During these six years the leaders of this war against religion have never dared to draw up a statistical account of the strength of the various religious bodies in France. In 1882 one of their followers, M. Alfred Talandier, on February 13, rashly proposed that a table should be officially prepared of the state of religious opinions in France; but the managers of the cause of 'moral unity' were too wily to walk into that trap; they quietly stifled the proposition. It really might be a little awkward, even for a Parliamentary oligarchy with a strongly-bitted Executive well in hand, to confront, let us say, 37,500,000 of Catholics, Protestants, Israelites, not to mention the Mussulmans in Africa, with a proposition to abolish a Budget of Worship amounting to a little over a franc a head, for the purpose of reducing France to a complete 'moral unity' of absolute unbelief in God and in the immortality of the human soul!
Cardinal Langénieux took possession, as I have said, of the Archi-episcopal See of Reims in November 1874. Seldom has the right man been put into the right place more exactly at the right moment. It was in September 1874 that M. Challemel-Lacour unfolded the Republican programme of war to the knife against all religion. In September 1874, too, as I have mentioned, the burning of the factory at Val-des-Bois called out a general demonstration of sympathy from the Catholic working-men's clubs all over France, which attracted public attention to the movement; and in October 1874 Pius IX. issued a brief recognising its importance and earnestly commending it.
The new Archbishop of Reims was exceptionally fitted by his training and his experience to promote such a movement.
He was a Benedictine of the school of Cluny, bred in the traditions of that illustrious Order, to which, without exaggeration, it may be said that we owe almost everything that is best worth having in our Western civilisation. For upon what does human society rest in the last resort if not upon the two great pillars of the rule of St. Benedict—Obedience and Labour? As a priest, the new Archbishop had successively and successfully administered two of the most important parishes in Paris, one in the workmen's quarter of the Faubourg St.-Antoine, the other in the quarter of the noblesse, in the Faubourg St.-Germain.
After a single year passed in the Episcopate at Tarbes, that pleasant city on the Adour which all the winds of the Pyrenees have not yet quite disinfected of the memory of Barère, he was translated to this great historic see in the prime of his vigour. For fifteen years he has so ruled it that the Christians of Reims and of the Marne now seize with delight upon every opportunity of manifesting their incorrigible indifference to the 'moral unity of France.' You meet workmen in the streets going about their work with religious medals openly displayed. The churches of Reims are filled with men on great Church festivals. Taking all the districts of the Marne together, the Revisionists and Monarchists at the elections of 1889 outnumbered considerably the Government Republicans. These latter polled 35,046 votes in the Marne, against 40,287 polled by the former. The Radicals, who are very strong in the first district of Reims, polled 11,037 votes there against a Revisionist vote of 9,230. Do not these figures show, what I believe to be the truth, that the 'true Republican' policy of reducing France to 'moral unity' by trampling on the traditions and coercing the consciences of the French people is steadily dividing the French people into two great camps—the camp of the Social and Radical revolution and the camp of the Monarchy? That there was no necessity for this is illustrated by what I have said as to the relations between the Cardinal Archbishop of Reims and the Republican Ministers of 1875 who came here on his invitation, and then took steps to secure the preservation and restoration of the Cathedral. One of these Republican Ministers, M. Léon Say, who is largely responsible for clothing the present Government with the power which it abuses, has just been signally humiliated by the present Government and the dominant majority.
In the second district of Bergerac in the Dordogne, the Monarchist candidate for the Chamber, M. Thirion Montauban, received 6,708 votes, against 6,439 given to his Republican competitor. I took a special interest in this election, because M. Thirion-Montauban is the present proprietor of the house of Michel de Montaigne, which came into his possession through his marriage with the daughter of M. Magne, the eminent Finance Minister of Napoleon III. I made a visit there late in the summer, and found him busy with his canvass, on lines of respect for personal liberty and the right of men to think their own thoughts as to life and death, which would have commanded the cordial sympathy of the great Gascon sceptic. The tower, the study, the bedroom of Montaigne are preserved by him with religious care. The inscriptions on the walls which John Sterling copied so lovingly half a century ago are there still, and if indeed there be a life of faith as Tennyson says, 'in honest doubt,' the Pyrrhonist seigneur who thought before Pascal that the true philosophy was to laugh at philosophy, would not find himself a stranger in his old haunt to-day because its lower hall has been consecrated as a chapel.
The opponents of M. Thirion-Montauban behaved throughout the contest with extraordinary violence, and on one occasion put him into serious personal peril. However, he was elected. When the Chamber met in November his election was contested. M. Léon Say took an active part in maintaining the validity of the returns which gave the seat to M. Thirion-Montauban, and the evidence in the case was overwhelmingly in his favour. Nevertheless after the Report of the Committee was made, the majority of the Chamber coolly invalidated the choice of the electors, and seated the candidate who had not been elected. It was an open secret that this was done quite as much to punish M. Léon Say as to exclude M. Thirion-Montauban.
Intolerant as the 'true Republicans' are towards their political opponents, they are still more intolerant towards those 'false Republicans' who hesitate at framing the policy of a French Republic in the nineteenth century upon the principles which led to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Were Socrates alive and a Frenchman, he would stand no chance for a government chair of philosophy in a competition with the little atheist Aristodemus, and were David Hume to reappear at Reims, where he got his early schooling, he would certainly find himself treated by the authorities as no better than a Catholic.
The irreligion of the Third Republic is a dogmatic irreligion. Bayle would find no favour in its eyes, because protesting, as he said he did 'from his inmost soul protest, against everything that was ever said or done,' he must of course protest against the Nihilism of M. Marcou and M. Paul Bert.
Unfortunately for the 'true Republicans,' it is essential to their success that with the religious faith they should also abolish the patriotic traditions of France. M. Jules Simon, a Republican and a Republican Minister of Public Instruction, has found himself compelled to denounce in the clearest and strongest language the deliberate attempt which these 'true Republicans' are making 'to teach the children of France that the glory of France began with 1789, and that it was never so great as under the Convention.'