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Show Clerical Party in Belgium. IN THE MAY NUMBER of the Re--view of Reviews a correspondent, criticising the action of the clerical party as being the cause of "bitter radicalism rad-icalism and turbulent socialism," wrote: . "The. clerical party, is. chiefly responsible, by its narrow and illiberal policy, for the rappid growth in Belgium Bel-gium of bitter radicalism and turbulent socialism." : Father Vander Heydon, who labored as a missionary for years in our neighboring neigh-boring ' stateldaho and who is at present in Louvain, in a letter to the Baltimore Mirror, tells how unjust and untruthful, the criticism is. ' This he does by stating facts which show that the clerical. (Catholic) party have, during dur-ing their term of office, proved by their legisiationto .be the best friends of the masses of the people. "That party," he writes, "exempted all workingmen's homes, from taxation;, so that 52 per cent of Belgian homes pay no personal taxes whatsoever. It passed a bill pensioning pen-sioning aged w orkers, and at the present pres-ent writing, one year after the passage of said bill, 177,000 old men and women enjoy the benefit of this pension. It Zreduced to one-fifth of a cent per mile the railroad fares of workingmen going to or coming from their work; whilst any other citizen pays 1 cent per mile in third-class coaches and almost 3 cents per mile In first-class. " .It cut down by one-half, where workingmen are the interested parties, the legal expenses ex-penses attendant upon the sale or transfer of property. It empowered the state to make loans at an interest of two and a half per cent, with every faciliity for payment of capital and j interest, to help workingmen in securing secur-ing their own homes. Eighteen thousand thou-sand workhigmen have in this way become be-come proprietors of their homes in the last thirteen years, and the government has $9,000,000 standing out now on these homes an immense sum, considering the size of the country. It must be added that if the government loans at two and a half per cent where a work-ingman work-ingman wishes to buy or build a home for himself, it pays him 3 per cent for the money he leaves with it at the postal pos-tal savings bank. ."With all 'these; benefits accorded to one class of citizens the largest and the most deserving of the state's paternal pa-ternal care you may think that the other classes are burdened down with taxes far from it: for Belgians pay-less pay-less taxes that the citizens of any other European countrythe Swiss ex ceptedand also less than the citizens of the United States. A Belgian pays $7 in taxes; a Frenchman, $14; an Englishman, $18. If the Belgian clerical cleri-cal party has been narrow, it has been so in the sense of narrowing down to the smallest possible quota the people's taxes; if it has been illiberal, it has been so for the benefit of. the taxpayer, whose money' it did not squander." After showing the many advantages which have come to the common people from clerical rule he winds up by telling tell-ing the cause of discontent among the radicals and socialists: "Thirst after power, spite at the failure fail-ure of all the schemes hitherto contrived con-trived to secure that power, accounts for the bitterness of radicalism and the turbulence of socialism. As for the growth of these elements of disorder ! the Belgians see nothing of it at present. pres-ent. On the contrary, radicals and socialists so-cialists are losing ground, and the elections elec-tions announced for the 23th of May will prove it; for the forecast is admittedly admit-tedly in favor of greater success than ever for the Catholic party." j |