than this; in future they will not be allowed to engage in these works of charity, as their activity must be strictly confined to the maintenance and exercise of religious worship: it is for this reason they bear the restricted title of associations cultuelles, or corporations of worship.

But will these corporations thus limited to the exercise of their religion, and despoiled of the greatest part of their former resources, be free in future to acquire any property and to administer it as they choose? Certainly not; their property will be limited and will all have to be invested in government securities, which will thus be entirely under its control. With the exception of a reserve fund, exclusively destined to the support and decoration of the Church, they can only possess property three times that of their annual expenses, if these expenses exceed $1,000, and six times that if less than that sum. As if in justification of this measure M. Briand, the reporter of the Parliamentary Commission, alleged that the State of New York also limits the property of religious corporations, mentioning the sum of $12,000, whereas the limit is $300,000, which is a slight difference! In order that they may not exceed these narrow limits, the associations cultuelles must give a regular account of their receipts and expenses to the officials of the financial departments of the State. If they are not found in accordance with the law, the trustees are liable to punishment by fine, and the tribunals can dissolve the association. These regulations. may be read in articles 21, 22 and 23. Further on, the articles 34, 35 and 36 include no less astonishing clauses against the ministers of religion. One might think that after the separation, as these no longer receive any advantage from the State, they would be regarded as simple citizens, and as such subject to ordinary tribunals. But it is quite otherwise. For the crime of speaking against the magistrates or the laws in a church they will incur special penalties of fine and imprisonment, penalties for which the association will be held responsible, even if the rector has acted without consulting it; and instead of being judged by an ordinary jury, as other citizens are in similar cases, the priest will be judged

by the Correctional Court, all of whose members are appointed by the government! To understand the danger of such clauses, it suffices us to remember that divorce being now legalized in France, a penalty might easily be applied to any Catholic priest who should insist on the indissoluble character of the sacrament of marriage.

And this idea of marriage will furnish us with the conclusion of the first part of our study. The Concordat might in fact. be compared to a conjugal union in which the State represented the husband and the Church the wife. To-day they are separated; but the separation has simply consisted in the husband banishing the wife from the home, keeping all the fortune for himself and preventing her from acquiring any other, in his managing the little income which he allows her to gain. and in exercising a jealous watch over all her words and actions. Such a separation is no separation at all.

II.

What is the Wise Policy for the Church?

The American reader can now well understand all the protest and resistance which the French Separation Law has evoked. He will also comprehend why we have appealed to the liberal example of the United States, and why our opponents have refused to attach any importance to such an example, being ready to say with M. Briand in his famous report: "Perhaps the Americans in their turn will know something of the clerical question which they now regard, with a rather superficial disdain and with the confidence of a young and partly inexperienced nation, as occupying too large a place in the political pre-occupations of the Old World." In so speaking, he forgot that the English colonies in America knew and practiced religious intolerance for more than a century, but that they abandoned these errors the moment they felt the need of concord in order to become a great nation. We Frenchmen have need of the same union, not to become, but to remain, a great nation.

Imperfect as is our separation law other religious bodies, both Protestants and Israelites, have at once submitted to it. Many Catholics are violently opposed to it, and the clamor of their resistance at

the moment of the inventories must have found an echo on the other side of the ocean. According to them, the Church should simply take no notice of the law and continue to act exactly as if it did not exist. On the contrary, the more enlightened Catholics and the majority of the bishops think that whatever be the faults of the law, it is imprudent, unreasonable, and even impossible to ignore it. altogether. We hope and believe that this opinion may triumph and we will proceed to explain why.

The so-called "resistance" would not abolish or change the law; it would only succeed in aggravating the evils already grave enough, and diminishing and and diminishing and retarding any advantages that we may reasonably hope from it. The recent elections have plainly shown that the mass of the people is not averse to the separation, and the very centers where the disturbances in connection with the inventories took place were those that voted the worst. Thus, if one could still cherish some illusions some months ago, to do so now would be folly. There is nothing left for us but to consider the law as it exists; and without approving of it, we are obliged to reckon with it.

If we establish the associations cultuelles, they will receive that part of the Church's property which is not yet confiscated by the law and whose total, if we include every diocese and parish, reaches perhaps a capital of a hundred million dollars. They will have free use of the churches subject to the charge of keeping them in repair. They can receive subscriptions, pew rents, the fees for certain ceremonies, and even endowments for certain offices. Aged priests will receive a small pension from the State, and finally religious worship will be public as in the past.

If we refuse to constitute these associations cultuelles, all property without exception will be confiscated by the State, and in the future we can never legally acquire any. The churches will no longer be ours and the State will take them over as it likes, without any delay in the districts where irreligion flourishes and by degrees in the others; and all this without exciting any serious revolt. We shall no longer be able to have any public worship; and the private ceremonies to which we shall be reduced will be subject

to every kind of vexatious interference, all the more to be dreaded as we shall almost always be in opposition to one or other of the exacting conditions of the network of the French legislation.

