The French Government have taken another downward step in that
discreditable policy of religious persecution which they have thought it politic to pursue. On Sunday they dispersed the Barnabites,—a body of non-political missionaries to the Italian poor, — in Paris, and the Carmelites in a great many various stations all over the country, in some places amid demonstrations of anger, and in others amidst the re- joicings of the people. The poor Barnabites, a perfectly harm- less body, founded to minister to the wandering Italian organ- boys and other Italian poor of Paris, point out in their protest that the site of their house was actually assigned to them by the Municipality,—that they never meddled with poli- tics,—that during the siege they turned their house into the head-quarters of an ambulance,—and that even the Com- mune left them, as strangers, quite unmolested. Cardinal- Archbishop. Guibert has said most truly in his protest that if an impression springs up that the Catholic Church and a Republic cannot coexist in France, though the Catholic Church may have much to suffer, the Republic probably will suffer more ; and this is true, for Churches usually gain by misfor- tune, while the popularity of forms of government invariably gains by prosperity, and loses by adversity of all kinds. More- over, a Republic cannot but lose by oppressing liberty of thought and worship,—while a Church never loses much by dignified suffering, unless persecution goes much greater lengths than France in her present mood is at all inclined for. The whole policy is at once ignoble and illogical, and France, who is only too much offended by want of logic, will not long endure what is ostentatiously ignoble, even towards a Church whom large French populations dread and hate.
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