V 
 
 MARKREE LIBRARY. 
 
 Shelf 
 
 Block 
 
 Re-arranged in 1013 by BRYAN COOPER

 
 Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN 
 
 PKOTESTANTISM AND CATHOLICISM, 
 
 IN THEIR BEARING UPON THE 
 
 LIBEETY AND PEOSPEEITY OF NATIONS. 
 
 A STUDY OF SOCIAL ECONOMY. 
 
 BY EMILE DE LAVELEYE, 
 
 il EMBER OF THE " INST1TUT DE DROIT INTERNATIONAL," OP THE ROYAL ACADEMIES 
 
 OP BELGIUM, MADRID, AND LISBON; 
 
 CORRESPONDENT OF THE " INSTITDT DE FRANCE;" 
 
 " OFFICIER D'ACADEMIE " OF THE UNIVERSITY OP FRANCE, ETC. 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTORY LETTER 
 BY THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P. 
 
 LONDON": 
 JOHN MtJEEAY, ALBEMAELE STEEET. 
 
 1875.
 
 LONDON: 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, 
 
 8TAMFOSD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
 
 T IP / 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTORY LETTER FROM MR. GLADSTONE .. .. 5-8 
 
 The progress of the Latin nations less rapid, in conse- 
 quence not of race but of creed. The Catholics 
 generally less industrious and less prosperous than 
 the Protestants. Causes of this .. .. .. 12-16 
 
 The Reformation has given an extraordinary force to 
 
 the nations who have embraced it .. .. 1718 
 
 Catholic nations torn by intestine dissensions which 
 
 retard their progress '.. .. .. 19-22 
 
 Education and science the sources of wealth and 
 
 liberty 23 
 
 Knowledge less diffused among Catholic than among 
 
 Protestant nations.. .. .. 21 25 
 
 Morality the basis of order and liberty. Higher 
 
 morality of Protestant than of Catholic nations .. 26-27 
 
 Religious Protestants the natural allies of Liberty. 
 
 Religious Catholics the natural allies of Despotism 28 
 
 Among Catholic nations the highest motive is the 
 sentiment of Honour ; among Protestant nations, 
 Duty or Religious Belief .. .. .. .. 29-32 
 
 Free and Representative government the logical con- 
 sequence of Protestantism. Absolute government 
 the ideal of Catholicism .. .. .. 35-37
 
 4 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAG> 
 
 The Protestants in France sought to establish a free 
 representative federal constitution. Liberty 
 perished with them .. .. .. .. .. 38-42 
 
 AVherever the Calvinists were victorious, they founded 
 
 free, Republican, and Constitutional government .. 43-4 l J 
 
 A sovereign who is a good Catholic cannot be a good 
 
 constitutional sovereign .. .. .. .. 50 
 
 The religious sentiment less lively among the well- 
 educated classes in Catholic than in Protestant 
 countries, because Catholicism does not meet the 
 wants of Modern Humanity .. .. .. 51-54 
 
 Scepticism and unbelief do not emancipate nations 
 
 from the dominion of Rome .. .. .. .. 55-56 
 
 In support of liberty, it becomes necessary, in Catholic 
 countries, to resist the priests. Eeligion and 
 morality are thus sapped, and liberty becomes 
 anarchy .. .. .. .. .. .. 58-62 
 
 The new Ultramontane movement puts in peril the 
 
 peace of Europe and the future of Catholic nations 63-64 
 
 LKTTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE ' TIMES ' ON THE POWER 
 
 OF THE KOMISH CHURCH IN BELGIUM 65-71
 
 PREFATORY LETTER. 
 
 MY DEAB M. DE LAVELEYE, 
 
 I thank you for your prompt assent to my 
 request that your Tract on the relations of Eeformed 
 and unreformed Christianity respectively, in the 
 West of Europe, to the liberty and prosperity of 
 nations, might be translated into English. 
 
 I need hardly say to any, least of all to you, that 
 this request did not imply adoption of your precise 
 point of view, or of each of your opinions in detail. 
 You have not, I believe, been governed by theo- 
 logical partialities in the judgment at which you 
 have arrived ; nor have I, in the desire to give 
 currency in this country to a Tract which includes 
 your rather unfavourable estimate of its Church in 
 comparison with the other Reformed Communions. 
 But I have felt that desire very strongly, because, 
 within a compass wonderfully brief, you have
 
 6 PREFATORY LETTER. 
 
 initiated in a very vivid manner, and have even 
 advanced to a certain point, the discussion of a 
 question which heretofore can hardly be said 
 to have been presented to the public mind, and 
 which it seems to me high time to examine. That 
 question is, whether experience has now supplied 
 data sufficient for a trustworthy comparison of re- 
 sults, in the several spheres of political liberty, social 
 advancement, mental intelligence, and general mo- 
 rality, between the Church of Rome on the one hand, 
 and the religious communities cast off by or separated 
 from her on the other. 
 
 Mr. Hallam stated, many years ago, the difficulty 
 of arriving at a conclusion on the ethical section of 
 this question : but much, which in his day remained 
 obscure, has been considerably elucidated by recent 
 experience. And I trust that the brief but signifi- 
 cant and weighty indications of your pamphlet, 
 especially if they should not be followed by a fuller 
 treatment from your own pen, may turn the thoughts 
 of other students of history and observers of life to a 
 thorough examination of this wide and most fruitful 
 field. 
 
 There are other features in your mode of handling
 
 PREFATORY LETTER. 7 
 
 the case, from which England in particular may 
 derive much instruction. With reference to the 
 political and social fruits of religion, we have been 
 accustomed to regard Belgium as the one choice 
 garden of the Roman Church : and it has afforded 
 a ready answer to many who entertained strong sus- 
 picion of her workings. It will be well for us to 
 have a few words on this subject from a Belgian ot 
 known liberality and tolerance, who knows what, 
 and under what difficulties, the wisdom of two suc- 
 cessive kings has done for Belgium ; and who is too 
 acute either to undervalue the power and fixed inten- 
 tions of the Ultramontane conspiracy, or to find comfort 
 in the visionary notion that any security is afforded 
 to European society against that conspiracy by any 
 system of mere negations in religion. This last- 
 named .error is widely prevalent in England. There 
 is an impression, which is not worthy to be called a 
 conviction, but which holds the place of one, that the 
 indifferentism, scepticism, materialism, and pantheism 
 which for the moment are so fashionable, afford, among 
 them, an effectual defence against Vaticanism. But 
 one has truly said that the votaries of that system 
 have three elements of real strength, namely, faith,
 
 8 PREFATORY LETTER. 
 
 self-sacrifice, and the spirit of continuity. None of the 
 three are to be found in any of the negative systems ; 
 and you have justly and forcibly pointed out that 
 these systems, through the feelings of repugnance 
 and alarm which they excite in many religious minds, 
 are effectual allies of the Eomanism of the day. 
 The Romanism of the day in a measure repays its 
 obligation, by making its censure of these evils 
 sincere no doubt, but only light and rare in com- 
 parison with the anathemas which it bestows upon 
 liberty and its guarantees, most of all when any 
 tendency to claim them is detected within its own 
 precinct. 
 
 I remain, my dear M. de Laveleye, 
 
 Most faithfully yours, 
 
 W. E. GLADSTONE. 
 
 LONDON : 23, CARLTON HOUSE TERRACE, 
 May 26th, 1875.
 
 IN THEIR BEARING TTPON 
 
 THE LIBERTY AND PROSPERITY OF NATIONS. 
 
 A STUDY OF SOCIAL ECONOMY. 
 
 I. 
 
 WE hear much at the present day of the decay of 
 the Latin races. It is said that they decline rapidly, 
 and that the future belongs both to the Germanic 
 and to the Slavonic race. 
 
 I do not believe that the Latin races are con- 
 demned to decline on account of the blood which 
 flows in their veins, that is to say, in consequence of 
 any fatal destiny, fatal, as no people can change its 
 nature or modify its physical constitution ; but the 
 fact that Catholic races advance much less rapidly 
 than those which are no longer Catholic, and that, 
 relatively to these latter, they even seem to go back, 
 appears to be proved both by history, and more par- 
 ticularly by contemporary events. This fact is so 
 manifest, that the very bishops themselves, and the 
 Univers, their organ in France, make it a text of 
 their reproaches to unbelieving Catholics.
 
 10 RESQLTS OF PROTESTANTISM 
 
 Different reasons prevent nay attributing this 
 undeniable fact to influences of race. Undoubtedly, 
 the fate of nations depends partly on their physical 
 constitution. Even if we turn back to the origin 
 of things, two causes only can be found capable 
 of explaining the different destinies of various 
 nations, viz., race, and surrounding circumstances ; 
 on the one hand, the constitution of man, on the 
 other, the influence of external nature the climate, 
 the geographical position, the products of the soil, 
 the aspect of the country, the food. But in point 
 of fact, when the question relates to nations of such 
 mixed blood as that of Europeans, who, moreover, 
 'descend from a common stock, it is very difficult to 
 connect the social conditions with the influence of 
 race with any degree of scientific certainty. 
 
 The English understand the parliamentary sys- 
 tem and the exercise of practical liberty better than 
 the French. Is this owing to the influence of 
 blood ? I do not think so ; for until near the 
 sixteenth century, France, Spain, and Italy pos- 
 sessed provincial liberties of a very similar character 
 to English liberties. The only notable difference 
 was, that the English had a single parliament, 
 and a centralised system, which proved strong 
 enough to hold its own against royalty. The 
 Norman Conquest having united England, an united 
 parliament was the result ; and royalty being very 
 powerful, nobles and commons combined to resist
 
 AND CATHOLICISM. 11 
 
 it, whereas elsewhere they were constantly at 
 strife. 
 
 The destinies of France and England only become 
 entirely different from the beginning of the sixteenth 
 century, when the Puritans had defeated the Stuarts, 
 and when Louis XI V., by expelling the Protestants 
 from France, had extirpated the last remnants of 
 local autonomy, and the sole important elements of 
 resistance, with which despotism might have 'been 
 opposed. 
 
 When Protestants of Latin race are seen to rise 
 superior to Germanic, but Catholic populations ; 
 when, in one and the same country, and one and 
 the same group, identical in language, and identical 
 in origin, it can be affirmed that Protestants advance 
 more rapidly and steadily than Catholics, it is 
 difficult not to attribute the superiority of the one 
 over the other to the religion they profess. 
 
 Sectarian passions or anti-religious prejudice have 
 been too often imported into the study of these 
 questions. It is time that we should apply to it the 
 method of observation, and the scientific impartiality 
 of the physiologist and the naturalist. When the 
 facts are once established, irrefragable conclusions 
 will follow. 
 
 It is admitted that the Scotch and Irish are of 
 the same origin. Both have become subject to the 
 English yoke. Until the sixteenth century Ireland 
 was much more civilised than Scotland. During the 
 
 B 2
 
 12 RESULTS OF PROTESTANTISM 
 
 first part of the Middle Ages, the Emerald Isle was a 
 focus of civilisation, while Scotland was still a den 
 of barbarians. 
 
 Since the Scotch have embraced the reformed 
 religion, they have outrun even the English. The 
 climate and the nature of the soil prevent Scotland 
 being as rich as England ; but Macaulay proves that, 
 since the seventeenth century, the Scotch have in 
 every way surpassed the English. Ireland, on the 
 other hand, devoted to Ultramontanism, is poor, 
 miserable, agitated by the spirit of rebellion, and 
 seems incapable of raising herself by her own 
 strength. 
 
 "What a contrast, even in Ireland, between the 
 exclusively Catholic Connaught, and Ulster, where 
 Protestantism prevails ! 
 
 Ulster is enriched by industry, Connaught presents 
 a picture of desolation. 
 
 I will not allow myself to establish any comparison 
 between the United States and the States of South 
 America, or between the nations of the North and 
 those of the South of Europe. The differences which 
 are to be observed might be explained by the 
 influence of climate or of race. But let us go to 
 Switzerland, and compare the condition of the 
 Cantons of Neuchatel, Yaud, and Geneva (more par- 
 ticularly before the recent immigration of the Savoy 
 Catholics), with that of Lucerne, Haut-Valais, and the 
 forest Cantons. The former are extraordinarily in
 
 AND CATHOLICISM. 13 
 
 advance of the latter in respect of education, litera- 
 ture, the fine arts, industry, commerce, riches, clean- 
 liness, in a word, civilisation in all its aspects, and 
 in all its senses. 
 
