[80] “By means of the confessional,” says M. de Laveleye, the “priest holds the sovereign, the magistrates, and the electors, and through the electors the legislative chamber, in his power; so long as the priest presides over the sacraments, the separation of Church and State is only a dangerous illusion. The absolute submission of the entire ecclesiastical hierarchy to a single will, the celibacy of the clergy, and the multiplication of monastic orders, constitute a danger in Catholic countries of which Protestant countries know nothing.” [Sidenote: But Protestantism is not a necessary step toward free-thought.] The several advantages which Protestantism enjoys by comparison with Catholicism are so incontestable that, if one must absolutely choose between the two religions, one could not hesitate. But such a choice is not necessary; one can avoid both horns of the dilemma. Free-thought is even more intimately dependent upon, and more disposed to favour, science than Protestantism is, for free-thought absolutely depends upon science. Free-thought is more intimately dependent upon practical and civil liberty than Protestantism is, by the very fact that free-thought is the complete realization of liberty in the sphere of theory. Finally free-thought renders the clergy superfluous, or rather to reinstate a mediæval term it tends to replace the priest by the _clerk_, that is to say by the _savant_, the professor, the man of letters, the man of culture, to whatever state of society he may belong. The best thing that has been said about Protestantism in France is M. de Narbonne’s remark to Napoleon. “There is not enough religion in France to make two.” Instead of a national religion we possess in France a national non-religion; that very fact constitutes our claim to originality among the nations. In France two-thirds at least of the male population live outside the limits of religious tradition. In the country, as in the town, there is scarcely one man for every ten women to be found in church, sometimes not more than one for a hundred, and sometimes none at all. In the majority of the departments, scarcely one man can be found fulfilling his religious duties. In the great cities, the labourer is the avowed enemy of religion, in the country the peasant is simply indifferent. The peasantry displays a certain respect for the exterior forms of worship; but the reason is that the peasantry comes in contact with the priest, its intercourse with him is constant, it generally fears or esteems him enough not to laugh at him, except behind his back. The results of the French Revolution cannot be arrested in this country; sooner or later they will suffice to give birth to a complete religious, political, and civil liberty: even to-day in politics it is not in the direction of a lack of liberty that our failure lies, it is quite the reverse. For the French, it is