“We shall insist upon knowing,” said he, “whether the government accept the responsibility for the campaign that is being waged by means of impure calumnies against the Catholics of France. The patriotism of French Catholics cannot be called in question; it is above suspicion. In what we are doing—in what we wish to do—we are claiming but our rights. We demand, however, that the government, to which we give our support, should free itself from the responsibility for the attacks made upon us, which render our position intolerable.”
M. Simon seems to have perceived that matters were growing serious, and that he could not much longer continue to pretend to serve two masters; but he resolved to struggle still to maintain his position. On the following day, after M. Leblond had put his question and supported it by a harangue in which he urged that the government should at once proceed to repress by the most stringent means “the Ultramontane intrigues,” M. Simon addressed the Chamber in a speech highly disingenuous and full of double meanings. It was virtually an appeal to the Gambetta faction to permit him to remain in power in order that he might do their work; while at the same time it was an attempt to throw dust in the eyes of the Catholics by hypocritical professions of respect for religion and its rights. The government had been blamed, he said, for permitting Catholic newspapers to assail Italy; but the government could not prevent this; the law would punish the writers, if what they wrote was punishable under the law. On the other hand, the government would not tolerate any attack upon the Catholic religion—“which it sincerely respected”—and would protect the rights and liberties of Catholics. In fact, the church in France enjoyed to-day more freedom than at any previous time. But it was necessary to limit this freedom. For instance, the government “tolerates” the existence of Catholic societies so long as they are used only for the purposes set forth in their statutes, but it had interdicted the Catholic committees which were employed in political undertakings and which had “formidable ramifications.” Having gone thus far, M. Simon thought he might as well go a little further, and he proceeded to make a statement which was a direct insult to the intelligence of the whole Catholic world. “The Catholic petitions and the demonstration made by the Bishop of Nevers,” said he, “were based upon a fiction—namely, that the Pope is a prisoner in the Vatican”; “the law of guarantees has taken every care of the spiritual independence of the Holy Father”! And he then went on to condemn the petitions as “an interference in the internal affairs of a neighboring country,” and to remind the Chamber that the government had done all in its power to suppress these lawful manifestations of Catholic feeling. The government, he added, would continue to protect the clergy as long as they confined themselves to their spiritual duties, but would in the future punish them severely “if they encroached upon the civil power”—that is, if they continued to exercise their freedom and to discharge their duty by protesting against the acts of the Sardinian robbers, and by seeking to enlighten the public mind and conscience as to the real condition of the head of the universal church.
This speech of the President of the Council was a virtual surrender to the Extreme Left; but M. Gambetta was determined to force a more formal and complete capitulation. On the following day, May 4, he resumed the debate in a speech which he had carefully prepared, and which he delivered with great eloquence and animation. Its spirit is expressed in the sentence which was received with the loudest applause by the Extreme Left: “It is time that lay society should drive back the church to that subordinate rank which belongs to her in the state.” M. Gambetta, our readers will perceive, is very far in advance of M. Cavour. The Italian statesman dreamed of “a free church in a free state”; the French revolutionist demands an enslaved church in an atheistic and communistic state. Listen to him:
“The church has set citizens by the ears, alarmed France, and troubled Europe. It is always thus: the monarchy was often compelled to resist the encroachments of the church, but the republic must do more, for now the state is assaulted on all sides in the name of religion and her very existence is threatened. The Catholic leaders—ex-ministers, senators, and members of this Chamber—have exalted the Pope as the supreme ruler of France and of the world; when the Pope has issued an order they exclaim: 'Rome has spoken and must be obeyed.’ The Pope on the 12th of March commanded that an agitation in his favor should be everywhere set on foot; immediately we behold deputations of Catholic royalists calling upon the Minister of Foreign Affairs, convocations being held, and petitions circulated in spite of the feeble pretences of the government to suppress them. It will not do to say that the church in France must have the liberty which she enjoys elsewhere; she shall not have it, for the reason, among others, that here the church is bound to the state, and the state is responsible for the language and the acts of the bishops. No longer must it be permitted that the Pope may address himself directly to France, without having first obtained the sanction of the civil power, and without first submitting to it his bulls, briefs, and allocutions. No longer must the bishops be allowed to address themselves to mayors and prefects, conveying to the civil functionaries of the republic orders received from Rome. It is useless to say that only a few of the bishops have done these things; for these bishops represent the whole hierarchy, the church is unanimous, and its submission to Rome is complete. There is no such thing as resistance or opposition in the church; the old Gallican liberties have been swept away by the Syllabus and by the Vatican Council. The Pope must not be permitted again to usurp the rights of the state, as he has recently done in appointing one of his bishops chancellor of a French university and giving him the right of conferring degrees. I cannot understand how it happened that the papal instrument making this appointment was ever permitted to enter France! We must no longer endure these things; we must drive back the church to the place where she belongs. We need not fear that the people will not be on our side; if there is one thing more than another that is repugnant to France, it is the yoke of clericalism; and it cannot be too strongly said that clericalism is the enemy of the country.”
