The Sun.
London, England, 1868-05-26 00:00:00

THE QUEEN'S GROUNDS,
OPEN FOR BEAN FEASTS.
ARTHUR CRUX, Proprietor.

Reply of the Archbishop of Algiers to Marshal
M'Mahon, Governor-General of Algiers.
ALGIERS, April 23, 1868.
MONSIEUR LE MAR7CIIAL,—I was occupied with
the innumerable cares which the orphans, the
native widows, the house of refuge which I am pre-
paring for old men, Europeans living in the pro-
vince at Algiers, put upon me when I received your
letter dated the day before yesterday. I had over
aud over again to read its address and signature
before I could persuade myself that it was addressed •
to a Bishop by the Governor of a Christian
country. In regretting the absence of courtesy to
which I have everywhere been accustomed, I will
not permit myself to imitate your Excellency. I
will recollect that you are the representative here
of a Sovereign whose subject I am, and to whom I
owe gratitude and respect, and that I am myself
the representative of the God of charity and peace.
I will not stop, therefore, to refut3 insinuations
doubly offensive by their substance and by their ex-
pression.
Nobody knows better than your Excellency that
the numbers which I gave as to the mortality of the .
Arabs in Algiers during the last six months of the
past year, not only were not exaggerated, but have
even, although you have officially contradicted
them, been below the reality. Better than any-
body you know that I have not spoken but in
obedience to my conscience, and that in speaking I
have not said all ; and that, finally, I am some-
' times silent, in order not to create under circum-
stances so grievous as the present fresh embarrass-
ment to your Government. Better than anybody
you know that in speaking of the assassinations,
and of the repeated acts of cannibalism which have
shocked our colony, I, a bishop, could not excuse
them on the ground pointed out to me by your
Excellency. For me, on the authority of your word,
to set about attributing to a frenzy of the brain which
destroys free will, as the materialistic physicians do,
the assassinations which I have alluded to, would
be to legitimatise and encourage crime, and to
,spread terror amongst our colonists and give new.
Audacity to the Arab assassins. Better than any-
body you know that in writing the following pas-
rseapgeeatAt herea
whicwh whichiytohuheowbjefchtr,eaen:d_„l lalt tFuraainuteaet nmaanadt
either bestow the gospel, or rather let me correct
myself, let the gospel be bestowed en the Arabs or
else drive them back into their deserts far from the
civilised world." You know that in writing- this
passage I had but one end in view, that of proving
by the absurdity of the thing, that is to say by the
material and moral impossibility of achieving the
second of the two alternatives, the necessity after
the dreadful experience we have had of granting
the first, of giving us not the aid of force which we
do not wish in aTty way but the liberty of the
death, with which we are incessantly threatened
charity, the
eand lihbeyrtythaotf Is
eunderstand
tthhoe
11
itib)
liberty
y o f
since the day when we came alone unarmed in the
midst of the Arabs.
And acts done here give to my words a commentary
more eloquent than my speech.
Tell me, Monsieur
le Marechal, who, in this moment, attracts around
him the Arabs, in spite of the dangers which their
presence causes, who receives them into his asylums,
his seminaries, into his own house? Who takes
care of them, who gives a refuge to their widows
and to their children, who sacrifices for them the
lives of his priests and of his nuns ? And on the
other hand, who drives them, like human herds, out
of the sight of Europeans, back to their mountains
and into their forests? under what imperious ne-
cessity, in what condition, and with what results,
alas! you know, and I know also.
Better than anybody, you know the value of
those odious insinuations which your Excellency
does not fear to repeat, following the lead of an
anti-Christian press, namely, that I would make
these poor Arabs pay by the sacrifice of their
religion for the bread
,which Catholic charity
has distributed to them through my hands. No,
Monsieur le Marechal, such has not been nor will
be the conduct of a bishop. I have not said, not
caused a word to be spoken in this sense to the
Arabs whom I have succoured. I did not mean,
and I declare it publicly, that not a single one of the
twelve hundred orphans whom I had rescued should
be baptized unless at the moment of death, and
even then I allowed those only to be baptized who
had not arrived at the age of reason. I wished that
in this respect they should preserve their liberty,
and that if when they had reached an age to make
a Tational decision they preferred remaining Mussul-
mans, I should nevertheless still continue to afford
to them my paternal support. It is true, I shall
teach them that it is better to aid oneself by exertion
against misfortune than to sleep in death, invoking
destiny; that it is better to have a family than to
live under the pretext of divorce or polygamy, In
perpetual and shameful debauchery ; that it is better
for them to love and aid men to whatever race they
may belong than to kill them as " Christian dogs,"
and that France and her Emperor are greater in
the eyes of God and men than Turkey and the
Sultan.

