The unauthorised convents in France are pushing their resistance to
the new Law of Associations very far. The Carthusians, for example, on Wednesday barricaded the monastery against the agents of the law, and compelled the Government to employ soldiers, who broke the doors and arrested the monks praying in their chapel. The Capuchin friars have also barricaded themselves, and have, moreover, stirred up the peasantry to resist the police, causing in one or two cases serious riots. The idea seems to be that such scenes will irritate Roman Catholic feeling ; but quiet submission would probably have produced a deeper moral effect. Frenchmen are very apt to yield when they see that a law will be carried out if necessary by military force. We shall see how the elections are affected, but we always distrust statements about the attach. ment of Frenchmen to the Roman Church. If they are so attached, why do their representatives always approve anti- clerical laws, even when opposed to the first principles of liberty P It is a minority which makes mobs, and even of that minority how many will vote against M. Combes when sheltered by the secrecy of the ballot ?
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