should be our instant duty as lovers of religious freedom and of our country.

In indorsing this movement the Free Religious Association is not dominated by hostility to any form of faith. It does not refuse its tribute to the piety, devotion, and loyalty of the Roman Catholic laity and humbler clergy. We do not speak as Protestants or Unitarians, or Christians even, we speak as loyal American citizens. But we do not forget that we are a religious organization. The theological soundness of the founders of the American Republic has often been questioned, but no one is able to deny that Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Marshall, and the rest were religious men. They were Theists, profound believers in God, Duty, and Immortality, and in their civil capacity they acted with profound respect for the Christian religion.

Our Association is one of the foremost representatives of this school of religion in America to-day. It is therefore our duty to maintain the principles of the founders of the republic, and to defend the free institutions of our country and the religious liberties of our fellow-citizens of whatever faith.

It is impossible that two mutually antagonistic theories such as the Clerical and the American conceptions of Church and State can co-exist in this country without disturbing the peace and endangering the higher welfare of the nation. The Clerical theory contains the potency of serious mischief to our institutions. It is not likely to triumph in our larger national life. In certain of our American communities, however, in which the Church, through immigration chiefly, is strong and influential, it may and does exert a great disturbing influence, threatening the integrity of civil, educational, and domestic life. Its aggressions grow daily more pronounced, its claims to superior and exceptional rights, its attempts to raid the public treasury for its sectarian purposes, its hostility to the American public-school system, all tend to undermine the authority of the civil power.

The best way to forestall and prevent these evils is to spread the knowledge of true American principles of civil

government and religious freedom among our people, that no specious reasoning or insolent demands shall obscure in their minds the real issues which are at stake. Our people need to be aroused to the defense of their liberties in State, school, and family. They need to be instructed as to the true principles which should guide them in their attitude towards the increasing demands of Clericalism. It would be well if some of the time now devoted in our Sunday-schools to the minute study of Hebrew history and legislation, and in our public schools to various educational frills, were to be given to the inculcation in American youth of the fundamental principles of American civil government, especially in its relation with religion and the churches.

Forty years and more ago the great Italian patriot, Cavour, gave to his fellow-countrymen as the needed watchword of the hour the kindling sentiment, "A free Church, in a free State." Here in America, under different circumstances and with the added insight the years have brought, we need a new reading of this maxim one that will better express the spirit and purpose of our time-namely, "Free churches in a free and sovereign State."

THE PRESIDENT. My friends, one of the best ways of arriving at the true solution of our social and political problems is to avail ourselves of the example of other nations that have passed through similar experiences, and have gained insight and strength from their struggles and trials, their defeats and their victories. Among these, our sister republic. of France has recently made a notable contribution to the solution of the great controversy between the State and the Church. We esteem it a great privilege that one of her sons who is thoroughly informed on this subject, and who has

written a most illuminating book upon it, has consented to be with us and tell us something of the fruits of State Clericalism in France. I take pleasure in introducing to you Professor Bracq, of Vassar College.

THE FRUITS OF STATE-CHURCHISM IN FRANCE

PROF. JEAN C. BRACQ.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I hesitate to speak after such a brilliant and illuminating address, dealing with a question which, more than any other, has been a source of national controversy in my native land. Practically for centuries the question has been up again and again, and when both sides, the kings and the Church, were tired of fighting, they had Concordats. These Concordats after a while naturally went out of existence, owing to a resumption of the fighting; so the expression "the Concordat," as far as French history is concerned, is not quite accurate, as it was preceded by others. Still, there never has been a Concordat like that one of Napoleon's, and France was for a century the only country in the world that had relations resting upon documents, perfectly definite, perfectly stated in the most formal manner, and accepted by both sides.

The Concordat was a kind of Magna Charta of political and of ecclesiastical despotism. When Napoleon made this compact with the Pope his purpose was to place the Church in a great machinery of government, in which the military life, the judicial life, the educational life, and the religious life should be each wheels within the great wheel that he would lead and master. It has been called by different names; the great name is the "Concordat "; but I think that its best, truest name is the "Discordat," for there has never been any agreement that has created so many national disturbances in the country as that agreement did. Your distinguished

countryman, Cardinal Gibbons, called it "a kind of matrimony." Taine speaks of it- and no man has studied the Concordat more ably than Taine, or set it forth in more beautiful and dignified form as a divorce in which the two parties have their relations perfectly defined by an agreement, and yet they are to remain by the side of each other in welldefined relations. Later on, when he deals with the extension of the Concordat to the Lutheran Church, the Reformed Church, the Israelites, and the Mohammedans, he speaks of it as "a flagrant polygamy." So that when we take up that document we must not be misled by metaphors, but must see exactly what it is.

Napoleon meant thereby to bring the Pope and the episcopacy and the priesthood into absolute subjection to the political power. According to the Concordat and the organic articles that go with it (and I should say perhaps we ought to add the Penal Code of the time, for these three things give us an idea of what was contemplated by that great agreement), Napoleon had inherited the rights of the old kings of France. He had a right, for instance, in Rome to see to it that the French cardinals had their full representation in the Sacred College. He had a right of veto upon the election of the Vatican, a right like that which the Emperor of Austria exercised at the last conclave in Rome. He had the right to nominate every bishop, every archbishop and every cardinal in France, and all that the Pope was to do was to "institute those men into office. Without the permission of Napoleon he did not have the right to add a new bishop to the number or to take one off. He could not convene a national assembly nor a provincial synod, nor could he correspond directly with the bishops. You can see that Napoleon had reduced the power of the Pope to the lowest possible minimum. He was, in the intention of Napoleon, merely a figurehead, and the bishops were not much better off. Their powers were limited on all sides. They were not allowed to leave their dioceses without the permission of the government. They were obliged to visit every parish of the diocese every five years.

They could not receive a student in their seminaries unless he had an income of three hundred francs a year. They could not choose the professors freely. These must all be Gallican, they must teach the Gallican doctrine. Not only that, but when they ordained a young clergyman, they must beforehand have the aproval of the government of the Emperor, and woe to the young fellow the politics of whose father were not quite agreeable to the Emperor.

The clergy were treated in a similar way. The priest had practically no rights in his church except that of saying his mass, together with the right of christening and of attending funerals. He was not allowed to preach with any degree of freedom, he was not allowed to add a single service. Even the costume of the bishop and the costume of the clergymen were not left to their free choice.

This was such an enslaving of the Church that there were very violent protests. The protests came from earnest Catholics everywhere, and they were so great that there was- I like your English word very much better than the Greek word; you frequently speak of a "schism"; I think the word "split" expresses it a split in the church resulting in the foundation of la petite église, which has lasted to this day.

Now, Napoleon unquestionably meant to enslave the Church, to make it a passive part of his great State machinery; and he did it not "suaviter in modo," he did it "fortiter in modo, fortiter in re." He mercilessly punished any interference with his designs. When he fell from power there were over five hundred priests in the prisons of France, merely because they had made criticisms of some of the actions of the Emperor, who did not fairly keep his pledges; and the Church observed them in no better spirit.

One of our playwrights has placed in one of his comedies. a notary who claims that he has a great respect for the law. Yes," he says, "I have the greatest regard for law, inasmuch as I get around it." Now, the Catholics have asserted their fidelity to the Concordat, but they have "got around it" and