Such is the law: plain, clear, and well-defined. There is no mistaking it: it is “goodly writ.” Paraphrased, it runs thus:
There is a body of men—and women even; for though we attach ourselves to the chief point at issue, the phrase, “Those congregations of a similar character,” may cover a very extensive ground, and seems ingeniously framed for abuse—in Germany, possessed of certain property, colleges, [pg 002] churches, seminaries, schools; possessed of certain rights as free citizens of a free land: liberty of action and of thought. Most of them are natives of the soil; many of them members of the highest families in the empire. They have been doing their work all these years without let or hindrance, or rumor of such. The state found no fault with them, or at least never expressed it. Consequently, they went on without changing one iota of their principles or mode of action, teaching in the universities, colleges, and schools: preaching in the churches; gathering together communities; giving themselves free voice in a free press, that all might hear and tell openly what they were doing, and what they purposed doing. Without a moment's warning, without a trial or even a mockery of a trial, the state swoops down on them, seizes their property, breaks up their communities, turns them out of their homes adrift upon the world, proclaims them outlaws, banishes them the empire, save such as were born in it—one of whom happens to be a cousin to the emperor himself; and these latter they proscribe to fixed limits under the surveillance of the police.
And such is law! The law of the new German Empire: the first great step in its reconstruction!
Short of death, the state could not do more utterly to destroy a body of men. Condensed into a word, these measures are—demolition. As death alone can make their penalty supreme, the crimes of these outlaws ought to be proportionately great. What, then, are these crimes that in a moment produced such a sentence?
Here we must confess to as great an inability to answer the question as Prince Bismarck or his followers found themselves; for the very simple fact that there are no crimes to answer for. This may account in part for the extra severity of the sentence. Only make the penalty big enough, and the popular mind needs to hear nothing of the crime. Prince Bismarck knows the value of the old adage, “Give a dog a bad name, and hang him.”
When the Communists seized upon Paris, we all knew what to expect: scant justice and speedy sentence; none of your careful balancing of right and wrong. They took what they could and gave no reason. This model German government, this new power which we all tremble at, though it promises to regenerate us, follows la Commune pretty closely in this its first essay of power.
In the even balance of the law, it is useless to talk of conspiracies, parties, plots, and this, that, and the other. Show us those conspiracies; point them out in black and white; let the law lay its inexorable finger upon them, and say, such and such actions have been committed by such and such persons; here are the proofs of guilt—and we are satisfied. Though the condemned may have been our dearest friends, we have only to acknowledge the justice of the sentence, to deplore that we have been deceived in them, and to range ourselves as honest men and true citizens on the side of the law. But in the present case, we have not had one single fact produced nor attempted to be produced; not a crime in the varied category of crimes has been laid at the door of the accused. We have had instead from such men as Bismarck and his tools vague generalities of “conspiracy,” “enemies at home as well as abroad,” intermingled with fears for the safety of the new empire—“the new creation”—padded in with bluster and empty bombast, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
And in the face of this advanced nineteenth century, this era of facts, figures, and freedom, on the strength of evidence that would not suffice to condemn the veriest scoundrel that ever stood face to face with justice in the dock, a body of intellectual gentlemen, beloved in the country from which they are banished, are proclaimed outlaws, enemies of their own nation, faithless to their country and their emperor, unfit to live in the land that is proud of them, and driven without scrip or staff into the world.
Let us bear it in mind, before quitting this point, that the feeling of their countrymen as well as of the whole Catholic world is with them. We all know how a government, and particularly a strong government, can influence the public voice and manipulate votes. Well, petitions rolled in for the suppression of the Jesuits; but, strange to say, roll in as they might, a still vaster number came to retain them; and on the strength of the former, the measure was put before parliament and passed. This fact of the popular voice proclaiming itself boldly in favor of the Order is very significant when we take into account the forces arrayed against each other, though, in truth, the battle was all on the side of the government. On the one hand we have the Prince-Chancellor working the engine of the state—his own creation—with every nerve that is in him, joining himself in the debates with speeches of the bitterest and most inflammatory character; on the other, we have a body of 708 men! Such was their number in Germany according to the statistics of last year; the total number throughout the world being 8,809.
To this, then, the contest reduces itself apparently. These are the ostensible foes. The new and powerful German government, in the first flush of an unprecedented success, headed by the “terrible Chancellor,” pitted might and main against 708 individuals, staking its very life on the contest. What evenly matched foes! For the Jesuits are the sole object of this attack, mind. Listen to Minister Delbrück in his speech on the third reading of the bill: “It is my duty, in the name of the confederate government, to repudiate anew that view of the question which identifies the Society of Jesus with the Catholic Church.... In such an allegation they can discover nothing more than an arbitrary perversion of notorious facts: a falsification which is the more to be deplored, as it might serve to deprive the measure in circles outside of this assembly of its true character, and impress on it another which it does not possess.”