ghtly
regard, as essential to the stability of law and order. Furthermore,
this Budget of 1889 shows the spirit in which the fanatics of 'moral
unity' are prosecuting their war against all religions in France. In
1883 the Government's budget amounted to 53,528,206 francs. Here we have
a reduction within six years of more than 8,000,000 francs. In 1883 M.
Jules Roche, now a deputy for the first district of Chambery and an ally
of M. Clemenceau, proposed to reduce the Budget of Public Worship to
4,588,800 francs! The Third Republic, it will be seen, is getting on
towards the proposition of M. Jules Roche--a proposition which clearly
combines everything that is most open to objection in a legal connection
between the State and religion with everything that is most odious and
dangerous in an open war of the State against religion.

During these six years the leaders of this war against religion have
never dared to draw up a statistical account of the strength of the
various religious bodies in France. In 1882 one of their followers, M.
Alfred Talandier, on February 13, rashly proposed that a table should be
officially prepared of the state of religious opinions in France; but
the managers of the cause of 'moral unity' were too wily to walk into
that trap; they quietly stifled the proposition. It really might be a
little awkward, even for a Parliamentary oligarchy with a
strongly-bitted Executive well in hand, to confront, let us say,
37,500,000 of Catholics, Protestants, Israelites, not to mention the
Mussulmans in Africa, with a proposition to abolish a Budget of Worship
amounting to a little over a franc a head, for the purpose of reducing
France to a complete 'moral unity' of absolute unbelief in God and in
the immortality of the human soul!

Cardinal Langenieux took possession, as I have said, of the
Archi-episcopal See of Reims in November 1874. Seldom has the right man
been put into the right place more exactly at the right moment. It was
in September 1874 that M. Challemel-Lacour unfolded the Republican
programme of war to the knife against all religion. In September 1874,
too, as I have mentioned, the burning of the factory at Val-des-Bois
called out a general demonstration of sympathy from the Catholic
working-men's clubs all over France, which attracted public attention to
the movement; and in October 1874 Pius IX. issued a brief recognising
its importance and earnestly commending it.

The new Archbishop of Rei