Even if,
as is probable, we are to have a temporary Catholic reaction, the
people will not revert to the Church. Religion has become for once and
all a matter of personal taste. Now beliefs are only dangerous
when they represent something like unanimity, or an unquestionable
majority. When they are merely individual, there is not a word to be
said against them, and it is our duty to treat them with the respect
which they do not always exhibit for their adversaries, when they feel
that they have force at their back.
There can be no denying that it will take time for the liberty, which
is the aim and object of human society, to take root in France as it
has in America. French democracy has several essential principles to
acquire, before it can become a liberal _regime_. It will be above
all things necessary that we should have laws as to associations,
charitable foundations, and the right of legacy, analogous to those
which are in force in England and America. Supposing this progress to
be effected (if it is Utopian to count upon it in France, it is not so
for the rest of Europe, in which the aspirations for English liberty
become every day more intense), we should really not have much cause
to look regretfully upon the favours conferred by the ancient _regime_
upon things of the mind. I quite think that if democratic ideas were
to secure a definitive triumph, science and scientific teaching would
soon find the modest subsidies now accorded them cut off.
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