M. WALDECK-ROUSSEA.0 AT TOULOUSE. N i V rE• have read M. Waldeck-Rousseau's speech
at Toulouse announcing and explaining his pro- gramme for the immediate future with the deepest regret. We honour his Ministry for the courage with which it has defied the military reaction, for the sincerity, so unusual among Governments, with which it has defended the ideas that it really holds, and for the practical power of governing which it has shown in the appointment of General de Galliffet, in the absorption of the saner Socialists, in its settlement of strike questions, in its foreign policy, so moderate yet firm, and, above all, in its management of the Chambers. To keep a majority without sacrificing principles is now the most difficult of tasks for a French statesman, and this task M. Waldeck- Rousseau and his colleagues have hitherto successfully performed. Even in this speech there is evidence of these great qualities. Throughout it is the speech of a man who has convictions and intends to act on them, who sees hostile forces which he defies, and who has plans to meet the difficulties of the hour which he intends to carry out. His expression, for instance, that there are moments when "you must be a Republican before being a party man" is meant, and is accepted as meaning, that this Government is Republican to the core, and will defend the Republic as Kings defend Monarchy, without fear and without compromise. His declaration that when he took the reins the Army was being "exploited" for other ends than its own dignity, and that the Government would prohibit the soldiers from taking cognisance of divisions, which could only weaken them, is a defiance to the coup d'etat party, and an assertion that the Army while he and his colleagues govern must obey the civil power, and confine itself entirely to its "national mission." And though it is possible that the practical difficulties of the old-age pension question may prove insuperable, still his promise to bring forward a proposal is a wise appeal to the labouring class, while his suggestion of a tax on successions may prove an acceptable substitute for the Income-tax, which by many classes in France is regarded with a sort of religious horror. They say that the moment the tax is imposed publicity is inevitable, and that publicity would expose every well-to-do man, from the millionaire down to the peasant with an unusually full stocking, to an amount of envy, solicitation, and reviling which would ultimately prove unendurable. Every little fundholder will be regarded by those who are near him, yet below him, as the Rothschilds are regarded by Jacobin Anti-Semites. A heavy succession-duty on Sir William Harcourt's plan would not be exposed to this drawback, and has, moreover, the advantage, very great in France, and not imperceptible even in England, that few of those who vote for it in the Chambers will be called upon to pay it. It is, therefore with pain as well as dismay that we see this, the best Ministry which France has enjoyed for years, throwing away its many advantages in order to plunge into another campaign against the Church which it cannot win, and in which it will be deserted by all men who are either penetrated with the modern spirit of toleration or are genuinely impartial. We are not referring to the threat to prohibit the religious Associa- tions from receiving further gifts of property. That, though it will excite bitter wrath among all devotees of Rome, is after all in essence only a question of policy. An owner who perpetually receives, who never dies, and who never wastes may in a few generations grow too strong for the State, and then the State may justifiably step in to prohibit further accretions. We do it our- selves pretty effectually, though in our mildly irre- sistible way, and there is, we believe, no Catholic country in which a law of mortmain has not been found indispensable to progress. Whether £40,000,000 in land, and perhaps as much in personalty, is too much for the religious Associations of France to hold collectively is a question for French economists, and not for outside politicians. Considering the immense claims on those Associations, it does not seem to mere observers such a gigantic sum ; but we may let that pass. The central point of M. Waldeck-Rousseau's speech is not the law of mortmain, but that he proposes through it and other measures to give a monopoly of all State functions, including doubtless military and naval commissions—for otherwise the proposal is inept—to those who have been educated in strictly secular schools. They are func- tionaries, he says, and the State has a right to dictate how its functionaries shall be trained. In other words, no young man in France is in future to enter the service of the State unless he has been trained in schools which French Catholics consider seminaries of agnosticism, or if be has been trained in schools which they regard as calculated to inculcate piety, or at least necessary faith. A more monstrous denial of the principle of religious liberty it would be difficult to conceive. It would be oppressive in any country, but in France, where the ideal of the educated classes is to fit their sons for Government appointments, it amounts to the most direct persecution. M. Waldeck-Rousseau might as well propose at once that no man who believes Christianity shall be permitted to acquire more than three hundred a year. It is the Irish Penal Code over again, in spirit at all events, with this aggravation, that it is not a product of the religious bigotry of a caste, but is proposed by the elected Govern- ment of a country which in theory holds that the Roman Catholic Church is divine, and that outside her pale there is no salvation. That Rome will fight the proposal, fight as for life, is certain, and Rome has immense power even in France ; but that is only a part of the resistance which M. Waldeck-Rousseau will encounter. He is defy- ing all the women of France, who dread nothing so much for their sons as disbelief, all who hold the Catholic faith to be true though they do not obey its precepts—an immense crowd—and all who while disbelieving them- selves, or fancying they disbelieve, think that the education given in religious schools will solidify their sons' characters. He will find, as Bismarck found in the Rhine provinces, that he has made fanatics of the in- different, that the tide he wishes to keep out is rushing in by a hundred unseen channels, and that the cleavage he wishes to remove between one servant of the State and another has been deepened fivefold. And he will find also, if he lives long enough, that even so far as he has succeeded he has done nothing for Republicanism. At heart he probably believes that anti-clericals must necessarily be Republican ; but there are signs in modern thought that those who believe nothing, or very little, tend to favour absolutism, and value liberty only when it means the liberty of believing in the dogmas of science. They bow to authority in all matters except religion, and they prefer that the masses, whom they do not greatly admire, should bow too. It was the generation which in the cataclysm of the Revolution had given up its faith that followed and obeyed Napoleon.
What amount of support M. Waldeck-Rousseau will find for his ideas in the Chamber we do not know. It may be considerable, for long watchfulness has convinced us that French Deputies, drawn as they are from the less prosperous of the professional classes, are more anti- religious than their constituents ; but this we do know, that he has given the Opposition a magnificent rallying cry, and will rouse forces of whose strength he has but an imperfect idea. That the Roman Catholic Church has in the last three years given the French Republic almost un- endurable provocation we fully admit, but this does not alter the fact that you cannot kill a ghost with a shell.
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