The French Republicans have introduced a new Educational Law, which
will take away from the mixed juries the right of conferring degrees, and restore that right to the State alone. But further, M. Jules Ferry's Bill is intended to interfere with the right of education, and to recognise no educational body as competent to give students the proper certificates for examina- tion, unless they belong to religions recognised by the State. Thus all the Jesuit Colleges will be struck at once, if the Bill passes, and compelled to merge their establishments in the edu- cational colleges of the Catholic clergy of France. This seems to us a very unwise attack on the freedom of the family to select for itself the teachers of the young. If Jesuitism is to be dis- couraged in France, it should be by the distrust of Catholic parents. The only effect of trying to strike a blow at it through the State will probably be to encourage the growth of an unacknowledged Jesuitism, which is more dangerous than that which fights under its true colours. Religious partisanship is still the danger of the Republic, as it was the danger of that Reactionary Government, which was Republican only in form.
Previous page