To this bitter harangue M. Jules Simon had no reply; he contented himself with declaring that he and the cabinet were not subject to the dictation of any power behind the throne, and that perfect harmony existed between the marshal and himself. He hastened to add that he would accept, in the name of the government, the order of the day proposed by M. Leblond, which was in these words:
“The Chamber of Deputies, considering that the recrudescence of Ultramontane manifestations constitutes a danger to the domestic and foreign peace of the country, calls upon the government to make use of the lawful means which it has at its disposal.”
This was adopted by a vote of 361 against 121; thus M. Gambetta won his victory, and, so far as M. Simon could pledge it, the government was pledged to carry out the demands of the foes of the church. This was on the 4th of May. Marshal MacMahon, it appears, hesitated as to his future course; but it appears also that he was conscious he had been betrayed into an intolerable position. He seems to have determined, from that moment, to dismiss M. Simon, and to appeal to the country to sustain him in his refusal to comply with the unconstitutional and tyrannical demands of the revolutionists; but, with what may seem to some an unwise timidity, he resolved to wait for some other act on the part of M. Simon which might be made the immediate ground for his dismissal.
He had not long to wait. During the next few days the sittings of the Chamber were characterized by great excitement and tumult. M. Simon was made the target of continual attacks; he was accused of having formerly belonged to the International Society, and of having been morally in league with the Communists who assassinated the Archbishop of Paris. He defended himself with vehemence, but his affiliation with the Gambetta faction became daily more apparent. He promised to draw up and send to the bishops a stringent circular, warning them that they would be held to a strict responsibility for all their future acts. The Committee of the Budget, on the 12th of May, reported in favor of according the sum annually paid for the support of the church, $10,626,199; but it accompanied this recommendation with the remark that it was now the duty of the government to revive and enforce a number of obsolete and almost forgotten laws which had been enacted, from time to time, by various governments which had desired to enslave the church. If these obsolete enactments should now be enforced, no French bishop could visit Rome without the consent of the government; no subscriptions for the Pope could be raised in France; no papal brief or bull could enter France, and no council or diocesan synod could assemble, without the consent of the government; and the ecclesiastical seminaries would be compelled to teach that the civil government is supreme in all things. M. Simon, it was understood, was about to enforce these unjust and virtually abrogated restrictions, and the Gambettists were in high feather. But their exultation was soon to be changed into disappointment and rage.
The Chamber of Deputies had before it a bill modifying the organization of municipalities, and another measure for the repeal of the law on the restrictions of the press which had been passed two years ago to secure social order. The cabinet had consulted upon these measures and had agreed upon the line which the ministers should take in opposing them. To this agreement M. Simon was a consenting party; it was well understood between him and the marshal that when these measures came up for decision M. Simon should explain that the government could not consent to them. But the new masters of M. Simon held him to the engagement he had made with them; and when these measures were brought forward M. Simon found it convenient to be absent from the Chamber, and the government was again betrayed. The patience of Marshal MacMahon was now exhausted; he was perhaps glad that M. Simon had so soon furnished him with a sufficient reason for his dismissal. Early on the morning of May 16 the marshal, having, it is said, passed a sleepless night, addressed the following note to M. Simon, and sent it to him without consulting with any of the other members of the government:
“I have read in the Journal Officiel the report of last night’s proceedings in the Chamber of Deputies. I observed with surprise that neither you nor the Keeper of the Seals put forward from the tribune the reasons which might have prevented the repeal of a press law, passed less than two years ago on the motion of M. Dufaure, and which you yourself quite recently wished to see applied in the courts of law. And yet it had been decided in several meetings of the cabinet, and indeed in the council held yesterday morning, that you and the Keeper of the Seals should undertake to oppose the motion for the repeal of the law.... In view of such an attitude on the part of the chief of the cabinet, the question naturally arises whether he retains sufficient influence to assert his views successfully, An explanation on this point is indispensable; for I myself, although not, like you, answerable to Parliament, have a responsibility towards France which to-day more than ever must engross my attention.”