The New York herald., 1871-05-30

The Murder sf de Arclsisasp axd the
Priests Of Paris. and tho Reason Why.
Or all the diabolical atrocities Of the
hideous Paris Commune its purely devilish
assassination of the Archbishop and sixty-nine
priests Of Paris appears to us the most shock
ing, unless it is true that a number of mans
were included in this horrible slaughter Of
helpless non-combatants The Archbishop,
the Abbe Duguerry and sixty-two other
priests were seized by the Commune, i'm
prisoned and held as hostages, from the day
(the 7th OF ApriD when the first direct attack
was made by the troops of the French govern
ment upon the Paris Jacobin usurpation. But
Marshal MacMahon was In occupation Of the
city and the Commune was virtually SUBJ
dued when these hostages were murdered, and
what object then was there to gain by the
Jacobin Club In the slaughter of these poor
prisoners? The object of the Commune from
first to last was revenge against the empire
and all its afiliation, and especially against
the Catholic Church and its clergy as the
mainstay of the empire, and as the power in
the French provinces which was too strong for
the red revolutionists of the cities in national
Dle0iscites and national elections.
Here is the secret of all these atrocities Of
the Paris Jacobins, including the pulling
down of the Vend6me imperial army column,
the burning of the Tuileries, and the murder
of the Archbishop Darboy and his religious
colaborers and subordinates held as hostages
by the Commune, after the fashion Of the
banditti Of Italy and Greece. Those Jacobins
of Paris had long catalogue of accounts to
settle with the Bonapartes and the empire.
One Of the first acts of the first Napoleon,
which brought him into the foreground in
Paris, was his decisive treatment of the
revolutionary reds Of his day with grapeshot
and canister. Napoleon the Third, in his de-
cisive coup Tttat Of 1851, applied to the same
disease the same remedy, and with equal
effect; and in keeping down the reds by the
strong hand, in Paris and in the other Jacobin
infected cities Of France, he gave to those
cities and to France, for twenty years, q
reign of law and order, of peace, progress,
power and prosperity which they had never
known before and will probably never know
again. But during all those twenty years he
had, nevertheless, been inaaming the Jacobin
elements Of Paris, and organizing them for
revenge and heaping up their wrath against
the day of wrath.
Hence, in the absence of the imperial army,
with the news In Paris of the great disaster to
fho he 10 ~;
Of the reds and the proclamation Of the repub-
lie; hence the fantistic tricks of Gambetta,
which so dlsgusted the French people outside
their great cities that in the midst of the
German occupation of their country, they
elected a National Assembly, involving not
only a condemnation of Gambetta and Com
pany, but involving demonstration, too, of
the power and the will of the men of law and
order and religion in the provinces against the
reds of Paris and the other great cities of
France. This power of the French provinces
is held by the Catholic peasantry, disciplined
to law and order by the Catholic Church,
and 1t is against this power and this
law and order policy of the Catholic
Church and the Catholic peasantry OF
France that the Paris Commune has most re-
morsely pushed its blind revenge. Hence
this savage slaughter of the Archbishop of
Paris and his martyred priests. The Com
mune Jacobins saw pretty clearly, when it was
too late to escape the consequences of their
treason, that the power, the great moral
power, which stood behind M. Theirs and the
Assembly was the power of the Catholic
Church-that it was too strong in France for
Communism and Atheism; and here is the ex-
planation of the murder Of the Archbishop of
Paris and his priests. These innocent men, as
the representatives of public sentiment in
France stronger than the diabolisms of the
Commune, were particularly obnoxious to
those Jacobins but as the blood of the mar
tyrs is the seed of the Church, 80 may we re-
gard these Jacobin atrocities as guarantees
against their repetition by the will or by the
federation Of the French people.