chapter of this book. In the Province of Quebec in Canada, ever since the "Customs of Paris were restored in 1774, the class distinctions and extensive legal privileges of the clergy, which existed in France before the Revolution, have been continued. The many bloody revolutions in Mexico were only struggles to overcome the tyranny of the priests and soldiers, whose claims to be tried in special courts of their own, composed exclusively of either clergy or officers, was most strongly supported by the Church; see the article in the North American Review for January, 1896, by the Mexican Minister at Washington, on the " Philosophy of Mexican

Revolutions."

All therefore who believe that society exists for men, and not men for society, and in the equality of all before the law should oppose this Church Socialism, which calls upon the Fourth Estate to undo the work of the Third Estate in the French Revolution, not only that it may introduce a rigid mediæval communism, but also that it may restore the First and Second Estates to their former positions.

There is another objection to Roman Catholic Socialism which will be better understood after a perusal of the chapter on the Church and the Individual, in its denial of the existence of the spiritual part of man's nature. The consequence is that even while men remain good Roman Catholics and under the guidance of the Church, they are thrown too much for the satisfaction of the wants of their entire being upon the physical and intellectual treasures of this world, and when once they throw off the control

of the Church, as has been the case in all countries with the spread of education, they become too eager in the pursuit of that which will please their senses, regardless of the claims of their higher or spiritual

nature.

Over thirty years ago, Bishop Ketteler declared from his cathedral at Mayence: "The Social Ques. tion is a stomach question" (Nitti, Catholic Socialism, p. 355). The teachings of Roman Catholic philosophy are, as will be shown hereafter, that men are simply physical and sentient organisms, and the result of such teachings is always practically a materialism, identical with that of the extreme communist. The eagerness with which that part of the Roman Catholic clergy which was least bound by the Papal authority, took up the Henry George movement and defended it on theological grounds, may serve as an example to show how naturally Roman Catholics become communists, so soon as the restraint from above is relaxed. Mr. George's book, by the way, has never been put upon the Index. The most extreme and dangerous communists are the products of Roman Catholic countries; see Flint's Socialism (p. 449).

If Leo XIII. is right in the statement which he lays down in the Encyclical on Labor (above cited) that "the first and chief duty" of a ruler is "distributive justice,"-i. e., the distribution of the goods which constitute the common stock, to the various classes, how does he differ in principle from St. Simon or any other communist, except that in his trade unions "no Protestant need apply"? Is

not this exclusive spirit the severest charge against the A. P. A.? In brief, his plan is a priest-ruled communism; of which good practical illustrations are found in the history of the Jesuit colony of Paraguay or of the Missions of Mexico; their civilization consisted of priests and peons.

If the priest, will but, like the cobbler, "stick to his last" and attend to the development of man's spiritual nature, instead of attempting the direct government of the world, in its minutest details, the germ of sympathy in the heart of every man would blossom out into such love of neighbor that organizations of employers and employees acting together in harmony (as set out in the author's "Trade Organizations in Religion") would make us soon forget that there had ever been a social question.

CHAPTER III.

THE CHURCH AND THE FAMILY.

Having shown in the preceding chapters how the rights of the State would be ground down between the Church and the Workingmen's Guild, acting like an upper and nether millstone, let us now consider whether there is a third institution which would still further lessen these rights.

The following extract from the Encyclical of Leo XIII. on Labor speaks for itself: "A family, no less than a State, is, as we have said, a true society governed by a power within itself, that is to say by the Father. Wherefore, provided the limits be not transgressed which are prescribed by the very purposes for which it exists, the Family has at least equal rights with the State in the choice and pursuit of those things which are needful to its preservation and its just liberty. We say, at least equal rights; for since the domestic household is anterior both in idea and fact to the gathering of men into a commonwealth, the former must necessarily have rights and duties which are prior to those of the latter, and which rest more immediately on nature. If the citizens of a State, that is to say, the Families on entering into association and fellowship, experienced at the hands of the State hindrance instead of help, and found their rights attacked instead of being protected, such association was rather to be repudiated

than sought after. The idea then, that the civil government should, at its own discretion, penetrate and pervade the Family and the household, is a great and pernicious mistake and to speak with strictness, the child takes its place in civil society not in its own right, but in its quality as a member of the Family in which it is begotten. And it is for the very reason that 'The child belongs to the Father,' that, as St. Thomas of Aquin says: 'Before it at tains the use of free will, it is in the power and care of its parents' (St. Thomas's Summa Theologiae, II., II., q. 10, a. 12).”

The theory of St. Thomas Aquinas on the Family is set out more at length in the Summa I., II., q 105, a. 4, where his conclusion is as follows: "Concerning domestic persons which are either servant and master, or man and wife, or finally father and child, the Old Testament gave precepts, rightly and conveniently for the preservation of human life."

The important part which the Family and Tribe played in Jewish history, preceding the organization of the State, is well known; and in most of the Greek cities, men bound together by ties of blood, were important political factors in their early history. See Aristotle's Politics I., 2. It is therefore not to be wondered at that St. Thomas should place the Family as a society on an equality with the State, as he does in Comm. in Lib. Ethic.Aristot., Lect. I., L. I., making the State, the Family, and the Individual the three subdivisions of moral philosophy. He concludes: "And hence it is that moral philosophy is divided into three parts. Of which one