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 populace has serious intellectual difficulties in adhering to the dogmas of religion. All these reasons may determine some forms and some moments of popular irreligion, but to be effective they require the working of some earlier and still deeper principle of disturbance in the intimacy of men's consciences. The original cause, perhaps, we shall find in the very attitude of the clergy towards the democratic movements of these later days.

In France the priest was found on the side of the privileged nobility when the people began to murmur ominously at the foot of the tottering throne; and, more than a century later, when the people under a Republican Constitution aimed at consolidating itself on the basis of social reforms, the priest in religious houses and convents was again found conspiring with the remnant of the nobility to make a fresh attack upon its peace. While, in Italy, the priest, after