Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
 
3>c 
 
 ri3 
 
 1 
 
 <$arneU Utttoecaitg iCibratg 
 
 Jltlfaca, N«>n %ark 
 
 Wtite l^iBtacital Siibcacg 
 
 THE GIFT OF PRESrOENT WHITE 
 
 MAINTAINED BY THE UNIVERSITY IN ACCORD- 
 ANCE WITH THE PROVISIONS 
 OF THE GIFT 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
This book was digitized by Microsoft Corporation in 
 
 cooperation with Corneii University Libraries, 2007. 
 
 You may use and print this copy in iimited quantity 
 
 for your personai purposes, but may not distribute or 
 
 provide access to it (or modified or partiai versions of it) 
 
 for revenue-generating or other commerciai purposes. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 92402431 1 585 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
%^e Ctiurc^ 
 
 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
THE FSE^ICH REVOLUTION. 
 
 A HISTORY 
 
 ENELATIONS OF CHURCH AND STATE, 
 
 FROM 1789 TO 1802. 
 
 E. DE PRESSENSE, D.D. 
 
 flrran^Kattft from t6e Jftenct Sp 
 JOHN STROYAN. 
 
 ' God is as necessary as liberty to the French people." — Mirabeau. 
 ' The Free Church in the Free' State."— Cavoue. 
 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 
 
 27, PATERNOSTF.R ROW. 
 
 MDCCCLXIX. 
 
 Digitized by IVjhrosoft® 
 
DC/ 
 
 / ^^7 
 
 1^^ 
 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 A CELEBRATED author, who has read much and written well oi 
 the French Revolution, has justly remarked that " considering the 
 qualities of the matter, one may perhaps reasonably feel that 
 since the time of the Crusades, or earlier, there is no chapter of 
 history so well worth studying." The present volume is devoted 
 to that " side of this instructive and mournful history which is 
 connected with the relations of Church and State." The trans- 
 lation is slightly abridged ; but as the passages omitted are only of 
 minor importance, it is substantially a reproduction of the original. 
 Space has thus been gained for the addition of an index, a 
 few notes, a chronological table, and an entirely new preface, 
 written by the author expressly for this edition. The translation 
 has been revised by one who has been my constant associate and 
 untiring helper in this labour. I am also indebted to my 
 friend and neighbour, the Rev. Richard Evans, for valuable 
 suggestions offered during a perusal of the manuscript. 
 . May the work now introduced to the British public be pro- 
 motive, through the Divine blessing, of the great cause of Religious 
 Liberty, which is the basis of all liberty; for, as Vinet profoundly 
 remarks, "The respect of a man or of a people for Religious 
 Liberty, is the exact measure of their love for liberty in general : 
 whoever does not love Religious Liberty does not really love any 
 
 liberty." 
 
 JOHN STROYAN. 
 
 BSUKJHAW, BURNLEV, 
 
 January, 1869. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
PREFACE 
 
 ENGLISH EDITION. 
 
 I BELIEVE that present circumstances impart a new interest to 
 the subject treated of in my book, on " The Church and the 
 French Revolution/' which has just obtained the honour of an 
 English translation. Let it be permitted me to show this in a few 
 words. 
 
 The question of the separation of Church and State occupies 
 the first place in the order of the day of our epoch. It is vain to 
 wish to set it aside or to postpone it; it returns more urgent, 
 more irresistible, as an imperious social and religious necessity 
 which is evolved from all the events of politics, and all the 
 conflicts of the Church. On the European Continent the 
 Roman question is nothing else than the question of the 
 relations of the temporal and spiritual, in that spot of the 
 world where the bonds between the two powers have been 
 the most closely drawn to the misfortune and shame of both. It 
 cannot be resolved in the metropolis of Catholicism without the 
 ancient system being shaken everywhere, for the various con- 
 cordats which unite the Church to the State in. the principal 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
VIU PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION OF 
 
 countries of Europe, are conceived at the point of view of the- 
 temporal power of the Bishop of Rome. This power could not 
 fall to pieces without drawing them down with it, and producing a 
 radical renovation in the relations of civil and religious society. 
 Now we know to what degree the temporal power of the Pope is 
 sapped at the base. Personification of all abuses, of all tyrannies, 
 it has against it all the liberal aspirations of the entire world, not 
 to mention the justifiable hatred of Italy, of which it is the curse, 
 and of the Roman people, on whom it presses with its whole 
 weight. Nothing is more decaying than the Vatican. This old 
 citadel of civil and religious despotism is sustained only by the 
 States outside. Lo, Spain is failing her ; there is no longer any 
 but France. We may apply to this last country, with a little- 
 modification, the ironical words of Francis the First on woman — 
 
 " Souvent France varie, 
 Bien fol est qui s'y fie ! " 
 
 " So oft does France alter, 
 A fool he who trusts her ! " 
 
 Let it not be forgotten that, by the side of the French Go- 
 vernment there is the public intelligence, which does not always 
 find its exact representation in a rigime in which all initiatives 
 belong to the Sovereign. At the very time, therefore, when the 
 second Roman expedition obtained its sad victory at Mentana, 
 opinion was passionately pronounced, not only against the Roman 
 theocracy, but against all State religions and all paid and protected 
 worships. The movement in this direction becomes every day 
 more general and more powerful, and we may hope everything 
 for its invigoration from the approaching council, which, by 
 •raising the temporal power to the height of a dogma, will pre- 
 cipitate its definitive fall. The dead soon go. That which must 
 
 die, feverishly hastens towards its dissolution. The attitude of 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. ix. 
 
 the Ultramontane party in Austria, with respect to the most ele- 
 mentary reforms, shows that no compromise with it is possible^ 
 Itself demands its letter of divorce from the State, by not 
 accepting the most moderate proposals. It will most certainly 
 obtain it, and will contribute, in its own way, to the enfranchise- 
 ment of conscience. 
 
 The internal circumstanoes of the Churches on the Continent 
 equally tend to press forward towards the same solution. 
 Catholicism in Italy and in Spain is in full crisis ; the innovating 
 or reforming elements that it may contain know that they can 
 obtain their liberty only when the official frame-works shall have 
 been broken. The Council will push them on towards this 
 declivity with a force altogether new. As for European Pro- 
 testantism, it is certain that recent events in Germany are casting 
 it, often in despite of itself, into the way of the separation of 
 Church and State. Thus the great Lutheran Churches forming a 
 part of the new provinces annexed by Prussia, find only in the 
 independent system, so contrary nevertheless to their religious 
 genius, a refiige against the ecclesiastical annexations with which 
 they are threatened ; we have seen, with astonishment, fanatical 
 partisans of the theocracy inaugurating the enfranchisement from 
 the civil power, and we have been ready to exclaim : " Ha, 
 what ! is Saul also among the prophets ?" French Protestantism 
 united to the State is in full dissolution. It presents the most 
 afflicting spectacle. The official frame-works serve as a closed, 
 field to an infuriated struggle between two parties, or rather 
 between two radically different religions which are contending for 
 the pay and protection of the State. Suppress the pay, and this 
 lamentable strife immediately ceases, or at least it is no longer 
 intestine ; the separation takes place of itself between unbridled 
 rationalism and the evangelical section, and the noble tradition of 
 
 the Church of the fathers springs up again immediately. Minds 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
X ' PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION OF 
 
 are weary with these ' unprofitable discussions which turn t 
 dispute, and which dishonour Christianity at a time when ii 
 fidehty no longer fixes limits to its audacious negations. A 
 generous hearts, therefore, sigh after enfranchisement. 
 
 Thus far for the Continent It does not belong t6 me to rela 
 the great ecclesiastical crisis through which England is nc 
 passing. It is certain that, apart from the considerable progres 
 ■of independent Christianity in its various sections, a great shakin 
 has been communicated to minds by the warm debates which th 
 •question of the Irish Church is provoking. The passionate efFori 
 ■of the Conservative party to resist Mr. Gladstone's proposal, ha-v 
 had the effect of enlarging the debate instead of localising it, an 
 of raising the ecclesiastical problem in its entirety, by saying t 
 the whole Anglican Church, De te fabula narratur — "It is of the 
 that the question is." Now, when a question of this order hs. 
 been thus broached in a country, we can no more cause it tc 
 disappear. The partial and momentary checks only precipitali 
 the movement of minds. The important point is that the question 
 is stated; the solution may tarry, it is 'certain. The valiani 
 English race has too much energy and logic to leave such a 
 problem in suspense, or to be satisfied with an expedient. I am 
 •of opinion then, that this century will not have completed iti 
 course before the noble motto of Cavour : " The free Church it, 
 the free State," shall have been realised on this side of the Atlantic 
 as on the other shore. 
 
 The circumstances which I have described seem to me to give 
 .a new opportuneness to the work which has the honour ot 
 appearing before the lettered public of Great Britain. The 
 ■experience of a recent past affords salutary instructions to the 
 present generation, at a time when it is struggling with the same 
 difficulties. The French Revolution found itself in presence of a 
 powerful State Church which was the greatest proprietor in the 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. xi 
 
 country. The question was not merely of abolishing its privileges, 
 it was necessary also to settle its position. Two systems were 
 discussed ; the first subjected it to the common law in all things, 
 and abandoned it to itself whilst leaving to it the means of self- 
 support, a thing easy enough, considering its immense pos- 
 sessions which might be equitably reduced to just proportions. 
 The second -system consisted in putting it under the hand of the 
 State, on condition that this hand should open to give to it a 
 recompense. Unhappily it was with this party that the Con- 
 stituent of 1789 sided, and to which the First Consul returned at 
 the time of the signing of the Concordat with Rome, after a too 
 short interregnum, of enfranchisement This book presents the 
 complete picture of the memorable debates which had this de- 
 plorable conclusion, and of the fatal consequences which it 
 entailed on reUgion and liberty. 
 
 May this sincere recital contribute to the avoiding of the same 
 faults by the present generation, and persuade it that, without the 
 entire separation of Church and State on equitable bases in what 
 concerns ecclesiastical property, there is only disturbance for the 
 civil society, oppression and debasement for the religious society. 
 I should esteem it a great honour if I could in this way serve the 
 cause which is dear to me, the cause which unites the Gospel and 
 liberty, in that great and noble country of England, which no one 
 admires more than I, as the classic land of a Protestantism truly 
 liberal. 
 
 EDMOND DE PRESSENSE. 
 
 ; Paris, 
 
 15/A December^ 1868. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 Translator's Preface v 
 
 Author's Preface to the EngUsh Edition vii 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Situation of the Church of France on the Eve of the Revolution. — 
 State of Opinion on Liberty of Conscience and Organisation of 
 Worship. 
 
 The Religious Question and the Revolution, i. — State of the 
 Ancient Church of France, 5. — Close Alliance with the Ancient 
 Regime, 7. — Catholicism alone recognised, 9. — Wealth and Pri- 
 vileges of the Church of France, 9. — Subordination to the Civil 
 Power, II. — The Concordat of Francis I. and the Gallican Liberties, 
 12. — Increasing Dependence with respect to Royalty, 13.— Ener- 
 vation of Faith, 15. — Maxims of Intolerance, 18. — Movement of 
 Opinion against the Church, 19. — Toleration universally De- 
 manded, 19. — Religious Liberty misunderstood, 20. — Baleful influence 
 of Rousseau, 21. — Backward Opinions of the Assemblies of the 
 Clergy, 23. — Opposition to the Reforms, 26. — Distinction between 
 the High and the Low Clergy, 29. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 THE CONSTITUENT. 
 
 Ctiaptfr I. 
 
 Legislative Preliminaries. — The First Debate on Liberty of Worships. 
 
 Opening of the States-General, 31.— The Official Instructions of the 
 Clergy, 32. — The Union of the Three Orders, 35. — Part borne by Riot 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 in the Revolution, 42.— Favourable Dispositions of the People towards 
 Religion, 43.— Night of the 4th of August, 44.— Numerous Clerica 
 Renunciations, 45.— Abolition of the Tithes, 47.— Declaration 
 Rights, St.— First Debate on Religious Liberty, 52.— Motion of M 
 Castellane, 55.— Speech of Mirabeau, 55.— Ambiguous Vote, 57.— Fins 
 Article of Mirabeau on the Debate, 58.— Spirit of the Majority of thf 
 Assembly, 59. 
 
 Chapter iu 
 
 Discussion on the Property of the Clergy. — Attitude of the different 
 Parties. — Speeches of Mirabeau, of Maury, and of Malouet. — 
 Suppression of the Religious Orders. — The Payment of Worships. 
 
 Ecclesiastical Property before the Revolution, 63. — The Question is 
 entered upon by the Assembly, 67. — Propositions of Talleyrand and 
 of Mirabeau, 69, 70. — Opening of the Debate, 72. — Three groups of 
 Opinions, 72. — Opinion of the Right. Opinion of the Left, 73, — 
 Speech of Malouet, "j"]. — Speech of Mirabeau, 80. — Resolution of the 
 Assembly, 83. — The Revolution too Faithful to the KtvostA Regime, 83. — 
 The right of the State with respect to Corporations, 85. — The True 
 Solution, 89. — Reorganisation of the Ecclesiastical Committee, 92. — , 
 New Propositions, 94. — Alienation of the Property of the Clergy, 95. — I 
 Discussion on the Monastic Orders, 96. — Proposition of the Payment- 
 of Worships by the State, 104. — Report of Chasset, 104. — ^The; 
 Debate is entered upon, 106. — Anger of the Right, io8. — Motion of 
 Dom Gerle, 109. — Agitation in Paris, 11 1. — Discussion of the Motion of 
 Dom Gerle, 112. — Defeat of the Motion, 115. — Inconsistencies of both; 
 Parties, 118. — Reparation made to the Protestants, 120. — Civic Rights; 
 granted to the Jews, 120. — Civic Rights granted to the Comedians, 122. 
 
 Cliapter fiu 
 
 The Civil Constitution of the Clergy. — The Assembly transformed into 
 
 a Council. 
 
 Bill of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, 125. — General Dis- 
 cussion, 128. — Discussion of the Articles, 132. — Retrospective Applica- 
 tion admitted, 135. — The Civil Constitution true to the Ancient 
 Regime, 135. Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
CONTENTS. XV 
 
 Cliapter it). 
 
 First resistances of the Clergy. — Disturbances at Nimes and Montauban. 
 — The Political Oath imposed on the Clergy. — Pathetic Scene in 
 the Assembly. — Address of Mirabeau to the Nation. — Pamphlet oj 
 Camille Desmoulins. 
 
 War breaks out between the Revolution and Religion, 139. — Effect 
 of the Measures of the Assembly in the Country, 140. — Disturbances 
 in the South and in Alsace, 140. — Massacres at Nimes, 141. — Organisa- 
 tion of Resistance at Rome, 145. — Statement of Principles of the Bishops 
 opposed to the Civil Constitution, 150. — Violent Mandates, 152. — 
 Proposition to impose on the Ecclesiastics an Oath to the Civil Con- 
 stitution of the Clergy, 155. — Speech of Mirabeau, 156. — First Effect 
 of the Decree on the Oath, 160. — Perplexity of the King, 160. — He 
 sanctions the Decree, 162. — Pathetic Scene in the Assembly, 163. — 
 Violences of the Left, 168. — Decree against the Refusal of the Oath, 
 169. — Address explanatory of the Civil Constitution, 170. — Bill of 
 Mirabeau, 170. — Magnificent beginning, 171. — Conclusion full of 
 inconsistency, 173. — Pamphlet of Camille Desmoulins,' 175.- 
 
 Chapter 6* 
 
 The Schism Constituted. — Correspondence with Rome. — Consequence of 
 the Legislative Measures in the Country. — Splendid Debate ^pn 
 Religious Liberty on the occasion of the Opening of the First 
 Church of the Nonjurors. — Speeches of Sieyes and Talleyrand.— 
 End of the Constituent Assembly. 
 
 Annexation of Avignon, 177. — Discussion on the Annexation: of 
 
 Avignon, 179.— Letter from the Pope to the Bishops, iSo.^Answer of 
 
 the Bishops, 182. — Brief from the Pope on the Civil. Constitution, 
 
 183. — Numerous Resignations, 184. — Principal Bishops' of the New 
 
 Clergy, 185.— First manifestions of the New Clergy, 187.— Ridiculous 
 
 Mandate of Gobel, 188. — Irritation of the People of Paris against the 
 
 Nonjurors, 189. — Resolution of the Directory with respect to the 
 
 Dissident Temples, 190.— The King prevented from proceeding to St. 
 
 Cloud, 191.— Riot against Religious Liberty, 191.— Noble attitude of 
 
 Lafayette, 192.— New Debates on Liberty of Worships, 193.— Speech 
 
 of Talleyrand, 195. — Strength of his Conclusions, 196.— Sieyes defends 
 
 the same Cause. 197. — He puts aside all Sophisms, 198.— Religious 
 
 Agitation increases, 199. — Removal of the ashes of Voltaire to the 
 , ^ Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
XVI CONTENTS. 
 
 Pantheon, 201. — End of the Constituent Assembly. The Flight 
 VarennBs precipitates the Crisis, 202. — Final Judgment respecting thi 
 Constituent, 204. 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 THE LEGISLATIVE AND THE CONVENTION TO THE PROCLAMATIO: 
 OF THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 C!)ap«c I. 
 
 Religious Strife under the Legislative Assembly. 
 
