasonry is the Republic under cover of our traditions and symbols.” Is this clear enough?

The Revolution of 1790 was undoubtedly due to Freemasonry, which about that time began to appear openly for the first time, and almost simultaneously, in France, Great Britain and America, etc. The Palladian Rite, established in France in 1769, found a congenial field of operation in the corrupt society of the _Régence_ and Louis XV.

Its aim then, as to-day, is the same--the destruction of Christianity. The Jacobin Clubs of 1792 were simply Masonic lodges. M. Waite, an eloquent apologist of the fraternity, makes the following statement in _Devil Worship in France_, page 322: “There is no doubt that it [Masonry] exercised an immense influence upon France during the century of quakings which gave birth to the great Revolution. Without being a political society, it was an instrument eminently adaptable to the subsurface determination of political movements.... At a later period it contributed to the formation of Germany, as it did to the creation of Italy. But the point and centre of masonic history is France in the eighteenth century.”

This explains the outbreak of _Kulturkampf_ in Germany and Switzerland soon after 1870, and the wave of anti-religious furor which swept over Italy at the same period. To-day Catholicism has repulsed Freemasonry in Germany, and the victory is not far distant in Italy. The Liberal Socialist party is waning, and it is always with these elements of socialistic anarchy that Freemasonry operates under a guise of liberty.

The efforts being made to break up the Austro-Hungarian and the Russian Empire are undoubtedly traceable to these Judeo-Masonic secret societies. But France remains the great battlefield. Christianity and Freemasonry are about to fight a decisive duel. One or the other must perish. “Si nous ne tuons pas l’Eglise, elle nous tuera,” said a prominent Mason recently. The suppression of the Congregations and their 27,000 schools was, as they said, “only the opening of hostilities.” The battle must be fought to the finish. I have repeatedly affirmed that France was held firmly in the coils of the Grand Orient, which has packed both Houses with its creatures, thanks to the political apathy of respectable Frenchmen.

The Separation Bill is merely a blind, a slip-knot which can be drawn at any moment to strangle the victim around whose neck it is cast. When his Socialist accomplices of the Left reproached M. Briand with being too liberal, he replied, “If necessary we can always amend the law or make another.” Only two short years ago M. Combes openly pronounced against any project of separation. M. Rouvier was of the same opinion, but the masters of France have spoken!

In vain it was pleaded that the country be consulted before taking so important a step. The perfidious feature of the Bill is just this--that nothing will be changed until two years (1907) hence, when the “bloc” will probably have gained a new lease of life by this manœuvre; for in May, 1906 they will be able to say to their electors, “You see the law is voted, and nothing is changed.”

Article I sounds sweetly liberal: “The Republic assures liberty of conscience and guarantees the free exercise of worship under the following restrictions” (contained in some forty more articles). In my opinion these numerous little “_restrictions_” will render the normal existence of the Church in France impracticable. Of course she will continue to exist, as she existed during the Terror, and under the _Directoire_ and Diocletian.

Another article, not yet voted, provides for the final disposition of church buildings twelve years hence. That, apparently, is the allotted span of life meted out to us by Masonic Jacobins.

Article II with sweet inconsistency declares that “the Republic neither recognizes nor subsidizes any cult,” and immediately after it inscribes on the Public Budget the service of _aumôniers_ of state lyceums and colleges.

Peasants and poor struggling tradesmen and artisans must pay for the luxury of religious worship or go without, but the sons of the rich, who frequent these state schools, are to be provided for, gratis, by this liberal Republic, which neither “recognizes nor subsidizes any worship,” except, of course, Islamism in Algeria, which is now, _ipso facto_, the religion of the State.

It is very pitiful to see so momentous a question treated with such flippancy and indecent haste.

All their utterances in the Chambers and in their Press show that the Freemasons are convinced that they would be defeated if the next elections were made on this issue. Therefore they must “do quickly.”

Alone of all the nations of Christendom, France totally disregarded Good Friday this year. The Stock Exchange remained open and the Chambers met as usual. The apostasy of the State will soon be complete.

In Spain, where I spent Holy Week, the young king has taken a decided stand against the Revolution. He has caused vehement enthusiasm by reviving Christian customs fallen into desuetude during a century of revolutions. On Holy Thursday he washed and kissed the feet of twelve poor men whom he afterwards served at table, aided by the grandees of Spain. On Friday he returned from church alone and on foot, and was wildly acclaimed. We are so accustomed to see the menus of the banquets of the rich, that it was refreshing to read, for once in the daily papers, the menu of a banquet of some poor old men served by a king.

