LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE DRAGONNADES.
[TO TUE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR. "] SIR,—Although it is, no doubt, unusual with you to allow your columns to be occupied by remarks upon your own criticisms, I hope you will let me say one word on the subject of the Dragon'lades, for which, in your notice on the current number of the Mimth, you seem disposed to make the Church responsible, instead of Louis XIV. and his advisers.
I believe it is uncertain how far Louis was himself aware of the cruel nature of the measures carried out its his name ; but it is certain that the Dragotinades, like the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, formed part of a policy pursued by his Ministers at a time when he was at issue with the I loly See, the object of which policy was to gain credit for bins as a good Catholic while he was behaving in the most overbearing manner to the Pope. It is certain also that Innocent Xt. disapproved both of the Dragonnades and of the Revocation, as he disapproved also of the violent measures of James II. in England ; and that he was abused in consequence by the French courtiers for not being a good Catholic. The feelings of the Pope are expressed in a brochure put forth by his order in reply to the invectives of Talon, the Advocate-General of Louis, from which I make the following translation :—" The reunion of all the Protestants of France to the Roman Church is doubtless a work which would have gained the Kiug immortal glory, if the manner in which the execution of this great enterprise was undertaken had not spoilt it. The Pope could not have failed to acknowledge, not only in word, but in deed, and by new favours, the great service which his Majesty would thus have rendered to the Roman Church. The Church and all her ministers would have shown him by new marks of esteem and respect how much she was obliged to a prince who had laboured so powerfully and so efficaciously to increase the number of her children, by causing those who had unjustly separated themselves from her to return to her bosom. But the Pope, the Church, and her most wise ministers know that an increase of people is not always an increase of joy, according to the words, ' Thou last multiplied the people, and not increased the joy' (Isaiah ix. 3). They have too much discernment to see any great cause for rejoicing in an external and apparent conversion of nearly two millions of persons, who, for the most part, have only re-entered the fold of that Church in order to stain it by an infinite number of sacrileges, and to profane all that is most holy in her by professing the Roman religion without real change of sentiments."
M. Gerin, from whose pages I take this quotation (320), quotes also correspondence of the time in which it is mentioned that the Pope did not like to hear of the conversions worked by the Dragonnades, saying, " Qu'on se relevait d'une erreur pour retomber dans un autre," and " Qu'il me pouvait approuver ni le motif ui lea moyena de ces conversions a million, dont aucune n'etait volontaire."—I am, Sir, &c.,
TIIE WRITER IN THE " MONTH."
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