 The. first are Latin, but Protestant : the second 
 German, but subject to Rome. Surely it is religion, 
 and not race, which is the cause of the superiority of 
 the former. 
 
 Let us now turn to a single Canton, that of Ap- 
 penzell, inhabited throughout by an entirely identical 
 Germanic population. The very same contrast pre- 
 sents itself between the Catholic " Rhodes interieures" 
 and the Protestant " Rhodes exte'rieures," as exists 
 between the inhabitants of Neuchatel and those of 
 Lucerne or Uri. On the one hand, education, 
 activity, industry, relations with the outer world, 
 and by necessary consequence, wealth. On the 
 other, inertia, routine, ignorance and poverty.* 
 
 * See Mr. Hepworth Dixon, whose judgment is certainly un- 
 influenced by any sectarian prejudice. He says in his recent 
 book on Switzerland : " A Liberal puts an Evangelical district 
 in the scale against a Catholic district such as Appenzell- 
 outer-Rhoden against Appenzell-inner-Ehoden and demands a 
 verdict on the evidence of eye and ear. 
 
 "In outer aspect these halt-Cantons have the differences of 
 Canton Berne and Canton Valais. In the lower country, though 
 the village may be built of frames, the style is pretty, the 
 arrangement neat. A fountain and a running water occupy tho 
 centre. Near it stand the village church, the council-chamber, 
 and the primary school. Each cottage has a garden to itself.
 
 14 RESULTS OF PROTESTANTISM 
 
 Wherever the two religions exist together in the 
 same country, the Protestants are more active, more 
 industrious, more economical, and consequently richer, 
 than the Catholics. 
 
 "In the United States," says Tocqueville, "the 
 greater part of the Catholics are poor." 
 
 A creeper climbs up every stair and hangs from almost every 
 roof. The click and whirr of looms are heard from every open 
 window, and the little folk go singing on their way to school. 
 The streets are clean, the markets well supplied, and every one 
 you meet is warmly clad. But in the upper country things look 
 poor and bare. Few villages are seen. The people dwell in 
 scattered huts, with styes and stables on the ground, and sleep- 
 ing rooms above them, like the folks in Biscay and Navarre. 
 These huts, though strongly knit, are rudely planned and 
 roughly built. Each herdsman lives apart, from all his fellows 
 whom he only meets at mass, at wrestling-match, and public 
 house. The lads can read and write, for they are Switzers, sub- 
 ject to the Cantonal law ; but books and journals are unknown 
 among them, saving here and there some lives of saints, and 
 popular sheets, containing scraps of old wives' lore in place of 
 general and exciting news. 
 
 " The Protestant half-Canton grows in wealth and numbers, 
 while the Catholic half-Canton lingers on in poverty and weak- 
 ness : for the first takes in all strangers, irrespective of their 
 creed, gives ready welcome to ideas on all subjects, and adopts 
 without delay improvements in the loom, her chief domestic 
 engine ; while the second shuts her gates to all the world 
 on Protestants of every country and on Catholics who are not 
 natives of the Canton keeps her antique sports and dress, 
 retains her shepherd industries as they existed in the Middle 
 Ages, keeps her feast-days and her wrestling-matches, feeds on 
 coarse rye-bread and acid curds, and holds in proud contempt 
 the arts by which her neighbours thrive."
 
 AND CATHOLICISM. 15 
 
 In Canada, all important concerns, manufactures, 
 commerce, and the principal shops in the towns, are 
 in the hands of Protestants. 
 
 M. Audiganne, in his remarkable studies on " the 
 working classes of France," observes the superiority of 
 Protestants in industrial enterprise, and his evidence 
 is the more trustworthy that he does not attribute this 
 superiority to Protestantism. " The majority of the 
 operatives of the town of Nismes," he says, " notably 
 the silk weavers, are Catholics, while the leaders of 
 industry arid commerce, in a word the capitalists, 
 belong in general to the reformed religion." 
 
 " When a single family has divided itself into 
 two branches, the one remaining in the bosom of 
 its ancestral faith, the other enrolling itself under the 
 banner of the new doctrines, you may nearly always 
 remark in the one case increasing embarrassments, 
 in the other, growing wealth." " At Mazamet, the 
 Elboeuf of the South of France," says again M. Audi- 
 ganne, " all the leaders of industry, except one, are 
 Protestant, while the great majority of workmen are 
 Catholic. There is less education among these latter, 
 than among the working families of the Protestant 
 class." 
 
 Before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the 
 Protestants took the lead in all branches of labour, and 
 the Catholics, unable to compete with them on equal 
 terms, caused them to be forbidden the exercise of 
 various industries in which they excelled, by several
 
 16 RESULTS OF PROTESTANTISM 
 
 successive edicts, dating from 1662. After their 
 banishment from France, the Protestants brought 
 into England, Prussia, and Holland their spirit of 
 enterprise and thrift, and enriched every district 
 in which they settled. It is partly to reformed 
 Latins that the Germans owe their progress. The 
 refugees of the Revocation introduced various 
 manufactures into England, that of silk among 
 others; and the disciples of Calvin were the 
 civilisers of Scotland. 
 
 If we compare the quotations on the Exchange of 
 the public funds of Protestant and Catholic States, 
 we shall find a great difference. The English 3 per 
 cents, are above 92 ; the French 3 per cents, average 
 60. The Dutch, Prussian, Danish, and Swedish 
 funds are at least at par ; in Austria, Italy, Spain, 
 and Portugal they are lower by 30 or 50 per 
 cent. 
 
 Throughout Germany, at the present day, the 
 trade in intellectual works such as books, reviews, 
 maps, newspapers is almost entirely in the hands of 
 Jews and Protestants. 
 
 In the presence of all these concurring facts, it is 
 difficult not to confess that it is religion, and not race, 
 which is the cause of the extraordinary prosperity of 
 certain nations. 
 
 The Reformation imparted to those countries which 
 adopted it a force which history can hardly explain. 
 
 Take the Low Countries: we have there two
 
 AND CATHOLICISM. 17 
 
 millions of men upon a soil half sand, half marsh : 
 they resist Spain at a time when she holds Europe in 
 her hand, and no sooner are they freed from the 
 Castilian yoke, than they cover all the seas with 
 their flag, they lead the van of the intellectual world, 
 they possess as many ships as all the rest of the 
 Continent put together, they become the soul of all 
 the great European coalitions, they hold their own 
 against the allied powers of England and France, 
 they present to the United States that type of federal 
 union which gives scope to the indefinite growth of 
 the great Eepublic, and they set the example of those 
 financial combinations which contribute so powerfully 
 to the actual development of wealth banks of issue 
 and joint stock companies. 
 
 Sweden, with her million of men, and her rocky 
 soil buried in snow for six months of the year, inter- 
 venes on the Continent, under Gustavus Adolphus, 
 with heroic might, defeats Austria by the hand 
 of her marvellous strategists, Wrangel, Torstenson, 
 and Banner, and saves the cause of the Reformation. 
 At the present day, England is the mistress of the 
 seas, the first among industrial and commercial 
 nations ; in Asia, she rules over two hundred 
 millions of men, and covers the globe with swarms 
 from her own hive. Sir Charles Dilke's fine book 
 1 Greater Britain,' presents the reader with a picture 
 of Anglo-Saxon power throughout the world. The 
 United States increase with bewildering rapidity.
 
 18 RESULTS OF PROTESTANTISM 
 
 They reckon forty-two million inhabitants. To- 
 wards the end of the century, their population 
 will be one hundred millions. Already, they are 
 the richest and most powerful people on the face 
 of the globe. 
 
 Protestant Prussia has defeated two empires, each 
 containing twice her own population, the one in seven 
 weeks, the other in seven months. In two centuries, 
 America, Australia, and Southern Africa, will belong 
 to the heretical Anglo-Saxons, and Asia to the 
 schismatic Slaves. 
 
 The nations subject to Rome seem stricken with 
 barrenness ; they no longer colonise,* they have no 
 powers of expansion. The expression employed by 
 M. Thiers to depict their religious capital, Rome, 
 viduitas et sterilitas, might be also applied to them- 
 selves. Their past is brilliant, but their present is 
 gloomy, and their future disquieting. Can there be 
 
 * Here is an example taken at random. The Comte de Beau- 
 voir arrives at Canton. There he sees the islet of Sha-Myen, 
 ceded to France and England, situated in the midst of the river. 
 The traveller is struck with the contrast between the part 
 ceded to England and that which belongs to France. " In six 
 years' time (1867) there have sprung up a little English village, 
 a Protestaut church, a cricket-ground, a training-ground for 
 race-horses, spacious villas, and magnificent go-downs for the 
 great tea houses of China. A pathway separates the British 
 from the French territory. On our territory there are clumps 
 of uncultivated trees, filth, stray dogs, cats, moles, but not a 
 single house." ' Voyage autour du moade,' vol. ii. p. 427.
 
 AND CATHOLICISM. 19 
 
 a sadder situation than that of Spain ? France, which 
 has rendered such services to the world, is also greatly 
 to be pitied, not because she has been conquered on 
 the field of battle military reverses may be repaired 
 but because it seems her fate to be ceaselessly tossed 
 to and fro between despotism and anarchy. Even 
 now, at the moment when, in order to recover herself, 
 she requires the harmonious action of all her sons, the 
 extreme parties are contending for pre-eminence, at the 
 risk of another outburst of civil war. Ultramontanism 
 is the cause of the misfortunes of France ; this it is 
 which has weakened the country by that baneful 
 course of action which we will analyse further on. 
 This it was which, through the Empress Eugenie, an 
 organ of the clerical party, brought about the Mexican 
 expedition in order to raise up the Catholic nations of 
 America, and the Prussian war in order to impede 
 the progress of the Protestant States of Europe.* 
 
 Italy and Belgium appear more prosperous than 
 France and Spain ; but is liberty definitely established 
 in those countries ? Able minds doubt it. Eecently, 
 a Roman journal, II Diritto, published a remarkable 
 work on the situation of Italy, with the significant 
 title, ' L'ltalia nera.' " The nations subject to the Pope 
 
 * So it was recently asserled by Prince Bismarck from the 
 tribune at Berlin. The Empress in July, 1870, said, " This is 
 my war." The decision in favour of war, in the Supreme 
 Council of Saint Cloud, on the 14th of August, was her doing ; the 
 Emperor was well aware of the danger, and reluctant to the last.
 
 20 RESULTS OF PHOTESTANTISM 
 
 are either dead already or dying," exclaims the author 
 with consternation : " I popoli di religione papale o 
 sono gia morti o vanno morendi." "If," he adds, 
 "Italy appears less sickly, the reason is, that the 
 clergy, expecting the restoration of the Pope, first by 
 means of Austrian, now by means of French inter- 
 vention, have not as yet attacked liberty and the 
 constitution from within. The clerical party held 
 aloof during the elections ; but all this will be 
 changed. The clergy have already entered the 
 arena at Naples, Rome, and Bologna. The Church 
 covers the country with associations inspired by the 
 Jesuits, and the congregations seize upon the rising 
 generation, whom they bring up in the hatred of 
 Italy and her institutions." This view is just. Italy 
 is at present in the condition in which France found 
 herself after 1789, and Belgium after 1830 : the 
 breath of liberty is carrying before it the whole nation, 
 even the clergy. Patriotism, the hope of a brilliant 
 future, the enthusiasm of progress these inflame all 
 hearts and efface all dissensions ; but before long 
 incompatibility must break out between modern 
 civilisation and Roman ideas. The clergy, and 
 especially the Jesuits, in obedience to the voice of 
 Rome, are already setting to work to undermine the 
 barely established edifice of political liberty. This is 
 precisely what has happened in Belgium since 1840. 
 One of the authors of the Belgian constitution, 
 perhaps the most distinguished among them, said to
 
 AND CATHOLICISM. 21 
 
 ine lately, with heartfelt sorrow : '* We believed that 
 all that was necessary to found liberty, was to pro- 
 claim it, by separating Church and State. I begin to 
 think that we deceived ourselves. The Church, rely- 
 ing on the country districts, seeks to impose her 
 absolute power. The great cities which have given 
 in their adhesion to modern ideas will not let them- 
 selves be enslaved without attempting resistance. 
 We are tending, like France, towards civil war. We 
 are already in a revolutionary position. The future 
 appears to me big with troubles." The last elections 
 of 1874 have begun to bring the danger to light. 
 The elections for the Chambers have strengthened the 
 clerical party, while those for the Communes have 
 given power to the liberals in all the large towns. 
 Antagonism between the towns and the provinces, 
 which is one of the causes of civil war in France, 
 begins already to show itself in Belgium also. As 
 long as the government remains in the hands of 
 prudent men, who are more disposed to serve their 
 country than to obey the bishops, grave disorders 
 need not be apprehended. But if the fanatics, who 
 openly accept the Syllabus as their political pro- 
 gramme, should attain to power, terrible shocks 
 would follow. 
 