 Dispositions of the New Assembly, 207. — Passions of the Girondi 
 208. — Situation of the Country, 209. — Popular Violences against t^ 
 Nonjurors, 2io. — State of La Vendee, 212. — Report of Gallois anf 
 Gensonne, 212. — La Vendee wishes only Liberty of Worships, 215.- 
 Rising in the South, 215. — Blindness of the Court of Rome, 216. 
 Strange Memorial of Maury, 216. — Massacre of the Glaciere, 219.— 
 Vergniaud obtains the Amnesty, 220. — Letter of Andre Chenier, 22i.-i 
 He demands the Separation of Church and State, 223. — Measures 
 against the Emigrants, 224. — First Debates on the Nonjurors, 225.— 
 Fauchet demands Persecution, 226. — Liberal Speech of Tome, 227.-=. 
 The True Solution caught sight of, 229 — Noble Speech of Ducosj 
 230. — Speech of Gensonne, 231.— "Bad News from the Departments^ 
 233. — ^Violence of Isnard, 235. — Propostion of Fran9ois de 
 Neuchateau, 236. — Iniquitous Decree of the 29th of Novembei 
 1791, 239. — The King opposes his Veto, 240.— Noble Petition of the 
 Directory of Paris, 241. — Counter-Petition to the Assembly, 243, 
 Petition of Camille Desmoulins, 244. — Effects of the Veto in the 
 Departments, 245. — Ill-treatment inflicted on the Reiractories, 246.— 
 Persecution in the Convents of Women at Paris, 247. — Protestatioi" 
 •of the Refractory Clergy, 249. — Liberal Report of Cahier-Gerville, 249, 
 New Brief from the Pope, 251. — Disorders among the Constitution; 
 Clergy, 252. — Continuation of Persecution, 253. — Abolition of thi 
 Ecclesiastical Costume, 254. — Roland favours Illegal Persecution! 
 255.— Report of Franjais de Nantes, 256.— Weakness of the Right, 
 258. — Vote of the Decree of the 25th of May, 1792, 259. — The 20th oi 
 June, 261. — Terrible Speech of Vergniaud against the King, 261. 
 Persecution increases in the Province, 263. — The loth of Augusi 
 264. — Confirmation of the Decrees against the Nonjurors, 265. — Thi 
 Civil State committed to the Municipalities, 265. — Massacres 
 September, 267. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
 :he 
 
 3 
 
CONTENTS. XVll 
 
 Chapter iu 
 
 The Church under the Convention to the Abolition of the Payment of 
 , Worships. 
 
 i General Character of the Convention, 271. — Organisation of the 
 Revolutionary Tribunal, 276. — The Majority Hostile to Religion, 277. 
 — First Manifestation of this Hostility, 278. — The People of Paris still 
 attached to Religion, 279. — New Formula of the Oath, 280. — Debate 
 on Transportation, 281. — Condemnation to Death of numerous Refrac- 
 tories, 282. — First Plans of Constitution at the Convention, 283. — Plans 
 of Condorcet and Robespierre, 283. — Constitution of 1793, 286. — Dis- 
 cussion on Liberty of Worships, 287. — First Proposition to Abolish the 
 Payment of Worships, 288. — Robespierre defends the Payment of Wor- 
 ships by the State, 289. — Attacks against the Constitutional Church, 
 292. — Gigantic Struggle of the Revolution, 294. — Recrudescence of the 
 Terror, 295. — The Commune of Paris at the Head of the Atheistic 
 F Movement, 297. — New Calendar, 298. — Speech of Fabre d'Eglantine, 
 ^ 299. — First Manifestation of Impiety, 300. — Inauguration of the Wor- 
 ship of Reason at the Convention, 302. — Numerous Apostasies at the 
 Tribune, 303. — Noble Conduct of Gregoire, 304.— Objects of Worship 
 carried to the Commune, 307. — Organisation of the Worship of Reason, 
 308. — Impious Saturnalia, 309. — Persecuting Measures, 311. — Absolute 
 Proscription of Religion, 313. — Robespierre Attacks the Commune, 
 314. — His Speech at the Jacobins, 316. — Recantation of Hebert and 
 Chaumette, 317. — Recantation of the Convention, 318.— Robespierre 
 gets Liberty of Worships Voted, 319. — Derisive Decree on Liberty of 
 . Worships, 320. — Condemnation of the Dantonists, 321. — Speech of 
 ': Robespierre on the Supreme Being, 323. — The Festival of the Supreme 
 Being is Voted, 325. — Celebration of the Festival, 326. — The 9th of 
 Thermidor, 327. 
 
 I BOOK III. 
 
 THE REGIME OF THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 Chapter i. 
 
 ivention with r 
 'or to the expira 
 
 Immorality of the Thermidorians, 330.— Their Impiety, 331.— Main- 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
 Measures taken by the Convention with respect to Religion, from the 
 events of Thermidor to the expiration of its Powers. 
 
XVUI CONTENTS. 
 
 tenance of the Laws against the Priests, 332.— Sufferings of the Priests 
 on the Hulks, 334.— Gregoire pleads their Cause, 336— Noble Speech 
 of Gregoire, 337.— The Assembly Votes the previous Question, 340 — 
 Cambon proposes to abolish the Payment of Worships, 341.— His 
 Proposition is Adopted, 342.— Motion of Boissy d'Anglas, 343.— He re- 
 demands Liberty of Worships, 345. — Law of the 3rd of Ventose 
 year IIL on Liberty of Worships, 346.— Rigorous Measures against 
 the Refractories, 347.— Good Effect of Toleration in La Vendee, 349. 
 — Decree of the i8th Fructidor year IIL against the Priests, 352. — The 
 Churches are no longer Interdicted from Worship, 352.— Private Wor- 
 ship may be Celebrated without Authorisation, 353. — Decree on the 
 Police of Worships, 354. — Bill to replace Worship by Civic Festivals, 
 355. — Constitution of the year III., 357.— Last measure of the Conven- 
 tion against the Refractories, 359. — End of the Convention, 360. 
 
 Cl&apter iu 
 
 Regime of Worships imder the Directory. 
 
 Shameful Regime of the Directory, 362. — The Directory a sworn 
 enemy of Liberty of Worships, 365. — Proposal of a New Decree of 
 Proscription, 365. — Violence of the Directory against the Court of 
 Rome, 367. — Treaty of Tolentino, 369 — Report of Camille Jordan on 
 Liberty of Worships, 371. — Fine Debate on Liberty of Worships, 373. 
 — Speech of Royer-Collard, 375 — Coup d'etat of the i8th of Fructidor 
 and its Results, 376. — Return to the Proscriptions against the Priests, 
 379.— Forced Celebration of the Decadi, 381. — Carrying off of Pope 
 Pius VL, his death at Valence, 383. — End of the Directory, 383. 
 
 Cfiaptet: t'l'i. 
 
 Worships restored by Liberty. 
 
 Moral State of the Country under the Directory, 385. — Hostility of 
 the Two Clergies, 386. — Establishment of the Worship of the Theophi- 
 lanthropists, 388. — The Worship of the Theophilanthropists, 389. — Pro- 
 gress of the Worship of the Nonjurors, 391. — It is stiU the Object of 
 Surveillance, 394.— This Worship was Self-supporting, 395. — Restora- 
 tion of the Constitutio^L^Ch^^cli^.^^6,^^art of Gregoire in this 
 
CONTENTS. XIX 
 
 Restoration, 397.— Great Concourse of People in the Churches, 399. — 
 Moral Severity of the Constitutional Church, 400. — Reformatory 
 Tendencies, 401. — Worship Re-established in 40,000 Parishes, 401. 
 — Ill-wiUof the Authorities, 402. — Re-organisation of the Constitutional 
 Church, 405. — First Council in 1797, 406. — Acts of the First GaUican 
 Council, 407. — The Second Council Dissolved by Order, 408. — Position 
 of Protestantism at this period, 410. — The Altars raised again, 412. 
 
 BOOK IV. 
 
 THE CONCORDAT. 
 
 Ctaptec L 
 
 Preparation for the Concordat. 
 
 Political Circumstances virhich prepared the Concordat, 415. — True 
 Motive of the Concordat, 425. — Opinion of Napoleon on Religion, 427. 
 — He sees in it only an instrument of Reigning, 428. — His Speech to 
 the Parish Priests of Milan, 429. — His Confidences at Malmaison, 431. 
 — The Liberty of the Church inseparable from the Free Regime, 433. 
 — First Measures of the Consuls vv^ith respect to Religion, 435. — Plan 
 of Negotiating with Rome, 436. — Based on the Civil Constitution of 
 the Clergy, 437. — Opinion Adverse to these Negotiations, 439. — Expla- 
 nations of the First Consul, 441. — Interdiction of Religious Discus- 
 sions, 443. 
 
 Chapter iu 
 
 Negotiation and Conclusion of the Concordat. 
 
 The Negotiations of the Concordat, 446.— Beginnings of the Nego- 
 tiation, 448. — The Delays of Rome irritate the First Consul. 450. — 
 Threats of Rupture, 450. — Gonzalvi repairs to Paris, 451. — Opinion at 
 Rome inclines to the Concordat, 452. — Conclusion of the Concordat, 
 453.— Opposition in the Political Bodies, 456. — Winnowing of the 
 Legislative Body and Tribunate, 458.— The Organic Laws of Germinal 
 year X., 460.— Legislation of Germinal year X., 462. — The Concordat 
 presented to the Tribunate, 467.— The Concordat presented to the 
 
 Legislative Body, 468.— Speech of Pprtalis, 460.— Speech of Lucien 
 6 j7 -r jT Qigitized by Microsoft® 
 
XX CONTENTS. 
 
 Bonaparte and Jaucourt, 474. — Publication of the Concordat, 475.- 
 Ceremony at Notre Dame, 476. — Proclamation of the First Consul, 47; 
 T— Not favoured by Public Opinion, 478. 
 
 Chapter Hi. 
 
 Conseqjiences of the Concordat. — Conclusion. 
 
 Effects of the Concordat, 480. — Suppression of Liberty of Wor 
 ships, 482.^Moral Decrease of Protestantism, 483. — Episcopal Flat 
 teries to the New Sovereign, 486. — Servility of the High Clergy, 487- 
 The Imperial Catechism, 489. — Minute Surveillance exercised over th 
 Clergy, 491. — Severe Measures against the Recalcitrants, 492. — Mor 
 than five hundred Priests incarcerated, 493. — Debates with Rome, 49^ 
 — The Pope is Insulted, 497. — Open Rupture, 497. — Carrying off c 
 the Pope, 499. — Napoleon Regrets the Concordat, 501. — Cardina 
 Pacca unfavourable to the Temporal Power of the Pope, 501. — Con 
 elusion, 502. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 
 
 OF ,THE 
 
 EVENTS REFERRED TO IN THIS HISTORY. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 A. D. 
 
 1269. Pragmatic sanction of Louis IX. (Saint Louis) lays the Founda- 
 tion of the Hberties of the Gallican Church, p. 12. 
 
 1438. Confirmed by Charles VII., 12. 
 
 15 15. Concordat between Francis I. and Leo X., 12. 
 
 1598. Edict of Nantes issued, guaranteeing to the Protestants the free 
 exercise of their religion, li. 
 
 1682. Edict of Louis XIV., 13. 
 
 1685. Edict of Nantes revoked by Louis XIV. 
 
 17 1 3. Bull Unigenitus issued, 15. 
 
 1748. Montesquieu publishes his '' Esprit des Lois,'' 20. 
 
 1749. Machault proposes to alienate a portion of the property of the 
 
 clergy, 19. 
 1762. Fran9ois Rochette, a Protestant pastor, executed, 24. 
 Rousseau's " Emile" published and burnt, 21. 
 
 1785. Affair of the diamond necklace, 17. 
 
 1786. Malesherbes's memorials on toleration, 25. 
 
 1787. Assembly of Notables sat from February 2?nd to May 25th. 
 
 Edict of Toleration, 25. 
 
 1788. Assembly of the clergy protest, 23, 27, 28. 
 
 Aug. 8th. — Royal edict for the Assembling of the States- 
 General in May next. 
 
 THE CONSTITUENT. 
 1789. 
 May 4. Meeting of the States-General at Versailles. The Third 
 Estate, 661 Deputies ; Nobles, 285 ; Clergy, 308 ; total 
 1,254. 
 June 6. Nomination of Committee in Chamber of Clerg>' on 
 dearness of grains, 39. 
 20. Saturday. " Oath of the Tennis-Court." 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
XXU CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 June 23. Royal Session, 40. 
 
 27. Union of the three orders in the National Assembly, 41. 
 July 14. The Bastille stormed and taken, 44. 
 
 Aug. 4, Renunciation of Feudal privileges, 44. 
 
 5. Question of ecclesiastical tithes, 47. 
 
 6. Protest of ecclesiastics, 47. 
 
 10. Proposal of Arnault to suppress the tithes, 48. 
 
 20. Ecclesiastical 'Committee appointed to watch over the 
 interests of the Church, 59 ; its composition, 93. 
 
 28. Committee of Twelve nominated to discuss the guarantees 
 
 of a loan of eighty millions, 69. 
 Sept. 25. Proposal that the Clergy should sacrifice their pl^te, 68. 
 
 29. Measure voted, 68. 
 
 Oct. 3. Discussion on the issue of paper money, 68. 
 5. Insurrection of women. 
 
 11. Formal proposal to seize the property of the clergy, 69. 
 15. The Archbishop of Paris leads the way in emigration, 139. 
 
 23. Thouret's speech on ecclesiastical property, 75. 
 
 24. Carat's ditto, 75. 
 
 Nov. 2. Ecclesiasticalproperty declared national property, 92, 83, 104. 
 
 12. Question of the annexation of Avignon raised, 178. 
 19. Motion of Talleyrand resumed by Maury, 94. 
 
 Dec. 4. Talleyrand proposes to apply to the National Debt the sale of 
 
 the Royal domain and ecclesiastical property, 95. 
 18. Treilhard supports Talleyrand's proposal, 95. 
 ig. Treilhard, in the name of the Ecclesiastical Committee, 
 
 gives in his report on the religious orders, 99. 
 2p. Vote alienating 400 millions of livres of the property of the 
 
 clergy, 95. 
 24. Decree declaring Protestants admissible to all offices both 
 
 civil and military, 120. 
 
 1790- ' ■ 
 
 Jan. 15. France divided into eighty-three departments. 
 
 28. Decree granting civic rights to Jews born in France, 122. 
 Feb. 5. Declarations required for the ecclesiastical pensions, 95. 
 
 II. Decree restoring the rights of French citizens to the : 
 
 descendants of Protestant refugees, 120. i 
 
 Feb. 13. The Bishop of Nancy demands that the Catholic religion be I 
 
 declared n^fg/^^t^gp */E^S6^. ■ 01 . 1 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. XXIU 
 
 Feb. 19. Pensions decreed to the monks, 103. 
 
 22. Discussion on religious orders commenced, 99. 
 March 7. The Pope in a Consistory denounces the Revolution, 146. 
 10. Rabaut Saint-Etienne, the son of the old Huguenot 
 minister, writes to his father that he is President of 
 the National Assembly, 120. 
 Brief from the Pope on the -Civil Constitution of the> 
 Clergy. 180. -^ 
 
 16. The proposal of the Commune of Paris to purchase alienated 
 property to the amount of two hundred millions, eagerly 
 welcomed by the Assembly, 96. 
 A Commission of twelve members nominated to carry out 
 the business, 96. 
 Mar. 18. Pensions granted to the monks remaining in the monasteries , 
 
 103. 
 April 9. Opening of the memorable debates on the Payment of Wor- 
 ships, 104. 
 
 1 2. The Archbishop of Aix offers progressive sales made by the 
 
 clergy of France for a sum of 600 millions, 90. 
 
 13. The Pope gives his final decision against the Civil Constitu- 
 
 tion of the Clergy, 183. 
 20. Large gathering of the Catholics at Nimes, to protest against 
 the liberal measures of the Assembly, 141. 
 May 10. Massacre of the patriots at Montauban, 144. 
 
 27. Opening of the debate on the Civil Constitution of the - 
 
 Clergy, 125. 
 29. Treilhard's speech, 129. 
 June 13. Civil strife breaks out at Nimes. More than 300 Catholics 
 and many Protestants killed, 144. 
 17. The Bill of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy passed, 134. 
 23. Retrospective application of the Bill voted, 135. 
 July I. The Bishop of Toulon publishes a protest against the Civil 
 Constitution of the Clergy, 152. 
 10. Letter from the Pope to Louis XVI., to dissuade him from 
 
 sanctioning the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, 148. 
 14. First National Federation. Feast of Pikes. 
 28. Louis XVL writes to the Pope, 148. 
 Sep. 7. Suppression of the Parlements. 
 
 Nov. 8. The Bishop of Senez protests against the Civil Constitution 
 of the Clergy, 1 53. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
XXIV CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 Nov. i6. Petion's speech on the annexation of Avignon, 179. ; 
 
 27. Decree of the oath to the Constitution to be taken by the; 
 
 Clergy, 160. 
 
 Tribunal of Cassation instituted, 276. 
 
 29. Report of the opposition of the bishops, 154. ; 
 
 Dec. 3. LouisXVI.writes to the King of Prussia invoking his help, i6ijl 
 
 22. Canjus declares that force should be used against the clergy 
 
 who resist, 162. 
 27. Gregoire endeavours to dissipate their scruples, 163. 
 
 1791- 
 
 Jan. 2. The oath refused, 164. 
 
 The Assembly pass to the order of the day, 167. 
 
