Certain members of the Republican party and even of the present Ministry thought that the deplorable influence Catholicism exercises on public affairs might be counteracted by open contest, and this was the origin of Clause 7, and the war at present waged everywhere against the Catholic bodies and the action of the clergy. Unfortunately there is a fatal solidarity between the Catholic religion itself and its most compromising representatives; the regular and secular clergy are united by the closest ties; it is impossible to deal a blow at the clergy on one point without in appearance attacking religion itself. Moreover it loves strife, and above all persecution; it feeds upon it; it wins the sympathy of the simple-minded by resisting, in the name of conscience, all even the most legitimate attacks against the authority it has usurped. The duty of a wise Government, therefore, is as far as possible to let all religious questions lie dormant, to cultivate towards them a salutary indifference, to avoid the possibility of being accused either of favouring or persecuting the clergy, so as to secure the countenance of all those who, without being hostile to the Church, have no wish to be its blind servants. One must be content to resist the Church's encroachments without attacking it in its own precincts. The present Ministry has stirred up, we think with unfortunate precipitancy, questions which might still have remained awhile untouched, and thus needlessly lessened the number of its partisans. But to be fair, it is certainly very difficult to be impartial and indifferent in face of a body in open revolt against the Government, whose bishops, like Monseigneur Freppel at the inauguration of the monument to Lamoricière, preach contempt for the Constitution and the law. The behaviour of the Belgian episcopate, on the occasion of the new school law, has proved that neither justice nor moderation is to be expected from the Catholic Church. Whence violent minds are too disposed to conclude that reconciliation being impossible, intolerance must be met by violence, and fanaticism by persecution.