3 SEPTEMBER 1881, Page 2

The French Republic is not, as yet, inclined to make

peace with the Catholic Church, nor, apparently, the Catholic Church with the French Republic. In the Council of the Department of the Nord, a deputy in this last session proposed cutting off the vote of 25,000 francs (£1,000) to the Archbishop of Cambrai, on the express ground that the Archbishop has never publicly pronounced the word " Republic " since his installation, and has defended the unrecognised religious Orders. The vote de- priving him of the subvention of £1,000 was carried by 29, against 22. There, the motive may have been a kind of injured pride at the affectation of ignoring the Republic displayed by the Archbishop. But the attempt to exact the concurrence of the Archbishop in what is, after all, a persecuting law, does not seem an omen of peace. In Brittany, the Church is more popular, and Monsignor Freppel, the Bishop of Anger, has secured his re-election for Brest to the new Assembly, and has thanked his constituents in a rather moderate address, in which he expresses the hope that the new Assembly will devote itself earnestly to agricultural and economic subjects, and will not shake the foundations of society by "acts of animosity and vengeance," reviving "scenes of violence and spoliation which we had fain regarded as for ever impossible." Monsignor Freppel, not without shrewdness, appeals to Frenchmen not to quarrel in presence of the great dangers caused by the present state of agriculture ; so that in France also, as well as in England, the farmers seem to be anticipating evils to come. But whether they are evils which will dispose them to pay episcopal incomes more liberally, we are disposed to doubt.