The Associations Bill was proclaimed to be a “law of liberty,” and we know to-day that it was only a vulgar trap set by the Government to betray the Congregations into furnishing exact inventories of all their property so that it might be more easily confiscated. The Separation Bill is also a law of perfidious tyranny aimed at the very existence of the Church in France. M. Briand caused great hilarity in the Chambers when, by a slip of the tongue, he declared that in every part of it “could be seen the hand of our spirit of Liberalism.”[9] What is evident throughout is the hand of the secret society which has governed France since twenty-five years, and in whose lodges and convents all the anti-religious laws have been elaborated. The Chambers are merely its _bureaux d’enregistrement_, and not even that. Under the _ancien régime_ the Parliament could and often did refuse to enregister royal acts and decrees. It was two years before the Parliament of Paris consented to enregister the Concordat of 1516. But the Chambers to-day are merely the executive of the Grand Orient. This is the plain unvarnished truth, which is corroborated by all who have any knowledge of French politics. I have repeated many times in the Press of the United States that Republicanism in France is not a form of government, but the _modus operandi_ of a secret society. Before me are _verbatim_ reports of their assemblies and the speeches made at their political banquets in 1902. At that time only unauthorized Congregations had been suppressed. This, it was declared, “was not enough.... The Congregations must be operated on with a vigorous scalpel, and all this suppuration must be thrown out of the country; only thus will the social body, still very sick with acute clericalism, be cured.” In July, 1904, all the authorized Congregations, too, were suppressed, as we know. Even this was not enough. At the general “convent” of the Grand Orient, January, 1904, it was said: “We have yet a great effort to make.... The separation of Church and State will be in the order of the day in the Chambers in January, 1905.... The Cabinet and the Republican Parliament will end the conflict between the two contracting parties of the Concordat. The destruction of the Church will open a new era of justice and goodness.” M. Combes, then in power, was notified of the wishes of the Grand Orient, and he telegraphed back that he would conform thereto. The sensation caused by the publication of the spy documents, or _fiches_, stolen from the Grand Orient by M. Syveton and de Villeneuve nearly overthrew the Republic last November. The assassination of M. Syveton saved the Government and struck terror into the Nationalist camp. The publication of the spy documents ceased, and the lodges continued their work with a new figure-head, M. Rouvier instead of M. Combes.