Note 80 — Chapter IV · RELIGION AND NON-RELIGION AMONG THE PEOPLE.

“By means of the confessional,” says M. de Laveleye, the “priest holds the sovereign, the magistrates, and the electors, and through the electors the legislative chamber, in his power; so long as the priest presides over the sacraments, the separation of Church and State is only a dangerous illusion. The absolute submission of the entire ecclesiastical hierarchy to a single will, the celibacy of the clergy, and the multiplication of monastic orders, constitute a danger in Catholic countries of which Protestant countries know nothing.”