 4. Grand scene of the refusal of the oath, 165, 163. 
 
 5. An unknown Abbe wishes to subject the refractory clergy to 
 
 a sort of inquisition, 167. 
 9. Marat, in his " Journal," urges the people to hoot the priestsj 
 174. ] 
 
 25. Malouet's protest against Barnave's proposal, 168. 
 
 26. Decree for filling the offices of ecclesiastics who had not 
 
 taken the oath, 170, 168. 
 Address, explanatory of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, 
 drawn up by the Ecclesiastical Committee, 170. 
 Mar. 17. The new Bishop of Auch pays his homage to the Assembly^ 
 
 187. 
 April 2 and 4. Death and Funeral of Mirabeau. 
 10. Nuns whipped in public, 189. 
 
 19. Visit of the King to St. Cloud violently prevented by the-= 
 
 populace, 191. i 
 
 June 2. Church of the Theatines at Paris, which had been re-opened| 
 
 by the nonjuring priests, invaded by the populace, 199,.' 
 
 191. 
 
 9. Thouret proposes to forbid the publishing any act of the 
 
 Court of Rome not confirmed by the Assembly, 201. , 
 
 The Assembly restricts the prohibition to public ecclesiasJ 
 
 tical functionaries, 202. 1 
 
 20. Flight of the King to Varennes. ; 
 22. Manifesto explaining his reasons for attempting to escape 202. 
 
 June 25. The King brought back from Varennes. ' 
 
 July II. The remains of Voltaire transferred to the Pantheon. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. XXV 
 
 Aug. 4. Legrand presents an alarming report on ecclesiastical af- 
 fairs, 203. 
 27. Convention of Pilnitz against the French Revolution. 
 Sep. 13. The re-union of Avignon to France voted, 179. 
 
 14. The Constitution finished. Louis XVI. accepts it, and swears 
 
 to maintain it. 
 23. The National Assembly decrees a general amnesty for all 
 
 political offences, 220. 
 26. The Pope accepts the resignation of Cardinal de Brienne, 186. 
 Sep. 28. Rights of citizenship granted to all Jews, 122. 
 30. Last sitting of the Constituent Assembly, 203. 
 
 THE LEGISLATIVE AND THE CONVENTION TO THE 
 PROCLAMATION OF THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH 
 AND STATE. 
 
 1791- 
 
 Oct. I. First sitting of the Legislative Assembly ; sat till September 
 2 1 St, 1792 : twelve months all but nine days. 
 7. Couthon opens the debate against the refractory clergy, 225. 
 9. Report of Gallois and Gensonne on the condition of La Ven- 
 dee, 212. 
 II. Lafayette's farewell proclamation, 210. 
 16. Massacres at Avignon, 219. 
 22. Andre Chenier's letter on religious liberty, 221. 
 
 27. Ramond proposes that all worships should be paid by the 
 
 State, 229. 
 
 28. Fine speech of Ducos on religious liberty, 229. 
 Nov. 3. Speech of Gensonne on the nonjurors, 231. 
 
 6. Fran9ois de Neuchateau brings in the draft of a decree re- 
 quiring the civic oath to be taken within a week by all 
 ecclesiastics not functionaries, 236. 
 The Assembly informed of religious agitation having broken 
 out in Anjou, 233. 
 Nov. 12. Decree interdicting nonjuring priests from celebrating mass 
 in buildings consecrated to official worship, 234. 
 13. Bill presented demanding the civic oath of all pensioned and 
 
 officiating priests, 235. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
XXVI CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 Nov. 29. Decree depriving priests of their pensions vifho did not tali 
 
 the civic oath, 240, 237. 
 Dec. ig. The King puts his veto to the decree. 
 
 1792. 
 
 Feb. 18. Liberal report of Cahier-Gerville, Minister of the Interior, t 
 
 the Assembly, 249. 
 March. Persecution of the nuns in the Dominican Convent at Paris 
 247. 
 19. The Pope- in a new brief congratulates the nonjuring priests 
 251. 
 Amnesty granted to the assassins of Avignon, 220. 
 April 6. The Legislative dissolves the teaching bodies, 254. 
 Prohibition of ecclesiastical costumes. 
 16. Roland announces the outbreak of disturbances in Aveyron 
 255- 
 
 23. Roland again draws the attention of the Assembly to religious 
 
 disturbances, 255. 
 26. Fran9ois de Nantes' report from the Committee of Twelve on 
 
 the internal tranquillity of the kingdom, 256. 
 May 4. NewreportfromFrancois de Nantes against thenonjurors,257, 
 16. Debate on the Bill of Francois de Nantes. 
 
 24. Ramond and Moy, the defenders of the cause of liberty, 
 
 opposed by Ichon, 259. 
 
 25. Decree of transportation of those priests informed against by 
 
 twenty citizens, 259. 
 
 29. Guard of Honour taken from the King, 259. 
 June 20. Invasion of the Tuileries by the populace, 261. 
 
 28. Lafayette suddenly appears in the Assembly to demand the 
 
 punishment of the authors of the outrage of the 20th. 
 
 30. Report of Pastoret on the situation of France, 262. 
 July 3. Vergniaud's speech against the King, 262. 
 
 14. Third Federation. 
 
 29. Arrival of the Marseillese in Paris. 
 Aug. 4. Convents of women suppressed, 265. 
 
 ID. Tuileries attacked and stormed, 264. 
 
 Decree of proscription against the priests, 265. 
 II. Suspension of the King. 
 
 13. Imprisonment of the King and Royal Family in the Templ^ 
 
 14. Oath to liberty and equality decreed for all functionaries, 280] 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® ' ] 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. XXVU 
 
 Aug. 17. Letter read to the Assembly from the department of Var- 
 announcing the transportation of the nonjuring priests, 
 265. 
 S^. 2-6. Massacres in the prisons of Paris. 
 
 21. Close of the Legislative Assembly, which sat from October 
 ti 1st, 1791, and passed 2,140 decrees. 
 
 h 
 
 THE CONVENTION. 
 
 "Sep. 22. Opening of the National Convention. Repubhc decreed. 
 Nov. 16. Cambon presents to the Committee of Finances a decree that 
 
 each sect should pay its own ministers, 288. 
 Dec. II — 16. Trial pt the King. 
 
 14. Jacob Dupont, the Atheist, proposes to abolish all religions, 
 f. 278. 
 
 ; 1793- 
 
 Jan. 21. King Louis XVL executed about ten o'clock in the morning. 
 "Feb. 15. Proposal to transfer the registration of births; deaths, and 
 
 marriages to the Municipalities, 266 ; voted June 22. 
 - Mar. I. Thuriot demands the annulling of the Civil Constitution of 
 the Clergy, 292. 
 9. Revolutionary Tribunal decreed, 276. 
 
 1 8. Decree authorising the execution within twenty-four hours of 
 an emigrant Or banished priest who should have returned 
 to France, 281. 
 April 19. Discussion on the Right of Conscience, 286. 
 
 27. Transportation of priests substituted for extradition, 281. 
 May 10. First meeting of the Convention at the Tuileries. 
 
 22. Committee of Public Safety instituted, 277. 
 f. 30. Robespierre's plan of Constitution remitted to the Committee 
 
 of Public Safety, 286. 
 June 2. The Girondists expelled and proscribed, 277, 294. 
 10. Robespierre's plan of Constitution presented, 286. 
 18. Discussion on liberty of worships, 287. 
 
 22. Registration of births, &c., confided to the Municipalities, 266. 
 
 23. Robespierre's plan of Constitution decreed, 286. 
 July 13. Marat assassinated by Charlotte Corday, 294. 
 
 c 19. A deputy; demands the deprivation of bishops who should 
 
 infringe the law by hindering the marriage of priests, 292. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
XXVlll CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 July 23. Danton demands that the decree to transport the refractoi| 
 priests should not be put into execution, 282. j 
 
 Aug. 5. New Calendar voted, 298. 
 
 15. Institution of the Great Book of the pubhc debt, 294. 
 
 23. Law ordaining the levy en masse. 
 
 Jieign of Terror. 
 
 Sep. 5. Decree appointing a Revolutionary army of 6,000 men 
 crush the counter-revolution, 295. 
 17. Law of the suspected. 
 Oct. 3. Penalty of death within twenty-four hours decreed agaiiisl 
 every priest subject to transportation, returned to France 
 and favouring the counter-revolution, 296. 
 Oct. 16. Execution of the Queen Marie- Antoinette, 296. 
 
 31. Execution of twenty-two Girondins,who sing the Marseillaisi 
 in chorus on their way to the scaffold, 296. 
 Nov. The Commune of Paris take the initiative in the Atheistic 
 movement, 296. 
 3. Designations of the months altered, 298. 
 
 6. The Duke of Orleans (Philip Egalite) executed. 
 
 7. Numerous apostasies at the Tribune, 301. 
 
 8. Madame Roland executed. 
 10. Mayor Bailly executed, 296. 
 
 Worship of Reason inaugurated. " Goddess of Reason 
 presents herself at the Convention, 309. 
 22. Masquerades repeated. *| 
 
 26. The Council of the Commune at Paris interdict all worsl 
 save that of Reason, 312. 
 Danton demands that there shall be no more anti-religioa 
 masquerades in the Convention, 318. 
 Dec. 5. Robespierre protests that the French respect liberty c 
 worships, 319. 
 14. Noyadings by night at Nantes. 
 
 1794. 
 
 Feb. 27. Recourse to tbe Tribunal de Cassation interdicted to tl 
 arrested priests, 296. * 
 
 Mar. 13. Insurrection of the Cordeliers, 321. * 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. Xxix 
 
 ' Mar. 30. Danton and his friends imprisoned, 321. 
 April 3. Danton and his friends guillotined, 322. 
 
 6. Couthoil announces that the Committee of Public Safety had 
 decreed a festival in honour of the Supreme Being, 322. 
 May 7. Robespierre reads his memorable report on the existence of 
 the Supreme Being, 323. 
 9. Festival in honour of the Supreme Being, 325. 
 July 28. Robespierre guillotined. 
 
 End of the Reign of Terror. 
 
 Sep. 20. The re^z>«^ of the payment of worships abolished, 341. 
 
 THE RfiGlME OF THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND 
 
 STATE. 
 
 Sep. 21. Barre informs the Convention that the refractory priests had 
 
 returned in great numbers, 333. 
 Nov. 4. An unknown deputy demands a respite in favour of 200 
 priests awaiting their transportation, 335. 
 12. Decree shutting up the Jacobins' Club. 
 Dec. 1 1. Gregoire upholds the cause of the persecuted priests, 336, 
 
 21. Chenier presents his report on supplanting Christianity by 
 civic festivals, 355. 
 
 23. Noble speech of Gregoire in favour of the right of conscience, 
 
 336. 
 
 1795- 
 
 Jan. 6. Severe decree against the nonjuring priests who had returned 
 to France, 343. 
 
 1 2. Bill of Eschasseriaux, senr., to destroy "the dangerous illusions 
 
 of fanaticism," 356. 
 Feb. 5. Report of Eschasseriaux, jun., attempting to supplant Chris- 
 tianity, 356. 
 21. Boissy d'Anglas' famous motion, claiming liberty of worships, 
 
 343- 
 
 24. Lecointre of Versailles obtains the revision of the decree con- 
 
 demning to transportation the citizen who had received a 
 nonjuring priest into his house, 347. 
 April I. Insurrection of Germinal. 
 
 13. The refractory clergy denounced with unheard-of violence, 
 
 347- 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
XXX CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 May I. Chenier presents his report on the measures to be taken 
 against the refractory priests, 351. , 
 
 15. Gregoire convokes a few bishops at Paris, 397. 
 20. Insurrection of Prairial. 
 
 23. Report presented by Lanjuinais on the celebration, of 
 worship in pubhc ediiices, 352. 
 July 4. Separate article in the New Constitution devoted to the 
 
 right of conscience, 359. 
 Aug. 17. The Republic pays no worship. 
 
 The New Constitution adopted, 359. 
 Constitution of the year III. 
 Sept. 4. Decree of perpetual exile against the priests condemned to 
 
 transportation, 351. 
 Oct. 4. Insurrection of Vendemiaire, 330, 359 ; quelled by Napoleon, 
 359- 
 
 End of the National Convention. 
 
 Oct. 28. Directory established. 
 
 1796. 
 THE DIRECTORY. 
 
 July 15. The Pope's Brief recommending submission to the estab.] 
 
 lished powers, 395. 
 Sept. 26. Napoleon's letter to Cacault "to dodge the old fox" (the 
 
 Pope), 437. 
 
 1797. 
 
 Feb. 17. Treaty of Tolentino, by which the Pope abandons the Lega.^ 
 tions to France, 370. ' 
 
 19. Napoleon writes to the Pope that he would have no more 
 faithful ally than the Republican Government, 437. 
 
 May 29. The Nonjurors recover the church of Saint-Roch at Paris, 393. 
 
 June 13. Gilbert Desmoliere complains of the low state into whicli 
 public education had fallen, 370. 
 
 July 8. Discussion on Camille Jordan's report on liberty of wor- 
 ships, 373. 
 
 Aug. 15. Opening of the First Council at Notre Dame in Paris, 406. 
 
 Sep. 4. Coup d'etat of the i8th Fructidor, 376. 
 
 5. Law of the 19th of Fructidor to transport every priest who 
 
 should disturb the public tranquillity, 404. 
 Digitized by IVIicrosoft® 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. XXXI 
 
 1798. 
 
 in. 12. Napoleon writes to the Bishop of Malta, 429. 
 
 [ay II. Law annulling the elections, 378. 
 
 ov. 7. Circtilar of the Minister of Police causes the transportation of 
 several priests, 404. 
 18. Law enforcing the celebration of the Tenth-Day, 380. 
 
 lec. 15. Gregoire complains of a circular of the Minister of {he Inte- 
 rior, demanding the transfer of services to the Tenth-Day, 
 382. 
 
 1799. 
 
 [qv. 9. Coup d'etat of the i8th Brumaire. 
 
 Fall of the Directory. 
 )ec. 25. Bonaparte First Consul. 
 
 1801. 
 ane 29. Second Council held at Paris, 408. 
 
 THE CONCORDAT. 
 
 ily 15. Signing of the Concordat, 453. 
 ug 6. Concordat presented to the Council of State, 456. 
 16. The Second Council dissolved by Napoleon, 457. 
 
 1802. 
 
 pril 6. Concordat and Organic laws presented to the Tribunate, 467, 
 
 18. The Concordat is published, 475. 
 ct. 3. Decree closing the temples to the Theophilanthropists, 391. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
THE CHURCH 
 
 AND 
 
 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 3fntroDuction. 
 
 Situation of the Church of France on the eve of the Revolution. — 
 State of opinion on liberty of conscience and organisation of 
 worship. 
 
 I DESIRE to recount the history of the. relations of the Church 
 and of the State under the French Revolution, from the moment 
 when this last bursts on France , and Europe intoxicated with 
 youth, enthusiasm, and inexperienced ardour for reforming every- 
 thing, to the day when it seems for ever organised in power and in 
 glory against the essential principles which had inspired it at its 
 outset. Napoleon has been proclaimed the heir of the French 
 Revolution, and yet he ruled France only when the great and 
 generous spirit of 1789 had very decidedly ceased to breathe. 
 Because he did not carry in his veins the blood of the old races, 
 because he has not resuscitated the privileges of caste, people have 
 wished to see in him the armed representative of this revolution 
 and its victorious missionary. They have maintained that he made 
 it enter with the gallop of his war steed into the capitals of despotic 
 Europe, forgetting that thc/fiflfstett&pilffiirdattsgwhich he penetrated 
 
2 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 as an all-powerful general was Paris — Paris delivering itself to 
 absolute power grown young again by victory, and thus denying 
 all that had raised and thrown life into it ten years eariier. 
 Now, that was, in my opinion, to disown the French Revolution 
 itself in its very foundation, viz., in this great principle of liberty, 
 which, whatever sophists, always hired to colour and gloss servi- 
 tude, may say of it, is the very principle of 1789. Equality is onl^ 
 its consequence. So soon as it is detached from the vigorous 
 trunk which has produced it, one of two things happens ; either it 
 withers and perishes, for privilege springs up again most frequent 
 from arbitrary power, or else it continues to exist only as a vaiS 
 appearance, a mere heap of dried leaves rolled at the will of the 
 wind which blows, following its fickle caprices. 
 
 This momentary miscarriage of one of the finest human move^ 
 ments remains the problem the most worthy of the interest of 
 contemporaneous history. This problem has been treated in its 
 entirety by eminent minds. My ambition is less vast; I should^ 
 wish to address myself only to one side of this instructive and^ 
 mournful history, and to restrict myself to that which is connecfl 
 with the relations of Church and State under the French RevolJ 
 tion. To mark the progress accomplished at the, dawn of the 
 new era, and to point out, without evasion, the faults committi 
 to indicate the fatal tendency which was, little by little, to lei 
 to the regular enthralment of the religious society; and witli( 
 excusing the last encroachments of a power which acknowledged 
 no bounds, to seek, in the anterior history, that which was almo] 
 necessarily preparing and introducing them: such is my desi| 
 There is not, perhaps, a surer means of comprehending the crul 
 deceptions from which we still suffer; for I have arrived at th( 
 profound conviction that nothing has more hastened the loss;^ 
 liberty than the erroj^^^f ^^^I^Jhgj^^ncerning the mann. 
 organising religion in France. An attentive study of the hi: 
 
THE RELIGIOUS QUESTION AND THE REVOLUTION. 3 
 
 he French Revolution proves that that which sunk in the mud 
 chariot so well started at first — that which later began to hurl 
 ito the bloody mire of terrorism — is precisely the religious ques- 
 1, or rather, the religious question ill understood and hastily 
 3lved. 
 
 kleanwhile, immortal truths had been proclaimed, sacred rights 
 [ been acknowledged by the French Revolution. But it sufficed 
 t it should touch the conscience in order to raise the most 
 incible resistance; it is this resistance which, by exasperating 
 :aused it to depart from the path of fruitful and durable innova- 
 is; it is this which, by its proud and formidable genius, caused 
 :o forget its benefits for its furies. That eighteenth century, 
 ich seemed so disabused of Divine things, was positively 
 iibled by the religious question more than by any other. It is 
 11 to acknowledge, to the honour of humanity, that it is religious 
 :h, that is to say, the most disinterested thing in the world, 
 ich stirs it most profoundly and raises it most forcibly. Despite 
 jearances, the passion for that which is above — to speak the 
 d language of an apostle — inflames it much more than the 
 ision for that which is belowi Hence, from all points of view, 
 : supreme importance of this order of questions, even when they 
 not meddle with the foundation of religion, but only with its 
 p,nisation. Let us acknowledge, besides, that the question of 
 mdation quickly mingles with the question of form. To defend 
 : complete independence of the religious conscience is one of 
 ; first duties of religion. 
 
 ro this day the problem entered upon in 1789 is still before 
 The authoritative act of the Concordat has settled nothing, 
 has only compHcated the situation a htde more like all that 
 nes fijom arbitrary power. Let us remember that in this very 
 icate I matter our faults and our errors would be graver than 
 ,se ol our fathers, because w^^C^PoW ^not^^comgensate them by 
 
 
4 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 reforms as brilliant ; for concerning toleration they had said all from 
 the first day, and we live on their conquests which no reaction' 
 could compromise, so entirely are they founded on eternal right. 
 
