This solution of the difficulty has been found to answer in practice in our time, though it is not likely to be permanent. All thinking Frenchmen are aware that it contains a contradiction which is this. The State pays Catholic priests for affirming the real presence, and then pays Protestant ministers for denying it. The State pays Catholic and Protestant for declaring that Christ was God, and then pays Jews for saying that he was not God. [Sidenote: Use of a Multiplicity of Sects.] To this a French statesman would probably reply that from the lay point of view this is the wisest policy. He would say, “It is lucky that we have got the Protestants and the Jews as a perceptible counter-weight to the Catholics, and one can only regret that they are not more numerous. We do not want a single overwhelmingly powerful priesthood. The ideal state of things would be half a dozen sects of nearly equal strength, either paid alike or without endowment.” In a word, the French policy in religious matters approaches very nearly to a neutral policy. [Sidenote: In what the English kind of Neutrality consists.] Is there anything resembling this neutrality in Great Britain? The answer is that the English have not exactly the same thing, but they have another thing that is not wholly unlike it. English statesmen, as we have already seen, will not establish contradictory religions within the limits of England itself, but they do not object to patronise and encourage the most opposite faiths in different parts of the Empire. In this sense the English Government comes near to a certain kind of neutrality, and it is on the whole a very tolerant Government, even towards small religious minorities that it does not directly patronise. The Unitarians, for example, though not paid by the State, are never molested now. [Sidenote: Modern Idea of the Duty of the State.] When statesmen reach this degree of impartiality, it becomes a question whether the same impartiality might not be equally well expressed by simply protecting every one in the exercise of his own religion, without payment or direct patronage of any kind. In Russia a State Church is evidently a natural institution. The religion of the Czar must be the true religion for the peasant, who is not to suppose that the Czar can be wrong in so important a matter; but with the non-religious character of the French Government and the tolerant character of the English, the idea gains ground that the duty of the State to all creeds is simply protection, and no more. This opens the question of disestablishment, which will be briefly examined in the following chapter. CHAPTER II DISESTABLISHMENT IN FRANCE AND ENGLAND [Sidenote: Disestablishment more simple in France than in England.]