178 



ARTHUR GALTON, M.A.^ ON 



is possible between them : that is a lesson wliich we may learn 

 from France. It is a lesson which we learned for ourselves, 

 and practised, in the sixteenth century; but there are many 

 signs that we are in danger of unlearning it, through that 

 sentimentalism, the fruit of ease and prosperity, which is one 

 of tlie gravest dangers in our modern life, not only to the 

 individual, but even more to States, and, as we should not forget, 

 to churches. " A catholic atmosphere," as it is called in our 

 fatuous and ignoble educational squabbles, whether angiican or 

 roman, is absolutely incompatible with Englisii citizenship. 



From this little sketch two things, perhaps, will have 

 emerged clearly; the old gallican church was destroyed, both 

 in form and spirit, by Napoleon's concordat. There was no 

 longer a national church of France, in the old meaning of the 

 term. Napoleon organised an ecclesiastical system, which he 

 intended to be a department of State ; but his hierarchy, as was 

 proved immediately, was wholly unprotected against papal 

 interference. He enabled a foreign power to become supreme 

 over a large body of Frenchmen. He gave to its representatives 

 official rank and collective wealth, both of which endued it 

 further with political influence; and this hierarchical system 

 easily secured for itself infinite and irresistible powers of 

 expansion. In two directions, this expansion was immediate 

 and systematic. The religious orders were not restored by the 

 concordat. In fact, they were implicitly forbidden ; but, even 

 before Napoleon disappeared, they were revived under one 

 pretext or another; and they increased continuously, prolihcally, 

 until the danger was tackled resolutely by the legislation of 

 Waldeck-Eousseau and the administration of M. Combes. 



The clergy also v.'on back, by slower degrees, the control of 

 education, a victory which they owed chiefly to the religious 

 orders; but, not content with privilege and supremacy and 

 control, they ^vere always trying to proscribe every other 

 system which was devised by the State and desired by those 

 who objected to the tone, the methods, and the results of 

 clerical teaching. 



^»'ow few things are so open to dispute as statistics. Even 

 facts are hardly more controversial ; and the numbers of the 

 French catholics are not an easy question to decide. I will, 

 howe^'er, take a practical test, which I think proves a good 

 deal, and impales those who dispute it on one or other horn 

 of a dilemma. Since the earliest parliaments of the Eestoration, 

 under Louis XVII I., there has never been a clerical majority in 

 France. There has never been even a respectable minority. The 