 But let us know how to unite a wise and impartial criticism 
 with the admiration with which our fathers inspire us, and whilst 
 bringing to light the great truths proclaimed or caught sight of by 
 them, on this point, as on all others, let us frankly indicate whatl 
 in their enterprise was false and unjust. We may the rather do 
 it, that in this they were much more timid conservators than 
 courageous innovators ; they submitted to the sway of the ideas* 
 of ancient French society at the very time they imagined they 
 had constructed against it the most formidable machine of war. 
 We find its errors recurring, if I may so say, in the defectivj 
 part of the new institutions given to the country. It is froi 
 it that the Revolution had learned to exaggerate the centn 
 power beyond measure, and to dehver to the State that whicll 
 belongs only to the individual. It is not surprising that the new 
 wine burst the, old bottles in which they were corifiningi'it 
 M. de Tocqueville wished to establish these truths for the whole 
 of the social organisation worked out by new France. I shall' 
 never cease to regret that he has been able only to lay the found- 
 ations of this considerable work. I am aware how rash it is to 
 attempt, without the help of the knowledge of that eminent mind, 
 to apply his fertile views to one of the portions of this organisa- 
 tion, to that precisely which is, without contradiction, the most 
 important; but the gravity of the circumstances, and the vistas of 
 the future, make me overlook my insufficiency. I shall believe 
 that I have rendered a solid service to my country by throwing 
 light on the rock on which the most generous revolut ion has 
 stranded, but for a time only. Of this we are assured. ' ] ^ 
 
 Let us attempt, by the impartial account of the debate,ns of our 
 first assemblies on the raigious ancf ecclesiastical question] 1- and by 
 
I 
 
 SITUATION OF THE ANCIENT CHURCH OF FRANCE. 
 
 the recital of the events which were their consequence, fully to 
 comprehend this great crisis of minds and of consciences, and to 
 draw from it the instruction which it contains for us. 
 
 If we seek to explain the mutual situation of religious and civil 
 society on the eve of the French Revolution, that which strikes us 
 at the very outset is their close association at the political point 
 of view, and their profound separation at the point of view of ideas 
 and aspirations. This contrast becomes more and more decided 
 and painful as we advance in the century, and it must end in the 
 fatal misunderstanding which separated, in France, the liberal 
 cause from religious faith. It was precisely the political union 
 which provoked and envenomed the moral separation. The 
 Church was as though incrusted in an order of things which 
 wounded the public conscience ; the altar was the strongest 
 support of the ancient social edifice. Every aspiration towards 
 reform, every tendency to progress, meeting it, from its first start, 
 as an obstacle and a barrier, beat against it with rage. The result 
 pfas that generosity of mind speedily became irreligious. All that 
 was young in heart, and burning to vindicate right and liberty, was 
 thereby even predisposed to repel Christianity at the outset; fire, 
 enthusiasm, energetic conviction, conquering proselytism, are on 
 the side of philosophy; the Church not only remains immovable, 
 but even desires to arrest and roll back the rising tide of minds 
 so that it passes on one side of her, when it cannot cover her with 
 its foam. The eighteenth century has seized a great idea, which 
 is a daughter of the Gospel; it is the idea of humanity; the idea 
 of human right, claimed in face of privileges which are its nega- 
 tion. And it is found that the Church has taken part beforehand 
 .gainst this human right which she ought to have been the first 
 b proclaim, since she had in her hands the Book which, in a 
 jociety profoundlji- divided, had caused those immortal words, 
 e charter of eaual\ty &nd ^^j^^^-^]j^iP^iJ^resound : '^ Before 
 
 ^ 
 
O THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 Christ there are neither slaves nor freemen." (Gal. iii. 28.) Thus, 
 by the fault of her representatives, the religion which, with the 
 Divine idea, brought into the world the grand idea of humanity 
 and of its rights, is considered by generous minds as the enemy 
 which it is necessary to strike down, and that in order to realise theiri 
 own programme. In the confusion of the time, the old pagan idea] 
 is defended by the pretended su ccessors of those who formerly 
 conquered it, and the social and humane applications of Christi- 
 anity are claimed by men who revive the naturalism of the ancient 
 world, the impure source of all the inequalities and of all the 
 abuses of power. Thus, elements the most incongruous are 
 mingled; that which was designed to be indissolubly united is 
 violently and sadly separated; rehgion and justice serve in oppoite' 
 camps, and each blow which the one inflicts on the other weakens 
 them both. 
 
 This fatal divorce goes far back into the past, but it was 
 renewed and consummated with eclat at the end of the seventeeni 
 century by one of the greatest crimes of history — by the violeni 
 and murderous expulsion of the portion of religious society whicl 
 had not bSnt under the yoke of unity. The ruins of Port Ro^ 
 and above all, those living debris of the Protestant Church, whomj 
 we find on the royal galleys, or who seek to rejoin each other il^ 
 the desert at the cost of the gravest perils, incessantly recall the 
 fatal union of religious and civil despotism, and recall it to an' 
 emancipated age, irritated, above all, with the narrow prison in ' 
 which its first years had glided away under the ferule of an all-j 
 powerful devotee. This ferule was, truly, too long the sceptre rf 
 this brilliant kingdom of France, condemned by the/rfi?!ftj6elfish. 
 of sovereigns to expiate for him the sins of his yjjmth by a mean] 
 and timorouspenitence. 
 
 The seventeenth century had not contented itd;elf with bequeatt 
 ing to the foUowingo^Jig^^^jj^embrailces, which were" 
 
CLOSE ALLIANCE WITH THE ANCIENT REGIME. 7 
 
 indeed, present facts, since the proscription of Jansenism and of 
 Protestantism was in full vigour. It had even formulated the 
 theory of its practice in a book due to its greatest orator, who had 
 graven for posterity, in an immortal style, the maxims of the doub,le 
 despotism, destined to raise so much indignation some years later. 
 "La Politique tiree de I'Ecriture Sainte," — ("Politics drawn from 
 the Holy Scriptures,") — that learned catechism, in which a royalty 
 without control, and a clergy without restraint, are taught how, by 
 uniting, they may entirely enslave a nation, may be considered as 
 the testament of the seventeenth century. Although drawn up by 
 his splendid genius, it was made to be broken like the testament 
 of Louis XIV. ; it was broken with fury in that parliament — free, 
 even to licence — which sits in the eighteenth century, wherever 
 a pen is held, wherever French conversation sports itself with a 
 sparkling grace — a terrible sport, which kills by raillery. The 
 book of Bossuet is the apotheosis of the ancient regime, and of its 
 worst abuses. The king appears in it as a god, whose countenance 
 rejoices his people as the sun, and whose indisputable caprices 
 ought to be received on their knees ; he is, it is true, a god — like 
 enough to those of Homer — made liable to all the passions of 
 mortals, and inclined to succumb to them. The counsels which 
 the eloquent bishop gives to the prince are excellent; he shows to 
 how many crimes unlimited power exposes, and what terrible con- 
 sequences they may have. But these counsels terrify more than 
 they encourage, by revealing the possibility of an evil which, once 
 committed, will be without remedy; since there is no resource 
 against the royal despotism, that everything belongs to the 
 sovereign, and that, after a timid remonstrance, his subjects have 
 only to kiss the dust where his foot has trampled them. There is 
 no right in face of the royal right — I am mistaken — there is the 
 right of the priest, for whom alone Bossuet causes to be heard a 
 haughty claim. All the property of the nation belongs to the king, ( 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
8 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 j except that of the Levites, with which he ought to concern himself 
 only to increase it. A king who well understands his duties, does| 
 not rest contented with opening his treasures to the Church in 
 order to enrich her; remembering that she has a horror of blood, 
 but that she, nevertheless, has need of it, he lends to her his sword, 
 or, rather, he turns it against her enemies, pursues them, and 
 sacrifices them for the greater glory of God, as at the revocation 
 of the Edict of Nantes. Heresy is not tolerated in the happy . 
 country that he governs. " Those who do not wish to suifer the 
 prince to use severity in the matter of religion, because religion 
 ought to be free, are in an impious error." Bossuet recalls the 
 oath taken by the very Christian king on the day of his coronation^ 
 
 / and the solemn engagement that he takes to exterminate heresy. 
 
 (All these beautiful theories are supported by passages of Holy 
 Scripture, the true sense of which is completely disfigured, despite 
 the beauty of the translation, because the learned bishop applies 
 to modem societies that which was suitable only to the theocracy 
 of Israel, essentially transitory, like the whole of Judaism. He 
 arrives thus at this double result of causing hatred altogether both 
 towards monarchy and Christianity, and of surely preparing the i 
 most dangerous revolution. 
 
 We might suppose that the effect of such a book was counter- 
 balanced by the general politics of Fenelon, much more Christian 
 than those of Bossuet, although they were clothed in a pagan 
 form. It was nothing of the kind. The " Telemaque" was a poetic 
 Utopia, the beautiful dream of him whom Louis XIV". had called : 
 the most chimerical mind in his kingdom. " La Politique tiree de 
 
 Il'Ecriture Sainte" was, on the contrary, the faithful picture of the 
 organisation of religion in France at the epoch when the boldest ' 
 wishes for the general renovation of society were being formulated.! 
 Let us give an outline of this organisation. r 
 
 The Church of France enjoyed all kinds of privileges at once. ; 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
CATHOLICISM ALONE RECOGNISED. 9 
 
 The country was entirely surrendered to her. She had no longer 
 to dread a rival worship since she had obtained the proscription 
 of the adherents of the Reformation. She alone possessed re-j 
 ligious edifices to celebrate Divine service, whilst the most con- ■; 
 cealed retreats could not protect the Protestants in the perform-! 
 aiice of their religious duties. They had lost not only the right 
 of professing their beliefs, but that of existing. They were as. if 
 they were not in the country which they had contributed to 
 honour and enrich, for as soon as they were discovered, 
 they fell under the judicial prosecution of the laws; neither 
 their birth nor their marriage was recognised; all public careers 
 were forbidden to them, and their children were considered 
 as belonging to the Catholic Church. The Protestants of Alsace i 
 alone enjoyed liberty of conscience — thanks to the special I 
 treaties concluded at the time of the conquest of that province. 
 A.S for tHe~7ews, they were only tolerated. They paid a special 
 tax, and were subject to very stringent police regulations; they 
 were equally excluded from public functions. The Catholic 
 Church was then absolute mistress of the kingdom, in the religious 
 point of view — the civil state was in her hands by marriages and 
 baptisms; her voice was alone raised from one frontier to the 
 Dther; -it was necessary to take the detour of Holland in order to i 
 i^enture to publish a book which attacked her, or which might only 
 3e displeasing to her. The instruction of youth was almost 
 
 entirely' confided to her, and no teaching was given outside of 
 ler control. Thus the thought, the soul, of all the citizens were 
 officially under her dependence. 
 
 To assist in this task the clergy disposed of immense riches, 
 (vhich rendered them proprietors of a considerable part of the 
 ioil. They held them from the piety of the faithful, often also 
 rom the terrors and the tardy repentances of the death-bed. 
 rhe kings of France had largely disposed of their domain in their 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
 }h- 
 
10 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. ' | 
 
 favour; and if we must reckon the number of their sins by that 
 
 of their donations, the list of their- misdeeds was frightful. Here 
 
 is the revenue of the clergy of the kingdom according to the 
 
 lowest valuation: — ^ 
 
 LIVRES. ,1 
 
 They had at their head ii archbishops and ii6 
 bishops. Their revenue in round numbers 
 amounted to 8,400,000 | 
 
 The revenue of the great vicars and of the canons 5 
 
 amounted to 13,400,000,; 
 
 The revenue of 715 abbeys in commendam, so named 
 
 because the titulars might put a substitute in the 
 
 office, amounted at least to 9,000,000, 
 
 The revenue of 703 priories was reckoned at i,4oo,oool 
 
 ■'A 
 That of 1 1 chapters of noble canons at 842,0001 
 
 That of 520 colleges or little chapters at *6, 200,000 J 
 
 The parish priests and their vicars formed the secular clergy, 4 
 
 who had to serve 35,156 cureS. Tithes and perquisites provided 
 
 for their support ; the regular clergy filled the convents with men 
 
 and women, who were reckoned at 19,000 monks and 32,000 ; 
 
 nuns of every order. They provided for more than 700 hos- s 
 
 pitals. The order of Malta possessed 200 commanderies in 
 
 France ; the half of the revenues of the Church of France arose 
 
 from tithes levied on the harvests of private persons, and the 
 
 totality of its avowed revenues amounted to nearly 130 miUions, 
 
 * The livre was formerly divided into 20 sous, 331,851 
 
 and the sou into 12 deniers. The franc = i livre 529,382 
 
 o sols 3 deniers. — " Enc. Brit." Vol. XV. p. 435. 355.555 
 
 Reckoning 25 francs to our sovereign, these sums 55.3oB 
 
 would equal the following in English currency, omit- 33,264 
 
 ting the shillings and pence : — 244,938; 
 
 ■- "i 
 
 Total ;£i, 550.298 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
WEALTH AND PRIVILEGES OF THE CHUECH OF FRANCE. II 
 
 equivalent to a very considerable sum of the present day. It is 
 no exaggeration to value the real revenue^ including the per- 
 quisites, at nearly 200 millions.* The propert^of thg.glergy was ' 
 exempt from taxation; they contributed to the charges of the 
 State by voluntary gifts voted by their assemblies. They voted ' 
 every five years a gratuitous gift of sixteen millions, but this gift 
 was employed in great part in payment of the debts which they 
 had contracted by prior engagements.f 
 
 Without doubt, civil society had shown itself sufficiently lavish 
 of privileges and riches toward religious society; but, in exchange, 
 the former had placed the latter under its dependence. The 
 eldest and cherished son of the Church had taken his precautions 
 with respect to his mother, and had bound her hands with chains 
 which, although golden, did not the less cramp her action. The 
 king sui^red her ascendancy every time that the fear of hell was 
 awakenedLjn him, that sickness or age made him catch sight in 
 the distance of the bell^of St. Denis, but laws restrictive of the 
 liberty of the Church were not the less in force. This is what they 
 had agreed to call the liberties of the Gallican Church. Animated 
 with a spirit of just distrust against the usurpations of Rome, often 
 founded in right and in political motive, inasmuch as they pre- 
 served the civil authority from the encroachments of a rich and 
 ambitious clergy, these famous maxims, the productions of those 
 legists who were the great authors of monarchical despotism, 
 tended to make of religion in France an instrument of govern- 
 ment, and subordinated it entirely to the civil power. To forbid 
 the clergy to assemble without permission of the king, to forbid the 
 bishops freely to communicate with the spiritual chief of Catho- 
 
 * About 7,901,234 pounds sterling. 
 
 t See Rodot, " La France avant la Revolution, son Etat Politique et 
 
 Social en 1787." Consult also ''La France Ecclesiastique," for the year 
 
 1788. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
12 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 licism, was obviously to put the religious conscience under the 
 rude hand of the State. It is true that it was difficult for the civil 
 power to divest itself of this supremacy in the face of a body so 
 rich and powerful as the clergy. Thus the riches which tended to 
 corrupt began by enslaving them. In order to comprehend this 
 situation of the Church of France, it is necessary to form a just 
 idea of its relations with the See of Rome. 
 
