Everyone is inclined to accept as true the statement, on record as official, that the wealth of the Religious Orders in France is at the bottom of the trouble.  We are not therefore a little astonished to learn from other sources that it is rather their poverty, which is burdensome to the people.  The religious are not too rich, but too poor.  They cannot support themselves, and live on the enforced charity of the laborer.  French parents, not being equal to the task of maintaining monasteries and supporting large families, limited the number of their children.  The population fell off in consequence.  The government came to the relief of the people and cast out the religious.

And here we have the beautiful consistency of those who believe that any old reason is better than none at all.  The religious are too poor, their poverty is a burden on the people; the religious are too rich, their riches are prejudicial to the welfare of the people.  One reason is good; two are better.  If they contradict, it is only a trifling matter.  As for us, we don’t know quite where we stand.  We can hear well enough, amid the din of denunciation, the conclusion that the religious must go; but we cannot, for the life of us, catch the why and wherefore.  Is it because they are too poor? or because they are too rich? or because they are both?  We might be justified in thinking:  because they are neither, but because they are what they are—­ religious, devoted to the Church and champions of Her cause.  This reason is at least as good as the two that contradict and destroy each other.  In this sense, is monastic poverty a bad and evil thing?

CHAPTER XLIII.  THE VOW OF OBEDIENCE.

What kind of obedience is that which makes religious “unwilling to acknowledge any superior but the Pope?” We have been confidently informed this is the ground given in several instances for their removal.  And we confess that, if the words “acknowledge” and “superior” are used in certain of the meanings they undoubtedly have, there is good and sufficient ground for such removal.  At the same time we submit that the foregoing phrase is open to different interpretations of meaning, several of which would make out this measure of repression to be one of rank injustice.

The studied misrule and abuse of language serves a detestable purpose that is only too evident.  A charge like the above is true and false, that is to say, it is neither true nor false; it says nothing, unless explained, or unless you make it say what you wish.  It is a sure, safe, but cowardly way of destroying an enemy without being obliged to admit the guilt to oneself.