This is the counter-revolution, and M. Salmeron and his Republican Socialist Freemasons, French and Spanish, who recently caused riots in many cities, might as well suspend operations. Only the assassination of Alphonse XIII can prevent Spain from recuperating steadily. In Italy, too, the counter-revolution is setting in. The Socialists, _alias_ Freemasons, are succumbing to the Conservative or clerical party. The Quirinal is steering for Canossa. France must bear the brunt till she, too, can have her counter-revolution.

CATHOLICISM IN GERMANY

GERMANY, _August, 1905_.

While Freemasonry in France seems on the point of triumphing over Christianity by the destruction of all religious education and a law of alleged Separation of Church and State, it is interesting to recall that only thirty-five years ago Catholicism in Germany was as much menaced as it is in France to-day. Churches were closed, prisons were full of priests, bishops, and archbishops, and Bismarck, like M. Briand of France, swore he would never, never go to Canossa.

In 1871 there were only fifty-eight Catholics in the Reichstag, representing 720,000 electors; in 1903 there were more than a hundred, representing 1,800,000 electors; and to-day this Catholic Centre forms the ruling majority in the country. The Emperor understands this perfectly, and hence his amenities towards the Church and the Holy See.

I have no doubt that the great Catholic Congress was held recently at Strasburg with his knowledge and approval, not to say at his suggestion. The event is significant coming so soon after his own investiture, at Metz, with the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, conferred upon him by the papal legate in the presence of the German cardinals and archbishops, and the highest military dignitaries of the empire.

At this Catholic Congress of Strasburg, forty thousand delegates of the federated societies of Germany paraded the streets with banners and music. The whole city was decorated, papal colours being most conspicuous. These popular federated societies count half a million members, grouped in nine hundred associations, that have 350 press organs of their own.

What makes the strength of these Catholic organizations in Germany is that they represent all classes of society--princes, peasants, artisans, nobles, and bourgeois--whereas Socialism finds its recruits almost exclusively, amongst the proletariat, cultured and uncultured, chiefly the latter.

At the Congress, Prince d’Arenberg renewed the usual protestations against the Piedmontese occupation of Rome, and the Bishop of Strasburg rejoiced that, “in spite of the devastations of the French Revolution, the ancient faith was still flourishing in Alsace, whence he hoped it _might soon extend its salutary influence_.”

These events are significant following the diplomatic humiliation inflicted on France when M. Delcassé, Minister of Foreign Affairs, was peremptorily dismissed at the behest of Germany.

Not long since the Socialist Bebel saucily told M. Jaurès the French would never have a pension for old age until the Germans gave it to them. Nothing, too, would please William more than to play the rôle of a paladin of religious liberty to the oppressed French Catholics.

Nor is there anything to prevent the resuscitation of the Germanic Confederation as it existed in the Middle Ages. The Habsburgs and the Austrian Empire might never have arisen, and the Hohenstauffens might still be reigning, if they had had sense enough to keep their hands off the Papacy. Napoleon, too, might have founded a dynasty as long-lived as that of the Bourbons, had he not also fallen into the same evil ways, and sought to dominate the whole Church by enslaving the Sovereign Pontiff. His nephew, the third Napoleon, in his youth, unfortunately became the bondsman of secret societies, whom he aided and abetted in the spoliations of 1870 which preluded his fall.

The Third Republic, too, will be shattered on the same rock, though not before having caused irretrievable wrong to France, I fear.

PSEUDO-SEPARATION

_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:--

“On a total of 11,219,992 French electors only 2,997,063 pronounced
yesterday by their deputies in favour of the denunciation of the
Concordat and the spoliation of the Church, voted by a so-called
majority.

“We must bear in mind that at the elections of 1902 the majority
only vanquished by 200,000 votes out of 8,000,000 voters inscribed,
and there are 400,000 functionaries. Thus spoke a senator (de
Cuverville), and he further quoted the declarations of M. Deschanel
in a public speech, July, 1905.

“A minority, he declared, governs the country, and a law voted by a
certain majority represents 25 to 30 per cent. One deputy is
elected by 22,000, another by 1000. The Department du Nord has
500,000 more inhabitants than six departments of the south-east,
yet it has five deputies less. Roubaix, with 125,000 inhabitants,
has one deputy, while the Department of Basses Alpes, with 115,000
inhabitants, has five deputies.”

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.

