Last Saturday Mr. Bodley delivered at the Royal Institution an
important lecture on the Church in France, a subject on which he is entitled to speak with peculiar authority. He began by pointing out the extreme prejudice which French law showed against all unauthorised associations, a heritage from the individualistic tradition of the Revolution. Never- theless, at the close of the nineteenth century religious Orders, though existing only on sufferance, were more numerous and powerful than at the end of the ancient regime. The ordinary clergy had no special sympathy with these Regulars, and would have welcomed any hOnest measures to limit their excessive growth. The power of the French Church had lain in its administrative ability, and it was admirably fitted to work in harmony with the State. After analysing the pro- visions of the Separation Law, Mr. Bodley described three attitudes towards it discernible in France. The moderate Republicans thought it an act of repression, aimed at that religious liberty which was fully guarded by the Concordat ; the Government held that the relations with the Vatican had become intolerable, and had better be ended before things became worse ; while the philosophical Radicals considered the Concordat a scheme of privilege for Rome, which was im- possible under a regime of liberty. On administrative grounds Mr. Bodley regretted the change, as the first important breach in the great Napoleonic edifice of reconstruction. "The Concordat was a work of stupendous genius, and the Separa- tion Law was the work of ordinary mortal men."
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