ULTRAMONTANISM FROM AN HISTORICAL POINT OF VIEW. 179 
•and his advisers that it has given the absolute control of 
ecclesiastical matters into their hands, making the parish priests 
mere slaves to their Bishops, and the Bishops to the Pope, 
while the religions orders are under the control of the Papacy 
:alone. The Organiques or administrative provisions of this 
•concordat have never been accepted by the Pope, and the 
numerous changes of government which have taken place 
between 1802 and 1870 have practically prevented the State 
from insisting on them. We come next to the Third Bepublic 
■established in 1870 on the ruins of the Second Empire. 
Strange to say, this Third Bepublic was at first ultra-conservative. 
Under the presidency of MacMahon, the old monarchy of the 
■days before 1789 was just on the point of being restored, when 
the determination of the Legitimist heir to the throne to fly the 
white flag, the symbol of the ancien regime, put an end to the 
negotiations. It is hardly necessary to say that the Ultra- 
montanes made the best use of their majority in the Legislature, 
and never, since Prance became a nation, was the Church so 
uncontrolled in that country as during the years immediately 
following 1870. A change, however, was at hand. The 
Bepublicans, under the leadership of Gambetta, first obtained a 
majority in the Chamber, and then in the Senate. That able 
statesman clearly discerned the direction from which danger 
threatened the Bepublic. Lc clericalisme, voila I’ennemi, was 
the pregnant phrase with which he inaugurated the campaign 
which may now be regarded as closed. One would not refuse 
to associate oneself with this sentiment, provided it were under- 
stood that by “ clericalism ” was meant the autocracy, not the 
legitimate influence, of the clergy. But this by the way. The 
Ultramontanes saw their danger clearly. In the Boulanger 
episode, and then in the cruel attempt to fix a false charge on 
Dreyfus, they endeavoured violently to suppress popular 
government by means of the army. We have not all, I hope, 
forgotten the proceedings at the Dreyfus trial, the savage abuse 
of opponents found in the Ultramontane organs La Croix and 
La Imbre Parole, and pilloried by “ Verax,” a Iloman Catholic, in 
the London Times of that date. These passionate outbursts 
culminated in the dastardly, and I believe entirely unpre- 
cedented, attempt to murder the counsel for the accused man. 
It is true that this was probably the attempt of a fanatic. But 
the memory of William the Silent, of Henry III., and Henry 
IV., of France will recall the fact to us how often Ultramon- 
tanism has stimulated and has never declined to use fanaticism 
for its own ends. The genuine Bepublicans in France were 
