Religious Persecution in France

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 28, 9 July 1903, Page 29

Religious Persecution in France

In a recent issue we quoted figures from a reliable authority showing what it will cost the French Government to provide and maintain schools and charitable institutions m place of those hitherto conducted by the suppressed religious Orders. But this is only one of lie results which will follow the persecuting policy of the Combes Ministry ; another, and a very serious one, is referred to by a correspondent in the London ' Tablet ' of May 16, who says :—: — *«w«,v The present French Government is engaged in a gigantic conspiracy to destroy true Christian religion Jhis scheme is being carried out with imposing vigor and great promptitude. First the teaching, preaching and nursing Orders are to be destroyed, then comes the turn of the bishops, and, finally, that of the parish priests. All religious instruction is banished from every school. Difficulties in observing their religious duties are put in the way of every lay Catholic in France who iu ay^ be In the army, navy, or employed in any way by the Government. J ' "' Persecution follows all' who outwardly observe their faith. Efforts are made to close as many places of worship as possible ; 155,000 persons who were all doing useful work for the -State and country of France are driven from their occupations and reduced to begtrimir The results of these criminal actions on the part of the present French Cabinet are not long in showing themselves, an.d prosperous, wealthy, and beautiful £ ranee is fast approaching to a condition of national bankruptcy. The peasant, the bourgeois, and the landed proprietor alike are terrified at the present condition of public affairs. The national banks of Belgium and Switzerland find that they are daily receiving vast imports of French gold. & Seized by a positive panic the saving portion of the French population is realising its capital and placing that capital in foreign ffinds. One of the first effects of the policy of M. Combes has been that ot alarming capitalists who are daily expecting catastrophes of every description. - M. Edmund Dollfus, a wealthy financier, who is himsflf a Protestant, expressed himself a few days since in tne following words to the editor of a leading American newspaper : M.- Combes, by expelling the Congregations, has expelled with them a. considerable proportion of French capital— a proportion that is daily increasing. French capital is making a vast exodus from the country where it owes its oritrin. The iniquitous and unjust measures taken against tho religious communities have outraged the feelings of all honest-minded Parisians ; in the provinces they have troubled, most profoundly the feelings of the inhabitants of all classes, whose religious sentiments are stronger than those of tho dwellers in towns Having no further confidence in a Government capable of committing such infamous acts, all of those who possess money are hrsy exchanging their French securities fnr foreign securities, and this precaution the Congreear t ions themselves were compelled to tak,e in self-dofon-e ntcnJhs asro. This is the cause of the sudden fall in I'rcnch P-entes. and the corresponding rise in Italian Spanish-Brazilian's, and Argentina Government security Between the Ist and 10th of May. 1903, in the Government Rapines Banks of France, the following operations took place : Francs. Deposits in the Caisse d'Eparpne 2,717,779 Money removed fiom the same investment 3 0,231,096 Excess of removal over deposits 7,513,317 Between the Ist' of January. 1903, and the 10th of May, 1903, the excess of money taken away from the savings banks (i.e., Caisse d'Ppai-jne) over " deposits is 41,900,116 francs, viz., £1,720,000 ! The Caisse d'Epargne, lil-ie our To^t OfPce Savings Bank, is solely used by perrons of limited means, and the amount to be invested is not allowed to exceed 5000 francs. All these things are absolutely ignored by the principal organs of the Fnerlish press, -Rhich are' apparently laboring under the delusion that the expulsion of the religious Orders find the persecution of the Christian laith among the laity of France is viewed with indifference by the inhabitants of that country