ith his predecessors in the great struggle between light
and darkness. What are all the lying stories about Infidel Death-Beds
but conversions of corpses? Great heretics, whose scepticism was
unshaken in their lifetime by all the parson-power of the age, were
easily converted in their tombs. What the clergy said about them was
true, or why didn't they get up and contradict? All the world over
silence gives consent, and if the dead man did not enter a _caveat_, who
could complain if the men of God declared that he finished up in their
faith?

Recently the clergy have been converting another corpse, but this time
it has been able to protest by proxy, and the swindle has been exposed
all along the line. Paul Bert, the great French Freethinker, died at
Tonquin. The nation voted him a state funeral, and his body was
shipped to France. The voyage was a long one, and it gave the pious
an opportunity of leisurely converting the corpse, especially as Paul
Bert's family were all on board the steamer. Accordingly a report, which
we printed and commented on at the time, appeared in all the papers that
the atheistic Resident General had sent for a Catholic bishop on his
death-bed and taken the sacrament. Thousands of Christians believed the
story at once, the wish being father to the thought. They never stopped
to inquire whether the report was true. Why indeed should they? They
took the whole of their religion on trust, and of course they could
easily dispense with proof in so small a matter as an infidel's
conversion. Some of them were quite hilarious. "Ha," they exclaimed,
"what do you Freethinkers say now?" And with the childish simplicity of
their kind, when they were told that the story was in all probability
false, they replied, "Why, isn't it in print?"

Now that the fraud is exposed very few of the journals that printed it
will publish the contradiction. We may be sure that the story of Paul
Bert's conversion will be devoutly believed by thousands of Christians,
and will probably be worked up in pious tracts for the spiritual
edification of superstitious sheep. Give a lie a day's start, said
Cobbett, and it is half round the world before you can overtake it. Give
it a week's start, and if it happens to be a lie that suits the popular
taste, you may give up all hope of overtaking it at all. First in
the way of exposure was a telegram from the Papal Nuncio at Lisbon on
December 29, saying that his name had been improperly us