MONTALEMBERT

CH

HARLES FORBES DE MONTALEMBERT was born at Poitou on the 29th of May, 1810. When he was but a little over twenty, he interested him. self in the establishment of a School of Liberal Catholicism. This scheme brought him into notice and he was formally charged with unlicensed teaching. He claimed the right of trial by his peers, and made a notable defence, of course with the deliberate intention of formulating a protest against the expected judgment. In 1836 he published the "Life of St. Elizabeth of Hungary." During the reign of Louis Philippe he made himself conspicuous by his remonstrances against the restrictions imposed on the liberty of the press, besides struggling for freedom in national education. On the downfall of Louis Philippe, he accepted a seat in the Assembly. A defeat in 1857 put an end to his parliamentary career. After the establishment of the Empire, he became prominent as an author. Ten years before his death, and when he was fifty years old, his great work, "Les Moines d'Occident depuis St. Benoît jusqu'à St. Bernard," appeared. He died in March, 1870.

I

FOR FREEDOM OF EDUCATION'

KNOW that by myself I am nothing. I am but a child;

and I feel myself so young, so inexperienced, so obscure, that nothing less than the recollection of the great cause of which I am here the humble champion could encourage me. But I am happy in possessing a recollection of words pronounced for the same cause in this very place by my father. And I am sustained by the conviction that this is a question of life and death for the majority of

'From an Address delivered before the Chamber of Peers in Paris in 1831, when Montalembert (aged twenty-one) was arrested with Lacordaire for teaching an unauthorized school.

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Frenchmen-for twenty-five millions who hold the same religious faith as myself; and by the unanimous cry of France for freedom of teaching; and by the written wishes of those fifteen thousand Frenchmen whose petition we have ourselves carried to the other Chamber; and by the rights of thousands of families whose offspring are springing up in a region which arbitrary legislation has made a desert-in one word, by the image of a cruel past to atone for, and an invaluable future to assert, and, above all, by the name I bear-that name which is as great as the world, the name of Catholic. I have all these principles to sustain me when I thus appear before you; and I require to remind myself of these great arguments, not only to give me courage, but to convince my judges that I have not been guided in what I have done by any inspiration of vanity, or any thirst for distinction. It is sufficiently well known that the career on which I have entered is not of a nature to satisfy an ambition which seeks political honors and places. The powers of the present age, both in government and in opposition, are, by the grace of Heaven, equally hostile to Catholics. There is another ambition not less devouring, perhaps not less culpable, which aspires to reputation, and which is content to buy that at any price; that, too, I disavow like the other. No one can be more conscious than I am of the disadvantages with which a precocious publicity surrounds youth, and none can fear them more. But there is still in the world something which is called faith-it is not dead in all minds; it is to this that I have early given my heart and my life. My life-a man's life--is always, and especially to-day, a poor thing enough; but this poor thing, consecrated to a great and holy cause, may grow with it; and when a man has made to such a cause the sacrifice

of his future, I believe that he ought to shrink from none of its consequences, none of its dangers.

It is in the strength of this conviction that I appear today for the first time in an assembly of men. I know too well that at my age one has neither antecedents nor experience; but at my age, as at every other, one has duties and hopes. I have determined, for my part, to be faithful to both.

DEVOTION TO FREEDOM

DELIVERED IN THE CHAMBER OF PEERS, JANUARY 1848. ON THE TROUBLES IN SWITZERLAND

I

HOLD for my part that the conflict in Switzerland has

not been against the Jesuits, nor for and against the

sovereignty of cantons. The battle has been against you, and for you. That is to say, a wild, intolerant, unregulated, and hypocritical liberty has combated that true, sincere, orderly, tolerant, and lawful freedom of which you are the representatives and defenders in the world. What was in question on the other side of the Jura was neither the Jesuits nor the independence of cantons; it was order, European peace, the security of the world and of France; and these have been vanquished, smothered, crushed, at our very doors, by men who ask no better than to throw the burning brands of discord, anarchy, and war from the Alps and the Jura into our midst. Thus I do not speak for the vanquished, but to the vanquished, vanquished myself that is to say, to the representatives of social order, rule, and liberalism which have just been overcome

in Switzerland and which are threatened throughout Europe by a new invasion of the barbarians.

Last year at this time, about this same day, I denounced at this tribune, in the midst of the marks of your sympathy and indulgence, a similar crime, the incorporation and confiscation of Cracovia; and to-day I am again called upon to denounce an unworthy violation, not only of the right of treaties, of that political right which I respect and esteem, but of a right superior to all others, the right of men, of nature, and of humanity, if I may use an expression common to the present time. The crime is the same to my eyes. Last year the last remnant of the Polish nation was in question; this year it is the cradle of European freedom which is the victim of a similar attack. But last year the attempt was made by absolute monarchies, and this year it is committed by pretended Liberals, who at bottom are tyrants of the worst class. What we have witnessed was the same then as now the abuse of force, the suffocation of liberty and right by brutal and impious violence-the violence of pledged faith, the reign of the greater number, the assumption by Force of Falsehood as its arms and attire.

There is, however, when I consider these two crimes, a difference which I cannot here indicate. The crime of last year, a crime of force, was committed in the name of force. This year the crime is that of despotism, with the addition of hypocrisy, for it is committed in the name of freedom. To my eyes, this odious lie aggravates the offence, and makes it ten times more worthy of your indignation and contempt.

Believe me, gentlemen, I do not come here to complain of religious or Catholic grievances. Yes, Catholicism has

been assailed in Switzerland, as all the world knows; but all the world knows also that the wounds and defeats of religion are never incurable or irreparable, and that at bottom her business is to be wounded, persecuted, and oppressed. She suffers, but only for a time. She is soon healed and raised up and out of these trials issues continually more radiant and stronger than ever. But do you know what it is which does not recover so easily, and which cannot with impunity be exposed to such attacks? It is order, peace, and, above all, freedom. This is the cause which I come to plead before you.

Let no one say, as certain generous but blind spirits have said, that radicalism is the exaggeration of liberalism; no, it is its antipodes, its extreme opposite. Radicalism is nothing more than an exaggeration of despotism; and never had despotism taken a more odious form. Liberty is reasonable and voluntary toleration; radicalism is the absolute intolerance, which is arrested only by the impossible. Liberty imposes unusual sacrifices on none; radi. calism cannot put up with a thought, a word, even a prayer, contrary to its will. Liberty consecrates the right of minorities; radicalism absorbs and annihilates them. To say

everything in one word, liberty is respect for mankind, while radicalism is scorn of mankind pushed to its highest degree. No; never Muscovite despot, never Eastern tyrant, has despised his fellows as they are despised by those radical clubbists, who gag their vanquished adversaries in the name of liberty and equality!

No man can have more right than I have to proclaim this distinction, for I defy any man to love liberty more than I have done. And here it must be said, I do not accept, either as a reproach or as praise, the opinion ex