 The Catholic countries, on both sides of the Atlantic, 
 are thus a prey to internal struggles which consume 
 their strength, or at least prevent them from advancing 
 as steadily and rapidly as Protestant nations.
 
 22 RESULTS OF PROTESTANTISM 
 
 Two centuries ago, supremacy belonged incon- 
 testably to the Catholic States. The others were 
 only powers of the second order. Now, put on one 
 side France, Austria, Spain, Italy and South America, 
 and on the other, Russia, the Empire of G-ermany, 
 England and North America, clearly the predo- 
 minance has passed over to the heretics and schis- 
 matics. M. Levasseur read of late before L'Institut 
 a curious work, in which he shows that, in 1700, 
 France alone represented 3 1 per cent., or one-third, of 
 the force of the five great Powers together ; whereas 
 now, counting six great European Powers, she pos- 
 sesses no more than 15 per cent., or one-sixth part, of 
 their total force.* 
 
 To the eye of every man who desires to consult 
 facts without a foregone conclusion, it is thus manifest 
 that Protestantism is more favourable than Catholicism 
 to the development of nations. We must now find 
 the causes of this fact. I think it is not difficult to 
 point them out. 
 
 II. 
 
 It is nowadays universally admitted that the 
 diffusion of enlightenment is the first condition of 
 
 * ' Compte-rendu des stances de 1'Institut,' by M. Verge", 
 November number, 1872. The population of France was 
 increasing very slowly. In the last quinquennial period, it 
 diminished by 366,000, without counting, of course, the loss of 
 Alsace and Lorraine.
 
 AND CATHOLICISM. 23 
 
 progress. Labour is productive in proportion to the 
 intelligence with which it is carried on. Civilised 
 man derives his wealth from the application of 
 science, under all its forms, to production. The 
 miserable destitution of the savage is the result of 
 his ignorance. Thus, economic progress will be in 
 proportion to the application of scientific discoveries 
 to industry. 
 
 The general spread of education is also indispen- 
 sable to the exercise of constitutional liberty. In 
 lands where power is conferred by election, electors 
 must needs be sufficiently enlightened to choose their 
 representatives well, or the country will be ill- 
 governed, will fall from bad to worse, and will 
 march to its ruin. In a despotic State, educa- 
 tion is useful, but it is not indispensable. In a 
 great State which is free, or which desires to be free, 
 education is of absolute necessity, under penalty of 
 decadence from inertia or disorder. In short, educa- 
 tion is the basis of national liberty and prosperity. 
 Now, up to the present moment, Protestant States 
 alone have contrived to secure instruction to all. 
 Vainly do Catholic States declare education to be 
 obligatory, as in Italy, or spend large sums for the 
 same object, as in Belgium ; they do not succeed in 
 dispelling ignorance. 
 
 With regard to elementary instruction, Protestant 
 States are incomparably more advanced than Catholic. 
 England alone is no more than on a level with the
 
 24 RESULTS OF PROTESTANTISM 
 
 latter, probably because the Anglican Church, of all 
 the reformed forms of worship, has most in common 
 with the Church of Rome. All the Protestant 
 countries, such as Saxony, Denmark, Sweden and 
 Prussia, lead the van, having few, if any, illiterate 
 children; the Catholic countries fall far behind, 
 having a third part of the population ignorant, as in 
 France and Belgium, or three-fourths, as in Spain, 
 Italy, or Portugal. 
 
 What a difference in Switzerland, with respect to 
 this point, between the Catholic and Protestant 
 Cantons ! The purely Latin Cantons of Neuchatel, 
 Vaud, and Geneva are on a line with the Germanic 
 Cantons of Zurich and Berne, and are greatly superior 
 to those of Tessin, the Valais, or Lucerne.* The 
 cause of the contrast is evident, and has been often 
 pointed out. The Reformed religion rests on a book : 
 the Bible ; the Protestant, therefore, must know how 
 to read.f Accordingly Luther's first and last words 
 were: "Teach the children; that is the duty of 
 parents and magistrates : it is one of God's command- 
 ments." Catholic worship, on the contrary, rests 
 upon Sacraments, and certain practices, such as con- 
 
 * For the facts, see my book, ' L'lnstruction du peuple.' 
 t During the war of 1870, it was ascertained that the Pro- 
 testant soldiers were much better instructed than the Catholic. 
 In the ambulances and hospitals, the former, as they began to 
 recover from their wounds, asked for books ; the latter, for a 
 game of cards.
 
 AND CATHOLICISM. 25 
 
 fession, masses, sermons, which do iiot necessarily 
 involve reading. It is therefore unnecessary to know 
 how to read ; indeed it is dangerous, for it inevitably 
 shakes the principle of passive obedience on which 
 the whole Catholic edifice rests; reading is the road 
 that leads to heresy. The manifest consequence is, 
 that the Catholic priest will be hostile to education, 
 or will at all events never make such efforts to extend 
 it as the Protestant minister will do. The organiza- 
 tion of popular education dates from the Reformation . 
 Education being highly favourable to the practice of 
 political liberty and the production of wealth, and 
 Protestantism favouring the diffusion of education, 
 we have here an evident cause of the superiority of 
 Protestant States.* 
 
 III. 
 
 It is agreed on all sides that the power of nations 
 depends on their morality. Everywhere is found the 
 maxim, which is almost become an axiom of political 
 science, that where morals are corrupted the State is 
 lost. Now it appears to be an established fact that 
 the moral level is higher among Protestant than 
 among Catholic populations. Religious writers confess 
 this themselves, and explain it by the fact that the 
 
 * M. de Candolles demonstrates by facts the superiority of 
 the scientific production of Protestant nations over that of 
 Catholic States, in his remarkable book, ' Histoire des sciences 
 et des savants depuis deux sieclee.' 
 
 C
 
 2 RESULTS OF PROTESTANTISM 
 
 former remain more faithful to their religion than the 
 latter, which explanation I believe to be the true one. 
 If we read the literary works of France, if we are 
 present at the pieces most in vogue in the various 
 theatres, we shall find that they are alike founded 
 upon adultery in all its varieties and forms. The 
 novels and plays which have proved successful 
 ought to be strictly banished from the circle of any 
 respectable family. In England and Germany this 
 is not the case. Those literary works which do not 
 bear the stamp of foreign imitation are written in a 
 tone and style not alarming to modest ears.* 
 
 As to French literature, the evil dates from afar. 
 The people of Provence inherited Gallo-Roman 
 corruption, and under the name of gallantry their 
 songs produced a relaxation of morals and irre- 
 gular amours, and made them attractive. Gallantry 
 has thus become in France the keynote of all the 
 works of imagination, and one of the traits of 
 the national character. The king " Yert Galant " is 
 the most popular of French sovereigns. In the 
 countries which have adopted the Reformation, the 
 puritan spirit has curbed this licence of morals, and 
 has brought about in its place a strictness which may 
 have seemed excessive, but which has given an 
 incomparable moral tone. 
 
 * See the book recently published by M. Potvin : ' De la 
 corruption du goftt litt^raire en France.'
 
 AND CATHOLICISM. 27 
 
 In Catholic countries, those who have purposed 
 to combat the omnipotence of the Church have 
 taken their weapons, not from the Gospel, but from 
 the spirit of the Renaissance and from paganism. 
 There are two ways by which the Church may be 
 attacked : either by showing that she has wandered 
 from the doctrine of Christ, and by preaching a 
 purer and more severe Christianity than hers, or 
 by attacking her dogmas with irony, and inciting 
 men's understandings against her moral dictates. 
 Luther, Calvin, Knox, Zwinglius, have taken the first 
 course, Rabelais and Yoltaire the second. It is clear 
 that the one, relying on the Gospel, must strengthen 
 the moral sentiment, while the other can onlv succeed 
 
 V 
 
 by ruining it. Hence it comes that almost all the 
 French authors who have endeavoured to emancipate 
 the minds of men have borne an immoral mark. 
 Would anyone, without misgiving, put into the 
 hands, I will not say of a young girl, but even of a 
 young man, the complete works of Rabelais, Voltaire, 
 Rousseau, Diderot, Courier, Beranger ? The authors 
 who respect morals, and who are given to the 
 youth of France to read Bossuet, Fenelon, Racine 
 are almost always devoted to the Church, and 
 saturated with absolutist doctrine. Hence comes the 
 profoundly Catholic tone of the greater number of 
 non-revolutionists in France. 
 
 In England and America things are different : the 
 most decided partisans of liberty are at the same 
 
 c 2
 
 28 RESULTS OF PROTESTANTISM 
 
 time those who profess the most severe morality 
 namely, the Puritans and the Quakers. While 
 Bossuet was formulating the theory of Absolutism, 
 Milton was writing that of the Republic, and it was 
 the Puritans who founded liberty in England and 
 in the United States. In the one case the writers 
 who are religious and moral preach slavery, whilst 
 those who advocate liberty respect neither religion 
 nor morals : in the other, on the contrary, the same 
 men stand up at once for religion, morals, and liberty. 
 See the consequences. Compare the private life 
 of the authors of the Revolution of 1648 in England, 
 or of the founders of the American Republic, with 
 that of the men of the French Republic. The former 
 are all of irreproachable lives, of spotless probity, 
 of an almost exaggerated severity of principle ; 
 the latter, with the exception of some fanatics such 
 as Saint Just and Robespierre, are for the most part 
 very lax in morals. The most powerful amongst 
 them, the true representative of the French Revo- 
 lution, that great genius and magnificent orator, 
 Mirabeau, sells himself to the Court, writes obscene 
 books, and carries depravity to its utmost limits. 
 Turn to the austere Calvinists who conquered 
 despotism, and founded liberty in England and in 
 America, and observe the contrast ! Edgar Quinet 
 remarks, in his admirable book on the French Revo- 
 lution, that the men of that period, so full of en- 
 thusiasm at the outset, soon wearied of the effort,
 
 AND CATHOLICISM. 29 
 
 and ere long sought, or at all events submitted to, 
 the repose of slavery under the Empire. The 
 " Gueux " of Holland struggled for a much longer 
 time, and passed through far other trials without 
 allowing themselves to be discouraged. Their towns 
 were taken by storm, whole populations were mas- 
 sacred. A mere handful of men, they struggled 
 with an adversary who had the treasures of both 
 worlds at his disposal. They felt neither lassitude 
 nor discouragement, and they conquered in the end ; 
 and why ? they had faith. 
 
 Pride, overweening selfishness and vanity, brought 
 the partisans of the French Revolution into mortal 
 and fratricidal conflict : they cut each other's throats 
 instead of uniting to found a republic. Those who 
 were engaged in freeing their country from tyranny, 
 succeeded in Holland, in England, in America, 
 under the influence of a certain spirit of charity, 
 humility and mutual support, in coming to an 
 understanding in order to consolidate their work. 
 For the foundation of a State, the Christianity of 
 Penn and of Washington is a better cement than the 
 philosophy of Yergniaud, of Robespierre, and of 
 Mirabeau. Without judging the two doctrines, it 
 is easy to observe the results which they have 
 produced. 
 
 When the religious sentiment is weakened, the 
 point of honour, vanity, love of approbation, act as 
 the motive power for good deeds, and the spring
 
 30 RESULTS OF PROTESTANTISM 
 
 of moral life. Alfred de Vigny has shown this in 
 eloquent terms in a chapter of his book, i Grandeur 
 et servitude militaires.' Musset has repeated it in 
 these energetic lines, 
 
 " L'orgueil . . . 
 C'est ce qui reste encore d'un peu beau dans la vie." 
 
 M. Taine says, in his * Notes sur 1'Angleterre ' : 
 " In France the moral principle is founded on the 
 sentiment of honour, in England on the idea of 
 duty. Now the former is arbitrary ; its bearing 
 varies according to the individual." 
 
