M. ZOLA AND THE PAPACY.
To THE EDITOP. Or THE " iPECTATOR."] SIR,—M. Zola is but repeating in the nineteenth century the part played by Voltaire in the eighteenth. Then, as now, the Roman Church aided and abetted the cruelties and injustices of the State. Then, as now, the freethinker was "on the side of the angels." " When an innocent man was broken on the wheel at Toulouse when a brave officer, borne down by public injustice, was dragged with a gag in his mouth to die on the Place de Greve, a voice instantly went forth from the banks of Lake Leman which made itself heard from Moscow to Cadiz, and which sentenced the unjust Judges to the contempt and detestation of all Europe."— (Macaulay, "Ranke's History of the Popes.") The Roman Church of that day drank deep of the cup it had tendered to others before the century was scored. Will the whirligig of time bring its revenges before this generation passes ?—I am,
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