satisfy, in some respects, the impatient spirit of our age, we should not see what I saw yesterday at the English club-house — military men, and fashionables of all ages, serious persons and giddy youths, making the sign of the cross, and remaining silent for some moments before sitting down at table — not a family-table, but a
The palace belonging to the club is large and handsome. The entire establishment is well planned and skilfully directed; everything is about the same as in the clubs of other places. This did not surprise me ; but the pious feeling of the Russians I sincerely admired, and said as much to the person who had introduced me,
We were talking together after dinner in the garden of the club.
' It is precisely this appearance,' I replied, ' which inspires me with esteem for your nation. With us, people dread only hypocrisy ; but the sneer of cynicism is even yet more injurious to society.'
' Yes, but it is less revolting to noble minds.'
' I think so too : but by what strange whim is it that incredulity should raise so great a cry of sacrilege whenever she thinks she sees in a man's heart a little less piety than he proclaims by his words and actions ? Were our philosophers consistent, they
40
ERROR OP THE LIBERALS
would tolerate hypocrisy, as one of the stays of the machine of state. Faith is more tolerant.'
' I did not expect to hear you make an apology for hypocrisy !'
' I detest it as the most odious of all vices: but I say that, injuring man only in his relations with God, hypocrisy is less pernicious to society than barefaced incredulity; and I maintain that it is only truly j)ious people who have any right to qualify it with the name of profanation. Irreligious minds, philosophical statesmen, ought to view it with indulgence, and might even use it as a political auxiliary. This, however, has not often happened in France; for Gallic sincerity revolts from drawing advantages out of falsehood, in order to govern men : but the calculating genius of a rival nation has known better than we have how to make use of the yoke of convenient fictions. The policy of England — a country which excels all others in the practical character of its views and aims —has liberallv rewarded theological in-consistency and religious hypocrisy. The church of England is certainly much less reformed than is the Catholic church, since the Council of Trent has done justice to the legitimate claims of princes and people : it is absurd to destroy unity under the pretext of abuses, and at the same time to perpetuate those abuses for the abolition of which the fatal right of making sects has been arrogated; nevertheless, the English church, founded upon patented contradictions, and maintained by usurpation, still continues to aid the country in prosecuting the conquest of the world ; and the country recompenses it by a hypocritical protection. I therefore maintain, that these incon-
IN REJECTING CATHOLICISM.41
sistencies and hypocrisies, monstrous as they appear in the eyes of men sincerely pious, ought not to shock statesmen or philosophers.'
' You do not pretend to say that there are no u`ood Christians in the Anglican church ?'
' No : I merely maintain that among such Christians the ideas of the greater number are illogical. I therefore do not envy for France the religious policy of England, though I admire at each step I take in this country, the religious submission of the Russians. Among the French, every clergyman who has influence becomes an oppressor in the eyes of the powerful minds, who, while governing, have been disorganising the country for the last hundred and thirty yeai·s, either openly by their revolutionary fanaticism, or tacitly by their philosophical indifference.'
The really enlightened man with whom I talked appeared seriously to reflect; and then, after a long silence, resumed : —
' I am not so very far as you may suppose from sharing your opinion ; for since I have travelled, one thing has always struck me as involving a contradiction—the unfriendliness of the liberals to the Catholic religion. I speak even of those who call themselves members of that church. How is it that such minds— for there are some who argue clearly, and carry reasons to their farthest consecµiences, — how is it that they cannot see that, in rejecting the Catholic religion, they deprive themselves of a guarantee against the local despotism which every government, of whatever character it may be, always tends to exercise ?'
42FRENCH POLICY
' You are right,' I replied, ' but the world is led by routine; and during centuries the strongest minds have so exclaimed against the intolerance and rapacity of Home, that people have not yet accustomed themselves to shift their point of view, and to look at the Pope in his quality of spiritual head of the church, of unchangeable supporter of religious liberty, as well as in his capacity of temporal sovereign; to view him as a venerable power, embarrassed in his double duties ¦— a complication perhaps unavoidable, л if he would maintain his independence. How is it that people cannot see that a nation, when sincerely Catholic, must inevitably become the adversary of England, whose political power is based entirely upon heresy ? Let France succour and defend with the energy of conviction the banner of the Catholic church, and by such act alone she will, from one end of the world to the other, be carrying on a powerful war against England. These are truths which ought to strike all minds, and which yet have hitherto only occurred to interested parties, and are consequently without weight: for it is another of the singularities of our age, that in France a man is considered wrong whenever it is suspected that he has any interest in being right. Such is the disorder of ideas produced by fifty years of revolutions, and more than a hundred of philosophical and literary cynicism. Have I not, then, good reason to envy your faith?'
' But the results of your religious policy would be to place the nation at the feet of the priests.'
' Exaggerations as regards religion are the worst signs in the features of our age: but were the piety of the faithful as menacing as it appears to me harmless,
NEWSPAPER GOVERNMENT.43
I would not shrink from the consequences involved in my principles. All who would do or obtain anything real in this world are obliged — to use your expression — to place themselves at the feet of somebody.'
' True; but I should prefer to flatter even the government of the journalists rather than that of the priests: the advantages of liberty of thought counterbalance its inconveniences.'
' Had you lived under it as I have done, and seen, as I have, the tyrannical minds of the greater number of the directors of the periodical press in France, and the results of their arbitrary power, you would not be quite so contented with that seductive word — liberty of thought. You would ask for the thing itself, and you would soon discover that the power of the journalists is exercised with as much partiality, and much less morality, than the ecclesiastical authority. To leave for a moment the subject of politics, just ask the newspapers by what they are governed in the fame or credit they accord to each individual! The morality of any power depends on the school through which the men have to pass who are destined to wield it. !N^ow you cannot think that the school of
