There are two reasons why the road to disestablishment is plainer in France. The first is the abolition of the monarchy, which takes away the defender of the royal faith. The second is the payment of the clergy by the State. The disestablishment and disendowment of the French Churches would, in practice, be a task of extreme simplicity. Parliament would merely decline to vote the budget des cultes, a refusal that may happen any day, and the Churches would be thrown on their own resources. In England there is a vast capital sum to be disposed of, and though it excites cupidity, the parties hostile to the establishment are unable to agree about the employment of it.
The temper of Englishmen is averse to a sudden change that is carried out all over the country. In France, whatever happens in legislation affects all France; but Great Britain has divisions which conveniently allow of experiments in this field or that, without extending them at once over all the national estate. Thus it may be predicted that when disestablishment takes place in France it will be co-extensive with the frontiers, whilst in Great Britain and Ireland, it was tried at first in Ireland, and will be tried a second time in Scotland or Wales.
A most important reason why it has not been effected of late years in France is the question of pecuniary honour. The question is this. Can the State honourably refuse to continue annuities which are in fact nothing but the interest of capital taken from the Church by the secular power? This consideration has great weight in a country that takes a just pride in continuing regular payments in spite of the disturbance caused by so many changes of government.
The objection, however, which looks unanswerable at first, is met by the advocates of disestablishment in two ways. First, they say that the property held by the Church in former times was generally ill-gotten, that is, by terrorising the consciences of the credulous; and next, they argue that a corporation is not like an individual or a family.
Then there is an objection, not on the ground of right but of simple policy. “Supposing it possible to confiscate the priests’ stipends honourably, would it be wise or prudent to do so?” Whenever they are ill-used, even to a much less degree than that, they immediately proclaim themselves martyrs. If their salaries were withheld there would be an immense display of clerical indigence. The clergy might excite much popular sympathy by appearing as one vast mendicant order, with ragged cassocks, and they would certainly do all in their power to arouse the indignation of the peasantry against the Government. Then they would put a great part of the country under a sort of interdict. Even already the reactionary parties prepare the way for something of this description by spreading rumours amongst the peasantry. According to these rumours the republic intends to deprive the peasantry of religious rites, so that their children are to remain unbaptized, and their dead are to be buried like dogs. These rumours have frequently reached me through the peasants themselves, and they are generally traceable to the efforts of reactionary candidates during election times, Cautious republicans think that to abolish the budget des cultes would be to provide the clergy and the monarchists with a very dangerous weapon. More than this, they believe that if disestablishment is intended to weaken and impoverish the clergy it will have an exactly contrary effect. The Church always gets whatever money she requires. Her power of renewing her wealth after immense losses is founded on the assured support of the rich. Here is a case in point. In consequence of the laïcisation of a school a few “brethren of the Christian doctrine” were put out of employment. The curé of the place started a subscription to get a home for them, and in a week he had got together nearly two thousand pounds.[35] Now, for comparison’s sake, imagine starting a subscription in the same place for some purpose of secular intellectual culture, such as the encouragement of scientific research or the purchase of prints or casts. You could not, in such a place, scrape together two thousand pence.
No one who knows France will venture upon predictions about French affairs. I may, however, indicate certain alternatives which the course of future events can scarcely altogether avoid.
There is the indefinite prolongation of the present system, by which opposite religions are endowed. This may continue for a long time, but it is not likely to last for ever. The annual payment of a tribute to the clergy is, like all tributes, a constantly-recurring vexation. In itself it is enough to revive hostility, which might otherwise pass into indifference. It will not let sleeping dogs lie. If it should ever happen, which is by no means impossible, that the opponents of the budget des cultes can unite a small majority, the clergy will open their newspapers one morning and see a brief announcement that their salaries are stopped.
A more probable event is that, according to the proposal of M. Yves Guyot, the State will disembarrass itself of responsibility by handing over the payment to the communes. According to this system the money would be given to the municipal council in each commune, to be expended either in the payment of the clergy, or for any other purpose of public utility that the majority of each council might prefer. There could then be no complaint against the Government, which would escape all responsibility. That would fall upon the municipal electors in each commune separately, who would have themselves to thank if they were deprived of religious ministrations.
The result of this, in practice, would be a partial and perhaps progressive disestablishment. The clergy would be paid in some communes, perhaps in the majority, but not in others. The change would therefore come without any general shock. This scheme may be agreeable to the numerous enemies of the clergy, who will have the wit to perceive that it offers a kind of bribe to the municipal councils, which are seldom rich, and almost invariably desire to do more than their limited means permit.[36] The more prudent republicans might accept it as affording a ground of complaint less advantageous, polemically, to the clergy.
It is unnecessary for me to go into detail about the question of disestablishment in England. Every English reader knows the present state of that question in his own country, and a few years hence whatever could be written in this book would only be out of date. I may, however, in a book of comparison between the two countries, point to the essential difference between disestablishment in France and England. In France it is desired by the aggressive secular spirit which is doing all it can to laïcise the country thoroughly. In England it is the unestablished religious communities that supply most of the motive power, and the spirit which animates them is not the secular spirit at all, but religious and social jealousy.
The use of this word “jealousy” looks like an attack upon the nonconformists, but it is not employed here in a hostile sense. If jealousy is a mental aberration when it makes people see falsely, it is not so when there is no perversion of facts. Nay, there may be circumstances when an awakened jealousy casts a clear light on unpleasant truths which would otherwise escape us. It is not in human nature that communities placed in a position of manifest social inferiority should not be jealous of the one community whose predominance makes them inferior. It is in human nature that, even when there is no active oppression, the inferior communities should desire a change which would relieve them from a degrading name.
The intellectual freethinker is not usually, in England, at all eager for disestablishment. The existence of a broadly tolerant State Church is not, from his point of view, a very great hindrance to liberty of thought. What he most dreads is a watchful universal inquisition, in which every man and especially every woman is an inquisitor always ready to examine him as to his opinions, and call him to account for omissions in religious “exercises.” A distinguished Englishman of this class, a scientific agnostic, said to me, “It would be a mistake to bring on disestablishment. The Church is more tolerant than the dissenters. The English state of things is more favourable to individual liberty than the American.”