the 16th of October, Napoleon entered the palace of the Tuileries as emperor. The cheers and cries of the populace, congregated in the gardens and shouting "Vive l'Empereur," brought him out upon the balcony. He stood between King Jerome upon his left, and the Archbishop of Paris upon his right. On that same day Victor Hugo fled from Paris for his life. The archbishop in the palace with Napoleon; Victor Hugo in exile! My countrymen, beware!

Under the Napoleonic regime the schools rapidly passed into the hands of the clergy. France had labored sincerely and made many sacrifices to reform the schools and to oust the priest—the priest who had declared that "the brains of young Frenchmen should be pinched, if necessary, to make them obedient to the authority of the church." Michelet, the glorious Michelet, was deposed from his chair in the College of France and a clerical given his post. The same fate overtook Vacherot and Renan. No professors in the Sorbonne, or in any institution, who did not bow to the pope and his creature on the throne of France, were permitted to teach. Secret orders and religious schools sprang up everywhere like mushrooms over-night. The emissaries and the missionaries of the faith became exceedingly busy in the acquisition of property. In a small town, suddenly, as it were, a few beggarly monks and nuns make their appearance; they have not where to lay their heads; the community has to provide them with the necessaries of life. A short time after, this same religious colony is in possession of the finest establishments in the town, with long bank accounts to their credit. Wealth flows into their coffers from rich widows and dying millionaires. Every faithful Catholic leaves his estate to the parish priest, or to some religious order. Property accumulates by leaps and jumps. What happens in one town happens in every other; the country is overrun with the agents of a foreign power. The church is making hay while the sun shines. As some of the principles of free government were still in force, even with Napoleon on the throne, these religious orders were asked to obey the law and secure a permit before pursuing their vocation. They answered that the church was above the state, and that they must obey God rather than men. The emperor advised them, from policy, at least, to apply for a license, which would certainly be given to them, but it is of no use. "We are citizens of heaven," declared the monks and priests, "we do not obey laws, we make them." What! Shall the bride of Christ wait upon the secular powers for permission to serve God! Abomination! the church that can elect a president and afterwards elevate him to the throne, can afford to dispense with the laws as it did with the constitution. Under the republic it was "Long live France," with the Catholics in power it is "Long live Rome and France."

Encouraged by the flatteries of the church, Napoleon invited the pope to Paris to place the crown upon his head, even as a former pope had crowned his uncle, the first Napoleon, in the church of Notre Dame. The pope was beside himself with joy. The opportunity had come for the vicar of Christ to ask for greater concessions from France—yes, from that infidel France, which had converted the Church of St. Genevieve into a Pantheon for atheist poets and philosophers. He sent word to the emperor that he would be glad to go to Paris to crown the faithful son of the church, but—but, the other Catholic sovereigns would not like it. It would make them jealous. Could not, therefore, Napoleon come to Rome to be crowned in St. Peter's cathedral? But the emperor realized that if he went to Rome, he would never be thought as big a man as the first Napoleon, who not only brought the vicar of Christ to Paris, but who also took the crown from his hands and placed it himself upon his own head. He wrote an autograph letter, which he sent to the pope by a clerical messenger of great influence, urging the pope to come to Paris. Then the pope threw aside the mask and opened his heart to the emperor: Yes, I will come; you have done much for the church, for our holy religion, but I will not come until you have altogether purged the country of every kind of heresy. How could the emperor expect the vicar of Christ to set his foot upon a soil where Protestant and Jew enjoyed equal freedom of worship with the Catholic—listen to that; how could the pope visit a country that allowed freedom of thought and speech, and of the press; that allowed civil marriages; that did not legally compel everybody to go to mass on Sundays; that did not punish with pains and penalties all those who departed from the Catholic faith? Let the emperor exalt Catholicism over all the sects,—make it the religion of the state, abolish civil marriages, refuse freedom of assembly to heretics; and then will the tiara of the pope lend its eclat to the crown of the emperor. And this is the church that shortly before had pledged its word of honor to the principles of the republic—"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!" See what happens to the republic when the Catholics are in power. "The lamb and the lion shall lie down together." Yes? But what will happen to the lamb? The divine church and a merely human Constitution can co-exist in the same country only on one condition—the "divine" shall swallow up the human. This is what has happened in Spain; this is what has happened in Italy; this is what happened in France under the Catholic regime, and this is, in our opinion, what will happen in America, should Rome ever come to be installed at the White House in Washington! "Ah," you say, "the Catholics will never do in America the things they have done in Europe." No? Are there two kinds of Catholics? Is the Church of Rome divided? Is there any reason why they should hesitate to sacrifice America, if need be, to the "Glory of God," if they did not hesitate to sacrifice France? At any rate, all one can do is to give warning and to point to the lesson of history. More than that no one can do, at present, at least.

In this connection, I must make an explanation. I respect the right of my neighbor to be a Catholic. I am ready to fight for the protection of his liberties as I am for my own. It gives me real pleasure to admit also that there are sincere, brave, noble and pure minded men and women in all the churches. What I am trying to do is to prove, by citing history, that a supernatural order and a merely human state can not pull together. The attempt has always resulted disastrously. The church is supernatural, the state is human. Either the one or the other must rule. If the church submits to the state, it ceases to be divine, for how can a divine institution be subject to a man-made state? It would be like asking God to obey man. Besides, a state is made up of Jews, unbelievers, heretics, Turks and pagans, as well as of Christians. How can such a state make laws for Christians?

If, on the other hand, the state would be subject to the church, there will only be the church. We will in that event have no further use for freedom, for instance, as we would not know what to do with it, since we can not use it to criticise or disagree with the church, or help to build up a new church. When we have God for a teacher, or his vicar on earth to rule us, what would liberty be good for? It follows then, that the Catholic church can not consistently be subject to any secular power, being a "divine" institution. This statement can not be successfully controverted, and if so, we call the attention of the president of the United States to it, as well as of all those who believe that it is possible to have Rome in the White House and be a republic at the same time.

Nor should people complain because I am so earnest about this matter. If it is a