This is what 1 have taught them. Who is it
that ventured to find anything in it to be retracted?
Finally, no one knows better than you, Monsieur
le Marechal, that 1 live in the most absolute retire-
ment and solitude, flying the world, and confining
myself to my episcopal duties and work. If, then,
as you tell me, the people of Algiers still range
themselves round me, it is because they consider
the ideas and principles which I profess as a har-
bour of safety after so many tempests. They are
my flock, they are the souls whose pastor I am, and
you reproach them with their confidence in me, and
you reproach me with luring them, with seeking to
save them, and you give me to understand that if I
do not separate myself from them that 1 am not the
friend of Cxsar.
I know the Emperor, Monsieur le Marechal ;
his magnanimous spirit does not fear the
light. I have experienced it—l experience
it every day ; and it is this which gives
him a strength which no opposition, open or
secret, will destroy. It is the duty of every honest
man in face of the crisis which forebodes au evil
day for Algiers to tell him with as much respect as
courage that he has been deceived. The Archbishop,
after pointing out that the Marshal M'Mahon had
been led into error in regard to his (the Arch-
bishop's) conduct, says that the Marshal's letter
has evidently a signification far beyond mere mat-
ters of detail ; that it is in effect but a carrying out
the unfortunate system in regard to the Church
which has been pursued from the day of the con-
quest of Algiers down to the present hour. The
Archbishop then points out how his predecessor the
first bishop of Algiers had been abandoned by the
civil power, and compelled to leave the country for
which he laboured and suffered. His successor Mgr.
Pavy had not been more fortunate. Every attempt
to convert the Arabs was interdicted. The venerable
Superior of his Seminary was publicly threatened
with imprisonment, and even with the galleys, for
having taken under his charge some native orphans
deserted in the marshes of Algiers. The wish ex-
pressed by the bishops at the Council of Aix to
open an Arab mission was rejected by the Govern-
ment ; and whilst, continues the Archbishop, my
two venerable predecessors were thus refused the
liberty of carrying out their apostolic mission, they
bad the sorrow to witness the building, often at
great cost, of mosques for the most part useless to
all encouragement given by public subsidies to
schools and religious gatherings, where the fana-
ticism of the natives was still further excited, and
to see the pilgrimage to Mecca conducted at the
charge of the State by the Mussulmans of Algiers;
and, finally, to see what seems verily incredible, the
Koran taught, in the name of France, to those even

who knew nothing about such as the inhabitants of
Kabylie ; and I am to witness the continuation of
the same system, in spite of the authorisation
which I have obtained for this purpose from the
highest quarters. I am not able, on account
of the obstacles which are thrown in
my. way, to establish in Kabylie, at my
own cost, even simple houses for Sisterst
of Charity to distribute to the natives who sough
them medicine an I alms. When the famine was
ravaging Algiers I made use of my right and ful-
filled my duty as bishop_ in taking charge of native
orphans, but I soon heard around rue disquieting
words as to the future of my work. , The silence
which you have observed in the Senate on a work
which bestows on both widows and orphans a suc-
cour four or five times larger than that given by the
State confirmed my susricion. But every doubt
ceased when I was informed that you had said, on
the occasion of the installation of the Freres de
Ben-Aknoun, that their work should only be tran-
sitory, that the orphans would be reclaimed after
the harvest by their respective tribes, and that they
could not be refused, adding, that in a few months the
orphanage should be closed; that is to say,lllonsieur le
Martichal that these children, fatherless and mother-
less, abandoned by all, and delivered up to death,
but rescued by him, thanks to the charity of the
bishops, the priests, and the. Christians of France,
watched over at the peril of their Kves by om
monks, by our nuns, many of whom attacked by
the typhus fever have fallen victims to their cha-
rity. Shall we have saved them, and saved them
at such a price, in order in a few months to deliver
them up, boys and girls, without protection or de-
fence, without parents, to the bestial passions of
their co-religionists? ft would have been a thou-
sand times better to have left them to perish. This
is what your Excellency alleges to be necessary, but
it shall not be carried into effect without a solemn
protest from me having been heard in the Christian
world. To their fathers and mothers I would have
given them up without difficulty, but I am the
father, the protector of all these children, whose
fathers and mothers are dead. They belong to me,
because it was I who preserved the life that is in
them. Force alone shall drag them from
their asylums, and if they be thus dragged
words will rise from my heart as their
bishop which will direct against the authors of such
au outrage the indignation of all on earth who still
deserve the name of man and Christian.