 In the France Nouvelle, Prevost-Paradol writes 
 as follows: "In the eyes of every clear-sighted 
 and honest observer, our country now presents the 
 almost unique spectacle of a society in which the 
 point of honour is become the principal guarantee 
 of good order, and ensures the performance of the 
 greater number of those duties and sacrifices which 
 religion and patriotism have lost the power of accom- 
 plishing. If the laws are generally respected, if the 
 young soldier obediently rejoins his standard, and 
 remains faithful to it, if the responsible agent 
 respects the public exchequer, if, in short, the 
 Frenchman duly acquits himself of his duty to the 
 State and to his fellow-citizens, it is to the point of 
 honour that it is due. It is not owing to respect for 
 the Divine law, which long since has passed into the 
 region of problem; nor from philosophic devotion 
 to an uncertain duty, still less to that abstract being,
 
 AND CATHOLICISM. 31 
 
 the State, upset and discredited as it has been by so 
 many revolutions ; it is the fear of having to blush 
 publicly for any action held to be disgraceful, which 
 alone maintains among us the effective desire to do 
 right." How faithful and distressing is this picture, 
 which Prevost-Paradol traces in the anguish of his 
 soul, above all when he adds, " That there should be 
 nothing left but the point of honour to lean upon, 
 and that even that should bend in one's grasp like 
 the fragile reed mentioned in Scripture !" 
 
 Read in France the proclamations to the people 
 and to the army, when their ardour is to be excited, 
 or their enthusiasm raised ; it is to the point of 
 honour, or to vanity, that appeal is made. Listen to 
 Napoleon : ** From the height of the Pyramids, forty 
 centuries observe you." " Soldiers, when returned 
 home, you will be able to say, * I was at Jena, at 
 Austerlitz !' ' Either to speak of oneself or to be 
 in the mouths of others, is the aim and the motive. 
 Nelson, at Trafalgar, says simply, " England expects 
 every man to do his duty." 
 
 In the sayings of the men of the Revolution of the 
 Low Countries, or the United States of America, 
 appeal is made to the love of country, to duty, to the 
 Divine law. It is clear that these springs of action 
 are surer than the other ones. In truth, to be 
 talked about is but a hollow advantage. The point 
 of honour loses its efficacy as a rule of conduct as 
 soon as a man has strength of mind enough to grasp
 
 3 2 RESULTS OF PROTESTANTISM 
 
 it. Moreover, public opinion may be perverted, and 
 in such a case cannot be invoked in favour of virtue. 
 Nearly all French writers have exalted the Renais- 
 sance at the cost of the Reformation, because, being 
 broader in its views, it brought more complete 
 emancipation to humanity. The facts do not bear 
 this out. The countries which have embraced the 
 Reformation are decidedly in advance of those which 
 have stopped short at the Renaissance. This is 
 because the Reformation had within itself a moral 
 force which was denied to the Renaissance. Now 
 moral force, coupled with science, is the source of the 
 prosperity of nations. The Renaissance was a return 
 to antiquity, the Reformation a return to the Gospel. 
 The Gospel, being superior to the tradition of 
 antiquity, was sure to yield better fruits. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Reformation has favoured the progress of 
 the nations which have adopted it, by permitting 
 them to found free institutions, while Catholicism 
 leads to despotism or anarchy, and often alter- 
 nately to both. Representative government is 
 the natural government of Protestant populations. 
 Despotic government is the congenial government 
 of Catholic populations. As long as they remain 
 subject to it they are at peace ; they have the polity 
 which suits them ; when they try to shake it off they 
 fell into confusion and are weakened, being in a state
 
 AND CATHOLICISM. 33 
 
 at variance with their nature. So argue L'Univers 
 and La Civilta Cattolica, organs of the Roman court, 
 and the facts seem to warrant their judgment. 
 
 It has often been asked why the Revolution of the 
 Low Countries, of England, and of America, succeeded, 
 while the French Revolution seems to have failed. 
 M. G-uizot has even published a special treatise 
 to elucidate this question, which in fact contains 
 the secret of our destinies. I answer without 
 hesitation, it is because the former took place in 
 Protestant countries, the latter in a Catholic country. 
 Voltaire had already perceived this. He asks him- 
 self, how it has happened that the Governments of 
 France and England have come to differ from each 
 other as entirely as those of Morocco and. Yenice ? 
 " Is it not," says he, " by reason of the fact that, having 
 always complained of the Roman court, the English 
 have entirely cast off its shameful yoke, while a 
 people of greater levity has borne it, affecting to 
 laugh at it, and dancing in its chains?" Voltaire 
 spoke truly ; but was it not he who provoked the 
 laugh and led the dance ? 
 
 To-day we can prove to demonstration that which 
 men of intellect in the eighteenth century were only 
 beginning to perceive. The decisive influence which 
 forms of worship bring to bear on political life 
 and political economy had not hitherto been apparent. 
 Now it breaks forth in the light, and is more and 
 more clearly seen in contemporary events.
 
 34 RESULTS OF PROTESTANTISM 
 
 The action of religion on the minds of men is so 
 profound, that they aje always led to give to the 
 organization of the State forms which they have 
 borrowed from that of religion. 
 
 Wherever the sovereign is held to be the repre- 
 sentative of Divinity, liberty cannot establish itself, 
 inasmuch as the power of him who speaks and acts 
 in the name of God is necessarily absolute. The 
 mandates of Heaven cannot be discussed. Simple 
 mortals have only to bow and obey. I know of no 
 exception to this rule. In the ancient empires of 
 Asia, as in those of the present day, in Mahometan 
 States, as in Catholic countries where kings reigned 
 by right divine, the people have been completely 
 enslaved. They were free at Athens and at Rome, 
 because those who governed, elected by their fellow- 
 citizens, did not give themselves out to be repre- 
 sentatives of Divinity. The priesthood was not a 
 caste, and exerted but little influence in the State. 
 
 Primitive Christianity could not but favour the 
 establishment of free and democratic institutions in 
 no ordinary degree. Doubtless on its ascetic side it 
 detached man from his worldly interests, and did not 
 lead him to claim his privilege as a citizen ; but by 
 purifying and raising morals, it qualified him more 
 for self-government and consequently for a life of 
 liberty. Great equality existed in the bosom of the 
 Christian societies of the first centuries, and all 
 power emanated from the people. Freedom of speech
 
 AND CATHOLICISM. 35 
 
 and opinion were the mainsprings of government. 
 The primitive Christian Churches were true demo- 
 cratic republics. Accordingly, when the Presby- 
 terians of the sixteenth century re-established the 
 ancient organization of the Church, they were 
 compelled to establish republican institutions in 
 the State. 
 
 The supporters and the adversaries of the Roman 
 Church alike confound Christianity with Catholi- 
 cism. Those who attack Christianity attribute to it the 
 principles, the abuses, and the crimes of the Roman 
 Church ; while those who uphold the Roman Church 
 invoke the merits, the virtues, and the benefits of 
 Christianity. There is error on both sides. Christi- 
 anity is favourable to liberty ; Catholicism is its 
 mortal enemy : so affirms its infallible head, the Pope. 
 
 The history of the institutions of the Church shows 
 us constant progress towards an increasing concentra- 
 tion of power. She has departed from the equal and 
 representative democracy of the first centuries, and, 
 through the proclamation of Papal Infallibility, has 
 arrived, in the nineteenth century, at the most 
 concentrated absolutism. A Democratic Republic 
 at the outset, she became aristocratic at the period 
 when the bishops effected an extension of their 
 power without losing their independence in relation 
 to the Pope. As long as councils exercised supreme 
 control she was still a constitutional monarchy. At 
 the present time she realises the ideal of a theocracy,
 
 36 RESULTS OF PROTESTANTISM 
 
 and of the most absolute despotism imaginable. 
 If civil society, as facts show, tends to mould itself 
 on religious society, Catholics must be subjected to 
 a purely despotic government. In fact, it is in this 
 sense that the partisans of the Church understand it. 
 Bossuet, in his ' Politique tire'e de 1'Ecriture Sainte,' 
 traces the condition of the government which suits 
 a purely Catholic country "God establishes kings 
 as His ministers, and reigns through them over the 
 nations." "Royal authority is absolute." " The prince 
 is not accountable to any one for his orders." 
 " Obedience must be rendered to princes as to Justice 
 herself. They are gods, and in a measure partici- 
 pate in the Divine independence." " Subjects have 
 only respectful remonstrance to oppose to the violence 
 of princes, and must neither mutiny nor murmur." 
 Thus, logically, in a Catholic country government 
 ought to be despotic;* first, because such is the 
 
 * See in what pompous and vigorous language Bossuet gives 
 us the definition of monarchy, such as it springs from Roman 
 Catholic tradition, and such as it is handed down from Imperial 
 and Papal Eome : 
 
 " Obedience must be rendered to princes as unto Justice herself. 
 They are gods, and in a measure, participate in the Divine 
 independence ; as in God all perfection is concentrated, so is all 
 the power of individuals in the person of the prince. Were God 
 to withdraw His hand, the world would relapse into nothing- 
 ness ; were authority to cease in the kingdom, all would be in 
 confusion. Consider the prince in his closet : thence emanate the 
 orders which cause magistrates and captains, provinces and 
 armies to act in concert with each other. We have here the 
 image of God, who, sitting on His throne in the highest
 
 AND CATHOLICISM. 37 
 
 government of the Church which serves as its type ; 
 next, because kings hold their power directly from 
 God or the Pope, which power can neither be limited 
 nor controlled. 
 
 The Reformation, on the contrary, being a return 
 towards primitive Christianity, engendered every- 
 where a spirit of liberty and of resistance to absolu- 
 tism. It tended to bring into existence republican and 
 constitutional institutions. The Protestant recognises 
 in religion but one authority, the Bible. He does not 
 bow to the authority of man, as does the Catholic ; 
 he examines and discusses for himself. Calvinists and 
 Presbyterians having re-established republican orga- 
 nization in the Church, the Protestant, by a logical 
 sequence, transported the same principles and the 
 same habits into political society. The accusation 
 levelled at the Reformation by Lamennais is com- 
 pletely true: "All power," he says, "had been 
 denied to religious society ; it was necessary also to 
 deny it to political life, and to substitute the will and 
 
 heavens, sustains the course of nature. In vain do the wicked 
 seek to hide themselves, the light of God follows them every- 
 where. Thus God puts it in the power of the prince to 
 discover the most secret plots ; he has eyes and hands every- 
 where, the birds of heaven tell him what is going on. He 
 has even received from God a certain penetration, which ap- 
 pears like divination, to assist him in the management of 
 affairs. If he has discovered intrigue at work, his long arms 
 seize hold of his enemies at the extremities of the earth, they 
 disinter them from the uttermost depths : there is no asylum 
 safe from such might as this."
 
 38 RESULTS OF PROTESTANTISM 
 
 reason of each individual for the will and reason of 
 God ; from that time every one depending on himself 
 alone could not but enjoy entire liberty, and be Master, 
 King, God to himself." Montesquieu says also : 
 " The Catholic religion is best suited to a monarchy ; 
 the Protestant adapts itself best to a republic." 
 
 Luther and Calvin do not preach resistance to 
 tyranny ; they rather condemn it, and proclaim 
 obedience. Neither do they admit full liberty of 
 conscience. But, in spite of them, the principle of 
 political and religious liberty, and that of the 
 Sovereignty of the People, is the logical result of 
 the Reformation. The proof consists in the fact that 
 everywhere this has been its natural fruit. The 
 writers of the reformed faith claim the rights of the 
 people, and wherever Protestants triumph, there they 
 establish free institutions. In this their enemies 
 have not been deceived ; they have announced this 
 connection between the Reformation and liberty, as 
 an evil. 
 
 " The Reformers," says a Venetian envoy in France 
 in the sixteenth century, " preach that the king has 
 no authority over his subjects. This tends," he adds, 
 " to a government similar to that which exists in 
 Switzerland, and to the ruin of the monarchical 
 constitution of the kingdom."* " It was announced 
 from the pulpit," says Montluc, " that kings could 
 
 * See, on the political ideas of the Reformation, the instructive 
 work of M.Laurent, 'La Revolution Fransaise,' t. i. sect. ii. 3.
 
