THE FRENCH LIBERAL CATHOLICS.
(TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.") SIR,—Perhaps you will grant me a little of your space for a few words in answer to your appreciation of an article on French Catholicism which you have done me the honour of noticing in your last number. My statement of the bias of re- ligious reaction and the progress thereof before the accession of Napoleon I. to a dictatorial power relates to a fact that has hitherto been generally overlooked, but which, none the less for that, is a historical truth beyond the denial of Catholic historians themselves. Your remark that the new Church must have re- sisted the change introduced by Napoleon by means of the Con- cordat, as well as the old Huguenots, had it owned the importance my statement attributes to it, is no doubt such an objection as would immediately occur to the reader ; but a mature consideration of the respective states of the old Huguenot Church of France and its youngest sister will obviously show that the former, as based on a creed of ancient root, was gifted with powers of resistance which were logically denied to a schism of so recent date as that which was nipped in its bud by the first of the Napoleons.—I am,
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