The recrudescence of infidelity, atheism, or materialism was a marked feature under the Second Empire, and the influence of religion daily and hourly declined; and all the wisdom and energy of the government seemed exerted to despiritualize, if we may be allowed the word, the French nation, to extinguish whatever remained of its old chivalric sentiments and its old love of glory, once so powerful in every French heart, and to render the nation intent only on things of the earth, earthy. His policy, being always that of half-measures, disguised as moderation, was not suited to make him true friends. His Italian campaign against Austria was pushed far enough to
make Austrians his enemies, but not far enough to make friends of the Italians. His consent to the annexation to Sardinia of the Italian duchies, the Neapolitan kingdom, and the Æmilian provinces of the Holy See, was enough to alienate the friends of international law, and to offend all conservatives and Catholics who had any sense of right or religion; but not enough, so long as he protected the Holy Father in the sovereignty of the city of Rome, to gain him the good-will of the infidels, communists, secret societies, or of the partisans of Italian unity. His policy of never pushing matters to extremes, and of winning and controlling all parties, by leaving each something to hope from him, but never what any one specially desired, necessarily resulted, as might have been foreseen, in offending all parties, and in gaining the confidence of no one. He had by his half-and-half measures succeeded in alienating all parties in France, and, by his Crimean war, his Italian policy, and his half-league with Bismarck to drive Austria out of Germany and increase the territory and power of Prussia, had succeeded equally well in losing the confidence of all the European nations with which he had any relations, and in finding himself without an ally or a friend.
The elections of 1869 disclosed the very unsatisfactory fact that he really had no party in France, and no support but his own creatures, and if he still retained a feeble majority in the popular vote, say of five hundred thousand votes out of an aggregate of six millions and a half, it was from a dread of another revolution, rather than from any attachment to him personally or to his government. This led him to a new line of policy, to abandon personal government, to make large concessions to what is
called self-government, and to throw himself into the arms of the apparently moderate liberals, as distinguished on the one hand from the church party, and on the other from the socialists, communists, or destructives, that is, of the feeblest and least popular party in France, and consented to the war against Prussia as his only chance of recovering, by military success, if he gained it, his popularity with the nation. His military expedition having failed, because he had, so to speak, unmartialized his empire, and because he was not really backed by the French people, he was obliged to surrender himself a prisoner of war with his army at Sedan, and his dynasty was expelled by a mob. He had abandoned the Holy Father in order to serve the liberals at home and abroad, deserted the cause of God, and God, and even the liberals, deserted him.
France is to-day not only prostrate under the iron heel of the Prussian, but is without any government in which any party in the nation has any confidence, and, if she recovers at all, her recovery must be slow and painful, and subject to numerous relapses. Prussia, as we have said, will not readily let go her hold, and never, so long as she can help it, suffer her to rise from her present condition. The remote cause is 1789, or rather the causes that led to that uncalled-for and most disastrous revolution; but the proximate cause we must look for in the lack of wise and practical statesmanship in Louis Napoleon, who sought to govern France according to a preconceived theory, worked out in his closet or his solitary studies. When he took the reins of government, the Catholic party were really in the ascendant; and, had he been a wise and practical statesman, he would have seen that the only chance of reorganizing
and governing France was not in laboring to maintain an equilibrium of parties, but in throwing himself resolutely on the side of the party, in studying and sustaining, without any compromise with the enemies of God and society, real Catholic interests, and in surrounding himself by thorough-going Catholic statesmen. Catholicity alone offered any solid basis for the state or for authority, order, or liberty. The other parties in the nation were all, in varying degrees, the enemies alike of authority and liberty, and none of them offered any solid basis of government. He should, therefore, have placed his whole confidence in Catholic France, and set them aside, and, if they rebelled, have suppressed them, if necessary, by armed force. Had he done so, and acted in concert with the Holy Father and the religious portion of the nation, he would have reorganized France, given solidity to his power, and permanence to his throne. But from policy or from conviction he chose to hold from 1789, and was incapable of understanding that no government that tolerates the revolutionary principle, or is based on infidelity or the rejection of all spiritual or supernatural authority above the nation, can stand. So-called self-government, without the church of God, teaching and governing all men and nations in all things spiritual, is only a delusion, for the nation needs governing no less than the individual.
But as we have already hinted, there are remoter causes of the present condition of France, and, we may add, of all old Catholic nations; and Catholics must not throw all the blame of that condition on the governments or the revolutionary spirit of 1789, still so rife. They have been and still are the great majority in all these nations, and why should
they not be held responsible for the prevalence of the revolutionary spirit, and for the bad secular governments they have suffered to oppress the church? Why have they suffered an anti-Catholic public opinion to grow up and become predominant? Why have they suffered the rights and interests of religion to be sacrificed to the falsely supposed rights and interests of the secular order? Can they pretend that no blame attaches to them for all this?
France has, at least since the death of Philip the Second of Spain, been the foremost Catholic nation of the world, and for a much longer time the leader of modern civilization; and in her we may see the causes that have produced her own fall and that of the other old Catholic nations. France, in this her supreme moment, has not, we believe, a single Catholic in the administration. The president is a believer in no religion; the minister of foreign affairs is no Christian, and besides is a man of very small abilities; the minister of worship and instruction says he is moral, but he is certainly no Catholic. The transition government, opposed as it is by all the other parties in the nation, of course must at present seek to gain the support of the bishops and clergy, or what we call the church party. In Spain, though the majority are Catholics and have votes, the government is in the hands of the enemies of the church. In Italy, a handful of infidels and miscreants are able, though the great body of the people are Catholics and have votes, to control the nation, to violate with impunity every principle of private right and of international law, to confiscate the property of the church and of religious orders, and to despoil the Holy Father, take possession of his capital, and hold him a prisoner
in his palace. Why is this suffered? Why is France and every other old Catholic nation ruled by men who have no regard for the church and are opposed to her freedom and independence? Whence in modern times comes this undeniable political inanity of Catholics? Why is it that popular literature, science, and public opinion are throughout the world decidedly anti-Catholic?