The Count de Montalembert always predicted that the next. Revolution
in France would be directed against the priesthood.. No sooner had Napoleon been overthrown than the people of Paris demanded that the seminarists should be made liable to. military service ; at Lyons and Marseilles decrees were issued confiscating clerical property, and at the latter city the Jesuits. were expelled. In Paris, moreover, M. Mottu, Mayor of Belle- ville, who ordered that children should not go to religious schools, and removed all crucifixes, holding them, like John Knox, to be "painted wood," has since the foiled emeute against the armistice- been re-elected. M. Blanqui had, at the same time, prepared a. decree ordering priests to be sent into the army without weapons, so that by standing before married men they might "for the first- time" be of some use as buffers. The Republican Government is distinctly hostile to all these extravagancies, refused to " conscribe the priests, removed Mottu, arrested Blanqui, rebuked Garibaldi for punishing priests for disloyal sermons, and refuses to touch the religious orders, the Jesuits perhaps excepted. They are so. unpopular with many Bishops and the parochial clergy that. perhaps they will be offered up as scapegoats. A Pope sup- pressed them once.
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