 AND CATHOLICISM. 39 
 
 have no authority but that which pleased the people ; 
 others said that the nobility were no better than 
 themselves."* This is in fact the free and levelling 
 breath of Calvinism. Tavannes often reverts to the 
 democratic spirit of the Huguenots. u They are," he 
 says, " republics within monarchical states, having 
 their resources, soldiers, and separate finances, and 
 intending to establish a popular and democratic 
 government."! Dumoulin,the great jurist, denounced 
 the Protestant pastors to the Parliament, saying " that 
 they had no other purpose but to reduce France to a 
 popular State, and to make of her a republic similar 
 to that of Geneva, from whence they had expelled the 
 Count and the Bishop, and that they were similarly 
 striving to abolish the right of primogeniture, purpos- 
 ing to put the nobles on an equality with the plebeians, 
 and the younger on an equality with the elder, as being 
 all sons of Adam, and equal by divine and natural 
 right." These are evidently the ideas of the French 
 Revolution, and if France had adopted the Reforma- 
 tion in the sixteenth century, she would from that time 
 have enjoyed, and she would have preserved, liberty 
 and self-government. In the year 1622, Gregory 
 XV wrote to the King of France to induce him to 
 have nothing more to do with Geneva, that hotbed of 
 Calvinism and republicanism. In France, after the 
 
 * * Blaise de Montluc.' Collection des Memoires de Petitot. 
 1 Se"rie, t. xxii. p. 26. 
 j- ' Tavannes.' Same collection, t. xxiii. p. 72.
 
 40 RESULTS OF PROTESTANTISM 
 
 death of Henry IV., the Duke de Rohan, a Huguenot, 
 wished to " establish a republic," saying that the time 
 of kings had passed away. 
 
 The Protestant nobility have been taxed with the 
 wish to divide France into small republican states, as 
 in Switzerland, and it has been considered a merit on 
 the part of the League that it maintained French 
 unity. What the Huguenots in fact aimed at was 
 local autonomy, decentralisation, and a federal polity 
 which should secure communal and provincial liberties. 
 This it is which France still in vain seeks to establish, 
 and it is the Catholic passion for unity and uniformity 
 which has been the cause of the failure of the Revolu- 
 tion, and which always brings back despotism. 
 
 Calvin holds that " the minister of the Holy Gospel 
 should be elected with the consent and approbation 
 of the people: the clergy presiding over the election." 
 This is the government which the Calvinists wished 
 to introduce into France. "In the year 1620," says 
 Tavannes, " their State was truly popular, all autho- 
 rity, of which they only appeared to yield a part to 
 their nobility, being lodged in the mayors of the towns 
 and the ministers, so much so that, had they attained 
 their object, the State of France would have arisen, 
 like that of Switzerland, out of the ruin of princes 
 and gentry." 
 
 As soon as the Reformation had in Germany 
 placed the Gospel in the hands of the peasantry, 
 they claimed abolition of serfdom, and the recogni-
 
 AND CATHOLICISM. 41 
 
 tion of their ancient rights, in the name of " Christian 
 liberty." The Reformation everywhere inspired 
 energetic demands for the restitution of the natural 
 rights, liberty, toleration, equality of right, the 
 sovereignty of the people. They are inscribed in 
 a great number of the writings of the time, amongst 
 others in the celebrated pamphlet of Languet : ' Junii 
 Bruti Celtae, Yindicise contra tyrannos, de principe in 
 populum populique in principem, legitima potestate,' 
 a'nd in the dialogue, ' De 1'autorite du prince et de la 
 liberte des peuples.' * 
 
 These ideas, which form the basis of modern 
 liberty, have always found eloquent defenders 
 among Protestants. The Minister, Jurieu, de- 
 fended them against Bossuet in a well-known con- 
 troversy, and Locke has set them forth under a 
 scientific form. They were borrowed from Locke by 
 Montesquieu, Voltaire, and the political writers of 
 the eighteenth century, and from these same ideas 
 the French Revolution sprang. But long before 
 this they had been applied, with constant success, 
 in the Protestant States, first in Holland, then in 
 England, and above ah 1 , in America. 
 
 The famous Edict of the 16th July, 1581, by 
 which the States-General of the Low Countries pro- 
 claimed the dethronement of the King of Spain, 
 
 * ' Memoires de 1'Etat de France sous Charles IX.,' t. iii., pp. 
 57-64. See Laurent, ' Revolution Fran^aise,' t. i. p. 345. 
 
 D
 
 42 RESULTS OF PROTESTANTISM 
 
 explicitly sanctions the sovereignty of the people. 
 In order to dethrone a king, they were necessarily 
 obliged to invoke the following principle : " Subjects 
 are not created by G-od for the prince, in order that 
 they should obey him in all that he may please to 
 command, but rather the prince for his subjects, 
 without whom he cannot be prince, in order that 
 he may govern them according to right and reason." 
 The Edict adds that the inhabitants, in order to 
 withdraw themselves from the tyranny of the king, 
 have been compelled to withdraw from their allegi- 
 ance to him. "No other means remains to them 
 whereby to preserve and defend their ancient liberty, 
 and that of their wives, children, and posterity, for 
 whom, according to the law of nature, they are 
 obliged to risk their lives and their worldly goods." 
 The authors of the English Ee volution of 1648 
 appealed to the same principles. Milton and the 
 other republicans of the period defended them with 
 admirable force of spirit and of character. 
 
 We are in the habit of giving the credit of the 
 famous principles of '89 to the French Eevolution. 
 This is a grave historical error. In France eloquent 
 speeches were made on the subject ; but liberties 
 were never respected, not even the most sacred of 
 all, liberty of conscience.* The Puritans and the 
 
 * On this subject a very instructive article by Prevost-Paradol, 
 in the Remie des deux Mondes, 15th Sept., 1858, should be read, in
 
 AND CATHOLICISM. 43 
 
 Quakers have proclaimed and practised them in 
 America for the last 200 years, and it is from thence 
 and from England that Europe first adopted the idea 
 towards the end of the eighteenth century. 
 
 Even as early as the year 1620, the constitution of 
 Virginia established representative government, trial 
 by jury, and the principle that taxes should be voted 
 by those who pay them. 
 
 From its first origin Massachusetts established 
 compulsory education, and complete separation of 
 Church and State. The different sects lived free under 
 the common law, and themselves chose their own 
 ministers. Representative democracy existed there 
 as fully then as in our own day. The judges them- 
 selves were annually chosen by the citizens. But one 
 still more important fact comes to light. A man 
 arises (in the year 1633), claiming not only tolera- 
 tion, but complete religious equality in the eye of 
 the civil law, and on this principle he founds a State. 
 This man is Roger Williams, a name little known on 
 our continent, but which deserves to be inscribed 
 amongst those of the benefactors of mankind. In a 
 world which 4000 years of intolerance had bathed 
 in blood, even before Descartes had established free 
 research in philosophy, he was the first to sanction 
 religious liberty as a political right. "Persecution 
 
 which he shows that neither law nor magistrates have brought 
 liberty of worship into France. It does not yet exist there. 
 
 D 2
 
 44 RESULTS OF PROTESTANTISM 
 
 for conscience sake," he repeats, " is manifestly and 
 lamentably opposed to the teaching of Jesus 
 Christ." " He who commands the bark of the State 
 can maintain order on board and bring her 
 into harbour, although all the crew be not obliged 
 to assist at divine service." "The civil power 
 has dominion only over men's bodies and worldly 
 eroods, it cannot interfere in matters of faith, 
 
 O ' 
 
 even to prevent a Church from falling into 
 apostasy or heresy." "By shaking off the yoke of 
 tyranny from our souls, we not only do an act 
 of justice to oppressed nations, we also found 
 public liberty and peace on the interest of the 
 conscience of all men." 
 
 It would be well to read, in the admirable history 
 of Bancroft, how Boger Williams founded the town 
 of Providence and the State of Rhode Island upon 
 these principles, then little understood throughout 
 Europe, except in the Protestant Low Countries. 
 When a constitution was formed in 1641, all the 
 citizens were summoned to vote upon it. The 
 founders themselves called it a democracy, and such 
 it certainly was in all the force of the term and in 
 the sense in which Bousseau understood it. The 
 people were directly self-governed. All citizens, 
 without distinction of creed, were equal before the 
 law ; and every law had to be ratified in the primary 
 assemblies. It was the most radical form of self- 
 government that human societies had known ; and
 
 AND CATHOLICISM. 45 
 
 for two centuries it has lasted without disturbance or 
 revolution. 
 
 The Quakers of Pennsylvania and New Jersey 
 founded their State on similar principles. " We put 
 the power in the people "- this is the basis of the 
 constitution of New Jersey. The following are its 
 principal provisions : " No man, and no assembly of 
 men possesses power over conscience. No one, at 
 any time, by any method, or under any pretext, shall 
 ever be prosecuted or injured, upon any ground 
 whatever, for religious opinions. The general as- 
 sembly shall be elected by secret ballot. Every man 
 shall be qualified to elect and to be elected. Electors 
 shall give obligatory instructions to their deputies. 
 If the deputy does not fulfil his obligations, he may 
 be prosecuted. Ten commissaries, elected by the 
 assembly, exercise executive powers. * Judges and 
 constables are elected by the people for a term 
 of two years. The judges preside over the jury, 
 but judicial power is exercised by the twelve 
 citizens who constitute the jury. No one shall be 
 imprisoned for debt. Orphans shall be brought 
 up at the charge of the State. Education is a 
 branch of public service paid for out of the common 
 treasury." 
 
 Nearly the same principles are laid down in Penn- 
 sylvania and Connecticut. 
 
 These ideas of man's self-ownership and freedom ; 
 of his immunity from service or taxation without his
 
 46 EESULTS OF PROTESTANTISM 
 
 own express consent this idea that government, 
 justice, and all other powers emanate from the people 
 this aggregate of principles which modern societies 
 struggle to enforce, is undeniably derived from 
 Germanic tradition, and may even be found at its 
 source among most races before the development of 
 royal power. But if these principles, stifled as they 
 were by feudalism during the Middle Ages, and by 
 centralised and absolute monarchy dating from the 
 fifteenth century, have revived in Switzerland, Eng- 
 land, Holland and the United States, it is owing to 
 the democratic breath of the Reformation ; and only 
 in Protestant countries have they maintained them- 
 selves, and secured order and prosperity to the people. 
 If France had not persecuted, strangled, and banished 
 those of her children who had become Protestants, 
 she might have developed those germs of liberty 
 and of self-government which had survived in the 
 provincial States. This fact has been completely 
 established by M. Gustave Garrison.* Every year 
 contemporary studies and events bring fresh 
 corroborative proofs. In the assemblies of La 
 Rochelle and Grenoble, and in the States-General 
 of Orleans, the spirit of liberty and the parlia- 
 mentary spirit are as powerful as in the English 
 parliament; and in them may be heard the strong, 
 clear language of Calvin, so admirably fitted for 
 
 * Revue des Deux Mondes, 15th February, 1848.
 
 AND CATHOLICISM. 47 
 
 the treatment of the great interests of religion and 
 politics. 
 
 " We shall know how to defend our cities against 
 the king, without a king," said the Huguenots, and 
 there is no douht that if they had triumphed, they 
 would have founded a constitutional monarchy as in 
 England, or a federal Republic as in the Low 
 Countries. Had the French nobility preserved the 
 spirit of independence and of lawful resistance which 
 they had borrowed from Protestantism, they would 
 have imposed limits on the royal power, and France 
 would have escaped that oriental despotism of 
 Louis XIY. and his successors, which ruined the 
 character of the nation.* Francis I., in giving the 
 signal for the persecution of the Reformed,f and 
 
 * M. Quinet, in his book on the Revolution, pronounces the 
 following severe but just judgment on the French nobility of 
 that period : " They had sold their religious faith how could they 
 be capable of founding political faith ? During the Fronde they 
 had shown a spirit of intrigue without ambition. While rebelling 
 against Mazarin, they crouched before the King as soon as he 
 appeared. Thus did their utter hollowness become apparent; 
 they had never led the French in the direction of liberty." 
 
 | " Francis I.," said Napoleon, at St. Helena, " was really in 
 a position to adopt Protestantism at its birth, and declare him- 
 self its leader in Europe. Thus he would have spared France 
 her terrible religious convulsions. Unfortunately, Francis I. 
 understood nothing of the matter ; for he could never allege 
 scruples as his excuse, since he entered into alliance with 
 the Turks and brought them into our midst. The plain truth 
 is, that he was shortsighted. Stupidity of the times feudal
 
 RESULTS OF PROTESTANTISM 
 
 Henry IV. in abjuring Protestantism, betrayed the 
 true interests of France, as the nobles had done. 
 The saying, " Paris is well worth a mass," in which 
 most French historians find a proof of practical sense, 
 is a revolting cynicism. To sell oneself to deny 
 one's faith for material advantages is surely an act 
 to be branded by all honest men. France bears the 
 punishment of this to the present day, as she still 
 suffers from the fatal consequences of those two 
 great outrages to liberty of conscience the massacre 
 of St. Bartholomew and the revocation of the Edict of 
 Nantes. France is above all things in want of men, 
 who, without breaking with tradition, are willing to 
 accept new ideas. The republicans are generally 
 hostile or indifferent to all religious ideas, and, like 
 their ancestors, the revolutionists of the last century, 
 they lack a foundation on which any solid edifice can 
 be raised. Those again who uphold religious ideas, 
 wish to reanimate the old system, and oppose all 
 reform. At this moment, France has an oppor- 
 tunity of founding free institutions. But the par- 
 tisans of monarchy will either prepare the way 
 for the return of a Napoleon, or they will plunge 
 the country into anarchy by dint of their blind 
 self-will. Under Louis Philippe, in 1850, and again 
 at present, the conservatives ruin their country by 
 
 dulness ! Francis I. was, after all, a mere tourney hero, a 
 carpet knight, a pigmy of a great man!" ('Memorial,' 17th 
 Aug. 1816.)
 
