We can best judge it by taking a glance at its policy since it attained to power in France by the late elections. These elections were won by the cry that the republic was in danger, that it was menaced by clerical, monarchical, Orleanist, or Bonapartist intrigues. That there was a real reaction we do not for a moment believe. We hold that the Catholic revival in France is still making as steady progress as it was a year ago, and we have evidence of this in the continued increase of Catholic works, the repeated subscriptions for the Free Catholic Universities, and the appearance of new and ablywritten journals in the Catholic press. But the Republicans seem to have gathered new adherents to their ranks because the Liberals and Radicals were alarmed by the action of the Catholics, and united in an unanimous effort to regain the upper hand in politics, an effort in which the common peril drew together M. Thiers, M. Gambetta, M. Naquet-in a word, men of every shade of Republican opinion into one heterogeneous alliance. To their standard they rallied a large mass of that inert body which always votes with the most active party; but it is a significant fact, that at the supplementary elections the judgment of the constituencies was in several places reversed, and a Bonapartist or a Legitimist was returned in place of a Republican, showing that the Liberal victory has already roused the Conservatives to more united and earnest action. Another fact worthy of attention as one of the most marked signs of the times, is the unanimous support given by the whole Catholic and Conservative press to M. Buffet's candidature for the Senate. Even the "Union" and the "Univers," while frankly confessing that they would have preferred a man who would take his place further from the Centre and nearer the Extreme Right, nevertheless proclaimed that it was the duty of every Catholic to support his candidature. The fury of the Radical press at this action of the Legitimists is shown by the wretched attempt of the "Droits de l'Homme" (a journal inspired by M. Rochefort) to misrepresent their attitude, by pretending that the "Union" had condemned M. Buffet. These prudent tactics on the part of the Catholics secured a Conservative success, and a severe defeat was inflicted on the Left by M. Buffet's election, which at the same time showed that the Catholic and the Liberal parties were much more evenly balanced than most men would have been inclined to believe, immediately after the general elections. Their union, then, in defence of the Republic, which they supposed to be menaced with a speedy overthrow, gave victory to the Republicans; but once they were victorious their party was in serious danger of

being rapidly broken up into cliques and sections. While M. Thiers and the Moderates of the Centre endeavoured to fix the Proteus of Republicanism in the form of that Conservative Republic of which we have heard so much and seen so little, M. Gambetta would have been trying with equal energy to gather all true Republicans to the standard of a more Progressist form of government, and meanwhile he would have to watch the intrigues of MM. Naquet, Clemenceau, and all the ultra-Radical wing of the party, whose policy would be gradually reddening into the baleful glow of a new Commune. But the Republican party has, thanks to M. Gambetta's leadership, escaped this disintegration. In his electoral canvass in the South he sounded the key-note of a new Liberal policy. The Clericals, he said, had found means to establish free universities under the new law on higher education, but it mattered very little, for all that would be changed when once the elections were over. The cry was eagerly taken up along the whole Republican line. Yes, here was a new rallying point. How could the party assembled to guard the Republic better fulfil its task than by assailing the Church in France? The Revolution is essentially a destructive power, it has never yet succeeded in building up a system of lasting institutions in any country in Europe, nor will it be able to do so till it has accomplished its first object, the permanent disintegration of Christian society, a triumph which we believe and trust it will never obtain. Meanwhile it concentrates all its destructive energies against God's Church, which is the one great sustaining power of law, order, and civilization in Europe, and consequently the one great obstacle to the progress of the revolution. What wonder, then, that the Revolutionary party unite as one man in assailing it? It is thus they have united in France; and as to the direction of their efforts, we have evidence first in the series of bills, or projets de loi, of a distinctly anti-Catholic and anti-social tendency, which have been introduced in the new Chamber of Deputies; and, secondly, in the popular literature and the journals of the Liberal party, the latter forming an instructive commentary on its legislative policy, and a remarkably outspoken programme of its ultimate aims.

The principal projets de loi introduced in the Chamber of Deputies by the victorious Liberals are as follows:

1. A bill for the suppression of the French Embassy at the Vatican; the effect of which is to proclaim to the Catholic world that official France has definitively abandoned the cause of the Holy Father for that of the enemies of the Church.

2. A bill to abolish the freedom of higher education; thereby

restoring the monopoly of the Liberal University of Paris, and breaking up the newly-established Catholic Universities.

3. Bills for compulsory secular* education, the expulsion of the religious orders from the schools, and the suppression of all religious teaching in them.

4. Bills for the separation of Church and State, and the suppression of that portion of the Budget which is devoted to the expenses of religious worship; a measure which, if passed, would deprive the fifteen thousand priests, who compose the clergy of France, of their means of livelihood.

5. A bill for extending compulsory military service to the clergy, the seminarists, and the religious orders of men.

6. Bills for removing certain restrictions on political clubs. 7. Bills for removing all restrictions on the system of colportage; a method at present largely used for the diffusion of infidel literature in a popular form, and by means of which the Liberals hope to still further extend their propaganda against the Church.