THE PROGRESS OF ANARCHY

_12th October, 1905._

The stories that are going the rounds of the whole European Press leave little doubt as to the fact, that a once great, free nation had her Foreign Minister, M. Delcassé, kept in office by the King of England while he was in Paris this spring, and that two months later, he was dismissed at the behest of Germany, who tore up the Anglo-French Convention regarding Morocco and inaugurated the Congress of Algeciras. No nation can act as France has done with impunity.[12]

This is curious too when we consider that France is so sensitive about the _ingérence_ of even a spiritual sovereign, that the denunciation of a Concordat and the rupture with the Holy See were ascribed to the fact that Pius X had taken the liberty of suspending two French bishops!

It is also interesting to recall that the Bill of alleged Separation was first voted at the Congress of Free-Thought held at Rome, in September, 1904. The motion was made by Professor Haeckel, of the University of Jena, Prussia, that: “We congratulate M. Combes in his struggle for free-thought against theocratical oppression, and for the radical separation of Church and State.” Allemane, a French Socialist deputy, exclaimed: “This is not enough. We want the abolition of the Church.” Robin, another French deputy, rejoined: “We are equally opposed to both. We demand the abolition of Church and State.”

I have already stated how the annual convent of the Grand Orient of France notified M. Combes (September, 1904) of their wishes regarding the passage without delay of the Separation Bill. This Bill was voted, or rather enregistered, by the Chamber of Deputies in July, as it will be done shortly by the Senate.[13]

Yesterday in Paris, the bureau of the “Federation of International Free-Thought” actually intimated to the French Senate its behest that the Law of Separation of Church and State be voted, without discussion or amendment, before December 31st. When we consider that this bureau is composed of one French Socialist Freemason deputy, the others being German, Belgian, and Italian, it seems preposterous! It would be so, even if all were Frenchmen, seeing that the Senate is supposed to be a free deliberative body, having the responsibility of accepting or rejecting what is done in the lower House.

The London _Saturday Review_ is almost the only organ in the English language which seems adequately to appreciate the enormity of the religious persecution in France.

“The extraordinary conspiracy of silence on this momentous matter, in the English Press,” writes the _Saturday Review_, London (July 8th, 1905), “is doubtless due to the fact that English Christians and gentlemen are usually considered unfit to represent English newspapers on the Continent. The Paris correspondents of our leading journals, being nearly all men of oriental extraction, cannot, however honourable and enlightened, be expected to entertain any interest in the fate of the Christian religion. We are invariably led by these gentlemen to believe that all is for the best in the best of republics. When, a fortnight ago, France suddenly realized that she was within sight of a war with her ancient foe on the other side of the Rhine, a thrill of terror passed over the land at the mere thought that while engrossed in the work of dechristianizing France, and hustling monks and nuns up and down the country, the politicians in power had demoralized the army, neglected the navy, and left the frontiers almost entirely unprotected. Things have quieted down since then, but none the less there is a feeling of unrest which makes people dread the passage of a law that may lead to internal divisions and disorders even more serious than those which agitate France at the present time.”

Referring to the Bill of alleged Separation, the _Saturday Review_ continues: “_La Lanterne_ (the organ of the ‘bloc’) intimates that ‘it only accepts the Bill as it stands as a preliminary; we must silence the priests and prevent them from infusing any more of the virus of religion into the minds of the people.’ ... To a thinking foreigner, the spectacle presented by contemporary France is an amazing one. Here is a great nation, which for sixteen centuries has proclaimed herself ‘eldest daughter of the Church,’ renouncing her great position as protector of the Catholics in the east and breaking off her connexion with the Vatican, at a time when Germany is menacing her and proclaiming at Metz, of all places in the world, her imperial wish to become more friendly with the Church.”

This is an allusion to the Emperor William’s having himself invested by the papal legate with the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, surrounded by German cardinals and prelates, as well as the highest military dignitaries of Alsace-Lorraine. For me, the dismissal of M. Delcassé and the whole Moroccan incident are the handwriting on the wall which the French are slow to read. On the Feast of St. Michael, September 29th, the Minister of Public Worship held high revelry at a banquet of five hundred Freemasons in the church of the recently expropriated convent of the Ursuline nuns at Ave-ranche, just opposite that wonderful pile known as the Mount St. Michel, a mediæval monastery and church. It is not stated whether--like Balthazar--he sent for the vessels of the temple.