 AND CATHOLICISM. 49 
 
 their attachment to worn-out forms of government. 
 A republic is now the only possible government for 
 France, and the republicans will prevent its taking 
 root, because Catholicism has saturated them with 
 the spirit of intolerance* and despotism. France 
 will hardly escape a fresh restoration of absolute 
 power. The Roman religion has not fitted the 
 French to live in freedom, to tolerate each other, 
 and to govern themselves. 
 
 Toleration may occasionally be found among 
 Catholic nations in their laws, but never in their 
 habits of life. Woe to him who, desiring to avail 
 himself of liberty of conscience, decides upon 
 following the dictates of his own ! He is even more 
 derided by his kindred, and by the indifferent, 
 than by believers. Sceptics find it more convenient 
 to compound matters by bending before the priest 
 
 * The intolerance of the French is probably due to their 
 Catholic education. Paris took part with the League. At the 
 time of Voltaire, the people were still full of hatred of Pro- 
 testants and sceptics. " We can ill bear contradiction in matters 
 near our heart," says a very sensible French writer. " The 
 rashest or the most absurd opinion is, in our eyes, a dogma 
 outside of which is no salvation. Each party insists on being 
 a Church, and will admit of no doubt as to its infallibility. 
 The most liberal-minded seek to shut out by subterfuges from 
 dissenters the liberty they claim for themselves. Hence the 
 facility with which dictatorships are established, and with 
 which are perpetuated, at the hands of the various parties, as 
 in turn they rise and fall, the self-same methods of coercion." 
 (Emile Beaussire, Rnue des Deux Mondes, 1st May, 1871.)
 
 50 RESULTS OF PROTESTANTISM 
 
 on all the important occasions of life, while they 
 scruple not to ridicule or to attack him. Eesigned 
 to the yoke of orthodoxy, to which they submit while 
 they deride it, they have no toleration for those who, 
 finding it too heavy, have the courage openly to 
 throw it off. By means of intimidation and ridicule, 
 uniformity is enforced, and liberty is but a name. 
 
 All modern nations are striving to establish re- 
 presentative and constitutional government. This 
 system, which took its rise in England, on the soil 
 of ancient Germanic institutions watered by Pro- 
 testantism, seems incapable of taking durable root in 
 Catholic countries ; the fact being, that the chief of a 
 State, be he king or president, cannot be a true 
 constitutional sovereign if he is a devotee, and 
 confesses as an obedient penitent. He is governed 
 by his confessor, who is subject to the Pope. By 
 means of the confessional the Pope is accordingly the 
 real sovereign, unless it he the Jesuits, who direct 
 the Pope. The prerogatives granted by the consti- 
 tution to the depositary of the executive power, are 
 in such cases exercised by a foreign Power, and to 
 the detriment of the country. Examples abound in 
 history. Too docile to the demands of their con- 
 fessors, we see Louis XIV. revoking the Edict of 
 Nantes, James II. of England and Charles X. of 
 France losing their crown, and Louis XVI. both 
 crown and life, Ferdinand and Leopold of Austria 
 ruining their country by the most frightful per-
 
 AND CATHOLICISM. 51 
 
 secution, Augustus and Sigismond of Poland paving 
 the way to the partition of that country, by bringing 
 into it Jesuits and intolerance. Under a pious 
 sovereign given to confession, the constitutional 
 system is either a fiction or a fraud, for it enslaves 
 the country to the will of an unknown priest, the 
 organ of his Church's pretensions, or else, when 
 the land refuses to bear the humiliating yoke, it 
 produces a revolution. In Austria the Emperor 
 Francis .Joseph only preserved his constitutional 
 monarchy by resisting his confessor. In Protestant 
 lauds the constitutional system flourishes naturally, 
 being on its native soil; while on Catholic soil, being 
 an heretical importation, it is undermined by the 
 priest unless it serves to secure his dominion, and 
 thus it is either perverted by the clericals, or over- 
 thrown by the revolutionists. 
 
 Y. 
 
 Another cause of inferiority among Catholic popu- 
 lations lies in the fact that the religious sentiment 
 is weaker amongst their intelligent and governing 
 classes than in Protestant countries. This fact is, I 
 think, denied by no one. The episcopal writings 
 affirm it daily, and claim for religion the same 
 respect which she enjoys in England and America. 
 The enemies of all religion upbraid the Americans and 
 the English with what they call their narrow bigotry :
 
 RESULTS OP PROTESTANTISM 
 
 the strict observance of Sunday rest, the public 
 prayers and fasts, and lastly their rigid piety. 
 
 Two causes explain why religion preserves more 
 life and authority among the enlightened classes of 
 Protestantism. 
 
 First, Catholicism, by reason of its multiplied 
 dogmas, its occasionally puerile ceremonies, its 
 miracles, and its pilgrimages,* places itself outside 
 the atmosphere of modern thought, while Pro- 
 testantism, by reason of its simplicity, and its various 
 forms, capable as they are of indefinite improvement, 
 can adapt itself thereto. M. Eenan says very well, 
 " The formation of new sects, which Catholics bring 
 as a mark of weakness against Protestants, proves on 
 the contrary that the religious sentiment still lives 
 amongst the latter, since it is creative. There is 
 nothing more dead than that which is motionless." 
 
 The apathy with which two new dogmas have 
 recently been accepted, which formerly would have 
 roused the strongest opposition and have led to 
 schism, is a sign of an incredible enfeeblement of all 
 
 * Agassiz, in his 'Voyage au Bresil,' writes thus on the 
 subject of the influence of Catholicism in that country : " The 
 priest is the instructor of the people. He must cease to believe 
 that the mind can be contented to be nourished exclusively 
 on grotesque processions, with coloured saints, lighted tapers, 
 and cheap nosegays. As long as the people do not demand 
 another sort of religious instruction, they will continue in their 
 downward course, or will not be able to improve."
 
 AND CATHOLICISM. 53 
 
 intellectual life in the bosom of Catholicism. The 
 excesses of superstition lead inevitably to infidelity. 
 The challenge thrown down to reason by the 
 Church leads those who refuse to abdicate their 
 use of it, to reject all religious worship. A French 
 writer, M. Geruzet, has pourtrayed this situation in 
 an incisive sketch : "The father of a family, who 
 believes in God without believing in St. Cupertin, 
 is in great difficulty between his religious daughters 
 and atheistic sons. The Lord deliver us from 
 atheism and from the worship of St. Cupertin ! " * 
 Evidently " the worship of St. Cupertin " engenders 
 Atheism, and the two have brought France to the 
 position in which we behold her, because there is no 
 longer room for a reasonable religion. 
 
 Catholicism produces such complete indifference in 
 religious matters, that even the strength requisite 
 honestly to leave the Church is wanting. We see 
 Protestants becoming Catholics, because, preserving 
 some religious faith, they seek the true religion and 
 believe that Rome offers it to them. Few Catholics 
 become Protestants, because they have become hostile 
 or indifferent to every species of religion. This indiffe- 
 rence again is useful to the Church, because it prevents 
 
 * In tracing the biography of Geruzet, Prevost-Paradol 
 quotes an irreverent but striking saying of his : " The nations 
 which neglect themselves are covered with monks they are 
 the vermin of the social body." On this point, however, some 
 reserve might, perhaps, be called for.
 
 54 KESULTS OF PROTESTANTISM 
 
 men from withdrawing themselves completely from 
 her authority, and she always ends by recovering the 
 children of her adversaries. 
 
 The second motive which leads Catholic popu- 
 lations to infidelity and priestophobia is, that, as 
 the Church* shows herself to be hostile to modern 
 ideas and liberties, all those who are attached to the 
 latter are led, often against their own wishes,^to hate 
 and resist her. Voltaire's cry of hatred, "Ecrasons 
 1'infame," becomes logically and everywhere the 
 avowed or una vowed word of command of liberalism. 
 The liberal attacks, and must attack, priests and 
 monks without intermission, because they wish to 
 enslave society to the Pope, and to his delegates, the 
 Bishops. He cannot respect the dogma by means of 
 which he is to be deprived of liberty. 
 
 We have established the fact and its causes, let us 
 now see its consequences. 
 
 The first is, that the efforts to free from Roman 
 dominion the countries which have revolted from her, 
 in the name of a simple negation or of a reasoning 
 scepticism, cannot be successful. No nation has ever 
 made a more violent effort to succeed in this enterprise 
 than France. She has employed all the means in her 
 power with incomparable vigour and brilliancy : the 
 reasoning of philosophy and the banter of fiction, the 
 satire of comedy and the eloquence of the Forum, the 
 
 * See letter to the Editor of the Times, printed at the end.
 
 AXD CATHOLICISM. 55 
 
 torch of tbe incendiary, the stealthy sap of the miner, 
 and the guillotine. 
 
 At this moment clericalism reigns in France ; it 
 hands over all instruction to the Jesuits, and prepares 
 the return of a monarchy wholly devoted to the Church. 
 Her influence increases rapidly, and, as in Belgium, 
 seems to become irresistible. This follows from the fact 
 that, in religious matters, we can destroy nothing but 
 what we replace. If, in politics, as in natural science, 
 reverence were paid to the lessons of experience, this 
 truth would be admitted as an axiom by all unpre- 
 judiced people. Free-thought will not break down the 
 dominion of the Church ; on the contrary, it will rather 
 strengthen it by the terror which it inspires, for it 
 does not satisfy the deep desires of the human heart. 
 
 Thus the attempt to destroy Catholicism without 
 replacing it does not attain its end, but gives rise to 
 the revolutionary spirit. See how this spirit charac- 
 terises all Catholic populations, in America as in 
 Europe, whilst observers are struck by its absence 
 even among the radical democracies of the United 
 States. Protestants respect both law and authority. 
 Catholics, unable either to found liberty, or to do 
 without it, make despotism necessary, and yet will 
 not submit to it. Hence arises an ever active leaven 
 of rebellion. When the evil reaches its final limit, 
 the country oscillates between anarchy and despotism, 
 consuming all its strength in this struggle of irrecon- 
 cilable parties. This is the picture presented to our
 
 56 RESULTS OF PROTESTANTISM 
 
 eyes by Spain, and by other States which are arriving 
 at a similar condition. Whence comes the evil ? 
 I believe the cause to be as follows. 
 
 Eegulated liberty is not possible without good 
 morals. Now the ministers of public worship are in 
 reality the only persons who speak of morality and 
 of duty to the people. If these men be discredited 
 in the minds of the great mass of the population, 
 who will replace them in this, their indispensable 
 office ? Certainly it will not be the free-thinkers. 
 G-uizot has admirably said, that Christianity is a 
 great school of respect. If, in order the better to 
 defend liberty, the spirit of liberal Voltairianism 
 shakes the authorit}^ of Catholicism, as it must do, the 
 respect even for legitimate authority disappears, and 
 gives place to a spirit of opposition, of disparagement, 
 of hatred and insurrection. Thus is produced the 
 revolutionary temperament of Catholic populations.* 
 Only by complete submission to Rome, as was for- 
 merly the case with Spain, and now with the Tyrol, 
 do they live in peace. If they attempt to emancipate 
 themselves, they escape with difficulty from anarchy. 
 
 VI. 
 