We do not say that all these bills will become law, many of them, doubtless, will be enacted, and one, that upon higher education, has already passed the Chamber of Deputies and is now before the Senate. In the selection of the committee of initiative upon this bill the Conservative senators were victorious by a small majority. There were, however, numerous abstentions, and it is very difficult to say how the votes will be divided upon the various readings of the bill.† Meanwhile the Republican press warns the Senate that if it does not register the decree of the more popular assembly by promptly passing the bill, it will incur the indignation of all France; and, if we are to believe some of the best informed journals of all parties, M. Waddington himself, in speaking before the Senate Committee on the bill, gave a more practical and definite form to the Republican menace by threatening that, if the bill is not passed by the Senate, the Liberal majority in the Chamber of Deputies will refuse to vote the budget des cultes. This was first reported by M. About's journal, the "XIXme Siècle;" it has been repeated by almost every paper from the "Univers" to the "Droits de l'Homme" : so far as we are aware there has been no contradiction, official or nonofficial, published. We therefore conclude that M. Waddington's words were correctly reported. They confirm all that we have said of the policy of violence pursued by the Liberals; they are using their majority as a standing menace

That is, as we shall show later on, atheistical education.

Since this was in print, the Senate has rejected the bill, but by a very small majority.

to the Senate, and thereby violating the first principles of constitutional government, which can now be said to exist in France only in the name. We fear, then, that there is but little hope of the anti-Christian policy of the victorious party receiving an immediate check. That it is essentially antiChristian and anti-social is shown by the character of the measures now before the Legislature, and if further proof is wanting, we have it in the anti-Catholic, Atheistical, and Socialistic popular literature of the party.

In France the atheistical propaganda is not carried on only by professors of the University and rationalists of the type of Littré and Rénan, Comte and Michelet, the Republican press opens its columns to writers of the infidel school, and there are thousands of little pamphlets published every week in Paris and Lyons, and spread all over France by local newsagents and by the colporteurs or hawkers, whose stock consists chiefly or entirely of cheap books, ranging in price from a few centimes to a franc. Mgr. Dupanloup, in his recently published brochure, " Où-allons Nous?" has collected a catena of extracts from this popular literature of infidelity and revolution; like many of his former pamphlets, the work contains but little in the way of commentary; he leaves the Liberals to speak for themselves-the facts to teach their own lesson. As probably few of our readers will see this masterly brochure of the Bishop of Orleans, we shall endeavour to reproduce, in so far as our necessarily limited space will permit, the leading points of the evidence collected by Mgr. Dupanloup, as to the doctrines set forth in the popular literature of French Liberalism, and endorsed by the utterances of its acknowledged leaders in the world of politics.

There is a little encyclopedia of Liberalism published at Paris in the form of a series of cheap pamphlets, and known as the "Bibliothèque Démocratique." The 24th number of this series is a work on "La Science et la Conscience," by M. Louis Viardot, in which we find the following passages :

In our days, by the continual progress of science, which brings the human mind face to face with concrete realities and facts ascertained by experience, the idea of God is beginning to disappear, and already religions like kings are becoming things of the past. . . . . Let us, then, resolutely reject all that is Divine. We are on the earth, let us not aspire to heaven. . . . . Let us not seek in heaven (which is a meaningless word) the reason of what we see on earth. Nowadays let us say :-"Take care of yourself, for Heaven will not help you. . . . . Just as so long as we have gravitation, there is no need of a God who, as Creator, originates and maintains the motions of the stars, in the same way, if we have justice among us, there is no more need of Providence. I have denied the Creation, and given direct proof for

my denial; I deny the existence of Providence, and I give direct proof in support of my denial; and on the ground of direct proofs, I shall deny the existence of the soul. . . . . The soul is the aggregate of the functions of the animated being, the resultant of the organism; just as God is only the resultant of the natural laws of the universe. What I call spirit is matter organized and capable of life and thought as opposed to inorganic matter.

We see, of course, the absurdity of all this, but what will the ignorant peasants and workmen think of it when they are told that in these few pages they have the results of modern thought upon God and the soul, and that these are the doctrines held by all the enlightened men of the day? Then we have a catechism of infidelity to oppose to the catechisms of the Catholic schools. Mgr. Dupanloup quotes largely from it; let us take a few of the questions and answers. It teaches a kind of popular agnosticism :

Q. Is there a God?

A. The negative and affirmative reply are alike mere suppositions, and therefore worthless.

Q. What is man?

A. What matters it whence man comes? Whether he is from God or from an ape, what influence has it on his state of being?

Q. Has man a soul?

A. Like all other animals, man has a brain, and the brain is organized for thought as the stomach is for digestion.*

This is only a popular digest of doctrines taught by men of science, by so-called philosophers, by leading reviews, and by elaborate works which purport to represent the culture and learning of the nineteenth century; but these reviews and these books would never reach the hands of the working man, and if they did he would not understand them, and so their conclusions are reproduced in the journal that can be bought for a sou and the brochure that is sold for half a franc, and the working man learns that if he is to take his true place amongst the men of his time he must deny his God, or doubt of His existence, believe that he has no soul, no life to come, that there is no Providence to watch over him here, no Judge to call him to account for his acts hereafter; that he must help himself, for assuredly there is no God to help him. And there is but one step from the negation of the doctrines of faith to the denial of the sanctions of morality, and that step the popular exponents of Liberalism have already taken. One of the journals of the Extreme Left thus formulates what it styles the "Irresponsibility of Criminals":

* "Petit Catéchisme du libre Penseur," pp. 1, 4, 5, & 6.