The crimes against justice, liberty, and humanity committed in France, since four years, are without a parallel in Europe since the Revolution of 1790, if we except, of course, the atrocities in the Turkish Empire. But most dire racial and religious antagonism may be alleged on behalf of the Turk. In Spain, too, similar violations of liberty, justice, and humanity have been committed during the nineteenth century, but this was done in the heat and turmoil of revolutionary and anarchist upheavals. In France they were committed in cold blood, under cover of law. Nearly 27,000 Catholic schools, freely patronized by Catholic parents, have been suppressed, thousands of aged men and women have been dragged out of their homes and cast into the street, _vi et armis_, the regular army being employed in a great many cases. Their homes, built up by years of patient labour, have been confiscated and sold for a trifle. Yet many of them were authorized and had contracts with the Government. Recently, convent and school buildings, estimated at 200,000 francs, were sold for 2200 francs.

Two days ago, forty-three nuns of the Benedictine Order were expelled from their homes; eleven of them were over seventy, and quite infirm. The Congregations who were wary enough not to ask for authorization, and realized what they could before going into exile, are not to be pitied so much. Unfortunately, the majority fell into the Government’s trap and asked for authorization, which obliged them to declare all their assets, that have been confiscated, and of which they will never see one cent. Not only have all the assets been consumed in the process called “liquidation,” but the Government has been obliged to put up over 4,000,000 of the public money to cover the expenses of the “liquidators.” So ends the myth of the “billions of the Congregations,” held out as a glittering lure by Waldeck Rousseau in 1900 to his Socialist henchmen.

The terrible inroads, made by anti-patriotism and anarchical Socialism by means of public-school teachers, are seriously alarming the creators of this modern Frankenstein. Domiciliary perquisitions are being made just now, in many cities, to seize the leaders of a conspiracy to debauch the young conscripts who begin their two years’ military service now. A brochure, called _Crosse en l’air_ (meaning military revolt), has reached, it is said, the million mark of circulation, in spite of the Government.

The conclusion of the Russo-Japanese war is an illustration of what I wrote in _Slav and Moslem_ ten years ago, page 170: “Henceforth commerce, not ideas, will rule in the council chambers of the world. Politics will be forged in counting-houses and warehouses, ‘where only the ledger lives,’ in whose dusty atmosphere none but merchantable ideas are current. Wars will be declared, peace be made, alliances formed or repudiated, according to their probable effect on the pulse of the market.”

Without wishing to derogate from the merit of Mr. Roosevelt’s good offices, I am convinced he could not have succeeded if the financial consideration had not rendered the belligerents docile. Japan was absolutely at the end of her financial resources; the Russian coffers were not far from empty. By the intermediary of the President, both parties were given to understand that not a yen or kopeck more could they borrow if peace were not concluded there and then. Any prolongation of that war would have meant financial panic in many countries, chiefly in France. Israel, by its bankers, has its hand on the throttle in Christendom, and can make for peace and war more than all the peace congresses. When we reflect on the three cruel, uncalled-for wars which followed the Hague Conference in 1898, we can only tremble for the future, if there is to be a new peace congress. In spite of conferences and Jew bankers, guns will continue to “go off by themselves.” These Delcassé revelations are not calculated to render the Germans more friendly to France or England, and the knowledge they have acquired of France’s inability and unwillingness to fight must be a strong temptation to a nation whose population is increasing at a formidable rate, in spite of emigration, while that of France is stationary, not to say steadily decreasing.

Belgium, that great country in a very small compass, has doubled hers since 1830. With 7,000,000 inhabitants, the figure of her business operations is now the same as that of France with 38,000,000. This last statement was made by M. Leygnes, ex-minister, in a recent political speech, regarding the steady decadence of France under Jacobin rule since twenty years.

No country wants war, but all fear it. The causes of unrest are manifold and legion.

In an important political speech made by Lord Beaconsfield (Disraeli) at Aylesbury, September 20th, 1873, he expressed himself as follows: “I can assure you, gentlemen, that those who govern must count with new elements. We have to deal not with emperors and cabinets only. We must take into consideration secret societies, who can disconcert all measures at the last moment, who have agents everywhere determined men encouraging assassinations, and capable of bringing about a massacre at any given moment.”

The passage is quoted in an article in the _Nineteenth Century_ (1876), “A History of the ‘Internationale.’” The “Internationale,” by the way, is fast superseding the “Marseillaise.” The verse of blasphemy against Christ and His mother is followed by one which ends with these words: “Our balls are for our generals.” A short time ago there were prolonged riotous strikes on the eastern frontier. A striker was killed accidentally. Thereupon M. Berteaux, the Minister of War, retired a general and imprisoned a captain and a lieutenant for the crime of having allowed the lancer regiments to carry lances when they were sent out against the strikers!

