Marlborough Express PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. Saturday, March 10, 1906. POLITICAL CRISIS IN FRANCE.

Marlborough Express, Volume XXXIX, Issue 59, 10 March 1906, Page 2

Marlborough Express PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. Saturday, March 10, 1906. POLITICAL CRISIS IN FRANCE.

The process of separating the Church and State in France has brought about the downfall of the Rouvier Ministry. The Act! which provides for this dissolution was passed last November, and is supplementary to the Religious Associations Law of 1901, which required all religious establishments to be registered and authorised by the State. It may be explained that in France all religions have been on a legal equality, every sect being entitled to a grant from the State if its numbers exceeded 100,000 ;but the Roman Catholics form the large majority of the population, lhe Separation Act of last year provides for the suppression of all State, departmental, and municipal grants, tor the return to the State of all real and personal property derived from the State, and for the vesting of ecclesiastical property of all kinds in associations for the maintenance of public worship to be legally formed, in accordance with the Associations Law °r il' •I* .allowed the gratuitous use or ecclesiastical buildings belonging to the State and the municipalities for two years after the promulgation of the law, and afterwards on renewable lease for ten years at a rent not exceeding ten per cent, of the average annual receipts of the parish. For the purposes of this law a process ol valuation had to be pursued, and it is the taking of the inventories1 in the churches that has caused friction in Pans and various parts of Franco. The stock-taking, so to speak, has had to be carried out at the point of the bayonet. Armed troops and municipal guards have actually been obliged to storm the sacred buildings to enable the valuators to do their work, aud even fire brigades have been brought into requisition to overcome the resistance of, the defenders. The cabled account of the disgraceful scene at. the beautiful Gothic Church of St. Clothlde in Paris last month will be fresh in thw mind. Thousands of people, representing every class of society, including noblemen and workmen in blouses, as well as hundreds "of welldressed ladies, unsuccessfully fought against the troops; the fittings of the fine edifice were wrecked, and two hundred people were injured. The attitude .of the State towards the Church has, naturally, been viewed with strong disfavour by the clerical party and, by a large proportion of the people, especially in provincial France; and, on the other hand, it is self-evident that the separation law has a large amount of sympathy otherwise, indeed, it would not have reached the Statute Book. Even among the clerical party the law is looked at with different eyes. Some regret - its enactment as a sign that the materialistic spirit is spreading; others regard it as a natural corollary of the development of democracy, and argue n .that the cause of religion will not deteriorate as the. result of temporal dispossession. It is apparent, though,,that the Separation Law is far from being in accord with the temper of the people as a whole ;in fact, the.present position seems to be that the State, or rather the Rouvier Government/ has rather badly miscalculated the national spirit and has met with disaster in consequence. Recent cables said that the opposition in the provinces had been so keen that the Government had decided to relax the inventory clause of the Act under certain circumstances; but £he concession has come too late. After a debate in the Chamber of Deputies with regard to an incident in which a gendarme shot a resisting butcher at a country church, a resolution proposing confidence in the Government's policy was rejected by 267 votes to 234. The M. Briand who defended the Government by accusing the clergy of provocative tactics with political, and not religious, ends in view, is probably the deputy who introduced the Separation Act last November. When M. Rouvier succeeded M. Combes on February, 1905, he took up the greater part of his predecessor's programme as to the education question and the separation of Chruch and State, but : declared that he would carry out the, programme in a more conciliatory way. His conciliation was of too stern a character.