 It was in the midst of the middle ages that the relations of the 
 two societies, religious and civil, were the most wisely regulated by 
 the two essential articles of the pragmatic sanction of Saint Louis, 
 which was confirmed by Charles VII. at Bourges, July 7th, 1438. 
 These articles declared: ist, that the cathedral and other churches 
 of the kingdom should enjoy the free exercise of their elections, 
 promotions, or collations; 2nd, that the collective promotions, 
 provisions of prelacy, dignities, and all other ecclesiastical bene- 
 fices and offices of whatever nature they might be, should be 
 made after the order of the common ^ right, the rules of 
 councils, and of the statutes of the h,9ly Fathers. The Con- 
 cordat concluded between Francis I. and Leo X. abrogated 
 these wise clauses, which left to the Church the right of 
 choosing its dignitaries, and preserved the kingdom from the 
 invasions of the papacy. There had been already a grievous 
 abuse of power in the claim of the prince to represent the Church 
 in this transaction, and to treat in her name without consulting 
 her. He arrogated to himself the right of nomination to the cures 
 and to the bishoprics, and conceded to the papacy that of the 
 confirmation by bulls, leaving in its hands the most terrible 
 weapon against himself; for the refusal of the bulls was sufficient 
 to agitate the entire country. This was perceived too late, under 
 Louis XIV., in the affair of the regales* On the one hand was 
 
 * Regale is the right of the crown to receive the revenues of vacant 
 bishoprics or abbeySp-g.^^^^ ^^ Mlorosofm 
 
CONCORDAT OF FRANCIS I. AND THE GALLICAN LIBERTIES. 13 
 
 to be seen the entire Gallican clergy prostrated at the feet of 
 royalty, to defend with passion the right of the crown which, being 
 round, according to the happy expression of the advocate-general 
 charged to be the spokesman to the parliament, could suffer 
 no restriction of power. On the other hand, we see the proud 
 monarch constrained at last to bow before the Holy See, after the 
 prolonged refusal of the bulls had thrown the kingdom into con- 
 fusion. It is not sufficiently known that Louis XIV. ended by 
 writing to the pope in these terms : — 
 
 " I am happy to make known to Your Holiness that I have 
 given the necessary orders that the things contained in my 
 edict of March 2nd, 1682, touching the declaration made by the 
 clergy of France, to which past conjunctures had obliged me, be 
 not observed, and desiring not only that Your Holiness should be 
 informed of my sentiments, but even that all the world should 
 know, by a special token, the veneration which I have for your 
 great and holy qualities." 
 
 Without doubt the maxims of the Gallican Church, fortified by 
 the famous declaration of 1682, had wisely prevented the blending 
 of a foreign power in the government of France, but they did not 
 thereby the less sanction the subjugation of the Church to royalty. 
 To be convinced of it, we have only to read over the acts of the 
 councils of the king concerning ecclesiastical affairs. 
 
 In the eighteenth century, the council of the king could declare, 
 without raising any opposition, that the temporal power, before 
 authorising the publication of the decrees of the Church, has the 
 right of examining the form of these decrees, their conformity with 
 the maxims of the kingdom, and of interdicting everything which 
 in their publication may disturb or affect public tranquillity. 
 " It is essential," ran the royal decree, " to prevent any one from 
 agitating in the kingdom rash or dangerous questions, not only on 
 expressions which mag.^^^c^^ijjgntlg^^derstood, but also on the 
 
14 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 basis of things. All these resolutions are taken for the good of 
 religion and for that of the State, which cannot be separated, and 
 as the surest means of strengthening the union which ought to 
 reign between the priesthood and the empire. " We see that the 
 Gallican Church, rich and powerful as she was, was not the less 
 for that a very dependent State Church. We praise her for having 
 resisted the forces of ultramontanism; we acknowledge that she 
 has been adorned with great talents and admirable virtues; her 
 glory is inseparable from that of the country, but she has not the 
 less sacrificed more than one precious liberty to the profit of the 
 great French idol — I mean the State. She forged, or suffered to 
 be forged for her, the yoke which was to become insupportable to 
 her as soon as it should be no longer of gold but of iron, and 
 should be imposed on her by the votes of an assembly in place of 
 being offered to her by royal hands.* We shall see, truly, that the 
 French Revolution has had, in order to enslave the Church, only 
 to draw the consequences of the principles laid down by Louis XIV. 
 and Bossuet. Still is it that, closely associated as she was in the 
 eighteenth century with all the iniquities of the ancient rigime, 
 surpassing them even by those which she provoked on her own 
 account, the Church of France was destined to raise the most 
 lively opposition, without being honoured by lofty virtues; for 
 nothing is more sad than her moral situation before the day when 
 she recovered herself by martyrdom and purified herself in her 
 own blood. 
 
 The state of things which we have just described was the con- 
 tinuation of that which had existed for ages in France. Nothing 
 was changed except the disposition of minds, but that sufficed to 
 make the abuses which had been tolerated or passed in silence 
 
 * See my pamphlet on " La Liberte Religieuse et la Legislation 
 Actuelle,'' i860. See also Dupin, " Manuel du Droit Public Ecclesias- 
 tique Fran9ais." ^.^.^^^^ ^^ Microsoft® 
 
ENERVATION OF FAITH. 1 5 
 
 appear in their true light. The irritated pubHc conscience revolted 
 against institutions which had for a long time awakened no 
 scruple, and it was sufficient for the Church of France to remain 
 conformed to her past to rouse against her the most ardent 
 passions. Unhappily she was indeed much more preoccupied with 
 her internal debates and temporal interests than with the formidable 
 strife to which the attacks of philosophy summoned her. 
 
 Nothing is so sad as the religious history of the eighteenth 
 century. Piety languishes ; science there is none, at least on the I 
 side of the defenders of Christianity. In England and in Germany ' 
 a parching wind blows over hearts and minds. There is preached 
 in the Protestant pulpits — in those which are standing — a religion 
 without grandeur, without mysteries, which has neither the bold- 
 ness of philosophy nor that of faith. The office is dismantled; 
 they make treaty with the opinions of the day, and shameful com- 
 promises are frequent. In the bosom of the Church of France 
 the decay is visible to all eyes. Since Mass illon has been silent, 
 there is no longer to be noted an eloquent word in the evangelical 
 pulpit, if we except some accents of a s'fudied rudeness of Father \ 
 Brid'aine. The mosf 'miserable vestry passions are in full career. 
 Not content with persecuting outside, the dominant party persecute 
 within in order to impose the bull Unigenitus* and with it the 
 Roman yoke, on whomsoever has not renounced all spirit of in- 
 dependence. The death-bed of the most esteemed priests is 
 watched, and clerical persecution does not stay itself even before 
 the last sigh. The noise of these pitiful quarrels fills the 
 audiences of the parliament. They are deafened and irritated 
 by them. The opposite party is not raised by this strife without 
 grandeur; there is something more sad than the destruction of 
 the Port Royal des Champs, it is the moral decline of Jansenism; 
 
 * Issued 1713. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
4 
 
 1 6 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 this great school, which has given to France Saint Cyran and 
 Pascal, has truly fallen into childhood. Nothing is talked of any 
 longer there except apocryphal miracles; the fanatics of Saint 
 Medard pass for the direct heirs of the saints and heroes who 
 represented austerity and liberty in the Church of France, and 
 illustrated it by innumerable masterpieces. The persecutors excite • 
 indignation, and the persecuted laughter. Is there a state of 
 things more deplorable ! 
 
 Meanwhile the attacks of philosophy are more pressing, and 
 always more eagerly listened to. It is, indeed, necessary to answer 
 them. Most frequently the rephes do not rise above undigested 
 trash; if we except Duguet and the Abbe Guenee, the champions 
 of the faith could show neither vigour of argumentation, nor solid 
 science. It would be necessary, besides, that they should separate ■ 
 the truth of the Gospel from all that which overlaid it and j 
 rendered it hateful in a privileged, opulent, and oppressiveij 
 Church. The Nonottes and the Baruels made a fine match for 
 Voltaire and the Encyclopedia. The insufficiency of the indi- 
 vidual refutations made them have recourse to blows of authority 
 and to official condemnations. It was more convenient to pul- I 
 verise error in a mandate affixed to the door of the^ cathedrals, 
 than to refute it with equal arms; but that was to forget' all the 
 powerlessness of refutations of this kind. Wherever we speak 
 alone, we speak into vacancy. The assemblies of the clergy from 
 the eighteenth century did not fail, each time that they met, to 
 anathematise philosophism, and especially to denounce it to the 
 authority, by recommending for beneiSces writers who had sig- 
 nalised themsSTveTln^a Tioly war without peril, and consequently 
 without'^Io^^ This attitude of St. Michael crushing the demon •% 
 was little calculated to reassure minds, because, first, the advevsar)- 
 was chained, and then the champions of the celestial cause did 
 not present themsdfge&etojtHecrgSdiBfeat with the stainless purity ■ 
 
ENERVATION OF FAITH. 1 7 
 
 which becomes such a part; and whilst the official belief remained 
 intact, the true faith was weakened more and more even in the 
 midst of the clergy. It seems as if they made it their business to 
 expose themselves to attacks; if he whom we do not see, one who 
 is in retirement, in the provinces, in the country, preserves in the 
 shade the beliefs and virtues of his state; the one whom we do 
 see, who makes a noise at court, at Paris, signalises himself by 
 deplorable scandals. Too often he serves a mass in which he no 
 longer believes; he carries to the altar the perfumes of the boudoir. 
 The race of gallant and fregij^iinking. a^^fe is numerous; they 
 crowTthesaloons, and they recall one of the greatest abuses of 
 the Church, this right of commendam which permitted the noble 1 
 incumbent of a benefice to have only the advantages of the 
 charge, whilst leaving its labours and its fatigues to the plebeian 
 whom he put in his place. The aristocracy took advantage 
 largely of all the high positions of the Church. They received con- 
 siderable rents from them, whilst giving little in exchange beyond 
 their fine names. The inferior clerg y, upon whom fell_the lajjgur, 
 were abandoned to the allowance made by the ,tithe-ownei:,_^nd 
 lived miserably. Thus wealth was in the. reverse ratio to labour. 
 
 In 1785, the scandalous lawsuit of the queen's necklace* had 
 gravely compromised a prince of the Church and of the State. 
 The Cardinal de Rohan, bishop of Strasbourg and grand almoner 
 of France, had, without doubt, been the dupe of an intriguing 
 woman of low condition, who had swindled him respecting an 
 ornament of an enormous price, by flattering him with the hope 
 of obtaining at this price the favours of the queen. But every 
 one thought that there was something worse than the robbery of 
 
 * For an account of this, see " Carlyle's Critical and Miscellaneous 
 Essays," Vol. IV. Also Vizetelly's "Story of the Diamond Necklace." 
 Tinsley Brothers. Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
 C 
 
la THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 the necklace — it was its purchase with such a design by one of 
 the first prelates of the kingdom. Let it not be forgotten that all 
 the means of rigour and of persecution obtained from Louis XIV., 
 were maintained with a jealous care by this discredited clergy. 
 What contempt must we feel for these musk-scented Dominicans 
 who, with a smile and a witticism on the lips, without being sure 
 of their own belief, were acting the part of the Middle Ages, 
 without recalling in anything its sombre enthusiasm ! The con- 
 demnation of Calas,* pronounced under such influences, was cal- 
 culated immeasurably to precipitate the movement of opposition. 
 We know that, passing beyond the Church, it soon challenged the 
 most elementary gifts of spiritualism, but without ever forgetting? 
 to point out, whilst exaggerating them, the palpable abuses of the 
 religion of the country. Voltaire had covered them with an im- ^ 
 mortal ridicule. The extravagance which belonged to these ; 
 attacks increased their success by serving the passion of the 
 moment. Anger which does not reason, willingly heaps up stones 
 in the mud for its summary executions. 
 
 We have, then, face to face, towards the end of the eighteenth 
 century, two irreconcilable tendencies which mutually drive each 
 other to the last exaggerations. We can foresee how difficuh it 
 will be to understand one another when the moment of social 
 innovation shall have arrived. If, in the liberal portion of lay 
 society, they seek to explain what they wish with regard to eccle- 
 siastical reforms, they acknowledge at the outset that they are not 
 disposed to allow the vast and costly establishment which drains 
 to its profit the best resources of the country to continue to subsist 
 on the present footing. They dare not, doubtless, speak clearly^l 
 
 • Calas Jean, a Protestant merchant at Toulouse, who was bar- 
 barously murdered under forms of law (on the 9th of March, 1762), 
 which were employed to shelter the sanguinary dictates of ignoran^ 
 and fanatical zeal. S^j;^E|^^^ Jj^g^^ ' | 
 
MOVEMENT OF OPINION AGAINST THE CHURCH. 19 
 
 n this delicate point, but they unceasingly revert to it by way of 
 llusion, at one time in discussing, as Mably, in his " Considera- 
 ons sur I'Histoire de France," ("Considerations on the History of 
 ranee," ) the origin of the tithes and property of the Church ; 
 t another in lavishing sarcasms on the uselessness of the monastic 
 fe, with a concentrated irony by the masterly satirical pen of 
 lontesquieu in his "Lettres Persanes;" or with that inexhaustible 
 pirit, that supple, fertile, and cutting genius of Voltairian raillery. 
 'ubUc opinion has made such progress in this direction, that 
 Iready, in the middle of the century, a comptroller-general ventures 
 ) propose one of the boldest measures of the constituent of 1789, 
 Qd does not fear to attack the sacred and inalienable domain of 
 le Church. Machault, in 1749, expressed the intention of 
 lienating one portion of the property of the clergy to cover the 
 eficit of the royal treasury. But if public opinion pronounced 
 self strongly against the accumulation of riches in the hands of 
 le clergy, the nation felt no impatience to possess itself of them. 
 ranee is naturally much more ardent for general ideas than for 
 iterestsj and the pressure of circumstances was needed, to induce 
 
 to put forth its strong will to modify the conditions of ecclesias- 
 cal property. 
 
 It was not so with the second object of its aspirations; it 
 Iready passionately claimed toleration for all opinions. Liberty 
 f thought and of belief was in the first line on the programme of 
 le new generation, and it was very determined to modify ancient 
 )ciety in this respect, though it were to overturn it. It will be 
 le eternal honour of Voltaire to have truly and sincerely loved 
 ileration. I do not know whether he had the fever at every anni- 
 srsary of Saint Bartholomew; it is not certain that his pulse was 
 ways felt on that day, but it is certain that he had fever in mind 
 id heart — that noble fever of an unfeigned indignation at the 
 lought of the crimes of mtgj|s^9%^ ^iJ^^o^y mistake is in 
 
 c 2 
 
^i 
 
 20 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 maintaining that he invented toleration, and that without him it 
 would not have existed in the world: that is materially false. 
 Without speaking of the first apologists of Christianity, so clear on 
 this point, William Penn, in the preceding century, had inscribed! 
 religious liberty at the head of the constitution of the State 
 founded under his auspices. The little State of Rhode Island in 
 America had honoured itself by the most enlightened practice of 
 this great principle. We ought to add, that it had been seized in 
 all its consequences only beyond the ocean. In France, the 
 boldest or the most profound freethinkers brought to it strange ; 
 restrictions. We applaud Montesquieu, when he puts in the 
 mouth of a young Jew an eloquent protestation against religious 
 persecution, thus expressed: — 
 
 " You wish that we should be Christians, and you do not wish 
 to be such yourself. The character of truth is its triumph over 
 hearts and minds, and not that powerlessness that you avow when 
 you wish to make it be received by punishments.* The chief 
 strength of religion comes from this, that we believe it; the 
 ; strength of human laws from this, that we fear them." t And yet, 
 1 very far from drawing the consequences of these fine maxims, Men- 
 ' tesquieu formally denies one of the first applications of religious 
 liberty by refiising to a new religion the right of propagandism. 
 " As it is almost only intolerant religions which have a great zeal 
 to establish themselves elsewhere, because a religion which can 
 tolerate others dreams little of its propagation, that will be a1 
 very good civil law when the State is satisfied with the religion 
 already estabUshed, not to suffer the establishment of another. 
 Behold, then, the fundamental principle of political laws in the 
 matter of religion. When it is in our power to receive in a State a 
 
 * " Esprit des Lois," Liv. XXV. chap. xiv. 
 
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY ILL UNDERSTOOD. 21 
 
 new religion, or not to receive it, it is not necessary to establish it 
 there; when it is established, it is necessary to tolerate it"* We 
 might suppose we were reading a contemporary of Trajan and of 
 the younger PHny. Do we not feel that there appears in these 
 words the old Roman and French idea of religion for the State 
 and for public order? Montesquieu adds: "When the laws have 
 thought it right to suffer several religions, it is necessary also that 
 they oblige them to tolerate each other. It is, then, useful that 
 the laws demand of these diverse religions, not only that they do 
 not trouble the State, but also that they do not trouble one 
 another." Thus everything reverts with him to the authorisation 
 of the State. Religions exist only under its good pleasure, under 
 its surveillance, and it is it which pacifies their discords. The' 
 civil constitution of the clergy and the laws of Germinal year X. 
 are in germ in these haughty words; 
 
 In Rousseau the germ had its full expansion. The citizen of 
 Geneva was, assuredly, a partisan of toleration. The decree of the 
 Parliament of Paris, which had caused his " Emile'' to be burnt, 
 and the mandates of Monseigneur de Beaumont had sufficed for 
 his instruction in this respect. It was he who had, after all, 
 inflicted the most terrible blow on the ancient^ Fren,ch society, 
 because he had brought to the new movement his serious passion, 
 and communicated to the young generation the fire which was 
 devouring his heart He had also the fatal honour of forming the 
 French Revolution in his own image. He reigned without dis- 
 pute over its most powerful and most devastating period. We 
 comprehend how much weight must have been attached in our 
 first deliberative assemblies to his ideas on the organisation of 
 religion. It is from his " Contrat Social " that it is necessary to 
 seek its most precise formula. Strange thing! this chart of the 
 
 * Ibid., Liv. XXV. chap. x. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
2 2 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: 
 
 future Revolution, this programme of the boldest renovation, is all 
 imbued with the favourite ideas of Bossuet; it is a kind of Gallic 
 deism, with the same terrible sanction as the Gallicanism of 1682 
 and 1685; it is the religion of State reduced to a small pittance 
 concerning dogmas, but as rigorous, as implacable, as if it had to 
 maintain the catechism of the Council of Trent. The sword' is 
 drawn for a lessened formula, but it is not the less drawn for it 
 before the affrighted eyes of the dissidents. The Contrat Social, to 
 say all, is Louis XIV. as a violent Jacobin.* It is true, that the 
 sovereign calls himself Legion, that he is not personified in a single 
 man, that he represents the entire people, and that he has for 
 Versailles a tumultuous Forum; but he is not the less absolute, 
 indisputable, absorbing as a whirlpool, for he annihilates all 
 initiative, all individual liberty; he is a despot in the most real 
 sense of the word. Rousseau desires that this despot should be 
 a good prince, and leave to each citizen the right of thinking what 
 he pleases; but the concession is not great, for, however haughty 
 for the human conscience have been the claims of the religiousi 
 tyrannies of the past, they have never crossed the interior court; 
 thought has always remained free and incapable of being seized ,; 
 But that which has everywhere characterised religious despotism, 
 is the claim to prevent the public manifestation of individual 
 differences of opinion. Now such is just the thought of Rousseau. 
 Let us judge of it by his own words : — 
 
 " There is a profession of faith purely civil, whose articles it 
 belongs to the sovereign to fix, without being able to obhge any 
 one to believe them; he may banish from the State any one who 
 does not believe them ; he may banish him, not as impious, but as 
 unsociable, as incapable of sincerely loving the laws and justice, 
 
 * (En carmagnole.) There was a costume, song, and dance, of this 
 name, very popular with the more violent Revolutionists. See " Car- 
 lyle's French Revolution," Vol. II. p. 292. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
AFTER OPINIONS OF THE ASSEMBLIES OF THE CLERGY. 23 
 
 and of sacrificing, in case of need, his life to his duties. If any one, 
 after having pubhcly acknowledged these dogmas, should conduct 
 himself as not believing them, let him be punished with death; he 
 has committed the greatest of crimes; he has lied before the laws." 
 
