silence, shows her disapprobation. They are on one side of the table, and you on the other — and alone. One would think that in the midst of them, and opposite you, was seated an invisible personage to contradict whatever you may say.

But how can we be astonished at this state of our family? Our wives and daughters are brought up and governed by our enemies!

This expression gives me pain for many reasons (which I shall mention at the end of the volume); but I have not passed my life in the search of truth, to sacrifice it now to my private feelings.

Yes, enemies of modern mind, of liberty, and the future. It is of no use to allege that this preacher, or that sermon, is democratical. Where there is one to raise his voice for liberty, there are fifty thousand to speak against it. Whom do they expect to deceive, by this clownish manœuvre ?

Our enemies, I repeat it, in a more direct sense, as they are naturally envious of marriage and family life. This, I know full well, is rather their misfortune than their fault. An old lifeless system, of mechanical functions, can want but lifeless partisans. Nature, however, reclaims her rights: they feel painfully that family is denied them, and they console themselves only by troubling ours.

This system will be destroyed, by what has recently given it apparent strength, its unity, and the blind confidence which it has inspired.

But is there moral unity? or real association of souls? By no means. Every element of a dead body left to itself would naturally fall away; but, nevertheless, it is not impossible with an iron frame to bind up a dead body better than a living one; make a compact mass of it, and launch it forth.

This lifeless spirit, let us call it by its real name, Jesuitism, formerly neutralised by the different manners of living, of the orders, corporations, and religious parties, is now the common spirit which the clergy imbibes through a special education, and which its chiefs make no difficulty in confessing. A bishop has said, "We are Jesuits, all Jesuits;" and nobody has contradicted him.

The greater part, however, are less frank: jesuitism acts powerfully through the medium of those who are supposed to be strangers to it; namely, the Sulpicians, who educate the clergy, the Ignorantins, who instruct the people, and the Lazarists, who direct six thousand Sisters of Charity, and have in their hands the hospitals, schools, charity-offices, &c.

So many establishments, so much money, so many pulpits for preaching aloud, so many confessionals for whispering, the education of two hundred thousand boys*, and six hundred thousand girls, the ma

* I shall not say a word in this volume, on the strange question that has been raised, whether they who have the daughters should have the sons also, whether they should add to their monstrous monopoly, whether France would trust her

nagement of several millions of women, form together a powerful machine. The unity it possesses in our days might, one would suppose, alarm the state. This is so far from being the case, that whilst the state prohibits association among the laity, it has encouraged it among the ecclesiastics. It has allowed them to form a most dangerous footing among the poorer classes, the union of workmen, apprenticehouses, association of servants who are accountable to priests, &c. &c.

Unity of action, and the monopoly of association, are certainly two powerful levers.

Well! with all this, strange enough, the clergy is weak. This would be evident to-morrow, had it no longer the state to support it. It is manifest even as it is.

Though armed with these weapons, and assisted by an active press that they have lately taken into their service, working underhand in the saloons, the newspapers, and the Chambers, they have not advanced one step.

Why do you not advance? If you will leave off shouting and gesticulating for a moment, I will tell you why. You are numerous and noisy, you are strong in a thousand material means, in money, credit, intrigue, and every worldly power; you are weak only in God!

children to the subjects of a foreign prince? I trust to the good sense of the Chambers.

Do not cry out here. of noise: let us try, if you are men, to find out together what is religion. As spiritual men, you do not apparently make it consist entirely of material things, holy water and incense. God ought to be for you, as for us, the God of intelligence, truth, and charity.

Let us have reason instead

The God of Truth has revealed himself in the two last centuries more than he had done in the ten preceding ones. By whom was this revelation accomplished? Not by you, but by those whom you call the laity, and who have been the priests of Truth. You cannot point to any one of the grand discoveries, or durable works which stand upon the road of science.

The God of Charity, equity, and humanity, has permitted us to substitute a humane code for the cruel law of the middle ages. But you maintain its barbarity.* This exclusive right suppressed contradiction only by killing the contradicter. Ours admits differences; of divers tones it makes harmony; it does not wish that our enemy should die, but that he should become our friend, and live. "Save the conquered †" said Henry IV., after the battle of Ivri.— "Kill all,” said Pope Pius V. to the soldiers he sent into France before St. Bartholomew.

* Among other facts, see those quoted p. 126.

Not only the French, but the Swiss. Discours véritable 1590 (Mém. de la Ligue, vol. iv. p. 246.).

In 1569. He complained, says the panegyrist, of his general:

Your principle is the old exclusive homicidal one that destroys whatever contradicts it.

You speak

much of charity; it is not difficult to practise it, when care is taken, as with you, to exclude the enemy from it.

Why is God, who has appeared in our days in the light of sciences, the mildness of manners, and equity of the laws, still unacknowledged by you?

It is there you are weak, because there you are impious; you are wanting in one thing of all others, and that one thing is religion.

That which constitutes the gravity of this age, I may even say its holiness, is conscientious work, which promotes attentively the common work of humanity, and facilitates at its own expense the work of the future. Our forefathers dreamed much, and disputed much. But we are labourers, and this is the reason why our furrow has been blessed. soil which the middle ages left us still covered with brambles, has produced by our efforts so plentiful a harvest, that it already envelopes, and will presently hide the old inanimate post that expected to stop the plough.

The

And it is because we are workmen, and return home fatigued every evening, that we need more than

"Che non avesse il commendamento di lui osservato d' ammazzar subito qualunque heretico gli fosse venuto alle mani." Catena, Vita di Pio V., p. 85. (ed. de Rome), et p. 55. (ed. de Mantoue).