In spite of all these inconveniences we would renounce all thought of the associations cultuelles if they were schismatic in character or incompatible with the essential discipline of the Church, as the partisans of the resistance pretend; we are no more disposed than they to sacrifice doctrine and principles for the sake of material advantages. But we foresee much more danger to discipline and to unity in the case when, for the want of associations cultuelles, we necessarily shall be obliged to depend on the good will and generosity of private individuals. Worship ceasing to be public would assume an aristocratic and privileged character; and the Church would belong to the rich in whose homes one would go to celebrate the religious offices. On the contrary the association cultuelle is preserved from the danger of schism, first, by the right left to the committees to themselves enact whatever by-laws they wish, the text of which may be determined by the bishops; second, by Article 4 of the law, according to which the use of the churches and property now left to religious bodies would lapse to those associations which would be legally formed "in compliance with the rules for the organization of that form of worship whose exercise they propose to secure.

Several jurists have practically shown how, under the new régime, parishes and dioceses can be reconstituted both in accordance with the civil law and yet conformed to all the exigencies of Catholic discipline. We know only too well that they will have very little freedom, but, apart from the fact that they were not more free under the Concordat, we have not the choice between a perfect and an imperfect régime; we have on the one hand, to face a cramped and narrow mode of existence, and on the other, an absolute impossibility of existing at all; we prefer an unquiet life to death.

III.

The Advantages to the Church in Separation

In spite of all that has been said, one would have a false idea of the sentiments

Its

with which the separation law inspires us, if they were simply resumed, in the fact of our deploring its injustice while resigning ourselves to it, as to a lesser evil, because powerless to do otherwise. The separation has its good points, which largely compensate for its faults. chief advantage is to give back to the Church the liberty of naming all its ministers, from its curés to its bishops, without any intervention of the public powers. And this liberty is all the more precious because for long centuries it was abolished in our country, to the great detriment of religious life. Before the French Revolution, the king, the nobles and the abbés of the court appointed the greater number of the curés; a few only depended on the bishops, and the Archbishop of Lyons, for instance, did not dispose of a quarter of the nominations.

It is true the Concordat of Napoleon in Article 10 gave back to the bishops the right of nominating the curés, but it added: "their choice may only fall on persons acceptable to the government." It is easy to understand the gravity of this restriction, and what conditions had to be fulfilled, especially of late years, in order to be agreeable to the government.

Honestly speaking, it was oftenest a moral impossibility for the bishops to name to any important offices those persons whom they considered the most capable of filling them. The latter, in order to be accepted, must not be opposed by the deputy, the prefect, the mayor, the ancient of the Masonic lodge, the saloonkeeper nor any other influential elector. The obstacle to their acceptance did not so much proceed from their deficiencies nor from their intrusion, real or imaginary, into the domain of politics, as from their success in their parochial works, their pastoral zeal, the successful mission they had preached, or the school and patronage which they had established and supported. Things had come to such a pass, that in certain cases the bishops, not to lose their time in useless procedure, would spontaneously eliminate the most worthy candidate, and present in succession two, three or four others, each time descending one degree in the scale of merit.

In order to get these nominations accepted and also to serve other religious

interests which were in continual need of support from the civil powers, they saw themselves forced to use great precaution and prudence in their relations with the government and at times were obliged to make those half concessions which, without endangering any essential rights, still provoked the easily roused and intemperate anger of the zealots, the brawlers and the politicians. Between the governmental hostility on the left, and the fanaticism of certain Catholics on the right, the administration of a diocese became a most painful and onerous task.

The new law does not concern itself in any way with ecclesiastical appointments. Happy in the enjoyment of such liberty, the bishops have at once profited by it. They have in the seven months which have just elapsed, filled up the posts which had suffered by being so long vacant; they have nominated to important offices excellent priests, whom the ostracism of the government had excluded for many years. Of one point we can be certain, not one of them regrets the former state of things, and when they have enjoyed such an important liberty for a still longer time, it is not likely they will ever consent to give it up, even if the impossible should occur, and the government desired to make a new Concordat.

The law of 1905 does not interfere in the choice of the bishops any more than it does in the choice of the rectors; it does not even allude to it. And this is a great and auspicious novelty in the life of the Church of France. It is true the canonical institution of bishops was left to the Pope, because in the Catholic Church it is an essential principle, an inalienable right; but their nomination, under the Concordat of Francois I. and also under that of Napoleon, was left to the head of the State. Thus at one blow vanishes the servitude of five centuries.

How the Catholic Church of France will henceforth make use of the perfect liberty left her in the choice of her bishops, is not yet determined, at least in any public or authentic text. However, the mode of nomination is beginning to take shape in the form of what is called the "recommendation." Under this system, in vogue to-day in every country in which the English tongue is spoken: Ireland, England, Scotland, Australia, Canada

and the United States, and which appears to produce the best results, the clergy of the vacant diocese and the bishops of the province each make a list, not necessarily similar, to be submitted to Rome. The Pope knows that the first name on the list that of the candidate preferred, and he generally chooses him, without, however, renouncing the right, which he sometimes uses, of taking the second or third candidate, or even nominating one not on the list.