Let me recapitulate. Your Excellency has di- I
rected against me two accusations, and these two
charges will be the greatest honour of my life. The
one is to have been the first to have lifted, and,
according to you, a little too soon, the dark veil
which hides from the eyes the misfortunes of
Algiers_ If this be a crime lam guilty of it. As
bishop I would not, and could not, witness without
appealing to the abundant succour of charity, the
frightful agony of so many victims.
The other charge is to have first exercised, and
then publicly in my last letter to have claimed,
a right which is mine, because it is a
right of the Church, a right belonging
to the truth, a right inscribed in our na-
tional laws, and because its exercise is now more
than every necessary for the welfare of Algiers. I
am speaking of the liberty of the Christian Aposto-
late, such as I have defined; that it is to say (with-
out the use of force of any kind, and according to
the dictates of wisdom and prudence), the liberty of
exercising in regard to the Arabs the duties of
charity, of self-denial, and of the Christian priest-
hood. If this be a fault, Monsieur le Marechal, I
have committed it, and commit it still, in demand-
ing the liberty of the people in Algiers, and in de-
manding it only, if it be necessary, as it exists in
heathen countries, at the risk and peril of those who
exercise and without protection of any kind
whatsover. 1 know that I am demanding the
abolition of the system pursued up to day in.
Algiers, that I am demanding the overthrow of
those impassable barriers which separate us from
the Arabs, and the renunciation of the pressure put
upon them, in order to prevent them listening to
our voice. But the system, the abolition of which
I demand, to what has it not led us ? I know all
the great, the enduring, the excellent things which
our army has done in these valleys, on these moun-
tains, where it has covered itself with glory ; but it
is not of the army nor of the military authority that
I am speaking, but of the administrative system
which regulates our relations with the Arabs. Po-
litically, we have just as many enemies in Algeria
now as at the time of its conquest. You, yourself,
iNlonsier le Marechal, declared to me our duty be-
fore the outbreak of the present famine, as a reason
for opposing every kind of Christian propagandism,
the danger of exciting Arab fanaticism, because
then, in case of a European war, we could not count
on the fidelity of twenty Arabs in the event
of an insurrection. Economically the Arab tribes
have been for five months a prey to famine, and
are ruined for years to come. Morally they have
acquired our vices without our good qualities, and
they have shown themselves obstinately opposed to
every amelioration and every progress. Such is the
result of a domination of thirthy-eight years by
France—Christian France. Is it not enough to
make us renounce at last errors condemned by the
voice of men as by the voice of God ? Perhaps we
shall be compelled to make still further efforts,
but better to make a hundred efforts—
even the sacrifice of several years rather
than condemn France to roll for ever in the
void of this rock of Sisyphus, which will end by
crushing, if she does not give it a basis ; and this
basis is that on which she herself rests, and that is
Christian civilisation.
After a few more remarks of a personal character,
the Bishop brings this important letter on the state
of Algeria and its relation to France in regard to
the Church to a close.
The letter is signed

4-4 CHARLES,
Archbishop of Algiers.

"On the Wing," written by the late Prince
Maximilian, has just been published. It gives the narra-
tive of his journey to Greece and Smyrna, in the autumn
of 1850, when in his 19th year, for he was born in 1832,
and was but 35 years old when he met his tragic end.
The book is well written, giving a pleasant nar-
rative of a few happy months of poor Maximilian's
life. It shows quick observation, considerable culture,
and accomplishments, and leaves a favourable impression
on the reader of the kindliness of the late Mexican Em-
peror's nature. He writes without affectation, with all his
youthful admiration for beauty, and love of what was
noble and generous. His account of Bmryna forms the
liveliest chapters in the book, and ho gives
tailitna taebressetniceng
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description of the Court of Athens, where ho was entertained
by the young and popular Queen in King o
Knowing the tragedy of Queretaro, the book is read with
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of those he so happily depicts. Otho died a fugitive from
his kingdom, and his joyous, blooming wife, then so be-
loved by the Greeks, and whose charms captivated the
Austrian Prince, little anticipated the vale of sorrows
through which she was to walk, or the bandit's death in a
foreign land her guest was to die.
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