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ARTHUR GALTON_, M.A., ON 



specially fitted to deal with the subject. For his own part, he had 

 only a superficial acquaintance with the subject, gained by personal 

 intercourse with some of the French priests, more than a thousand 

 in number, who have left the Church of Rome during the last 

 fifteen years. He had also studied carefully their organs in the 

 press. They might, presumably, regard the Revolution of 1789 as 

 the moment when the tide of public indignation arose which had 

 now submerged Papal domination in France. He had to thank 

 Mr. Galton's volume for a better comprehension of the true character 

 of the settlement of affairs ecclesiastical attempted at the Revolution. 

 In England they had been too ready to accept the description of the 

 measures then taken to reform ecclesiastical affairs from the one- 

 sided utterance of Ultramontane writers. Mr. Galton had shown 

 that the Constitutions Civiles were really a statesmanlike attempt to 

 deal with the situation, though they survived only a short time, 

 being replaced before many years by the famous Concordat of 

 Napoleon. That was an attempt to make the Emperor the absolute 

 master of the situation. The old franchises of priests and bishops 

 were swept away ; the priests were at the mercy of his bishop, the 

 bishop at the mercy of the Pope, and the Pope a prisoner in the 

 hands of Napoleon. The situation thus created was beautifully 

 simple. Only Napoleon forgot that institutions are usually longer 

 lived than individuals. The Papal authority had lasted somewhere 

 about a thousand years, and might have been expected to live 

 another thousand. Napoleon, on the most favourable computation, 

 could hardly expect to live so long. The return of the monarchy 

 placed the Pope once more at the head of affairs, instead of the 

 sovereign. , The restoration of the Empire left things as they were, 

 and it was long before the Third Republic, surrounded by difficulties, 

 attempted to grapple with the Church. The conflict was precipi- 

 tated by the famous Dreyfus case, which showed that the clergy 

 were in league with the army to destroy the Republic. A great deal 

 of sentiment has been wasted on the supposed oppression of 

 harmless and holy men and women by the impiety rampant in 

 France. But as a matter of fact the Church had been treated, as 

 Mr. Galton showed, with the greatest consideration. The conflict 

 would never have arisen had not the Church intrigued to overthrow 

 the Government, and the Orders might have remained in France 

 had they submitted to the regulations laid down for their observance 