 In reading these lines, I seem to see in the distance Robes- 
 pierre celebrating the feast of the Supreme Being in face of the 
 guillotine. Rousseau would have been the first to detest the 
 application of his own theory; but when we consider that he 
 positively formed, in great part, the generation which mad'e the 
 Revolution, we comprehend how it could have committed the 
 greatest faults whilst regulating the relations of Church and State. 
 Evidently it was ill prepared by its eloquent teacher to protect 
 liberty of conscience. 
 
 What we have said of the moral state of the clergy in the 
 eighteenth century explains the attitude which they took, in face 
 of the demands of public opinion on the employment of their 
 riches and on the intolerance of the laws. We see them in 1 749 
 energetically protesting, by the Cardinal de la Rochefoucault as 
 their spokesman, against the schemes of Machault, and against 
 the edict, of the same year, which rendered obligatory the royal 
 authorisation for every new acquisition or foundation. The Court 
 yielded on the first point, in the hope of appeasing the religious 
 quarrels ; and Machault was sacrificed to the implacable rancours 
 of the ecclesiastical proprietors. In 1788, the assembly of the 
 clergy, called to vote on the resolutions adopted by the Assembly 
 of Notables — resolutions which, for the first time, subjected all 
 lands to taxation, including ecclesiastical property — protested with 
 great energy against an innovation which seemed to them to 
 subvert the Divine and human laws. 
 
 "Our immunities," ran the memoir presented to the king, 
 " take their source in the consecration, the destination, and the 
 primitive exemption of our property; this property is devoted. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
24 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 consecrated to God, with exemption from all charge foreign to its 
 destination. It is to fulfil these vows and these charges that the 
 property of the clergy, by an irrevocable consent of the king and 
 of the nation, forms an inalienable and sacred domain. We will 
 dare to say to a master whose magnificence equals his power,. 
 ' Our conscience and our honour do not permit us to consent to 
 change into necessary tribute that which can be only the offering, 
 of our love.' May it please God to preserve always to France this 
 ancient constitution, which, by the strength of its spirit, superior to 
 the revolution of times and to the licence of opinions, has carried ' 
 the kingdom to the highest degree of splendour." 
 
 Such was, in 1788, the opinion of the high clergy respecting 
 ecclesiastical property. Were they better disposed towards tole- 
 ration of opinions? We have noticed with what importunity,,; 
 they invoked legal repression against the writings of philosophers. | 
 These demands, already very strong, were stamped with a special i 
 bitterness in 1781 and 1782. They resolved to denounce to the 
 king every opinion contrary to Christianity. 
 
 " The alarmed provinces,'' we read in the memoir presented on 
 this subject by Dulau, archbishop of Aries, " unanimously tender 
 to the solicitude of the general clergy this formidable crowd of 
 anti-Christian productions spread, with impunity, from the bosom . 
 of the capital to the extremities of the kingdom."* 
 
 What is more serious, is the attitude of the last assembhes of 
 the clergy in respect to the Protestants. We have already said 
 that the eighteenth century had maintained with respect to them 
 the legislation of Louis XIV. One of their pastors, Fran9ois 
 Rochette, had been executed in 1762, and the death — let us say 
 rather the judicial murder— of Galas, goes back to the same epoch. 
 The explosion of indignation raised by this last crime, and elo- 
 
 * Introduction to the reprint of the " Moniteur," p. 365. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
OPPOSITION TO THE REFORMS. 25 
 
 quently sustained by Voltaire, had more advanced the cause of 
 Protestantism than half-a-century of obscure sufferings. People 
 did not yet venture to ask that it be tolerated as religion, but they 
 were ashamed of the proscription which smote one of the most 
 honourable classes of the population. Already, for some years, 
 the magistracy, alarmed by all the injustices favoured by the 
 absence of civil standing for the Protestants, had sought various 
 judicial expedients, to meet the difficulty; but these expedients, 
 changing from one resource to another, were very insufficient. 
 The friends of toleration openly urged the legal recognition, if not 
 of Protestantism, at least, of Protestants, by the concession of a 
 regular civil status. Malesherbes had composed, in 1785, and in 
 1786, two memoirs on this subject, adding to them a project of 
 law. -At the Assembly of Notables of 1787, the Marquis de la 
 Fayette, who had. inhaled in the United States the air of liberty, 
 took the initiative of a formal proposition which ended in the 
 Edict of Toleration of 1787. Nothing could better make us 
 appreciate the state of French legislation in the matter of religious 
 liberty at this epoch than the lively satisfaction with which the 
 publication of such an edict was received. It stated in its 
 preamble that the king would always favour, with all his power, 
 those means of instruction and persuasion which would tend to 
 the good of all his subjects through the common profession of the 
 ancient faith of the kingdom. The first article was thuscouched: 
 "The Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion shall continue 
 alone to enjoy, in our kingdom, public worship." The edict 
 granted to the non-Catholics, whose name, through a sort of 
 religious shame, was not even mentioned; first — the right of living 
 in France, and of exercising therein a profession or a trade with- 
 out being disturbed on account of religion ; second — the permis- 
 sion to be legally married before the officers of justice; third — / 
 the authorisation of causing births to be verified before the judge 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
26 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 of the place; fourth — a regulation for the interment of those who 
 could not be buried according to the Roman Catholic rite.* 
 These concessions were, doubtless, very important in practice, 
 but they did not inflict any blow on the principles of the ancient 
 society; the unity of the faith of the kingdom was preserved;* 
 Nevertheless, they raised the most energetic, the most inconceiv- 
 able opposition, in the assembUes of the clergy at the moment 
 when they were demanded, then warmly applauded by the laity. 
 The Parliament of Paris made, indeed, some remonstrances before 
 the registering: D'Espremenil cried, whilst showing the image of 
 Christ to his colleagues, " Do you wish to crucify Him once more ?" 
 But this ridiculous freak, as well as the timid demands of the par- 
 liament, were provoked only by the spirit of opposition with which 
 this great body was then animated against everything emanating 
 from the court. Nothing better suited the public sentiment than 
 these concessions made to the persecuted, since their cause had 
 been pleaded by the philosophers ; for it required the eclat and ex- 
 citement of a sharp and spirited discussion to render it interesting 
 in France. The high clergy, alone, did not cease to protest against 
 this progress of opinion in favour of the Protestants, and specially 
 against the imperfectly compensating measures which it had brought ' 
 about. At the time of the coronation of Louis XVI., a prelate, less 
 known by his virtues than by his ambition, Lomenie de Brienne, 
 archbishop of Toulouse, had held this language to the monarch: — 
 ' ' Sire, you will reprove the counsels of a false peace, the sys- 
 tems of a guilty toleration. We conjure you. Sire, do not delay 
 to take away from error the hope of having amongst us temples 
 and altars. It is reserved to you to give the last blow to Calvinism 
 in your States. Order that the schismatic assemblies of the Pro- 
 
 * De Felice. " Histoire des Protestants de France," p. 543 and 
 P- 549- 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
OPPOSITION TO THE REFORMS. 27 
 
 testants be broken up ; exclude them without distinction from all 
 offices of public administration, and you will secure for your 
 subjects unity of Christian worship." 
 
 The assemblies of the clergy, held from the accession of Louis 
 XVI. to the Revolution, are continually complaining of attempts 
 made by the Protestants to obtain liberty of conscience. We read 
 the following words in the report presented in 1789, by the Abbe 
 de la Rochefoucauld: "This sect which, in the midst of its ruins, 
 preserves the spirit of boldness and independence which it had 
 from its origin, wishes to>usurp, for falsehood, rights which belong 
 only to truth." The question was, let it be remembered, of the 
 right of not being treated as a wild beast surrounded in the woods. 
 " This sect has the audacity to demand a civil and religious exist- 
 ence ! Thence, the necessity of opposing a vigorous resistance to 
 all its efforts." The archbishop of Aries caused a voice of greater 
 authority to be heard in the same assembly. According to him, 
 the country and the Church are in danger; everything forebodes a 
 violent tempest, and he utters the cry of the disciples in distress : 
 "Lord, save us." The kingdom is in peril; for Protestants are 
 admitted, contrary to the laws, into a great number of offices. 
 That does not hinder the good archbishop from declaring his love 
 for his erring brethren. "They are, nevertheless, our fellow- 
 creatures, our fellow-citizens, our brethren. Ever shall we love 
 and cherish them. Far from us be the sole thought of the sword. 
 The militia to which we are called is purely spiritual." The 
 orator forgot those nimble pens, charged by Bossuet, in his funeral 
 oration over Letellier, to bear to future ages the knowledge of the 
 exploits of that holy man for extirpating heresy by the most 
 abominable persecution. The sabres of dragoons, and the sword 
 of the executioner, could not pass for a pacific crook. The arch- 
 bishop of Aries declared that he put all his confidence in the 
 
 touching and luminous instructions of the Church and in her in- 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
28 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 structive examples. But neither did the instructions appear to 
 ■ him sufficiently luminous, nor the examples sufficiently instructive 
 to dispense with supplicating the temporal power to add to them 
 the weight of a practical instruction more easy to comprehend. ^ 
 The assembly of the clergy, held in 1788, formally demanded of 
 the king to withdraw his edict of toleration. This was its last 
 public act, and, as it were, its testament* Happily, no one in 
 France welcomed the legacy. 
 
 We have not cited these facts to bring discredit on the ancient 
 Church of France. Great bodies like it are only slowly enlight-'.f 
 ened, because they preserve their traditions with a jealous care. 
 The more we advance in the study of history, the more we are 
 convinced of the unheard-of facility with which human nature 
 unites the strangest contradictions; it is constantly tempered by 
 inconsistency. Generous sentiments are found in the same man 
 by the side of the most fatal prejudices. Assuredly, the high 
 French clergy reckoned in their ranks more than one mind of an 
 elevated and liberal turn ; but they carried the weight of a secular 
 error. 
 
 Now that we have characterised the tendencies which are about 
 to enter into strife, we shall not be astonished at the formidable : 
 conflict which broke out in 1789. We shall have more than one 
 occasion to regret that their opposition was not more radical in 
 its basis ; for, whilst combating each other, the parties at strife set 
 out from the same principle and made use of the same weapons. 
 We shall see the boldest innovators defend the cause of toleration 
 by intolerant measures, make sacrifice, even they, to false religious s 
 unity, and, under pretext of freeing conscience, violate it outrage* 
 ously among their adversaries. On another side, these assailed, 
 
 * " Histoire de I'Eglise de France," par I'Abbe Guettee, Liv. XII., 
 ch. i. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE HIGH AND THE LOW CLERGY. 29 
 
 in their turn, in this interior court, which they had not respected 
 among their brethren, wounded in those sacred rights which they 
 had not admitted in the days of their prosperity, will rise again 
 under opprobrium and persecution, and, without knowing -it, will 
 labour by their sufferings to obtain that liberty of conscience which 
 they had neither known how to comprehend nor to protect against 
 the despotism of the civil power, praised by them so long as it 
 had been their docile instrument. 
 
 This cursory view of the state of the French clergy would be 
 incomplete if we spoke only of its high dignitaries. The nobility 
 occupied in it all the lucrative offices and brilhant positions. The 
 breath of renovation which was then passing over the aristocracy, 
 and which had brought about the glorious adventure of the 
 American war, had touched the noble prelates, but without 
 shaking their ecclesiastical prejudices, properly so called; they 
 remained invariably faithful to them, with the exception of Lefranc 
 de Pompignan, archbishop of Vienne, and of the young bishop of 
 Autun; it is true that this latter had the ecclesiastical vocation in 
 the feeblest degree imaginable. It was not so with the inferior 
 clergy. Badly paid, held in dependence by their' superiors, they 
 werFTnclined to continual discontent. Sprung, in great part, from 
 that intelligent and enefgetTcT body of citizens who felt that their 
 day was come, they were imbued with their opinions. They 
 reckoned in their ranks a certain number of Jansenists, who 
 belonged, beforehand, to the party of progress, for they had the 
 most just grievances to allege against the ancient order of things. 
 It was at their expense that the union of Church and State had 
 been, for a century, tightly riveted. The monasteries, encumbered 
 with men without religious vocation, concealed in their retreat 
 more than one dangerous agitator, yet unknot n to himself. On/^ 
 the whole, the opinions of the inferior clergy did not exceed the 
 measure of a moderate3?^fe^gr^^g}.;^afevery decided liberaHsm, 
 
30 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 at least in the, provinces of the centre and of the east of France; 
 for the west and the south belonged to the religious passions of 
 the past. It was an abbe who, at the time of the Convocation of 
 the States General, pronounced the decisive word which was 
 destined to cut, like a sword, the capital question of the represent- 
 ation of the different orders at the approaching assembly. The 
 pamphl»t of the Abbe Sieyes gave the most precise and happy 
 expression to the public sentiment: it was to lend it wings, and to 
 add to it an irresistible force of circulation and impetus. The 
 Abbe Gouttes published considerations "Sur 1 'Injustice des Pre- 
 tentions du Clerge et de la Noblesse," — ("On the Injustice of the 
 Pretensions of the. Clergy and Nobility,") the Abbe Pacot letters 
 " Sur la Liberte Politique,"— ("On PoHtical Liberty,") and the Abbe 
 Gregoire, who was shortly to play so great a part, his " Lettres 
 aux Cures," — ("Letters to the Parish Priests.") We even see the 
 revolutionary spirit, with all its exaggerations, beginning to dawn 
 in the little work of a priest of the diocess of Auxerre, entitled, 
 " La Gloria in excelsis du Peuple," — (" The Gloria in excelsis of 
 the People,") but it was only an exception. Such was, at the 
 special point of view with which we occupy ourselves, the state of 
 mind at' the moment when all innovating aspirations were about 
 to produce themselves freely in open day, and to meet no other 
 obstacle to their realisation than their own rivalries and contradic- 
 tions. It was not possible to lay hands upon the State without 
 laying hands, at the same time, upon the Church, so strictly were 
 they bound together under the ancient regime. We are, therefore, 
 about to see the question of their relations stated from the com- 
 mencement of the Revolution, with all its perils, but in order to 
 march irresistibly to its solution, from fault to fault, and also from 
 progress to progress; for each fault acknowledged, even after 
 having been dearly paid for, contributes to free the future from 
 obstruction. Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
3^ 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 THE CONSTITUENT. 
 
 C&apter i. 
 
 Legislative preliminaries. — The first debate on liberty of worship.* 
 
 A.LL has been said on this unique hour of our history, in which, 
 previous to all the irritating debates, France felt herself live in a 
 national representation worthy of her, and saw the future under 
 the brilliant colours of that beautiful sun of May, which shone 
 upon the opening of the States General, expected and demanded 
 svith so much ardour. " Never laugh at your youth," said a great 
 poet. Let us equally respect this rapid season of enthusiasm for 
 :he public good, so much the more to be admired that it flourished 
 n a race which seemed to have grown old; let us not turn into 
 ierision this facility to hope everything, this unbounded confi- 
 ience so soon deceived. If the summer does not answer to the 
 ipring, that does not prevent the spring from having had its boil- 
 
 * Next to the ordinary sources, we may consult with advantage, on 
 :his first period of the history of the Revolution, '' L'Histoire de Louis 
 XVI." by M. Droz. This work has been compiled, in part, from the 
 ' Memoires de Malouet,'' unfortunately not published. There may, 
 ilso, be read, with advantage, the " Genie de la Revolution," by Ch. 
 L. Chassin, Paris, 1863, Vol. I. " Les elections." — This book, marked 
 jy great bitterness against Christianity, and excessive indulgence for 
 he violences of the Revolution, contains valuable particulars on the 
 Sections of 1789, and a well-executed analysis of the official instruc- 
 ions of the different orders. o/g/feed by Microsoft® 
 
32 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 ing sap. Without what you call illusions, nothing could have been 
 undertaken, no result would have been obtained. If there are 
 still, to-day, invincible resistances to the general fattening, in- 
 curable regrets, and generous aspirations, it is because there still 
 remains something of the illusions of 1789. They remain, after 
 all, the ideal which hovers over our history. From the day on 1 
 which this ideal should have disappeared, we might say for 
 modern Europe — The Lower Empire is made. 
 
