The armed struggle in the East has scarcely attracted more universal attention than the civil struggle in France. France is trying to solve problems that touch her very life, and they are problems in which all men have a personal interest. The French questions are eminently questions of the day and of the age. The struggle going on there is one between the elements of society. MacMahon, Gambetta, “Henri Cinq,” “Napoléon Quatre”—these are but names. The fight is not on them and their personal merits or demerits. It is at bottom between the men who find the “be-all and the end-all here” in this world, and the men who believe that there is a God who made this world for his own purposes, who is to be obeyed, loved, and served, and according to whose law human society must conform itself, if it would fulfil the end for which it was created, have happiness in this world, and eternal happiness in the next.
The first class is not restricted to the men and women who figured in the Commune. These only compose its rank and file, and their sin is less, for multitudes of them sin through ignorance. It embraces also the men of the new science, the professors in the atheistic universities; statesmen of the Falk and Lasker type; preachers of the Gospel as expounded by Dean Stanley; philosophers and scientists, like Darwin or Herbert Spencer, like Huxley and Tyndall, like, descending a grade, Professor Fisk or Youmans; women like some we know here at home, who tread the platform with so masculine a stride; the men of “progress” such as Brigham Young was, such as, in a more intellectual sense, John Stuart Mill was, such as “tribunes of the people” like Charles Bradlaugh, or his friend M. Gambetta, or Garibaldi, are; poets like Victor Hugo or Algernon Swinburne. The men who have the teaching power in the secularized and secular universities of the day, who shape a purely secular education, who edit too many of our leading newspapers, who preach atheism or blasphemy from pulpits supposed to be consecrated to the service of Christ, are equally members of this party with the outcasts of society and the avowed conspirators against order. This it was that gave its significance to the late French elections; that induced men to study so carefully the name, character, antecedents, and political color of each man elected; that caused to be telegraphed on the very day of the elections the long files of the deputies to England, to Germany, to Austria, to Italy, even to these distant shores. Why, such a fact as that last mentioned is unexampled. For the time being the world centred in France.
This is a dangerous pre-eminence for France. The country is for ever in a fever. It is in a constant state of crisis. Ministry after ministry is tried, found wanting, and thrown aside. The truth is the parties cannot coalesce. There is a barrier between them that it seems cannot be overthrown. The elections decided nothing. They left the country and parties in much the same condition as before. As a matter of fact the conservatives, if any, gained, but the gain was too small to indicate the will of the country. We doubt if the country has a will beyond the desire to be at peace, which the contentions of its own parties alone threaten. M. Gambetta, the leader of the radicals, is for ever clamoring for a republic. Well, he has a republic; why not make the most of it? He has certainly as good a republic as he could make. The difficulty with him is that the republic which he wishes to lead must be founded on the negation of Christianity. In France the dividing lines between creeds are very clearly drawn. Protestantism counts for nothing there, and the little that there was of it has gone to pieces. Gambetta’s bête-noir is “clericalism”—i.e., Catholicity. He would abolish the Catholic Church, not merely as an adjunct of the state but altogether. No Catholicity must be taught in the schools; that is a vital principle with him. The pope must have nothing to say to Catholics in France. The clergy must receive no pay, scanty as it is, from the state. No such thing as a free Catholic university is to be tolerated. The children of France are to be brought up and educated free-thinkers, and be made to turn out true Gambettists. In a word, the foundation of M. Gambetta’s scheme for the regeneration of France is to abolish the Christian religion there. Irreligion is to be the corner-stone of his republic.
This is a pleasing prospect for French Catholics, and it may be necessary to remind our able editors who denounce “clericalism” so lustily, and see no hope for France but in the republic of M. Gambetta, that there are still Catholics in France; that the bulk of the nation is Catholic. It is a pleasing prospect, we say, for them to contemplate the suppression of their religion at the word of M. Gambetta. Is it very surprising that the oracle of the new republic should only bring hatred on the very name of republic to men who can see in it, as expounded by its oracle, nothing but the most odious tyranny? It was John Lemoinne, if we remember rightly, who in the anti-Christian Journal des Debats said, on the retirement of Mr. Gladstone from office, that religion lay at the bottom of all the great questions that move the world. If that be so, and it is so, why not recognize the fact? Must the French republic which M. Gambetta advocates and our republican editors on this side advocate be first and above all an irreligious despotism? Must it begin with religious persecution? M. Gambetta says that it must.
We are not accusing him wrongfully. His own words express his meaning plainly enough. It must be borne in mind that the epithet “clericalism,” in the mouths of French radicals, means Catholicity. Every French Catholic who believes in and practises his religion is a “clerical”; so every Catholic who believes and does the same all the world over is, in the mouths of anti-Catholics, an “ultramontane.” If there is one lurid page in all history that sears the eyes of humane and sensible men, it is that of the French Revolution—the most awful revolt, save its offspring, the Commune, against all order, human and divine, that the world has witnessed. Yet “the French Revolution,” and none other, is M. Gambetta’s oriflamme.
Just on the eve of the elections he addressed an immense meeting at the Cirque Américain in Paris. “Amongst those present,” says the correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph, “I observed the most prominent members of the various groups of the Left. When the great orator of the evening (M. Gambetta) appeared, he was received with a shout of welcome, renewed and continued for several minutes. There were only two cries issued from every lip: ‘Vive la République!’ and ‘Vive Gambetta!’ ... On the latter rising to speak he was received with another storm of cheers.”
Well, and what had he to say to this enthusiastic assembly and to the leading deputies of the Left? We can only find space for a few sentences, though the whole speech is instructive, as giving the character and aims of the man:
“What is at stake?” he asked. “The question is the existence of universal suffrage and of the French Revolution (Loud cheers). That is the question.” This declaration, which was so uproariously cheered, needs no comment. He made a little prophecy, that was unfortunate for him, regarding the returns of the elections. The prophecy turned out to be false, even though M. Gambetta assured his friends by saying: “I should not risk my credit with you five days before the event on a rash statement.” “The country will say,” he thundered on, “at the forthcoming elections that she wants the republic administered by republicans, and not by those who obey the voice of the Vatican.” He appealed to the example of this country, where he said, with brilliant vagueness, “law has taken the place of personal vanity, and conscience that of intrigue.” We accept the example. There are millions of good enough republicans in this country who certainly “obey the voice of the Vatican” as faithfully as any “clerical” in all France, and who find that voice agreeing admirably with their republicanism. Indeed, that same voice has recently, with justice and openly, proclaimed that in the republic the Pope is more Pope than in any other country; and we have yet to learn that the republic has suffered any hurt from that declaration.
“There is no principle,” said M. Gambetta, “that binds together the three parties which are now opposed to us, and the nation will do justice to their monstrous alliance. There is but one binding force, and that is called clericalism. Those parties wanted a word of order to rally a formidable army against us; they found it in Jesuitism.” And he closed his speech by saying:
“I feel that what Europe fears most is that France should again fall into the hands of the Ultramontane agents. I fear that the universal suffrage may not take sufficient account of surprise and intimidation. We must look this question in the face, and be able to say to Europe, pointing to clericalism, Behold the vanquished!”