his uncompromising defense of the Church, he was more violent against the members of the executive government than his own sentiments and his real political views would, in moments of cool reflection, have permitted him to be. The Abbé Lacordaire did not sound sufficiently the sources of his opinions; M. de Montalembert did not properly measure his attacks. But in spite of their shortcomings and of our own, of their faults and of our own, in all the struggles that grew out of religious questions between us, they rendered constantly faithful and powerful services to their cause, which, notwithstanding our dissentiments on other points, was really the cause of Christ's Faith awaking to new birth and life on the bosom of Liberty. {62} It is not without well reflecting that I term that _our_ cause. When religious liberty reigns in a State, it is a great and a too common error to believe that the statesmen charged with its government have no religious belief whatever; that they are careless in matters of faith because they embrace and advocate the cause of liberty of conscience. The soul does not abdicate the right to its proper and intimate life, because it respects in other souls the rights of that same life; and nothing is more logical or more legitimate than to sustain with fervor the principle of freedom of conscience, and yet to be at the same time a true and an earnest Christian. {63} I have not here to make a profession of faith for others; but I affirm that, from 1830 to 1848, the Prince whom I had the honor to serve, and the Cabinets to which I had the honor to belong, not only always had at heart the maintenance, however difficult, of the principle of religious liberty, but that they always felicitated themselves upon the progress made by the Christian Faith, even when the manner of that progress was for them a source of serious embarrassment. In 1841 we were placed, in this respect, in a most trying position. Great was the general astonishment, and violent were the attacks made upon us, when, with a devotedness to Catholicism even bolder than had been his conferences at Notre Dame, the Abbé Lacordaire returned from Rome a monk, and a monk of an order which has left more somber memories behind it than any other, that of St. Dominic. This is not the place to examine what the utility may be in our days to the Catholic Church of the monastic orders, or to inquire whether the services they are capable of rendering the Church outweigh the objections and the feelings of repulsion and uneasiness which they arouse. {64} No well-read man can deny their having, in seasons of chaotic confusion, effectually served the cause, not only of the Christian Faith, but of civilization, of science, and even of liberty.