Watson's Jeffersonian Magazine, January, 1907

by Various

Disestablishment in France.

While in England there are issues which dispute the first place with the Education bill, there can be no doubt as to the pre-eminence, just at this time, of the administration of the law providing for separation of Church and State in France. It was early in December, 1905, that the French Senate adopted a measure which abrogated the Concordat, signed in 1801 by the First Napoleon and Pope Pius VII. This measure had already passed the Chamber of Deputies in July. In France the churches are owned by the state and the clergy, regardless of denomination, are supported by the government, a member of the cabinet known as the Minister of Public Worship, having supervision of ecclesiastical affairs. According to the terms of the new bill, no newly made clergyman of any denomination is to receive support from the government of the republic. Those now getting it from the state will continue to do so, but the appropriations are to be decreased as the pensions and salaries of the clergyman now in office expire or are withdrawn. The churches and other places of religious worship will continue to belong to the state, but they are to be leased to congregations of the churches or denominations now worshipping in them. The Vatican is bitterly opposing the separation act, and there has been considerable delay in forming the associations to take over the church property under the terms of the law. Originally it was provided that the period during which these associations should be formed would expire on December 11, 1906, but there is no intention on the part of the Clemenceau ministry, which came into power late in October, to persecute the church. M. Briand, Minister of Public Worship and the author of the bill, announced in the Chamber of Deputies on Nov. 10, that church property not claimed by the “cultural associations” by Dec. 11 would pass under control of the state and finally go to the communes at the end of the ensuing year, but that in the meantime the churches will remain at the disposition of the clergy. The way is thus left open to the Vatican by the admission of the possibility that church property can be granted by state decree to associations formed before December 11, 1907.

The government’s inventories of church property were completed without arousing as much hostility as they did in the beginning but as we go to press great excitement prevails.

To Abolish Capital Punishment.

Not only is the French government pursuing a peaceful policy toward the church, as far as possible, but a humane measure is now pending which is well worthy of an era of civilization and enlightenment. A parliamentary commission, to which the matter was referred, has, by a vote of eight to two, reported in favor of abolishing the death penalty, and substituting life imprisonment. In extreme cases, solitary confinement is recommended. It is not generally known, perhaps, that many of the leading countries of Europe have long since abolished the death penalty, except in trials by court martial. It seems a mockery that Russia should be no exception to this rule, but in point of fact it was the Empress Catherine the Great who took the initiative in abolishing capital punishment. That the law is apparently disregarded is due to the fact that the greater part of Russia is subjected to what is known as “the minor state of siege,” which admits of the application of military law to the trial of political prisoners. Capital punishment was abolished in Greece forty odd years ago, and since that time Roumania, Portugal, and the Netherlands in the order named, have followed suit. It has been in comparatively recent years that Italy, Switzerland and Norway adopted the same measure of clemency, on the other side of the water, and Brazil and Venezuela in the southern part of our own hemisphere. So the civilized countries which still retain capital punishment are the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Sweden, Austria and Spain.

Liberalism in Spain.

The leaven of Liberalism has been working mightily in the direction of the severance of church and state in the land of the Inquisition.

The weak and capricious youngster who occupies the throne of Spain sent assurances to the Pope, late in October, of his filial attachment, and all that sort of thing. Six days later he signed the Associations bill, which had just passed the Chamber of Deputies, restricting the power and influence of the church in a degree but slightly less than in France. Then he made a little speech. There is an old Spanish custom that the premier should give a banquet at the end of each year that he and his colleagues in the ministry have been continuously in office. In view of the fact, as the young king recalled, that one hundred and twelve ministers had taken the oath before him during the four years and a half since his coronation, there had been no banquets at the expense of an incumbent premier. Alfonso, in signing the Associations bill, expressed the hope that Gen. Lopez Dominguez, who was then at the head of the Liberal ministry, with a large Liberal majority behind him in the Cortes, “would be able to reintroduce so pleasant a custom.”

And the premier said he hoped so, too.

Having passed the lower house and received the signature of the king, the reform measure which is agitating all Spain went back to the Senate. It must pass that body, and again receive the signature of the king, to become the law of the land.