To propitiate these rioters the Minister of War went to Longwy, and the strikers marched past singing the “Internationale,” and the Minister of War actually saluted the red flag! He afterwards protested in the newspapers that he did not salute the red flag, but the men and women who were escorting it! This Minister of War began life as dry-goods commercial traveller. He is to-day a millionaire _agent de change_ at the Paris Bourse, and is said to ambition the presidential chair.

Shakespeare wrote: “Motley is the only wear.” In France, everything seems to be running to red. I have witnessed here two “free-thought” funerals, one last April and another yesterday, in which pall and banners were red, and even the coffin was draped in flaming red. Red “is the only wear,” though it is not easy to understand why “free-thought” should necessarily blush--for itself. At the “Free-Thought” convention held, recently, at Paris, under government patronage, anarchy dominated, just as it did at Rome last September. Red was the keynote.

THE ABOLITION OF THE CONCORDAT

_February 3rd, 1906._

On August 19th, 1905, I described some of the odious features of the alleged Separation Bill voted by the House of Deputies on July 7th, at “midnight, the hour of crime.” It may truly be ranked in that category to which Cicero referred when he said, “There are laws which are merely conventions among thieves.” “The vote of the Senate is a foregone conclusion,” I wrote. The order had been given; every amendment (there were about a hundred) was rejected automatically, and the law was voted, December 6th, 1905, by a majority of 180 to 101. “The French Government,” I wrote (June 30th, 1900), “is on the verse of apostasy. Is this a cause, a presage, or a symptom of national decadence? All three I fear. Nations stand or fall with their governments. They have the government they deserve, and are punished for the evil doings of their rulers! ‘I gave them a king in my wrath,’ was once written of the Jews. Is there sufficient vitality left in the French national constitution to reject the poison which is undermining it, and of which alcoholism, unknown in France fifty years ago, is but the outward and visible sign?” To-day this apostasy, not of the nation, but of the French State, is complete. It is the latest, though by no means the last act of a series of anti-religious laws, elaborated by the Grand Orient and voted by majorities and cabinets formed by them. I dealt with this subject on March 17th, 1900, and said, then, that “with a Parliament and Ministry like this any legislation is possible.”

The pseudo-Separation Bill is the most important legislation accomplished in France since a century at least, and it has been done in a manner which would not be tolerated in any free, civilized country. An Act, which is the repudiation of fifteen centuries of national life, and is fraught with the gravest consequences both political and religious, interior and exterior, has been rushed through both Houses with most unseemly, “scandalous haste.” “You are treating it,” said a senator, “as if it were a question of a fourth-rate railroad.” There was only one deliberation in the Chamber of Deputies, and not one in the Senate we may say. Senators of the Right were allowed to soliloquize eloquently. Their speeches were admirable from every point of view and might well have given pause to the Left. But these were dumb, by order. With few exceptions, the reporter and President of the Separation Commission and the Minister of Worship alone spoke, to curtly and peremptorily repulse the proposed amendments. M. Rouvier, Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, who did not speak at all in the House of Deputies, made but one appearance, on November 9th, at the first session of the Senate, to declare that “the question was essentially a political one,” and that there was “a primordial and dominant interest for the Government that this reform should be completed before the Senate went before the electoral body.” He further declared “that the Senate had given its adhesion in advance ... if it were otherwise the Government would resign.” Surely a singular speech to make to a deliberative assembly, on a matter that transcends in importance anything that has been transacted in the French Parliament since 1793.

If the law were not what Cicero calls “a convention among thieves,” how did M. Rouvier know “that the Senate had given its adhesion in advance”? Indignant at the systematic refusal of the Left to enter into any discussion, a senator exclaimed: “You are a deliberative assembly; try at least to keep up appearances.” MM. Monis and Clemenceau spoke on the Left, not to refute the arguments of the Right, but to travesty history, to malign and misrepresent, and to discuss subjects wholly irrelevant. M. Monis entered into a long digression on the Franco-Prussian war in order to incriminate a French cardinal and Pius IX. He was ably refuted by M. de Lamarzalle.

Whence this unseemly haste to vote a measure so important on the ragged edge of a legislature? Next month one-third of the Senate is to be renewed, the presidential term expires, and in May general elections are to take place. In vain the Right, in learned and eloquent speeches, adjured the Senate to postpone the final vote: (1) till one-third of the Senators had been replaced; (2) till the Municipal Councils had been consulted; (3) till the country had been consulted; (4) until after the general elections of May, 1906. All in vain. “_Motions préjudicielles_” and a hundred odd amendments all had the same fate.