 With the assistance of the clergy, everything in 
 matters of social reforms is easy : without such 
 
 * M. Deschanel has recently written in the National, " For 
 us Frenchmen, liberty and revolution are synonymous, because 
 authority and oppression have too often been so."
 
 AND CATHOLICISM. 57 
 
 help, or in spite of it, all is difficult and at times 
 impossible. See how this holds with reference to 
 primary instruction. 
 
 Enact compulsory education with the co-operation 
 of the minister, as among Protestant countries, you 
 will accomplish your end. But if, on the contrary, 
 the priest is hostile or indifferent, as in Catholic coun- 
 tries, the law is not observed. You need only refer 
 to the statistics of schools in Italy. If the priest be 
 allowed to enter the school by virtue of his office, as 
 in Belgium, he prepares the triumph of theocracy. 
 If he be expelled, he destroys the school, for he 
 causes it to be deserted. Moreover, in your normal 
 schools, will you infuse a spirit of resistance and of 
 hostility to the clergy into your teachers in order 
 that they may transmit it to their pupils? You 
 will inevitably destroy the religious sentiment, 
 and create an atheistic people. Logic drives, and 
 "free-thought" invites you to it. Are you pre- 
 pared for this ? In Protestant countries, in America 
 and in Holland, you have non-sectarian lay schools, 
 but they are entirely penetrated by the Christian 
 spirit. In a Catholic country, lay schools will only 
 be able to exist by dint of a violent struggle with 
 the clergy, who will wish to destroy them ; they 
 must therefore inevitably be anti-religious. 
 
 As for the formidable social questions, which pro- 
 duce conflict between the working classes and the 
 capitalists, Christianity provides us with their solu- 
 
 E
 
 58 RESULTS OF PROTESTANTISM 
 
 tion, for, by means of the brotherhood and self-denial 
 which it advocates, it leads mankind to the reign of 
 justice. Between really Christian masters and men 
 no difficulty could arise, for equity would preside 
 over the division of profits. We feel but too keenly 
 the frightful void caused by the weakening of reli- 
 gious sentiment, which results from the forced oppo- 
 sition to the only form of worship which we knew. 
 
 In Protestant countries, on the contrary, the 
 ministers of public worship are highly esteemed 
 among all classes of society, and through their 
 mediation, and the Christian influences of which 
 they are the respected organs, strifes lose some of 
 their bitterness. 
 
 In his fine work on the French Revolution, 
 Quinet proves that if this colossal effort of emanci- 
 pation has not been successful, it has been in con- 
 sequence of religious opposition, and hence he con- 
 cludes it to be impossible thoroughly to reform the 
 civil and political constitution of a country with- 
 out also reforming its public worship. The reason 
 is that civil and political society tends to take the 
 forms of religious society. 
 
 The priest has so great a hold on souls that he 
 imposes his ideal on them, unless you root out the 
 religious sentiment by means of which he governs 
 them. Now, in such an attempt as this, nations 
 run the risk of perishing. 
 
 Steady progress is very difficult in Catholic coun-
 
 AND CATHOLICISM. 59 
 
 tries, because the Church, aiming at establishing her 
 dominion throughout, the living energies of the 
 nation are almost exclusively employed in repelling 
 the pretensions of the clergy. See what is taking 
 place in Belgium. All party efforts are con- 
 centrated on this one question, and other interests, 
 even those of our national defences and of our 
 independent existence, are subordinated to it. The 
 struggle is so keen that we have twice already been 
 on the eve of a violent commotion, and it is due 
 only to the wisdom of the Sovereign that we have 
 twice escaped the danger. The forces employed in 
 struggling against the clerical party are forces lost 
 to progress, for even when they prevail, the victory 
 has no other result but that of preventing us from 
 falling under the yoke of the bishops. 
 
 The celibacy of the priests, the absolute submission 
 of all the ecclesiastical hierarchy to one single will, 
 and the multiplication of monastic orders, constitute 
 among Catholics a danger unknown to Protestant 
 countries. 
 
 I admire a man who, in order to devote himself to 
 his fellow-men and to truth, renounces the joys of 
 family life. St. Paul is right : he who has a difficult 
 mission to fulfil should not marry. But, when all 
 priests are bound to celibacy, a great danger accrues 
 to the State, in addition to that which threatens 
 morals. These priests form a caste, having a special 
 interest differing from that of the nation. 
 
 E 2
 
 60 RESULTS OF PROTESTANTISM 
 
 The true home of the Catholic clergy is Rome as 
 they themselves announce. They will therefore 
 sacrifice their country, if need be, to the welfare 
 or to the dominion of the Pope, the infallible head 
 of their religion and the representative of God upon 
 earth. First Catholic, then, if the good of Catho- 
 licism permit it, Belgian, French, or German ; this 
 is the only patriotism from a Catholic point of view. 
 
 When the Liberal party was in power in Belgium, 
 and Napoleon III., before the Italian war, assumed 
 the attitude of defender of the Church, I was told by 
 more than one of the Flemish priests, " Deliverance 
 will come from the South." At the present day the 
 German Ultramontanes openly profess that, in the 
 interest of the Church, they would betray Germany. 
 Has not a Bavarian deputy said in open Parliament, 
 " In vain you raise new regiments ; if they are 
 Catholic they will pass over to the enemy ! " 
 
 The monk acknowledges a country still less than 
 the priest. Slave to the Papacy, detached from local 
 ties, he lives only in the Church, which is universal, 
 and he has no other prospect but that of her rule, 
 which will also be his. How shall the State pre- 
 serve its independence in presence of the clergy 
 and of the monks, both of whom wish to have the 
 upper hand, and who hold the masses in subjection 
 by the most powerful and irresistible means of action ? 
 In Protestant countries the clergy are married, and 
 have children ; they have thus the same interests
 
 AND CATHOLICISM. 61 
 
 and the same mode of life as other citizens. They 
 are divided into a great number of sects ; therefore 
 they do not obey the same word of command. They 
 are not hierarchically subject to the will of a foreign 
 chief who is pursuing the dream of universal 
 dominion. They are national, because their Church 
 is a national Church. They are independent of the 
 State as in America, subject to the State as in 
 England ; but they do not aim at being masters of 
 the State, as in France or in Belgium, 
 
 Separation of Church and State is a principle which 
 it is universally sought to establish. In Protestant 
 countries this may succeed, as we see in America, 
 because the clergy submit to it. But in Catholic 
 countries it will be vain to enact it. The Church, 
 asserting as she does that temporal things should 
 be subject to spiritual, as the body is to the soul, will 
 only accept this system of separation so far as she can 
 profit by it in order to attain her end. This separa- 
 tion will therefore be either a snare or a fraud. You 
 cannot, in the same man, separate the believer from 
 the citizen, and it is usually the sentiments of the 
 former which influence the actions of the latter. The 
 ministers of public worship exert a much greatei 
 authority than the representative ministers of the 
 State, over those who believe them to be the inter- 
 preters of the Deity ; for the priest promises eternal 
 .happiness, and threatens never-ending hell-torments, 
 while the layman disposes only of earthly and
 
 62 RESULTS OF PROTESTANTISM 
 
 temporary punishments and rewards. Through the 
 confessional the priest has in his power the Sovereign, 
 the magistrates, and through the electors, the Houses 
 of Parliament. As long as he dispenses the sacra- 
 ments, the separation of Church and State is* there- 
 fore only a dangerous illusion. 
 
 To govern with the clergy is to subject the nation 
 to their dominion, and to govern in opposition to 
 them is to imperil all authority. To govern side by 
 side, while ignoring them, would be the wisest course ; 
 but that they will not permit. He who is not for 
 me is against me, they say. It is necessary, there- 
 fore, to resign oneself either to obey or to resist 
 them, and I do not know which of the two is the 
 safer course. 
 
 The Catholic nations of the Continent have bor- 
 rowed principles and institutions from England and 
 America, which, having sprung from Protestantism, 
 lead under its influence to good results. But on 
 the Continent we already begin to see whither they 
 tend, when they are opposed or turned to account 
 by an Ultramontane clergy. They end in disorder, 
 when the masses lose their faith, as in Spain or in 
 France, or in the reign of episcopacy, when they 
 retain it, as in Belgium. 
 
 The attentive and disinterested study of contem- 
 porary facts seems then to lead us to the dreary con- 
 clusion, that Catholic nations will not succeed in 
 preserving the liberties which sprang from Pro-
 
 AND CATHOLICISM. 63 
 
 testantism. In submitting to the absolute dominion 
 of the Church, they might perhaps, if they were 
 isolated, enjoy a peaceful kind of happiness and a 
 life of gentle mediocrity. But a danger from with- 
 out seems to threaten them, and that soon, unless 
 they refuse to obey episcopal commands. 
 
 Buckle considers indifferentism to be one of the 
 merits of our age, inasmuch as it preserves us 
 from religious wars. This advantage, if it be one, 
 our epoch is not likely long to maintain. Every- 
 thing seems to be leading up to a great conflict, 
 of which religion will be one of the chief causes. 
 Already, in the year 1870, Ultramontanism has 
 declared war on Germany. If Henry V. or Napoleon 
 IV. ever reach the throne, it will be with the 
 concurrence of the clergy, who will push on a new 
 crusade in order to deliver their persecuted brethren 
 beyond the Ehine, on whose future assistance they 
 will reckon. The States in which the clerical party 
 will prevail will probably be dragged into the religious 
 war. This is the policy which is preached in France 
 by L'Univers, and elsewhere by the other organs of 
 the Eoman Curia. The restoration of the legiti- 
 mate sovereigns in the three Latin countries, Spain, 
 Italy, and France ; Protestant Prussia crushed in 
 the dust ; Germany given over to Austria ; Eome 
 restored to the Pope, and supreme power to the 
 Church ; the return to the true principles of 
 Government, that is to say, to those proclaimed
 
 64 RESULTS OF PROTESTANTISM AND CATHOLICISM. 
 
 by the Syllabus and by Catholic tradition this 
 is the grand scheme, the realisation of which is 
 everywhere in preparation by the Ultramontanes. 
 Will they succeed? Who can say? But, if they 
 fail in this assault against Germanic Protestantism, 
 what will be the fate of the vanquished? We 
 may tremble when we reflect on the calamities in 
 store for Europe through the dream of the restora- 
 tion of universal dominion to the Church, which at 
 this moment she claims with greater audacity and 
 obstinacy than ever. 
 
 fe;
 
 ' TIMES,' DECEMBER 14TH, 1874. 
 ULTKAMONTANISM IN BELGIUM. 
 
 A Monsieur le Eedacteur du ' Times' 
 
 MONSIEUR. 
 
 Lord Arundell de Wardour dit " that during the last 
 two centuries no Pope has trenched upon the political 
 ground ;" et Lord Acton, tout en prouvant jusqu'a quels 
 exces ont ete portees les doctrines Ultramontaines, croit 
 neanmoins qu'il n'en peut resulter actuellement aucun 
 danger. 
 
 Permettez-moi de montrer cornbien le danger est reel et 
 grand, en rappelant certains faits empruntes a 1'histoire de 
 mon pays, la Belgique. 
 
 En 1815, le Koi Guillaume du Pays-Bas voulut donner 
 a son royaume une Constitution qui consacrait toutes les 
 libertes modernes. L'^piscopat Beige condamna cette Cons- 
 titution dans un jugement doctrinal, au nom de 1'Eglise, et 
 la fit rejeter dans 1'Assemblee des Notables par 798 voix 
 centre 527. II est utile de reproduire les termes de ce 
 jugement doctrinal, parce qu'ils montrent clairement que les 
 vrais Catholiques ne doivent pas mainteuir les libertes 
 modernes quand ils peuvent les supprimer : 
 
 " C'est done pour remplir un des devoirs les plus essentials 
 de 1'Episcopat, pour nous acquitter envers les peuples, sur
 
 66 ULTRAMONTANISM IN BELGIUM. 
 
 lesquels le Saint-Esprit nous a etablis eveques pour gouverner 
 1'Eglise de Dieu (Act. 20, v. 28), de 1'obligation qui nous 
 a ete strictement imposee par 1'jfiglise, que nous avons 
 juge necessaire de declarer qu'aucun de nos diocesains 
 respectifs ne peut, sans trahir les plus chers interets de 
 sa religion, sans se reudre coupable d'un grand crime, 
 preterles differents serments prescrits par la Constitution, 
 par lesquels on s'engage a maintenir la nouvelle loi fonda- 
 mentale, ou a concourir au maintien et a 1'observation de la 
 dite loi. 
 