At the end of February, when Rome nominated fourteen of our bishops at one time, we know that her choice was directed by lists; but by lists drawn up by bishops only; by the bishops of the provinces in which the vacant see was situated, and by the bishops of the neighboring provinces. The clergy were not consulted. Will they still continue to be ignored? Many suppose so, but without any sure grounds; and as far as one may express an opinion on the subject, there would be good reason to regret it: in fact the diocese interested would be the only one that could exercise no influence in the choice of its head, whilst on the other hand a body which recruits its members itself offers less chance of renewed vigor

and adaptability. We have need of union. The two lists would give it more completely, the clergy of the diocese would be already attached to the bishop of its choice; the bishops of the provinces likewise would be in sympathy with the colleagues accepted by them. At least we are already sure of this second benefit, and thereby of having henceforth united episcopacy, a Church of France.

And the idea of this union leads us to insist on another advantage of the separation, which can not fail at the present time to strike even the most prejudiced minds. I mean the liberty of episcopal councils. When the prelates assembled at the archbishop's palace in Paris, some few weeks ago, it was the first time for a hundred and twenty years that we saw the heads of our Church conferring in concert about our gravest interests.

This reconstruction of the Church of France is well worth the loss of the budget for public worship; it will even compensate and make amends for the spoliation and injustice of the Law of 1905. It is for this reason that the separation law, imperfect as it is, which has been forced on us, inspires us upon the whole with more hope than fear.

The ice men defend their position with the contention that last winter was a poor winter for the natural ice crop and that an ice famine did exist in the ice fields of the Great Lakes basin. To this they add an alleged increase in the cost of labor and a general advance in operating ex

penses.

The public as represented by the various officials now engaged in an investigation of alleged ice trusts declares that the alleged ice famine is a creature of the imagination, that climatic conditions. in the natural ice making regions are never such as to justify the increase of prices which marked the opening of the 1906 season. They contend, admitting the increased cost of labor and the increase of operating expenses, that the ice dealers were not justified in fixing ice quotations where they did.

The prosecutions are based upon the alleged fact that all the ice dealers got together and agreed upon the prices at which ice was to be sold to a certain community and that competition was stifled by such action.

This is borne out by the fact that natural and artificial ice have sold at practically the same figure in every city where both kinds of ice are sold. In Toledo, Ohio, and in many other cities the artificial ice dealers whose manufactured product could not cost very much more than in previous years maintained identically the same schedule of prices quoted by the natural ice dealers, and one kind of ice was frequently distributed from the wagons of dealers in the other kind.

Toledo, Ohio, a distributing point for the ice harvested in the great ice fields of Michigan and the home of several large ice manufacturing plants, seems to have made the pace. Ice prices in Toledo were doubled early last March and a grand jury investigation of the alleged Toledo ice trust was started by Prosecuting Attorney Wachenheimer, of Lucas County, Ohio, in that same month. Five Toledo ice concerns and their officers were indicted.

As soon as the attention of the country was attracted to Toledo and her battle with the ice dealers, reports of investigations began to come in from other cities and prices appear to have increased over a large part of the United States during

the months of April, May, June and even as late as July. Statistics gathered since the trouble commenced show an advance of from twenty to forty per cent in ice prices in almost every town between the Atlantic coast and Kansas City. Even Washington was not immune from the contagion and is now in the throes of an investigation of an alleged ice trust which sprang into life within the very shadow of the White House. Prices of ice increased in Philadelphia and Pittsburg the same day, July 11, the increase being practically the same in both cities. About a month before that time prices rose in Norwalk, Connecticut, Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Cincinnati and west as far as Omaha and Kansas City.

Thus far the ice men have been convicted in Toledo and acquitted in Cleveland. The prosecutions in other cities. have been interrupted by the traditional summer adjournment of courts or have been delayed by the slow process of the law. In Toledo workhouse sentences were imposed and the ice dealers spent almost two weeks in the county jail awaiting commitment to the workhouse, but before the commitment papers were made out by the County Clerk the execution of the sentence passed upon the ice men was suspended by an order of the circuit court. and the Toledo ice men are now at liberty pending a resumption of proceedings in circuit court this fall.

Toledo is getting ice cheaper now than any of the other cities in which an ice trust is being prosecuted. A new concern, the Citizens' Ice Company, is underselling the trust concerns in Toledo and is in a great measure restoring competition. From thirty cents per one hundred pounds in Toledo, prices range to sixty per hundred in Yonkers, New York.

The character of the general advance in prices has given rise to a suspicion in many quarters that it is a national affair, and some prosecutors do not hesitate to express a belief that a national ice trust is in existence. Prosecutor Wachenheimer, of Toledo, who has followed the situation carefully, expresses himself interestingly upon this phase of the controversy.

"I do not think that the increase in the price of ice throughout the country is evidence of a national ice trust," he says.