opposition, to find support in the working classes. It is not only flattery that they address to the workers, in order to convince them that it would be greatly to their advantage to abandon the Socialists. They also would very much like to organise politico-criminal associations, just as Waldeck-Rousseau hoped to do twenty years ago; but the results they have obtained up till now have been very moderate. Their aim is to save the Church, and they think that the well-disposed capitalists might sacrifice a part of their profits to give to the Christian syndicates the concessions necessary to assure the success of this religious policy. A well-informed Catholic, who interests himself in social questions, lately told me that in a few years the workers would be obliged to recognise that their prejudices against the Church had no foundation. I think that he deluded himself as much as Waldeck-Rousseau did when in 1884 he regarded the idea of a revolutionary federation of syndicates as ridiculous, but the material interest of the Church so blinds Catholics that they are capable of every kind of stupidity.
The Social Catholics[1] have a way of looking at economic questions that makes them resemble our vilest politicians very closely. In fact it is difficult for the clerical world to conceive that things can happen otherwise than by grace, favouritism, and bribery.
I have often heard a lawyer say that a priest can never be made to understand that certain actions which the Code never punished are nevertheless villainies; and I have been told by a bishop's lawyer, that while a clientèle composed of convents is an excellent one, yet at the same time it is very dangerous, because convents frequently want fraudulent deeds drawn up. Many people seeing during the last fifteen years so many gorgeous monuments
- ↑ [The "catholiques soceaun" form a definite party. De Mutz has been for a long time the recognised leader of the party and still exercises considerable influence.—Trans. Note.]
