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ARTHUR GALTON_, M.A., ON 



Oppose nothing except sonorous and self-righteous platitudes, 

 which have naturally not counted in the scales of international 

 justice against the weight of the Prussian sword. 



But let us return to France. Everything was done by 

 Pius X. and his director Merry del Val, to exasperate the French 

 government. Bishops were summoned to Pome, and deposed 

 without consulting it. Both the letter and spirit of the 

 concordat were ignored. French national feeling was wounded 

 in the most galling way over the journey of President Loubet 

 to Italy ; and the insult w^as aggravated by the garbled 

 despatches in which the matter was discussed with other powers. 

 The Curia thought the Eepublic was afraid to deal with 

 separation, but it w^as never more fundamentally mistaken. 

 The policy was carried through calmly and steadily, without 

 causing even a ripple of serious disturbance on the surface of 

 public order, in spite of desperate efforts by the Vatican to 

 inflame the population and to influence the Chambers. We must 

 acknowledge that this satisfactory result was due very largely 

 to the wise educational policy of Jules Ferry and the earlier 

 statesmen of the Third Eepublic. Pius IX. could coerce and 

 terrify the administration of Napoleon III., by pJaying through 

 his clergy upon an uneducated electorate. Pius X. and his 

 agents have proved themselves unable to ruffle public opinion 

 in any single part of France. 



The project of separation itself was just and moderate. 

 There was no church property in France. It was all resumed 

 by the nation, in 1789, with the acquiescence of the clergy, and 

 the whole matter was ratified by Pius VII. in 1802. It was 

 allowed by all French jurists, and admitted by the ecclesiastics, 

 that no corporation, and therefore not the church, can have any 

 claims against the State, which must be supreme in all questions 

 of property. It was admitted, also, that the payments to the 

 clergy under the concordat were in no sense an equivalent for 

 the old ecclesiastical revenues. The roman catholic clergy, 

 then, and the other ministers recognised by the State, were paid 

 annual salaries. They were civil servants, as all State paid 

 officials must be. There w^as thus no question of disendownient, 

 properly speaking; no vexed and complicated problem of 

 dealing with, or readjusting, vast quantities of property. 

 Disestablishment in France meant literally a separation, 

 officially, between church and State. It was thus in its 

 financial aspects a very simple measure indeed, and not as it 

 would be with us a very complicated matter. The budget of 

 public worship had grown outrageously between 1814 and 



