A " DETAIL " OF THE FRENCH REVISION.
BY far the most interesting of M. Ferry's proposals for the revision of the French Constitution is contained in the clause abolishing the demand now made on the Churches sup- ported by the State to offer up prayers for Parliament. It is impossible for any one who knows how completely Second Chambers have in France failed to accrete power to themselves to care very much whether seventy senators are elected for life or for nine years, or whether the whole Senate is chosen by the Councils-General plus a few communal delegates, or by the Councils-General plus more delegates than before. Nor will any student of history give a second thought to the clause forbidding Congress to "change the form of Government,"— that is, to abolish the Republic. If the Republic is to die, it will be buried rapidly enough, whether or not the Assembly is or is not free to pronounce its sentence and compose its epitaph. No Parliament that we know of has ever abolished the Royal Veto in Great Britain. But that a Government, in its drift almost Conservative, should, in order to sweeten a Bill distrusted as too Conservative, propose to reject—and, indeed, as we understand it, to prohibit—the public prayers on its behalf offered by all who believe in God, Catholics, Protestants, and Jews alike, is a most significant fact. It would be one even if the proposal were likely to be rejected ; but it is sure to be rapturously welcomed by the Deputies, and, if eloquently denounced by some Senators, will be passed with- out a dangerous division—the Left, even among Senators, _moderately approving, and the Right declaring that if the -Republic chooses to reject the favour of God, so much the better for the Monarchy. The significance does not lie in the fact that Government and people are alike in- different to religion, for that has been the case in many countries and many ages. The multitude in any country has seldom been very religious, though it has often been ex- ceedingly orthodox, and the governing class has rarely been without a deep taint of Sadduceeism. But it is not indiffer- ence which prompts a proposal such as this. Indifference would suggest leaving the matter alone, as any other etiquette is left alone, as English Radicals leave alone the haughty formula in which the Sovereign's assent to a Bill is signified to Parliament. The proposal is dictated and will be carried by dislike of the religious idea, as not only false, but de- grading, as an influence tending to lower the intellectual status of all who, even by implication, accept its favour. Of course, N. Ferry and his colleagues who have to deal with Popes, and pay three Churches, and "avenge martyrs" in Tonquin, and perform a great many other acts of outward respect for the religious forces, will say, and do say, that to order prayers for Parliament is to interfere with reli- gious liberty. But they know, as they say it, that they are talking nonsense. Nobody is asked to pray who does not hold his office by virtue of his solemn avowal that he believes in prayer ; nor is there any Christian, or Jew, or member of any creed acknowledging God, who will not acknowledge that to pray for God's influence, 'even on a bad Government, is entirely right. Radicals did ' not emit the prayer for the Ministry because Lord Beaconsfield was its head. He wanted their prayers most. The proposal is made in order to conciliate disbelievers, and them only ; and in making it, M. Ferry expresses his belief that the majority of electors in France—that is, of all adult males—are dis- believers, who are not Saddueees, nor even contemptuous sceptics, but men actively annoyed when other men pray to God for a Government which they themselves permanently
approve. He acts just as he acted when he supported the suppression of chaplaincies in the Army, under a full conviction that in France the religious men are so few that an act of savage persecution—for the suppres- sion by force of the means of confession before imminent death is, among Catholics, that and nothing less—will make no appreciable difference to the popularity of those who decree it.
It is very difficult to Englishmen, among whom aggressive atheism is the most rare of all conditions of mind,—though we probably underrate the extent of the passive atheism here,— to believe that this can be the true attitude of the modern French peasantry. They prefer to explain it as hostility to the Roman Catholic Church, or antagonism to State interference, or disgust produced by the meddlesomeness of priests, who, in the absence of home cares, interest themselves in everybody ; and no doubt all those sentiments help to swell the volume of negative opinion. But as the years go on, and Act succeeds Act, it becomes very difficult for calm observers to accept this explanation as complete. No measure which seams to be hos- tile to religion is ever rejected in the Chamber, or ever passed without there appearing in the new law some trace of contempt. The majorities for such measures have grown from tens to hundreds, and yet we never hear of a Deputy being dismissed for his anti-religious vote. If there is anything certain about the present condition of France, it is that peasant electors bully their representatives without mercy, that clauses for which three Deputies out of four would vote at once—as, for in- stance, the exemption of University graduates from the con- scription,—cannot be passed " beeauee of the constituencies," yet when the vote expels a cure from his schools, or orders the removal of religious emblems, or expels the clergy from the hospitals or the regiments, or rejects prayer even from prayerful people, no body of peasants interferes,
and the Deputy votes in freedom. Grant, what is true, that he is, as a rule, a little more anti-religious than his electors ; still, he is on all other questions ready to be their delegate, and on this they exercise no coercion. They, at the best, do not care whether God is implored for their Republic or no. Remembering that the women are still Catholics, that a peasantry feels the influence of use and wont far more than an urban proletariat, and that to leave the priesthood and their prayers alone would be the instinctive course of the indifferent, the conclusion seems to us inevitable that a majority of those Frenchmen who vote, at heart like that disbelief should be proclaimed as their feeling, that believers should be snubbed as foolish persons, and that the Church should be treated as on the whole a force to be barely tolerated by an enlightened community. If that is the case—and this writer at least has no doubt of that conclusion—France, as an effective entity, has slid away from Christianity without em- bracing any other creed, and has become something more than an agnostic Power. If so, as it is the specialty of France to express its inner ideas, even with cynicism, we shall in no long time see the fact publicly pro- claimed, and one of the greatest States in Europe will soon commence a career avowedly not to be influenced by that common system of belief which, though constantly defied under the pressure of in'erest or circumstances, still has controlled more or less all European statesmen. The time may be coming very quickly, and the formal announcement may be made in a style that will interest the whole world; for, unless we greatly mistake the signs, French statesmen are already impatient of what they think the hypocrisy of deference to the old ideas. They want to seem as cynical as they are. Hypocrisy is "the homage which vice pays to virtue ;" and when Al. Ferry proclaims publicly that he conquers Tonquin for the benefit of fathers of families, he announces either that he thinks the Christian idea of such conduct nonsensical, or that he be- lieves France as a whole to be of that opinion. A Power like France, avowedly determined to make money out of her strength, to seek pleasant things without restraint, and to ac- quire provinces to enrich her ruling families, would be a Power almost as dangerous as if she had set to herself the conquest of the world,—the danger being limited only by her force.
France may tend, as many observers think, to become a Japan, that is, a country where ingenuity, politeness, and a certain in- stinct for art, stand in place of the virtues ; but if Japan were able to conquer a continent or snap up provinces all over the world—well. Europe would grow at least very watch- ful of Japan.
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