The Third Republic has found a better way. To say nothing of the extensive network of electoral strongholds that they have established all over the country by unlimited and most abusive high licence, the masters of France have enlisted the enthusiastic support of myriads of pettifogging lawyers and all the nondescript red-tapers of law by the unlimited supply of lucrative jobs, pickings, and perquisites, furnished by the notorious laws of 1901 and of 1904, and their bandit operations called “liquidation.” They do not all pocket a few hundred thousands, like the millionaire Socialist, M. Millerand, appointed by M. Waldeck Rousseau, but all have a share in the carving up of the quarry. Not content with devoting to this novel kind of graft all the holdings of the hapless Congregations, who fell into its trap and asked for authorization, the Government has kindly put up more than four millions and a half of public money, thus far, to cover the cost of innumerable lawsuits, expropriations, etc., going on all over the country since four years. The mobilizing of the regular army for the expropriations was in itself an important item. All this reckless, thriftless expenditure, joined to the continuous drain of millions from the _Caisses d’Epargne_ and the exodus of capital, will lead up to national bankruptcy as in 1795. To throw dust in the eyes of the public, domestic and foreign, a most elaborate document has been published regarding pensions and retreats for aged _congréganists_ ruthlessly thrown into the streets. This document is a huge farce, seeing that these pensions are only conditional to there being funds enough, and there will be no assets left. The Chartreux of Grenoble had some hundreds of their aged workmen on their pension list. These were, in common justice, creditors of the order, and should have received compensation from the _liquidateur_. But the latter repudiated their claims absolutely.[10] What a fall was there from the billions of the Congregations, held out as a glittering lure by Waldeck Rousseau in 1900, to bait his Socialist majority with promises of pensions for workmen, etc. The Bill of alleged Separation, eminently calculated to bring Church and State into constant contact and collision, holds out another golden perspective. To use an expressive slang term, there is in it unlimited _poil à gratter_, fur to scratch, for years to come--nay, as long as the Republic lasts. A few days after it was voted, 200 “venerables” of the Grand Orient offered a banquet to M. Briand, the reporter of the Law of Separation, while at a Socialist Congress presided over by M. Combes, the President of the Commission of Separation, referring to this law, declared “that the war against the Church must be carried on without intermission.” Commenting thereon, the _Temps_ sarcastically wrote: “If the clerical spectre is still to haunt us, was it worth while to be turning like squirrels in a cage for the past five years?”