The ground on which it is proposed to declare religious congregations illegal without interfering with Masonic and other associations is, said Waldeck Rousseau, that “our public right [_droit public_] and that of other States proscribes all that constitutes an abdication of the rights of the individual, right to marry, to possess, all, in fact, that resembles personal servitude.” Thus in the name of liberty and the famous rights of man, I am denied the right to exercise my freewill by electing to remain single, because not to marry would be an abdication of one of the rights of the individual, and resemble “personal servitude.” Anything more grotesquely inconsistent cannot well be imagined, and this project of law has been in process of elaboration in the lodges since twenty years! In 1880, when the decree against the Jesuits and all congregations of men was promulgated, it was declared illicit and unconstitutional by 1500 jurists, and 400 of the higher magistrates, who refused their connivence, were removed from office. One of my best friends was among these victims. The decree was enforced _manu militari_, but the current of public opinion was so strong that, ere long, these establishments were reopened and continued their good works unmolested. It was next proposed to crush out the Congregations by fiscal measures. This also has proved inadequate, and the present project of law is the supreme effort of a most paternal and absolute Republic to secure the liberty of thousands of unappreciative subjects, by preventing them from exercising it in the choice of a mode of life. Truly a strange aberration of liberty, equality, and fraternity! Of course it is an open secret that what is aimed at is the destruction of the Catholic Church in France, and the establishment, if possible, of a national church with a “civil constitution of the clergy” as was attempted in 1792. Before attacking the citadel it is proposed to demolish the two great ramparts of the Church, Christian education and Christian charity, by disbanding the noble men and women who man these ramparts. It is a notorious fact, well established by Taine, that the French Revolution, with all its saturnalia of carnage and nameless tyranny, was the work of a handful, some ten thousand in all, and even many of these were foreigners. They carried all before them, and I fear that history will repeat itself.