 The clergy powerfully felt the ascendancy of this universal 
 enthusiasm. The bi.shop of Nancy, who preached the inaugura- 
 tion sermon of the States General in the Church of St Louis, at 
 Versailles, so exactly expressed the sentiments which filled all 
 hearts, that, despite the solemnity of the place and of the circum- 
 stance, he was interrupted by applauses. Nevertheless, from this 
 first day, any one might have been convinced of the profound 
 divisions which brooded in their hearts; it was sufficient to open 
 the official instructions* of the different orders. Not that there 
 was not a full agreement on many very important points — such as 
 the equal assessment of the taxes, the regularity of the Convoca- 
 tion of the States General, and the reform of abuses inherent in the 
 feudal system. The official instructions of the clergy are distin- 
 guished by their liberalism in all that does not concern the 
 privileges of the Church. " They there show themselves," says 
 M. De Tocqueville, " as much enemies of despotism as favourable 
 to civil liberty, and as much in love with political liberty as 
 the Third Estate or the nobility; they proclaim that individual 
 liberty ought to be secured, not by promises, but by a procedurei 
 analogous to that of the habeas corpus. They demand the destruc- 
 tion of the State prisons, the abolition of the exceptional tribunals, 
 
 * Official instructions {cahiers) of the electors to the deputies at the 
 
 States General. „. ... , , ... ^^ 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
OPENING OF THE STATES GENERAL. 33 
 
 the publicity of all debates, the permanency of all the judges, 
 the admissibility of all citizens to the employments which ought to 
 be open to merit alone, a military recruiting less oppressive and 
 less humiliating for the people, and from -w'hich no one shall be 
 exempt, the redemption of manorial rights, which, having sprung 
 from the feudal system, were, tliey said, contrary to liberty ; the 
 unbounded liberty of labour, the destruction of inland custom- 
 houses, the multiplication of private schools ; and laic establish- 
 ments of beneficence in all the provinces. In politics, properly so 
 called, they proclaim, more loudly than anyone, that the nation 
 has the imprescriptible and inalienable right of assembling to make 
 laws and freely to vote the taxes. No Frenchman, they assert, 
 can be forced to pay a tax that he has not himself voted, or by 
 a. representative. The clergy also demanded that the States 
 General, freely chosen, should be assembled every year; that they 
 should discuss, in presence of the nation, all great affairs; that 
 :heir deputies should be inviolable; and that the ministers should 
 ■emain always responsible to them."* Perhaps, M. de Tocque- 
 i^ille has attributed to the clergy, as a body, an advanced liberalism, 
 rf which there was trace only in some of the oflrcial instructions; 
 3Ut it is not less certain that, for what concerns political rights, 
 he clerg}- are not behind the other prders, that they are even 
 nore liberal than the nobihty, although they are still very divided 
 )n the question of vote by head. Let us acknowledge, to their 
 lonour, that they insisted strongly on the abolition of the slave 
 rade and of slavery. But this liberalism contradicts itself from 
 he moment that the question is of their privileges and their posi- 
 ion in the State. With rare exceptions, we find amongst them. 
 he same pretensions which they had not ceased to express in 
 heir periodic assemblies. Here is what we read in the official 
 
 * " L' Ancient Regim^z^^W^mM)?- I? 
 D 
 
34 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 instructions of the general assembly of the electors of the clergy; 
 " You will impose on the assembled nation the profound respect 
 which the divinity of its origin, and the gravity of its morality, 
 ought to attract to the Christian religion ; you will indicate to the 
 States General the means of rendering to it all the influence which 
 it ought to have on social order and the liberty of the people ; you 
 will be on your guard against fraudulent insinuations. You will 
 cherish, in the depth of your heart, and you will manifest in every 
 circumstance, the most sacred and the most respectful love for the 
 sacred person of his Majesty."* It is just, nevertheless, to remark 
 important diiferences in these official instructions. When they 
 emanate from the assemblies in which the high aristocracy pre- 
 dominates, they insist on the Divine right, but they vindicate the 
 right of the people wherever the parish priests have been in the 
 majority. 
 
 The high clergy, themselves, were divided. Whilst Alexander! 
 de Marboeuf, archbishop of Lyons, in his mandate of Lent, 
 1789, speaks only of the anarchy and subversion prepared by 
 the new ideas, Themines, bishop of Blois, offers the half of 
 his revenue to the country, and the archbishop of Bordeaux 
 preaches — to the great, sacrifices; to subjects, moderation; and to , 
 all, concord, t But this liberalism does not go so far as to 
 acknowledge liberty of conscience. The official instructions of 
 the Third Estate, and a good number of those of the nobiUty, 
 openly claim the consecration of toleration, without yet venturing 
 to demand the abandonment of a national religion; the clergy, 
 insist on the fiecessity of maintaining in France the Catholic 
 religion as the State religion; they demand that the publication of 
 every anti-religious writing should be stopped. They confess 
 without evasion that they need to be reformed in many respects, 
 
 * Chassin. " Genie de la Revolution," I., p. 316. 
 t Ibid., L, pp^K^cR®4/M/crosoft® 
 
THE UNION OF THE ORDERS. 35 
 
 but on condition of preserving to them all their prerogatives. 
 They wish that people should actively occupy themselves with the 
 instruction and education of youth; but the majority of their 
 instructions vote that this work should be entrusted to the Church. 
 In fine, whilst fully admitting the necessity of re-establishing the 
 discipline, and of modifying the organisation, of the monastic 
 orders, they claim their maintenance. Truly, the distance was 
 great between such views and those which were laid down on the 
 same points in the instructions of the Third. The force of public 
 opinion was such, according to what Bailly relates in his 
 " Memoirs," that, in the meeting for choosing the electors of Paris, 
 there was heard from every part this cry : " No clergy ! no clergy ! " 
 The wish was not to suppress the calling, but the ecclesiastical 
 order.* The official instruction, drawn up by the deputation of 
 Paris, reveals this profound disagreement. Whilst fully admitting 
 that the Catholic religion is the dominant religion in France, it is 
 there plainly declared that religion is established by persuasion, 
 and never by constraint, and that the Christian religion enjoining 
 civil toleration, every citizen ought to enjoy private liberty of con- 
 science; that all transport of pence to Rome ought to be pro- 
 hibited; that no dignitary of the clergy ought to be excused from 
 the duty of residence; that it is necessary to abolish the monopoly 
 of benefices; that vows of rehgion^ made in future, should not 
 bind monks and nuns to their monasteries ; and that these said 
 monks should not be able to dispose of their property in favour of 
 these monasteries.! This was boldly to lay the hand on abuses 
 which still seemed sacred rights to the majority of the clergy. The 
 collision between claims so contrary was not to be put off'. 
 
 The deliberation on tire vote by order or by head in the States 
 
 * "Memoires de Bailly," I., p. 19. 
 
 f " Histoire Parlementaire,'' by Buchet and Roux, I., pp. 345 
 ind 346. Digitized by Microsoft® _ 
 
 D 2 
 
36 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 General gradually revealed this division. The fate of the Frencl 
 Revolution depended on it; the question of form became preemi 
 nently the question of basis; the very existence of the ancienl 
 r^^me-w3s put on trial; no innovation was to equal the importance 
 of a resolution which decidedly ptit an end to the era of privileges 
 for to cause these last to be discussed by the majority of the non- 
 privileged, was to condemn them beforehand; it was for the two 
 orders that lived by them to place themselves under the level 
 which was about to pass over entire society, and to efface all pro- 
 tuberances of the soil. We comprehend how ancient France may 
 have had some trouble in accepting its own death. Men had 
 come with the sincere desire of putting the hedging-bill and even 
 the hatchet to the parasite branches and to the excresences of the 
 old oak, but they were not disposed to cut it up by the roots. 
 Neither royalty, nor the nobility, nor the majority of the clergy, 
 were prepared for such an overthrow. For the clergy, with whom 
 alone we have to occupy ourselves, the union with the commons 
 had a gravity without parallel. The very idea of the priesthood 
 made to itself a law of isolation. Like those rivers which run 
 through lakes without mingling their waters with them, the clei^ 
 had believed it to be their duty, up to that time, to preserve a dis- 
 tinct existence in the country, and to separate themselves from the 
 mass of the nation, as that which is sacred separates itself from 
 that which is profane. Constituted on the model of the Hebrew 
 Levites, they bore the seal of a sacred character in their garments, 
 in their organisation, and even in their properties. To bend 
 under the common law, to admit that they could debate their 
 interests with the laity, to submit themselves to a majority which 
 was not formed of their own order, was to accomplish the most 
 unheard-of renovation in a time which was not to recoil from 
 any boldness. The fusion of the orders in one single assembly 
 was then, for the &mif,^^'^^eS!iM sacrifice that they could 
 
UNION OF THE THREE ORDERS. 37 
 
 make. It would be unjust to condemn their hesitations and their 
 scruples, but all their efforts were to miscarry against superior 
 ability put to the service of manly enthusiasm. Those, in fact, 
 wield the greatest moral power who associate ardour with skill in 
 action, passion with prudence. The Third Estate, during the long 
 days which preceded the union of the three orders, gave proof of 
 a true political genius, soon to grow feeble in the moment of 
 triumph, when it would have no longer to restrain and watch over 
 itself in order to conquer. The Third knows what it wishes ; it 
 pursues a near end with an energetic perseverance which nothing 
 wearies ; no false step retards its victory. It lends itself to efforts 
 of conciliation, which put justice and moderation on its side, 
 stopping at the precise limit where concessions would be trans- 
 formed into fraud. As soon as energy is needed, it shows it 
 indomitable, and rises with the occasion, even to the sublime — 
 as at the Tennis Court — in a grand scene, which strikes the 
 imagination and excites the noblest passions. Amid an eloquent 
 race, which requires that great words rouse great actions, and 
 which willingly does the latter at the prompting of the former, it 
 has the inestimable happiness of possessing the prince of orators 
 of modern times, sincerely raised, despite his vices, to the tone of 
 the general enthusiasm, and finding, in order to express it, an 
 inflamed, cutting language, sometimes terrible as thunder, which 
 leaves behind it a long furrow of anger or of passionate admira- 
 tion. It is on his battle-field that it is necessary to hear Mirabeau, 
 in the midst of those stormy sittings of which his own journal 
 gives the most faithful image. He who has read him only in 
 rhetorical collections does not know him. We comprehend, in 
 reading his vehement extemporisations, in which passion is 
 mingled with a natural logic of the most compact order, that he is 
 in the intellectual rank of kings by Divine right, who, with a word, 
 know how to throw light and fire into the bosom of the Assembly 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
38 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 which they subjugate, even when it is condemned to admire 
 without esteeming them.* 
 
 The victory of the Third Estate was certain from the first day, 
 for it was by much the strongest; when we read the reports of the 
 dehberations of the order of the clergy, before the union, we 
 at once acknowledge that it is much more divided than the 
 order of the nobility. On_the firs^vote a minority of a hundred 
 and fourteen voices gives its opinion in favour of the verification 
 of the powers by the three orders united. This minority com- 
 prises only three bishops_the first day; it is compos ed then p iin- 
 cipally of the inferior clergy; these last have sprung from the 
 Third, and their origin has more influence on them than their 
 robe. The majority is restrained by the numerous opponents 
 which it has in front of it; therefore, it is more moderate in its 
 resistance than the chamber of the nobility. The deputies of the 
 Commons, who bring the wishes and the supplications of the Third, 
 are well received. The clergy are carefully on their guard against 
 a precipitate answer. Measures of conciliation and delay are 
 eagerly welcomed ; but the majority are none the less decided 
 not to yield, for it is, in their eyes, a question of life or death, and 
 I they are not deceived. It is from them that the idea of a com- 
 mission of conciliation goes forth. They propose in it a half 
 measure, which consists in proceeding separately to the verification 
 of the powers, and in remitting disputed cases to commissioners 
 named by the three orders, after that each order shall have 
 received communication of the result of the deliberation of the 
 two others.! The nobility, in repelling, at the outset, this propo- 
 sition, make a fine match for the commons, who preserve all the 
 
 * See, on Mirabeau, the eight volumes published by Lucas de 
 
 Montigny, all filled with extracts from his correspondence and from 
 
 his first writings. 
 
 t See the " Moniteur." Sitting of May 25, 1789. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
UNION OF THE THREE ORDERS. 39 
 
 appearances of moderation. The fear of being dependent on a 
 mixed assembly is so great that the majority of the clergy do not ■ 
 hesitate, spontaneously to offer what they had refused with so 
 much obstinacy in 1788. They cause to be announced to the „ 
 Third Estate the disposition of the chamber to renounce all 
 pecuniary exemption. This decision was not solely prompted j 
 by the desire of turning aside a dreaded blow, and of, in some ( 
 sort, sharing the hearth, but also by the ascendancy' of public ; 
 opinion and the firm decision of the minority. 
 
 The Commons were very disposed to accept this sacrifice, which 
 besides was required by the almost universality of the official in- 
 structions : but we are greatly mistaken if we imagine that 
 they would be content with it. They remained immovable in 
 their first resolution. But the majority of the clergy took a 
 measure which revealed a rare political spirit and that consummate 
 skilfulness which is due to delicate negotiations. The question 
 of livelihoods was one of the first with which the legislators 
 of the country were to occupy themselves, on account of the 
 increasing dearness of grains. The public misery was frightful. 
 What was there more conformable to the holy mission of the 
 clergy, than to ask the abandonment of all political questions, 
 in order urgently to occupy themselves with this question 
 of charity? If they succeeded in getting the different orders to 
 deliberate on a subject so pressing, the deliberation by order was 
 carried by surprise, and an impulse of sensibility and generosity, 
 which it was easy to provoke, would save the Church of France, 
 and by the same opportunity, nobility and royalty. In the sitting 
 of the 6th of June, it was unanimously decided, in the midst of the 
 Chamber of the Clergy, to nominate a commission to take into con- 
 sideration the dearness of grains, and the two other orders were in- 
 vited to occupy themselves equally with the same object.* Without 
 
 * See the "Moniteur" of the 6th of June, 1789. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
40 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 doubt, the minority voted this proposition without any aiter 
 
 thought of laying a snare, but we could not contend that there 
 
 was not there a manoeuvre plotted by the leaders of the majority; 
 
 at that very moment, they were parleying with the king to prepare 
 
 a coup d'etat. Bailly,. president of the Commons, replied very 
 
 skilfully to the orators of the first order: " The most ardent wish 
 
 of the representatives of the people," said he, " is to come to its 
 
 help. The decree of the clergy authorises them to believe that 
 
 this order shares their impatience in this respect, and that it will 
 
 no longer object to a union, without which the public evils could 
 
 only increase.'' Thus beaten on all the grounds on which they 
 
 had placed themselves, the high clergy who were in understanding;' 
 
 with the Court, openly urged the coup d'itat; there was so much 
 
 the more need of it, that the minority was becoming pressing. 
 
 After the closing of the conferences of conciliation held between 
 
 the commissioners of the three orders and the royal commissioners, 
 
 the partisans of union with the Third had ended by obtaining the 
 
 majority, and had decided that they would act in conformity yvith 
 
 their views on the first day; already several parish priests had 
 
 preceded them amid the applauses of the assembly. The royal 
 
 sitting took place on the 23rd of June; the National Assembly, 
 
 according to the words of Sieyes, remained after the sitting what 
 
 it was before, that is to say, sovereign; it was not so with royalty, 
 
 conquered by the first collision, and weakened of all the power 
 
 which it had claimed and not found. The proud answer of 
 
 ,Mirabeau announced that the, new right was stronger than the 
 
 ancient right. It may be seen by the declarations of the intentions 
 
 of the king, read at the famous sitting, in what a feeble degree the 
 
 high clergy counted on associating themselves with the reform of 
 
 abuses. There was no question in the royal programme except 
 
 of the equalisation of the taxes and of the redemption of some 
 
 feudal rights. The Church was to preserve all its privileges, - to 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
UNION OB' THE THREE ORDERS. 4I 
 
 possess the monopoly of worship, and to yield nothing of its 
 essential prerogatives. The king. secured the future by imposing 
 the separation of the orders by a stroke of authority which he did 
 not know was to resound in vacancy. This stroke of authority 
 was the blow of despair of the high clergy and of the party of the 
 nobility, strangers to the new breath. In vain did the two orders 
 solemnly unite to adhere to the royal declaration; the National 
 Assembly, in maintaining its right, secured its ascendancy. 
 Already the new majority of the clergy, led by the archbishop of 
 Vienne, had taken sitting, as well as an important fraction of the 
 nobility. Popular commotion began to bring its dangerous sup- 
 port to the Commons. The king gave way, and the two orders 
 are obliged by his formal command to unite with the National 
 Assembly. The opponents among the clergy endeavoured, at 
 least, to shield the future by protesting against that which was, 
 in their eyes, the overturning of the bases of French societ}-. 
 This protestation, made by the archbishop of Aix, powerlessly 
 expired, at the foot of the tribune, under the blow of tljis 
 energetic speech of Mirabeau's : " No one can continue a 
 member of the National Assembly if he does not acknowledge its 
 sovereignty; and the Assembly itself cannot deliberate in presence 
 of anyone who believes that he has the right to protest against its 
 deliberations."* It was, then, over with the hierarchy of the past; 
 there remained standing only the sovereignty of an assembly. 
 Historic right was thrown to the earth; it was too much so, 
 perhaps, but it was so without appeal. The Revolution was con- 
 summated, for it could do nothing bolder, at least in its first period, 
 than that which it had just done in a few days. In what concerns 
 the Church of France, it was no longer a society apart in the State, 
 it was no longer on its own good pleasure that its reorganisation 
 was to depend. Like all other institutions of the past, it was 
 
 * Sitting of the ist of July, 1789 C" Moniteur"_). 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
42 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 about to fall under the appreciation and criticism of the rep] 
 
 sentatives of the entire nation. It was to be feared that tl 
 
 control would exceed the just measure, and that in consequen 
 
 of the inextricable confusion of the temporal and the spiritu; 
 
 they would quickly offend the religious conscience, even whi 
 
 they thought only of reforming a political abuse. This was tl 
 
 grave peril of the situation such as it had been made by tl 
 
 opposite passions which were about to take their swing in the h 
 
 debates of which we shall have to measure the bearing and 
 
 appreciate the result. 
 
