186 



ARTHUR GALTON_, M.A.^ ON 



separation. They thought it would clear the air, end many 

 obvious unrealities, and stimulate zeal by forcing the laity 

 to accept their responsibilities. Above all, they hoped to realise 

 the ideal of a free church in a free or at any rate a neutral 

 State. Certainly the State has become neutral. Subject only 

 to its ordinary laws of police and of corporate finance, the 

 Eoman catholics are free. Indeed, the ordinary laws of public 

 meeting have been relaxed in their favour. But they are less 

 free than they were before. Under the concordat, if there were 

 some State control, which was more nominal than real, there 

 was also some theory of protection and guarantee. This has all 

 been swept away ; and what is called the French church has 

 become merely an outlying department of the Vatican adminis- 

 tration. The choice of bishops was not given back to the 

 people, or even to the clergy. It is solely in the hands of 

 Eome. The bishops are now, both in fact and theory, mere 

 papal delegates, made and unmade at pleasure, with no security 

 of tenure, no powers of initiative, no genuine responsibility, and 

 an ever dwindling power of administration. The parochial 

 clergy, in like manner, are absolutely dependent on their bishops. 

 The canon law, and the possession of corporate endowments., 

 especially in land, made the old French clergy both free and 

 strong, as against Eome, while the royal supremacy was an 

 additional protection. All this was modified or destroyed by the 

 Eevolution and the concordat. Though the Constitution Civile 

 would have secured the freedom of the church, against both the 

 papacy and the politicians, the concordat was no protection 

 against either. It was illogical in its conception, blundering in 

 its methods, and mischievous in its results, from the beginning ; 

 and its century of life only made these defects more glaring. 

 But the present state of French romanism is far worse, and can 

 only end in moral and intellectual disaster. Every institution 

 must bear the defects of its principles and qualities. Of all 

 institutions which human beings have devised for their moral, 

 intellectual, political, social, and material undoing, a theocracy 

 is the worst. It is the most prolific in itself of mischief ; the 

 most obstinate in ill-doing ; the most opposed to progress, and 

 to intellectual or civic freedom ; and it is the most difficult to 

 over- turn. To reform a theocracy is, indeed, impossible ; for 

 it is a contradiction in terms. Whenever deities have been 

 established and endowed, they have always shown theuiselves 

 incorrigible. 



Now the Vatican is a theocracy ; and it has added to this 

 original disease the next most pernicious of administrative 



