Let me not be accused of forgetting that since the triumph of Christianity, oppressive tyrannies and odious persecutions have occurred in, different Christian societies in the name of the Christian faith. No one more than I deplores and detests such facts. They were the work of the sins of men, not of the principles of Christianity, which, far from authorising them, condemns them. Water from the purest source is changed and polluted in its course over the surface of the earth, after it has been exposed to the stormy atmospheric influences. In creating man free, God left him a part and a share in his own destiny and in the events which determine it. Christianity, emanating from God, marks out and combats uncompromisingly all evil desires and bad motives, all the excesses and all the weaknesses of man's selfishness: she has not destroyed them; she did not at once restore innocence to man nor make him a present of virtue: he is bound to labour in the work of his own control and of his own reformation; the Gospel is a Mirror in which, if he looks at himself, he may, it is true, behold the stains upon his soul and upon his life, but those stains proceed from himself, and not from the mirror, which only enables him to see them. When we lay to the charge of the Christian Religion the fatal errors, the unlawful passions and actions which have appeared under its name in the history of Christian Societies, we acquit without reason men, whether princes or nations, learned or ignorant, of the responsibility that weighs upon them; we ignore what Christianity commands and what she forbids; we demand from her that which she has not promised.
Of history thus far. I now confine myself to the present epoch and to the problems which the actual relations of Christianity to Liberty present. What are the principal obstacles at the present day in the way of the establishment of a real and lasting Liberty, and what are the means within our reach to surmount them? In other terms, which express my meaning more exactly, What are our infirmities to retard, what our strength to accelerate, the establishment of a free government? Is Christianity an obstacle to us in this work or a help, an ill or a remedy?
It is with a profound feeling of sadness that I see eminent men, men truly Christian, incessantly depicting in the most sombre colours society as it now exists, and representing it as only a prey to political and moral diseases now acute, now indolent, as deprived thereby of all title to respect, and of all hope of amelioration, incapacitated at one time for orderly life, at another for Liberty. As for straightforward attacks upon our vices and failings, our errors and shortcomings, I complain not of them however violent: nations as well as individuals require to be often admonished frankly and with severity; the rudeness which shakes them is more salutary than the indulgence which cradles them to sleep. But what I regret and deplore in the attitude and in the language of these worthy Christian Censors, is not that they scrupulously and unsparingly expose prevalent evils, our bad propensities, and our foolish pretensions; but that they ignore what good there is in us, the progress which we make, and the just and salutary results to which we are tending. The simultaneous presence, the profound intermixture, of good and evil, of virtue and vice, of wisdom and folly, is the chronic sore of man and of human societies; this is no new fact, no evil which we are the first to endure and for which we are the first to be responsible; it is the old condition of the world as it appears from the constant testimony of History; each of its ages has incurred and has merited reproaches, not the same, but at least as serious as those laid to the charge of our age; and if we were suddenly transported to any other epoch of the past, it matters not to which, I do not hesitate to affirm that we would not willingly accept that epoch in exchange for our own, nor should we even very much like to contemplate the spectacle. Severity is well, but justice is due to different periods and different conditions of society. In the last hundred years we have gained more, both in morality and in common sense, than we have ever forgotten.
And here I am met by a question respecting which I will explain my view unreservedly and at once. Society in France has reached its actual condition only by a progressive effort, an advance more or less perceptible, more or less rapid, but not without numerous interruptions and vicissitudes; it has sought to escape in turn from the feudal system, from the pretensions and the selfish contests of the great nobles, from the predominance of the Court, from arbitrariness, from the improvidence and caprices of absolute power. National unity, civil equality, and political liberty have been, throughout the whole course of our history, the objects of our aim and desire. Our greatest thinkers, the actors on the stage of our Politics, the nation itself, with its tendency dimly marked, yet powerful, have constantly proceeded in this direction and towards this object. The Revolution of 1789 was the most violent and most serious explosion of this incessant travail of France. Was it pregnant with fruitful consequences, or is the issue to be now deplored? France believed that she had then gained a great victory, not only for herself, but for all mankind. Did she deceive herself? Have we been for so many centuries proceeding in a good road or in a bad road, towards success or towards delusion? Are we progressing, or are we declining? It is a question upon which eminent men, and men whose opinions are entitled to every respect, are, at the present day, not all of the same opinion; for whereas some persist in a cry of triumph, others give but utterance to gloomy and alarming prognostics.
I have some right to say that no one is more struck, more shocked than I am by the crimes, faults, errors, and follies both of opinion and action generated by this French Revolution; I never hesitated openly to characterise them as, in my opinion, they deserved; indeed the severe contests through which I have had to pass in my public career may, perhaps, in some degree have originated in my sincerity upon this subject. I had to confront many prejudices, and to wound much self-love. I regret no sentiment which I felt, and I retract no language which I used. But in spite of the strong anti-revolutionary opinions which have been attributed to me, I was and still am convinced that, upon the whole, whatever the evil which that Revolution occasioned, and is occasioning, it nevertheless, served the good cause both of the nation and of Humanity; I believe that France and the world will gain by it more than they suffered, or are suffering, and that we are, in the midst of all our trials, still in an æra of progress, and not at the commencement of a decline. I derive motives for my Optimism upon this subject in the sphere of ideas as well as in that of facts. Theoretically the principles of 1789 contain a large share of truth, truth pregnant of consequence, truth superior to the share of error which they contain, and which is, nevertheless, large. Historically the tendency and the travail of opinion which have been for centuries a source to France of incontestable progress in the way of justice, liberty, and social happiness, cannot have become, all of a sudden, a cause of decline. Practically, in spite of all its ills and all its shortcomings, the present century has no cause to dread a comparison with past centuries. There never has been any epoch in the history of French society in which it would have bettered its condition by halting, or to which it should wish to return.
I revert to my question; what perils, what obstacles, do our social institutions and our manners oppose to the establishment of Liberty with effect and upon a lasting footing? Is Christianity of a nature to stand us in good stead, or to hurt us in such a work?
All earnest men, all clear-sighted men, at the present day, whether they are Conservatives or Liberals, Christians or Free-thinkers, Catholics or Protestants, are unanimous in deploring the preponderance of material interests, the thirst for physical and vulgar pleasures, and the habits of selfishness and effeminacy which they generate.