The French Tyranny

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIV, Issue 12, 22 March 1906, Page 2

The French Tyranny

There was at least one Emperor of Russia whose ear was not attuned to flattery. Madame de Stael committed one of her deadly sins against good statesmanship when she said to him : ' Sire, your character is a constitution for your country, and your conscience its guarantee.' The menarch's reply was a model of wit and wisdom. ' Even if that werei so,' said he> ' I should never be anything but a happy accident.' All of which, being interpreted, sigmfieth that high character in -a, ruler, however desirable it may be, can never make up for the lack of just laws and sound institutions. But when rulers are devoid of character, when the law is made an instrument of tyranny, and when representative institutions are prostituted to the private ends of the enemies of all religion, then indeed a country has reached the abomination of political desolation.

Such is the case in lodc;e-nddrn France. In that ill-,starred land ' the Executive,' as an English contemporary points out, ' has powers of mischief unefl^ialled elsewhere' at was not by law, but by administrative decree, that Mr. Combes destroyed the teaching Orders and sent tens of thousands of persons into exile. Again : it was not by law, but by a decree of the Executive that the order (afterwards withdrawn under pressure) was issued to desecrate the Tabernacles all oiver France. This was an unnecessary and wholly unprovoked aggravation of wholesale spoliation by a tsaenlcgious profanation that is revolting to the Catholic mind and heart. ' Just wha.t a non-rehpious State,' says the ' Brston Pilot ' in an article reproduced elsewhere in our columns, ' wants of the \essels and vestments of our churches is not explained ' The Radical and Freemason press acknowledge with frank brutality (as we have shown by quotations from time to .time) that the object of the legislative crusade against the schools and churches and religious Orders, and the confiscation of ecclesiastical property, is the utter destruction of religion in France. Ministers dare not make so open an avowal. They must discover pretexts more or less plausible for the infliction of such wholesale proscription, exile, and spoliation as finds a parallel only in the Great Pillage cf Henry VIII. It is the homage which tryanny pays perforce to liberty, and the spirit of the sixteenth century to that of the twentieth. ' There's no such thing as hypocrisy in the wurruld,' says ' Mr. Dooley.' ' They can't be. If ye'd turn on th' gas in th' darkest heart ye'd find it had a good raison for th' worst things it dene — a good varchous raison, like needin' th' money, or punishin' th' wicked, or tachin' people a lesson to be more careful, or protectin' th' liberties iv mankind, or needin 1 the money.' Roper, the famous forger and coiner, long- %,overed his exploits with a seraphic air of piety and bonhomie. And the historic murderer, Hooker, was arrestcjd with a butterfly net in his hand, and gazing with a beatified air at the latest specimen of moth that had fallen intc his hands. Republican France in particular seems to enjoy an evil pre-eminence for the crimes committed by her rulers in the name of liberty, ever since the days of Madame Roland.

The invasion of the people's sanctuaries — with a view to their final complete plunder and spoliation, down to the last packet of pins — has naturally arousecl fierce and widespread opposition. But (as Sydney Smith has remarked) ' all rebellions and disaffections are general and terrible in proportion as one party has suffered, and the other inflicted.' We have more

than once referred to the manner in which the French Freemason crusade against religion is favored by a great many secular papers in the English-speaking wrrld that are given to somnolent homilies on ' liberty 'i and ' toleration ' and ' equality of treatment before the law.' Alack ! There are a good many ' pious editors ' besides Russell Lowell's that 'dv believe in Freedom's cause ez fur ez Payris is ' — or, preferably, further ; and who likewise ' Dv believe in bein' this Or thet, ez it may happen,' so far as principles are concerned. Says the San Francisco "Mcnitor ' in a recent issue :—: — If the churches in France 'subjected to the outrageous invasion by Government oiheers, were Protestant instead of Catholic, what a howl of indignation wculd go up from the shocked American press, on the tyranny of the thing ' As matters stand, our newspapers apparently see inotlung out of the way in the infamous action of the persecuting authorities. Though the present policy of the French Government in pushing its scheme , of interference beyond the remotest limits of decency is fatally short-sighted and morally certain to react to the discomfiture of its authois, the fact has nothing to do with the curious indifierence displayed by those eminent champions of liberty and justice, the editors of our great dailies, in the presence of an exhibition unparalleled in a half dozen generations. The New York ' Sun ' sees further into the French persecution and speaks with more fairness than the bulk of the secular papers in English-speaking countries that have expressed an opinir n upon the matter. It says in a recent issue .—. — 1 The position of Catholicism in France hereafter, will by no means be analogous to that occupied by that religion in the United States, where the national Government exercises no supervision over any form of worship. - That liberty which with one hand the French civil power professes to give the Catholic Church while, withholding from it the pecuniary assistance which it bestowed for a century, it takes back with the other hand by subjecting the votaries of that Church to the system of close oversight and restraint elaborated in the laws concerning associations which have been enacted during the last few years. In a word, the treatment of the Catholic Church at the hands of the civil power in France recalls that suffered by Shylock . in the "Merchant of Venice," when, after receiving successive rebufts at the hands of the law, he begs the Court to " give him his principal and let him go," but is sternly halted with the mandate : " Tarry, Jew ; the law hath yet another hold on you." It is patent, in fact, that " a free Church in a free State " is by no means contemplated bly the Radicals and Socialists who control the present Chamber of> .Deputies, though they have taker; measures to relieve the treasury of the buiden of supporting religion in any guise.' We should like to see the London ' Times ' and its colonial echoes put forth a defence of the plunder and spoliation of the Church and of religious corporations generally in France. And we are curious to know what plea they can advance that would not likewise justify the proscription and plunder of any benefit society, public company, trading association, or private owner) in this or any other country.