France has been a turbulent country. Its political weather has been more frequently stormy than fair. It makes one nervous, almost, to read the history of France--it is so sensational. Its pages are lit up with the lightning. It is a sad and shocking story of intrigues, plots, conspiracies, treason, machination, finesse,--of manoeuvre and scandal, of sudden strokes and startling surprises, which have alternately cooled and heated the brain of the nation, and which have cultivated in the people the unhealthy craving for excitement. Let it be admitted that the temperament of the people, its irritability or impetuosity, is in a measure responsible for this. But this in itself is not enough to explain the terrible punishments and misfortunes which have fallen upon that nation. You are all familiar with the remark of one of her great statesmen, Gambetta: "The enemy, it is clericalism." Another statesman, Paul Bert, said: "It is not our domestic discords; it is not England; nor even the trained German legions, that constitute the greatest menace to Frenchmen and the prosperity of France, still bleeding from her wounds, _but the man in black_." Did these statesmen speak the truth? We shall ask history to answer the question. This much, however, we can say without consulting history, that today the French republic and the Catholic church are at swords' points. After trying to pull together, church and state have separated--are completely divorced, and each suspects and fears the other. Let us try to explain the strained relations between Rome and the French republic by a reference to the events in France from the time of the second republic to the Franco-Prussian war. In 1848, after many attempts to maintain the monarchy, France returned to the republican form of government. The Catholic church, always powerful in the country, and having great interests at stake, to the surprise of the nation, welcomed the republic with enthusiasm. The Archbishop of Cambrai, the bishops of Gap, of Chalons, of Nancy, and the Catholic periodicals, _l'Univers_, the _Moniteur_, etc., declared that the republican form of government was of divine origin, and that there were no other three words in all the world more sacred than the words "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." In all the churches high mass was celebrated, and a _Te Deum_ chanted in honor of the new regime. "There are no more devoted and sincere republicans in France than the Catholics," wrote Veuillot in _l'Univers_, the organ of the church. In asking you to keep this in mind, I also request you to note that the Catholic church in America seems to be today just as devoted to the American republic as the French Catholics professed to be to the republic of 1848. But let us not forget that this same clergy, during the reign of the first Napoleon, introduced the following questions and answers into every church catechism in use throughout the land: _Question:_ Why are we under obligations to our emperor?