That 'Milliard'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 40, 3 October 1907, Page 9

That 'Milliard'

The fairy-gold ' of Irish folk-tales shone with an alluring glow when the elves were around and night wrapped the earth in a mantle of darkness. But when morning came the yellow wealth was turned to broken twigs and withered leaves. A like fate has befallen the fairy milliard of francs (£40,000,000) which (as M, Waldeck-Rousseau declared -in Toulouse) would fall into the fob) of the workers of France on the suppression and confiscation of the religious Orders in that lodge-ridden land. The bait held out by the French Premier was substantially the same as that which Henry VIII. dangled before the eyes of his hungry retainers when he wished to attract ' rice-converts ' to his new ' reform '. But there was this difference : Bluff Hal, with all his faults, fulfilled fiis bond ; the French ministerial promise was made only to be broken. It was a ruse de guerre— one of the immoral expedients that the ireaner class of politicians are prepared to justify in a party or religious war. The promise was notoriously founded on figures that did not truly represent the property of the religious Orders. But the deception did its intended work at the ballot-boxes. The religious Orders were suppressed, their members dispersed or banished, and their properties have been in part sold and confiscated. Those who clamored for the promised bribe of the monastic ' milliard ' have long been wishing to finger the coins. But these have vanished in the daylight of hard experience ; there is left for the workers only the dead leaves and rotten twigs of broken ministerial promises ; and the disappointed and disillusioned ones who acquiesced in the regime of plunder and proscription are singing a doleful variant of ' The Highland Laddie ' — ' Oh, where, and oh f where is the convent milliard gone ? ' * " It is gone like the hoarded gold and gems of the great barbaric epic of the North, the song of the Nibelungs. From time to time we have recorded how the prices realised for the monastic property were only a .fraction of the absurdly inflated official values which went to form the mythical ' milliard ', and how the proceeds of the sales went, in practically every case, to line the pockets of the "liquidators— together with heavy advances from the Treasury as well. The latest figures to hand are from the ' Republique Francaise ' ; they deal with the property of four religious congregations that have been seized and sold in the Department of Am :—: — ' The official value, according 'to the table of >H. Trouillot, was set down at 737,140 francs (£25,485), whereasi the net price obtained was no more than 110,000 francs ' (£4,400). ' There was thus a difference of no less than 627,-140 francs' (£21,085) ' between the official estimate and the purchase price. Again, the properly of the diocesan missionaries of Notre Dame de la Salette was estimated at 153,000 francs ' (£6120). € The liquidator offered it for 30,000 francs ' (£1,200), ' but there was no purchaser. The Marist Brothers' property was set down as worth 292,000 francs ' (-£-11,680) ; ' it only fetched 40,000 francs ' (£1,600), %he difference thus being 252,000 francs ' (10,080). 'Lastly, the Trappists' property was estimated at 577,000 francs' (£23,080), but no purchaser has come forward. The.upshot of the transaction is that the property of these four congregations which was declared to be worth 1,760,000 francs ' (£70,400), has brought in no more than 150,000 francs ' (£6,000), ' a deficit of 1,610,000 francs ' (£64,400), ' or in round numbers about 8§ per cent, of the estimate made by the Governirient '. And be it noted that, out of the sums realised (says the same non-Catholic paper) ' there will have to be paid the expenses and fees of the minor officials, and the great officials, the liquidators '. ' Ah ! false as the dream of the sleeper, Like love, the bright ore is gone '.

Judging by the published experiences of previous liquidations of monastic property, not the value of one centime will be left for the workers of France out of the bribe which M. Waldeck-Rousseau offered to them. They have had their reward. And, in all the circum-~~ stances," we cannot honestly say that we ' weep with them tear for tear '. -