We pointed out last week the readiness of the French
Assembly to pass any laws hostile to religion, and the reluct- .ance of the peasantry to condemn the Deputies for those laws, —drawing what seems to us the inevitable deduction that the peasantry are no longer believers. Since our last number appeared, we have seen the following statement by Mr. John Morley, in Macmillan's Magazine for June :—" Before the census of 1881 it had been usual in France to class all persons who declined to state what was their religion, or who stated that they had no religion, as Roman Catholics. In 1881, persons who declined to make any declaration of religious belief' were enumerated as such, with the result that there were upwards of seven and a half mitlicrns who registered themselves under that head, against twenty-nine millions of Roman Catholies." As the poor have every social and personal motive for registering them- selves as Catholics, more than a fifth of the population must be anxious to proclaim unbelief ; and among electors the propor- tion must be much greater. It is not the women who will allow themselves to be registered as having no religions belief.
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