 "En effet, on s'oblige par les dits serments a observer 
 et a maintenir tous les articles de la nouvelle Constitution 
 et, par consequent, ceux qui sont opposes a 1'esprit et 
 aux maximes de la religion Catholique, ou qui tendent 
 evidemment a opprimer et a asservir I'&glise de Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 " Or, tels sont les articles suivants : 
 
 "'Art. 190. La liberte des opinions religieuses est garantie 
 a tous. 
 
 " ' Art. 191. Protection egale est accordee a toutes les com- 
 munions religieuses qui existent dans le royaume. 
 
 "'Art. 192. Tous les sujets du Koi, sans distinction de 
 croyance religieuse, jouissent des memes droits civils et 
 politiques, et sont habiles a toutes dignites et emplois quel- 
 conques. 
 
 " ' Art. 193. L'exercice public d'aucun culte ne peut etre 
 empeche, si ce n'est dans le cas ou il pourrait troubler 1'ordre 
 et la tranquillite publique. 
 
 "'Art. 196. Le Eoi veille a ce que tous les cultes se 
 contiennent dans I'obeissance qu'ils doivent aux lois de 
 1'fitat. 
 
 " ' Art. 226. L'instruction publique est un objet constant 
 des soins du Gouvernement. Le Roi fait rendre compte tous 
 les ans aux fitats-Generaux de 1'etat des ecoles superieures, 
 moyennes et inferieures.
 
 ULTKAMONTANISM IN BELGIUM. 67 
 
 " ' Art. 145. Les fitats (provinciaux) sont charges de 
 1'execution des lois relatives a la protection des different^ 
 cultes et a leur exercice exterieur, a 1'instruction pu- 
 blique, &c. 
 
 " ' Art. 2. Additionel. Toutes les lois demeurent obli- 
 gatoires jusqu'a ce qu'il y soit autrement pourvu.' 
 
 " Nous nous bornerons a faire sur chacun de ces articles 
 quelques courtes observations. 
 
 "Art. 190 et 191. 1. Jurer de maintenir la liberte des 
 opinions religieuses et la protection egale accordee a tous les 
 cultes, qu'est-ce autre chose que de jurer de maintenir, de 
 proteger 1'erreur comme la verite; de favoriser le progres 
 des doctrines anti-Catholiques ; de semer, autant qu'il est en 
 son pouvoir dans le champ du pere de famille, 1'ivraie et le 
 poison qui doivent infecter la generation presente et les 
 generations futures; de contribuer ainsi, on ne peut plus 
 efficacement, a eteindre peu a peu dans ces belles contrees le 
 flambeau de la vraie foi ? L'Eglise Catholique, qui a 
 toujours repousse de son sein 1'erreur et 1'heresie, ne pourrait 
 regarder comme ses vrais enfants ceux qui oseraient jurer de 
 maintenir ce qu'elle n'a jamais cesse de condamner. II est 
 notoire que cette dangereuse nouveaute n'a ete introduite, 
 pour la premiere fois, dans un pays Catholique, que par les 
 revolutionnaires de France, il y a environ vingt-cinq ans, 
 et qu'a cette epoque le chef de 1'^glise la condamna 
 hautement. 
 
 " ' La religion,' dit-il, ' a deja ete fortement attaquee par 
 les decrets qui sont emanees de cette Assemblee Nationale. 
 Des maux que nous deplorons ont ete occasionnes par les 
 fausses doctrines qu'on a repandues depuis longtemps dans 
 tine multitude d'ecrits empoisonnes qui se trouvent dans les 
 mains de tout le monde ; et c'est afin que cette funeste 
 contagion se propageat avec plus de hardiesse et de rapidite 
 par les moyens de la presse, qu'une des premieres operations 
 de I'Assemblee Nationale a ete de decreter la liberte de
 
 68 ULTRAMONTANISM IN BELGIUM. 
 
 penser ce qu'on voudrait en matiere de religion, d'exprimer 
 librement et impunement ses opinions a cet egard, de ne 
 suivre, en un mot, d'autres regies et d'autres lois en cette 
 matiere que celles qu'on voudrait se prescrire. 
 
 " * Informes de ces evenements, pouvons-nous garder le 
 silence sur tant de maux, et ne pas elever notre voix Apos- 
 tolique centre ces funestes decrets qui ont pour objet d'ane- 
 antir la religion ? ' (Allocution du 29 Mars 1790.) 
 
 " Art 192. 2. Jurer de maintenir 1'observation d'une 
 loi qui rend tous les sujets du Koi, de quelque croyance 
 religieuse qu'ils soient, habiles a posseder toutes les dignites 
 et emplois quelconques, ce serait justifier d'avance et sanc- 
 tionner les mesures qui pourront etre prises pour confier les 
 interets de notre sainte religion dans les provinces, si emine- 
 ment Catholiques, a des fonctionnaires Protestants. 
 
 "Art. 196. 4. Jurer d'observer et de maintenir une loi, 
 qui suppose que 1'Eglise Catholique est soumise aux lois de 
 1'^tat et qui donne au souverain le droit d'obliger le cierge 
 et les fideles a obeir a toutes les lois de i'Etat, de quelque 
 nature qu'elles soient, c'est s'exposer manifestement a 
 cooperer a I'asservisserhent de 1'figlise Catholique. C'est au 
 fond soumettre, suivant 1'expression de notre Saint Pere le 
 Pape, la puissance spirituelle aux caprices de la puissance 
 seculiere. (Bulle du 28 Juin 1809.) 
 
 " Art. 226. 5. Jurer d'observer et de maintenir une loi 
 qui attribue an souverain, et a un souverain qui ne professe 
 pas notre sainte religion, le droit de regler 1'instruction 
 publique, les ecoles superieures, moyennes et inferieures, c'est 
 lui livrer a discretion 1'enseignement public dans toutes ses 
 branches, c'est trahir honteusement les plus chers interets de 
 1'^glise Catholique. Le pouvoir qu'ont les eveques de 
 surveiller 1'enseignement de la foi et de la morale Chretienne 
 dans toute 1'etendue de leurs dioceses, comme celui de 
 remplir toutes les autres fonctions de leur ministere, emane 
 de la volonte et de 1'autorite de Jesus-Christ lui-meme. On
 
 ULTRAMONTANISM IN BELGIUM. 69 
 
 ne peut le leur oter ni le diminuer sans soumettre la doctrine 
 de la foi et toute la discipline ecclesiastique a la puissance 
 seculiere, sans renverser, par consequent, tout 1'edifice de la 
 religion Catholique. 
 
 ' Art. 145. 6. Jurer d'observer et de maintenir une loi 
 qui autorise les tats provinciaux a executer les lois relatives 
 a la protection des differents cultes, a leur exercice exterieur, 
 a Finstruction publique, n'est-ce pas confier les plus grands 
 interets de la religion a des la'ics qui n'ont et ne peuvent 
 avoir aux yeux de 1'Eglise Catholique aucune qualite\ soit 
 pour reconnaitre la justice ou 1'injustice des lois de ce genre 
 qui leur seront envoy ees, soit pour en diriger 1'application, 
 soit pour en ordonner 1'execution dans les dioceses respectifs? 
 
 " Art. 2 addit. 7. Jurer de regarder comme obligatoires 
 jusqu'a ce qu'il y soit autrement pourvu, et de maintenir 
 toutes les lois qui sont maintenant en vigueur, ce serait co- 
 operer evidemment a 1'execution eventuelle de plusieurs lois 
 anti-Catholiques et manifestement injustes, que renferment 
 les Codes Civil et Pe'nal de 1'ancien Gouvernement Francais, 
 et notamment de celles qui permettent le divorce, qui 
 autorisei it legalement des unions incestueuses condamnees 
 pur I'iglise, qui decernent contre les ministres de 1'^vangile, 
 fideles a leurs devoirs, Ics peines les plus sdveres, &c. toutes 
 lois qu'un vrai Catholique doit avoir en horreur. 
 
 "II est encore d'autres articles qu'un veritable enfant de 
 1'figlise ne peut s'engager par serment a observer et a main- 
 tenir, et dont 1'urgence des circonstances ne nous permet pas 
 de nous occuper en ce moment ; tel est, en particulier, le 
 227me, qui autorise la liberte de la presse, et ouvre la porte 
 a une infinite de desordres, a un deluge d'ecrits anti-Chretiens 
 et anti-Catholiques. II nous suffit d'avoir prouve que la 
 nouvelle loi fondamentale contient plusieurs articles opposes 
 a 1'esprit et aux maximes de notre sainte religion, et qui 
 tendent evidemment a opprimer et a asservir 1'Eglise de 
 Jesus-Christ ; que, par consequent, il ne peut etre permis aux
 
 70 ULTRAMONTANISM IN BELGIUM. 
 
 fideles Catholiques de s'engager par serment a les observer 
 et a les maintenir. 
 
 "Le Prince t MAURICE DE BROGLIE, veque de 
 
 Gand. 
 " f CHAELES FRANCOIS JOSEPH PISANI DE LA GAUDE, 
 
 fiveque de Namur. 
 
 " t FRANCOIS JOSEPH, veque de Tournay. 
 
 " J'adhere au jugement doctrinal ci-dessus porte par Mes- 
 seigneurs les fiveques du Eoyaume de Pays-Bas. 
 
 "J. FORGEUR, Vicaire-General de 1'Archeveche de 
 
 Malines. 
 " J'y adhere egalement. 
 
 " J. A. BARRETT, Vicaire-General, cap, de Liege." 
 
 Voici done un fait qui prouve que, de nos jours encore, 
 1'Eglise peut faire refuser a un peuple les liberte's les plus 
 necessaires. 
 
 A peine la Constitution de 1830 eut-elle consacre en 
 Belgique, avec le concours des Catholiques liberaux, les 
 principes condamnes en 1815 par 1'^piscopat, que le Pape les 
 foudroya dans sa fameuse Encyclique de 1832. 
 
 On ne peut nier que I'^lglise condamne, par exemple, la 
 liberte de conscience. Ecoutons sur ce point Bossuet, dont 
 1'autorite ne sera pas suspecte, car dans 1'ecrit dont je vais 
 citer un passage il reclamait une certaine tolerance pour les 
 Protestants : 
 
 " Je declare (dit-il) que je suis et que j'ai toujours ete du 
 sentiment, premierement, que les princes peuvent contraindre 
 par des lois penales tous les heretiques a se conformer a la 
 profession et aux pratiques de 1'Eglise Catholique. Deuxieme- 
 ment, que cette doctrine doit passer pour constante dans 
 1'lSglise, qui non-seulement a suivi, mais encore demande 
 de semblables ordonnances des princes. En etablissant ces 
 maximes comme constantes et incontestables parmi les 
 Catholiques," etc.
 
 ULTRAMONTANISM IN BELGIUM. 71 
 
 Si done les Catholiques disposes a obeir anx decisions du 
 Pape deviennent un jour les maitres en Belgique, ils suppri- 
 meront la liberte. Les journaux des veques ne le nient 
 plus depuis qu'ils esperent voir leur parti rester au pouvoir. 
 
 Chaque fois que le Pape actuel a conclu un Concordat 
 avec un gouvernement pret a lui obeir, il a stipule 1'into- 
 lerance absolue a 1'egard des dissidents. Comme type de ces 
 Concordats je citerai celni conclu le 22 Avril 1863, avec la 
 Eepublique de 1'^quateur, dont 1'Article I. porte : 
 
 "La religion Catholique, Apostolique et Eomaine con- 
 tinue d'etre la religion de la Eepublique de 1'^quateur. En 
 consequence, on ne pourra jamais permettre dans la Eepu- 
 blique 1'exercice d'aucun culte ni 1'existence d'aucune societe 
 qui auraient ete condamnes par 1'^glise." 
 
 Quand le Pape actuel stipule que tout Protestant, tout 
 franc-ma^on sera inexorablement proscrit d'un tat, Lord 
 Arundell peut-il dire que "no Pope has trenched upon the 
 political ground ? " 
 
 Supposez 1'Irlande separee de 1'Angleterre et gouvernee 
 par des vrais Ultramontains, ceux-ci seraient tenus de faire 
 un Concordat semblable a celui de l'quateur. N'est-ce pas 
 ainsi que les derniers Protestants ont ete expulses du Tyrol ? 
 
 Eecevez, Monsieur, &c., 
 
 MILE DE LAVELEYE. 
 
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