message
adjourning the sittings for a month was read to the Chamber,
the republicans protested with repeated cries of "Vive la
Republique!" to which the Right responded with "Vive la
France!" A month later, when the decree dissolving the
Chamber was laid before the Chamber, the republicans
shouted: "Vive la Republique! Vive la Paix!" and the Right
answered with "Vive la France! Vive le Marechal!" When it
was announced in full Congress that M. Grevy had been
elected President, and again when M. Carnot's name was
proclaimed in the same way, the republicans once more
hurrahed for a form of government, while their opponents
posed as the defenders of the country and the nation.

Another grave error of the republic is its break with the Catholic
Church. I have no space here to place the blame where it belongs. I
wish simply to point out the lamentable fact that the whole powerful
organization of Rome is arrayed against the present government of
France. The danger from this source cannot be exaggerated. It has made
the whole body of women enemies of the republic, and "a government
which has the women against it is lost," says Laboulaye. And if
Cardinal Lavigerie and the Pope are, at the eleventh hour, coming
around to the republic, is it to be wondered at that the Radicals
declare that the Church is changing front for the purpose of capturing
rather than supporting the republic?

Attacking the purse is quite as grave a mistake as attacking the
religion of the thrifty, economical, and provident Frenchman. The
financial policy of the republic is unpopular. The annual deficit and
the increasing taxation are crying evils even more difficult to handle
than are religious troubles, while conservative republican statesmen,
like Senator Barthelemy Saint Hilaire, tell me that the national debt
keeps on increasing at such a rate that the bankruptcy of France seems
sure in the more or less distant future. The present tendency towards
a high protective tariff is an attempt to bring money into the
national treasury, and thus relieve the peasant and manufacturer not
only from foreign competition, but from the disagreeable claims of the
tax-gatherer.

The Alsace Lorraine imbroglio must, of course, be mentioned in any
list of the dangers threatening the French republic. But it is not so
dangerous as might appear at first