imperial. For 1879, for example, M. Leon Say, as Finance Minister,
gave in his 'ordinary' budget at 2,714,672,014 francs, which showed a
reduction of 78,705,790 francs from the 'ordinary' budget of 1878; but
with this cheerful statement M. Leon Say gave in also his
'extraordinary' budget at 460,674,566 francs, the whole of which rather
important sum was to be raised, not out of the revenue, but by a loan!

This system has been carried on ever since 1877, when the 'true
Republicans' got possession of the legislature, two years before they
put M. Grevy into the Elysee as President.

On July 22, 1882, M. Daynaud, an authority on questions of finance,
summed up the results in a speech delivered in the Chamber of Deputies.
The Government in 1877 spent, in round numbers, 3,177,000,000 francs. In
1883 it spent 4,040,000,000 francs. All this without including what are
called 'supplementary credits.' So that, putting these aside, it appears
from the speech of M. Daynaud that, in seven years, between 1877 and
1883, the 'true Republicans' subjected the people of France to an
increase of no less than 863,000,000 francs in their annual public
expenditure.

Meanwhile these same 'true Republicans,' who were thus adding hundreds
of millions yearly to the public debt, struck hundreds of thousands out
of the lawful income of the clergy of France. They ordered the
dispersion by Executive decrees, and 'if necessary by military force,'
of all religious orders and communities not 'authorised' by the
Government. They drove nuns and Sisters of Charity, with violence and
insult, out of their abodes. They expelled the religious nurses from the
hospitals and the priests from the prisons and the almshouses. They
'laicised' the schools of France, throwing every symbol of religion--in
many cases literally--into the street, forbidding, literally, the name
of God to be mentioned within the walls of a school, and striking out
every allusion to the Christian faith from the text-books supplied at
the cost of the Christian parents of France to their children in the
schools supported out of taxes paid by themselves.

It is simply impossible to overstate the virulence and the violence of
this official Republican war against religion which began under the
Waddington Ministry almost as soon as it took possession of the
government in 1879. It was formally opened under the leadership of M.
Ferry. M. Ferry is admitted to be the ideal statesman of the Opportun