the authors of this hypothesis, the Protestant religion, once fairly entered in the lists against Catholicism, must inevitably and speedily win the day; the iron pot would make short work of the earthen pot. The partisans of Protestantism invoke history in support of their conclusions; Protestantism was vanquished among us by force, and not by persuasion; its defeat is therefore not definitive. Wherever Catholicism has not employed violence, persecution, and crime to maintain itself, it has always succumbed; its only tenable argument has been to put its opponents to death; to-day this comfortable method of backing the syllogism by the sword is out of date, and Catholicism is condemned the instant it is attacked. It contains, moreover, an essential and irremediable vice, auricular confession. By the confessional it excites the open or secret hostility of every husband and every father, who sees the priest interposing between him and his wife, between him and his children. The confessor is a supernumerary in every family; a member who has neither the same interests nor the same ideas, and who, nevertheless, is perfectly informed of everything the other members do, and can, in a thousand ways, oppose their projects, and, at the moment when they least expect it, bar their path. When one takes into consideration the mute state of war which so often exists between the married man and the Catholic priest; when one analyzes the other causes of dissolution which are working in Catholicism; when one considers, for example, that the dogma of infallibility is simply inacceptable to anyone whose conscience is not absolutely distorted, one must admit that the project of Protestantizing France, how strange soever it may seem at first glance, is worthy of serious attention. [Sidenote: Proposal to Protestantize France.]