M. Combes has been hired to do an odious job, when it is done he, too, will retire or fall. But the well-matured plans of the Grand Orient will be carried out with long-drawn, unrelenting, satanic astuteness. This is the peril I noted in my first article from France, March 17th, 1900. UNCHANGING JACOBINISM _6th May, 1903._ Last August I described the true spirit and scope of the Associations Bill, as it is called, and which many supposed was a mere matter of domestic economy. It should have been called an act for the suppression of all religious associations preparatory to the elimination of Christianity in France. _L’ennemi c’est Dieu._ It is evident to-day that the law of 1901 was a mere trap set by the Government to obtain from the Congregations accurate information regarding their pecuniary resources, in order to seize their property (for the term “liquidation” is only an euphemism); and regarding their members, so that they may be marked men and women, for ever debarred from preaching or teaching. The law required that demands for authorization of each religious order or association be submitted to the Chambers. M. Combes just bunched them all into three categories: preaching, teaching, and contemplative. At the request of the Government, the majority or “bloc” then sent them to execution by cartloads, as in 1793. Then the categories were labelled royalists, _emigrés_, and Catholic priests. It is much to the credit of these fifty-four Congregations of men that their lives were so free from reproach that _three_ times the Government had recourse to the same incident of a certain Superior, said to have been condemned to hard labour in the year 1868! As another instance, the case of the Frère Duvain was alleged. Like the Frère Flamidien, the former had been recently arrested and imprisoned on false charges. For since then, only a week or so ago, Frère Duvain too was acquitted as wholly innocent! These wholesale executions have been committed not only illegally, but in spite of the fact that out of 1600 municipal councils consulted on the subject, 1200 voted for the maintenance of the Congregations. About 100 abstained, and the others voted against. The prefects, being mere satraps of the Government, were nearly all opposed to the Congregations. The Government has been profuse in its protestations that its object in suppressing the religious Congregations was to protect the secular clergy against their encroachments. But since seventy-two bishops signed a petition to the Chambers on behalf of the Congregations, and are daily raising their voices to denounce the tyranny which has ostracized them, this mask also falls. The right to preach and to teach are corollaries of the right of free speech and free thinking. All liberties, indeed, are inseparably connected, and must stand or fall together.