ist
Republicans now in power. To him M. Carnot owes his Presidency of the
Republic. In March 1879 M. Jules Ferry asked the Republican majority of
the House to pass a law concerning the 'higher education,' in the draft
of which he had inserted a clause ever since famous as 'Article 7,'
depriving any Frenchman who might be a member of any religious
corporation 'not recognised by the State' of the right to teach. This
'Article 7' was a revival of an amendment offered to but not carried by
the Legislative Assembly of the Second Republic in 1849. The principle
of it is as old as the Emperor Julian, who forbade Christians to teach
in the schools of the Empire.

M. Ferry's law was intended to repeal a previous law adopted in 1875,
and which had not been then three years in operation. By the Law of July
12, 1875, the Republic of Thiers and Macmahon had modified, in the
interest of liberty, the monopoly of higher education in France enjoyed
by the State. It was an essentially wise, liberal, and 'progressive'
law. But the Republicans of Gambetta could not endure it, for it gave
the Christians of France the right to provide for the higher education
of their children in their own way; so it must be abolished.

It was abolished; and though the Senate, making a partial stand for law
and for the equal rights of French citizens, struck out 'Article 7,' M.
Ferry and his friends, who controlled the President, caused him to issue
an Executive decree, to which I have already referred, breaking up the
religious orders aimed at in 'Article 7.' This was in 1880. In 1882 the
Chamber adopted a law proposed by M. Paul Bert, confirming to the State
the monopoly of secondary education; and to-day we see M. Clemenceau,
the avowed enemy of M. Jules Ferry and of the Opportunists, shaking
hands with them in public, after the elections of 1889, on this one
question of deadly hostility to all religion in the educational
establishments of France. At a banquet given on December 3 by certain
anti-Boulangist students in Paris to the Government deputies for the
Seine, M. Clemenceau declared himself in favour of 'the union of all
Republicans'--upon what lines and to what end?--'To prepare the Grand
Social Revolution and make war upon the theocratic spirit which seeks to
reduce the human mind to slavery!'

In other words, the Third Republic is to combine the Socialism of 1848
with the Atheism of 1793, the National workshops with the worship of
Reason, and t