The Sun.
London, England, 1868-05-11 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, MAY 11, 1868.

RELIGION IN FRANCE' UNDER LOUIS go about his business. Everybody knows how
PHILIPPE. the King of the barricades left. He was put
into a cab on the Place Louis XVI., and driven

It was the cholera, after the Revolution of •
1830, which first opened the eyes of the people,
in some places, in that circle of forty miles
round Paris, called by the world the most
enlightened portion of France, where field work
is going on, and where nobody goes to church
on Sunday. Vice and irreligion were so much
in honour, that people could not even bear the
sight of a Sister of Charity, on account of her
large, white, starched cap, her very modest
dress, her beads, and crucifix. Such things
were a constant reproach to their conscience,
so that in some towns and villages the-bonne
sceur was sent away. But on the breaking
out of the cholera, nobody was found to take
care of the sick or to bury the dead. The
Sisters of Charity accordingly were recalled.
To this dread scourge, therefore, the first re-
turn to better feelings in regard to religion in
France can be traced. The Sister of Charity
was received back with the greatest enthu-
siasm by the entire population. The cholera
had also the effect of rendering the parish-
priest more popular ; the people called upon
him and requested him to head them in their
processions and pilgrimages. An ancient pil-
grimage, which had been forgotten since the
great Revolution of 1792, exists within that
circle of forty miles round Paris, of which I
have so often spoken : it is situated in the
rural village of St. Julienne, among some of the
prettiest hills of the department, and the
church is dedicated to the saint from whom
the village derives its name. In less than four
months, more than 300 villages or towns
went in procession to St. Julienne to obtain
the intercession of that saint for deliverance
from the calamity which was desolating the
country. The rage of the so-called liberal press
boiled over when they heard of so wonderful a
change in the people ; their pages were full
of recriminations against priestcraft. In the
town of Arpajon, about eight leagues from
Paris, on the road to Orleans, where scarcely
an individual goes to church on Sunday, the
population insulted the pilgrims on their way,
though they carried the banners and the cross
of their village churches. They accused them
of being priest-ridden fanatics, making use of
the arguments furnished them in the infidel
journals. However, even that so-called en-
lightened town, when it had buried about thirty
of the inhabitants, also recalled the Sisters of
Charity; and when they saw eighty new: graves
in their cemetery from the effects of cholera,
the entire population, men, women, and chil-
dren, went themselves on a pilgrimage to St.
Julienne. It was noticed at the time that
only two more deaths occurred after that pil-
grimage. The rage of the infidel newspapers
was intense ; they cried out bitterly against
the effects of priestcraft, but that did not
prevent many more such examples. Pilgrims
even came from the city of Lyons to renew
their ex-votos at St. Julienne, in special dili-
gences and stage coaches; more than 600 ex-
votos, which had been neglected during the
last century were renewed, and may now be
seen at St. Julienne. . _

churches better attended
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measures continued;
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the deadly corruption had
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in the year 1846, when .
clical of Pius IX., dated the 9th of November,
was issued from Rome. This Encyclical letter,
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existingunder
Governments, of s
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may have been their origin, was
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perverselyiremwi.
co
interpreted by such men as L ,
a
talembert, and Falloux, as confirming the new
school of political Liberalism they had inau-
by the great maority of ecclesiastics in France. '
gurated, and which at the time was accepted
It was the alliance of the Revolution with re-
ligion. Even men like Garibaldi became popu-
lar at Rome at the time. Those who would not
adopt the new system were looked upon as
retrogrades, as incapable of seeing how much
religion would gain if it could place itself at
the head of the so-called Liberal movement.
As if heaven could be allied with hell. The
opponents of the new school scouted any
approach to an alliance with Liberalism.
They foretold what would be the result of
this new system, therefore told that the eyes
of those ill-advised men would be opened
by the cruelest events—possibly, even, by
the martyrdom of the Holy Father in the
Eternal City. The Encyclical, however,
which had been grievously misinterpreted, con-
tained this important provision its precept—
that obedience and subjection is due to Princes
and Governments, " except in what is contrary
to the laws of God and the Church." The
Archbishop of Paris, the noble prelate who
afterwards, in the holy cause of peace and re-
conciliation, laid down his life in the barri-
cades, took action on this proviso and made
representations to the Sing of the barricades.
In his speech, on New Year's Day, at the
Tuileries, he reproached Louis Philippe with
the awful erimes, which at the time were re-
ported in every law court ; showed how urgent
it was, for the sake of faith and morality, to
reform the university and put an end to the
un-Christian character of the national educa-
tion. The King's answer was not published
in the Moniteur, the official gazette of France ;
on the contrary, the official journals found
fault with the Archbishop, taxing him with a
violation of his oath of allegiance. The King,
who had perjured himself so as not even to re
spect the oath of the cordon bleu, found writers
ready to support him in his infamy. But
such is the nature of infidelity. It makes men
unjust, capable of seeing the mote in their
neighbour's eye and not the beam in their
own. Such men have two weights and two
measures.

The remonstrances made by the Archbishop
of Paris, and not accepted by the King, acted
as an electric shock all over France. The people
saw that Government was powerless against
crime, and had not even the wish to reform
the crying evil. A feeling of disgust crept
over the whole nation, and the year 1847
drained the last drop of popularity left to
Louis Philippe. During that year you might
have travelled all over France without meet-
ing a person who dared support the Govern-
ment ; even the army and place-men joined
the universal cry. In every coffee-room, in
every place of public resort, in railway car-
riages, everywhere you could hear but this one
phrase—" La poire est inure it faut ellequ'
tombe." To understand the application of
the woad poire, it is necessary to explain that
in a famous lawsuit for a political offence the
accused designed a pear, which represented
exactly the portrait of Louis Philippe. The
joke was taken up by every gamin or idle
street boy in Paris, and chalked upon every
wall. From Paris, the joke was carried to all
the provinces. It was about this time the
Spanish marriage was contracted, which out-
witted Lord Palmerston ; the English press
was loud in their condemnation of treachery,
and that event weakened much the popu-
larity of Louis Philippe in England ; but in
the higher circles of society the King was still
considered safe on his throne. In England it
is too often desires rather than facts that guide
the pen of public writers. In all questions of
the higher order, such as morality and religion,
they are obliged to flatter the passions and pre-
judices of their readers. Reading is made in that
way easy and comfortable. Something of the
same kind of delusion befel Louis Philippe in
1848. He was so blind that he could not see
that vice and crime had been carried to such
a pitch that they had opened the eyes of the
people. The King could not see that the
French nation felt the justice of the Pope's
Encyclical, and the justice of the Archbishop's
remonstrances, that the clergy of France had
become popular by their opposition, that it was
necessary to free the country from those chains
which his reign had rivetted. The consequence
was that when the Revolution of February
broke out, it was found to be a revolution of
sheer disgust. France did not wish to hurt
the King. All it wanted was that he should

by a common cabman through the Champs
Elysees out of Paris. There was something
honest in this revolution. The Government
fell into the hands of the people. It was a re-
volution brought about by excessive crime.
Religion, therefore, could only gain by it.
Public order was respected because every class
of society took up arms to protect itself. The
country was free from every tyrant, because
nobody in France had the popularity necessary
to make himself a master. The people there-
fore named a republic, with universal suffrage.
The next article will comprise the consequences
of that measure up to the year of the coup d'acit
in 1852.—Correspondent of the Westminster
Gazette.