The French Premier, M. Waldeck-Rousseau, made a speech at Toulouse
on Sunday which should when the Chambers meet produce prodigious excitement. He de- clared open war upon the religious Associations of France. He affirmed that they had replaced the monasteries over a larger area, that they possessed £40,000,000 in land and perhaps as much in personalty, and that they had such an influence on education that the man trained in their schools was a different being from the one trained in the schools of the State, often indeed incapable of understanding him. The Church through these Associations has become an "occult and rival" power to the State. The Government intend, therefore, to limit this acquisition of property, if not to reduce that already acquired, and further, to make employ- ment under the State conditional on training in State schools. To be trained in those schools will in future be held "proof of elementary loyalty" to the Republic. "Those who have no ambition to become State officials may prepare themselves, when and as they like, for the numberless liberal, commercial, or industrial professions open to them. But the service of the State is not a profession, it is a function, and if the education of these officials offends the conscience, how is it that this conscience does not experience at least equal scruples in serving the State P" That is the deadliest blow levelled at Catholicism since the days of the Terror, it is, as we have contended elsewhere, a most unwise one, and it will rouse a fury of antagonism between the two parties to which even France has hitherto been a stranger.
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