 It seemed that the National Assembly, once constituted, hi 
 
 only to undertake its great constitutional work. But it w 
 
 necessary above all that it should secure its existence, which 
 
 knew to be threatened. Then intervened a new power, irregul 
 
 and violent, dangerous, even when it saves liberty, because 
 
 arrogates to itself all right over it on the morrow of its triumph; 
 
 power whose imperious vetos were much more to shackle tl 
 
 independence of the deliberative assemblies than the vetos 
 
 monarchy. That power was riot. We are far from blaming eve 
 
 popular rising; there are sublime ones which have saved the ind 
 
 pendence of the country; but in the state of ignorance in whi( 
 
 the masses were plunged at the end of the eighteenth century, ai 
 
 in which they were still languishing, these explosions of the publ 
 
 sentiment had the character of wild and undisciplined forces. Tl 
 
 instructed classes fanned the fire of an indignation which w 
 
 often legitimate in those rude and simple hearts served by robt 
 
 arms. They imagine that the roused people will stop at ti 
 
 precise point at which they themselves stop. But it is nothing 
 
 the kind. When the breath of the tempest has passed over the 
 
 great human waves, the intelligent liberalism from which it eir 
 
 nates, is powerless to say to them; Thus far and no farther. Tl 
 
 obscure wave drives on the tide, the banks are carried away, ai 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
FAVOURABLE DISPOSITIONS OF THE PEOPLE TOWARDS RELIGION. 43 
 
 the initiators of the movement are the first to curse it, for they 
 are submerged. They would do better to complain of themselves. 
 Whose fault is it if those generous forces which they have raised 
 are blind? Do they not suffer the chastisement of their disdainful 
 forgetfulness of that people whom they remembered only on the 
 day when tliey had need of their bold resistance? If they had 
 instructed them, loved them, associated with their ideas, they 
 would have found them not less courageous, but they would have 
 acted as a moral force, which knows how to contain itself, the 
 only means of founding and preserving liberty. Demagogism 
 will always end by drowning in its tumultuous waters moderate 
 liberalism, so long as this last will not be sufficiently wise to busy 
 itself fraternally with the people in peaceable days. It will be the 
 just chastisement of its selfish indifference. Such is the grand 
 lesson which is taught by the stormy beginnings of the French 
 Revolution. Surely, when foreign troops were encamping at 
 Versailles, ready brutally to close the national parliament, it was 
 right to rely on the people of Paris; but this same people which 
 had saved its parliament, was, later, to constrain and oppress it. 
 For having wished to make it their instrument and nothing more, 
 the liberal classes were to end by bowing to its impetuous will in 
 enthroning the despotism of the street, which is, after all, the 
 worst of all, and which, besides, brings back the other. We 
 applaud the people who take and overturn the Bastille. It is the 
 same, nevertheless, which will surround the guillotine on the Place 
 de la Revolution. 
 
 We shall see that riot never exercised a more imperious 
 ascendency than when the religious question was put before the 
 National Representation. 
 
 The people of Paris were not, at the commencement, ill dis- 
 posed to religion. In the terrible riot of the 14th of July, they 
 
 bore down, it is true, upon the house of Saint Lazare. Never- 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
44 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 theless, it was not against the religious establishment that they had 
 a grudge, but against the-prison which was annexed to it. They 
 confounded in their hatred of arbitrary power a political prison 
 such as the Bastille, and a house of correction very necessary for 
 good morals. The Sisters of Charity of Saint Lazare were re- 
 spected and protected. Irreligious passions were so little roused at 
 this epoch, that after their great victory of the 14th of July, the 
 people of Paris put the rising Revolution under the protection of 
 St. Genevieve. A solemn procession was made to render thanks 
 to God for the taking of the Bastille. The combatants, with their 
 wives and their daughters, carried votive offerings and bouquets to 
 the patron saint of Paris. The citizens of the Faubourg St Antoine 
 were seen repairing to the church, preceded by young girls in 
 white and a numerous clergy. They piously celebrated the 
 funeral service for the citizens who had died at the Bastille. 
 These dispositions quickly changed, but they show that, at the 
 commencement of the Revolution, the impiety which was destined 
 to be so fatal to liberty had not penetrated into the masses. 
 
 The date of the 4th of August remains for ever glorious in our 
 annals. Our fathers gave one of the finest spectacles which can be 
 contemplated, that of one of those generous outbursts of enthusiasm 
 which, formed on the heights of the human being, mingle in an 
 irresistible current all that is noble and disinterested in men's 
 hearts. It should be called a Pentecost in the .purely human 
 order, so sudden and sovereign is its effect. Nothing better makes 
 known our French nationality, in its finer aspects, in that gift of 
 heroic impulse, of prompt and imprudent generosity, in that sym- 
 pathetic power which communicates one electric spark to minds 
 the most divided. Perhaps, also, if we had the courage to criticise, 
 we should discern some of its imperfections in that memorable 
 night, for so ardent an extemporisation of reform had indeed its 
 
 peril; not thus is society renewed; a beautiful summer storm 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
NIGHT OF THE 4TH OF AUGUST. 45 ' 
 
 does not suffice for it. What an hour has destroyed an hour may 
 restore; a slow elaboration is more lasting, for it takes into consi- 
 deration the legitimate interests which are rendered more long- 
 lived by being roughly handled. There was, in our opinion, more 
 than one grievous imprudence in this striking down of abuses. 
 But admiration covers all criticisms. The night of the 4th of 
 August reveals all that there was of human faith in this incredulous 
 age; it does not diminish the regret we feel to see human faith 
 separated from religious faith, but it makes us just towards a 
 generation whose descendants appear very unworthy, when we 
 see them grown sleepy in prosperity, and ask ourselves what they 
 have risked and sacrificed for liberty ! 
 
 The entire clergy, as well the great dignitaries as the parish 
 priests of limited incomes, followed the general impulse. The 
 nobility had just renounced their feudal privileges. De la Fare, 
 bishop of Nancy, rose and expressed himself in these terms: — 
 
 " Accustomed to see near at hand the misery and the grief of 
 the people, the members of the clergy form no more ardent wishes 
 than those of beholding them cease. The redemption of the 
 feudal rights was reserved to the nation which wishes to establish 
 liberty. The honourable members who have already spoken, have 
 demanded the redemption only for the proprietors; I come to 
 express, in the name of the members of the clergy, a wish which 
 honours at once justice, religion, and humanity. I demand that 
 if the redemption is granted, it do not turn to the profit of the 
 ecclesiastical lord, but that there should be investments, made- of 
 it useful for the benefices themselves, in order that their adminis- 
 trators may spread abundant alms over indigence." 
 
 There was there the germ of a fertile idea which might have 
 facilitated the transition between the ancient state of things and 
 the new. The bishop of Chartres demands, in energetic terms, 
 the abolition of the right o^^ljie^^^as^/^ De^oisgelin, archbishop 
 
46 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 of Aix, insists on the necessity of prohibiting every feudal con- 
 vention and of suppressing the duty on salt. Two parish priests 
 claim the execution of the canonical laws touching the plurality of 
 benefices ; Gregoire proposes the abrogation of the annates, a re- 
 venue received by the Court of Rome on vacant benefices. In 
 fine, we see one of the representatives of the under clergy so 
 miserably paid, offer what he himself called the widow's mite. 
 Thibault, parish priest of Souppe, demanded that it should be 
 pennitted him to sacrifice his perquisites; other parish priests pro- 
 posed to renounce their benefices. This noble sitting ended by 
 the proposition of the archbishop of Paris to chant a Te Deum in 
 the royal chapel. It was fitting that the name of God should be 
 pronounced at the end of such a sitting, for all that is great and 
 noble comes from Him. His breath had passed over this 
 assembly, of which the majority were very far from being believing. 
 The clergy did not consider the gravity of the generous act 
 which they had just accomplished. This gravity arose not from 
 the importance of the sacrifices to which they had consented, but 
 from the fact that the privileges of the Church had been sub- 
 mitted to the deliberations of the National Assembly by the 
 clergy themselves. The question of the ecclesiastical properties 
 was closely bound up with those which had been so rapidly 
 decided. It could not be forgotten that the bishop of Uzes, 
 supported by the bishops of Nimes and Montpellier, had declared 
 a willingness to refer to the wisdom of the Assembly about the 
 property of the clergy, and to adopt what it should decree on this 
 point. This word had not fallen to the ground ; it opened up 
 glimpses of reforms much bolder than those which had been 
 realised, and of which certainly the honourable, bishops were not 
 thinking when they pronounced these words in an hour of unre- 
 flecting enthusiasm. Already on the morrow of the famous night, 
 one of the gravest queg^jUfed^i^SferJfelfeof ecclesiastical tithes. 
 
NUMEROUS CLERICAL RENUNCIATIONS. 47 
 
 They had been comprised in the aboHtion which had smitten all 
 the tithes of the kingdom on the 4th of August, but it was a 
 question whether they should be purely and simply abolished, or 
 redeemed. In the sitting of the 6th of August, some ecclesiastics 
 had timidly protested against individual renunciations made, accord- 
 ing to them, with imprudent precipitation, but they had drawn 
 down upon themselves this reply from Buzot : — 
 
 " I maintain," he said, amid the murmurs of the riglit, covered 
 by numerous applauses, " I maintain that the ecclesiastical pro- 
 perties belong to the nation. I rely on the official instructions of 
 the ecclesiastics who ask of the nation augmentations of the 
 allowances made by the tithe owners ; then they acknowledged 
 the incontestable rights of the nation over the property of the 
 Church. They would not have proposed to those who had no 
 right to share property which did not belong to them.'' 
 
 It might have been replied to Buzot, that he must first prove 
 that the official instructions to which he made allusion, claimed 
 the vote by head and not the vote by order ; for, in the latter 
 case, they would have limited themselves to ask of the Church 
 itself to regulate the employment of its properties ; which would 
 not have been in anything a derogation from its ancient con- 
 stitution. Buzot would have done better ,to rely on the actual 
 deliberation of the Assembly, which proved by that alone its right 
 to debate these grave interests. It might always be foreseen that 
 the sacrifices offered by the clergy were a small thing, compared 
 with those which would be imposed on them. Buzot flung these 
 insolent words at them ; — " The clergy have nothing better to do 
 than to save at least appearances, and to appear to make of them- 
 selves all the sacrifices which imperious circumstances will force 
 them to make." Some days later, on the occasion of a loan for 
 which they sought territorial securities, a deputy proposed to. 
 charge the ecclesiastical V^oPSf^Mef^l^lir^^W^ ^^^ °^ i>5°°,°oa 
 
48 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 livres for the interests, and 500,000 livres for the redemption of the 
 mortgage, and to levy previously for the benefit of the State, a 
 right of annate, on each vacancy. " Come, ministers of the 
 altars," said he pathetically, "come to the help of the country, which 
 gives to you its property." Immediately the archbishop of Aix, the 
 bishops of Langres, of Nimes and of Autun rose to declare that the 
 clergy were ready to fulfil this great duty.* We understand their 
 attitude, for this proposition left the property of the clergy at the 
 disposal of the Church, and preserved the principle to which she 
 essentially held. In reality, the question of the redemption of 
 the tithes was identical with that of the ecclesiastical pro- 
 perties themselves. This clearly appeared from the proposi- 
 tion made by the Deputy Arnault on the loth of August : — "All 
 tithes shall be suppressed, dating from the ist of January. The 
 Assembly shall provide without delay pensions for the eccle- 
 siastics." The bishop of Langres plainly stated the question : — 
 "Are the ecclesiastics, or the nation, proprietors? To whom 
 have the tithes been given ? Is it to the nation ? No, without 
 doubt, they have been given neither to the nation nor by it." 
 The violent murmurs which interrupted the orator showed him 
 that he had touched a delicate point with all parties. It was, 
 that apropos of the tithes, he had sought to preserve the very prin- 
 ciple of the ecclesiastical properties, and nothing more offended 
 the deliberate and passionate opinion of the majority. Mirabeau 
 did not less widen the debate by these words : — 
 
 " The tithe is not a property ; property belongs only to him 
 who can alienate the stock, and never have the clergy been able 
 to do this. More than this ; the tithe is not even a possession, 
 it is a contribution appointed to that part of the public service 
 which concerns the ministers of the altars ! It is the subsidy 
 
 * "Momtqgj^;t/f^(/tfei^A05Bfei?Mugust, 17S9. 
 
NUMEROUS CLERICAL RENUNCIATIONS. 49 
 
 with which the nation pays the salaries of the officers of morality 
 and instruction. At this word salary, I hear many murmurs, and 
 one would say that it offends the dignity of the priesthood ; but, 
 gentlemen, it is time in this Revolution which developes so many 
 5ust and generous sentiments, to abjure the prejudices of proud 
 ignorance, which make us disdain the words salary and salaried. 
 I know only three ways of existing in society : it is necessary to 
 be z. beggar, a robber, or a stipendiary (salarii).'' 
 
 This bold paradox had the appearance of liberalism, and yet, 
 as we shall be convinced, it was contrary to true liberty. I do 
 not see what it gains by increasing immoderately the number of 
 the functionaries, and by putting under the hand of the State, 
 the soul and the conscience of the citizens. The sequel of 
 Mirabeau's discourse proves that such was indeed his thought : — 
 
 " It is just and fitting that they (the officers of morality and 
 instruction) should be endowed in a manner conformable to the 
 dignity of their ministry and to the importance of their functions, 
 but it is not necessary that they should be able to claim a per- 
 nicious mode of contribution as a property." 
 
 That which is of serious moment in these words, is not the 
 proposition to abolish tithe, but this idea of a functionary clergy, 
 officers of morality and of instruction. The abbe Sieyes 
 answered Mirabeau the same evening. His discourse is a 
 masterpiece of logic. He demands not the preservation of the 
 tithe, but simply its reinvestment — that is to say, what they had 
 wished on the night of the 4th of August To discuss the origin 
 of the ecclesiastical property appeared to him dangerous, for 
 what property could resist a subtle metaphysics ? When do we 
 find original titles entirely clear and evident ? Besides the tithe 
 is a fine imposed on the land, not by the nation, like the taxes, 
 which we are always free to preserve or to abolish, but by the 
 proprietor himself, wl^^fef^ jj^^^^o give his property on 
 
so THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 such conditions as he pleased. Consequently, it ought not to be 
 suppressed to the advantage of the present proprietors, to whom 
 the tithes to be collected on the lands acquired by them, have 
 been taken into consideration in the sale price which they have 
 paid. Lands have always been purchased minus the tithe by 
 which they are burdened. Why make a present of seventy 
 millions of rent to the French proprietors, when the sums 
 arising out of this retlbmption can furnish to the State infinitely 
 precious resources, without any fail to the primitive object of the 
 tithes, which is the relief of the poor, and the maintenance of 
 worship ? Let them not invoke the interest of the people, 
 for this superb present would be made to the rich, to the land- 
 owner. " Do not cause it to be said to France, to Europe, that 
 the good even which we do, we do it badly. I ask you, not if it 
 is fitting, or useful to you, to possess yourselves of the tithe, but 
 if it is an injustice. They wish to be free, they do not know how 
 to be just." The reflections presented by Sieyes deserved the 
 most serious attention. Without pretending to conform exactly 
 to his views, we believe that it was in this way that it was 
 necessary to seek to reconcile the ancient rights with the new 
 interests. They were not running the risk of exasperating the 
 clerical resistance, and they were attaching the Church of France 
 to liberty, by yielding it largely to her. This will come out with 
 more clearness from the stormy discussions on the ecclesiastical 
 properties. 
 
 The discourse of Sieyes could not lead back the majority of 
 the Assembly. They opposed to him the exceptional nature of 
 the corporations placed under the good pleasure of society, which, 
 giving them a factitious life, can always withdraw it; they 
 opposed to him, above all, the strong will to make an end of it. 
 The clergy felt that this position was lost, that it was useless to 
 defend it, and that it ^J6!f%e*tfeli' tScfagj/^ck upon the office itself, 
 
DECLARATION OF RIGHTS. * 5 1 
 
 and to shut themselves up in it. They made their renunciation 
 by the mouth of the venerable archbishop of Paris, M. de 
 Juigne, and they made it in terms full of dignity. "We remit," 
 said he, " all these ecclesiastical tithes into the hands of a just 
 and generous nation. Let the Gospel be announced, let Divine 
 worship be celebrated with decency and dignity, let the poor of 
 the people be relieved — behold the end of our ministry and of our 
 wishes ! We confide ourselves to the National Assembly." To 
 imagine that after that it would be possible to preserve in any 
 degree whatsoever the ecclesiastical property, was to indulge the 
 vainest illusion ; the cause was lost from the first battle. 
 
 We shall conclude what relates to the preliminary labours of 
 the Constituent by a rapid analysis of the discussion upon 
 religious liberty on the occasion of the project of the Declaration 
 of the Rights of Man. The National Assembly would not have 
 been an Assembly truly French, and it would have denied the 
 instinct and the genius of its race, if it had not commenced its 
 work by philosophical generalities. One might have thought 
 that before writing the preface, it would be better to make the 
 book, and that it was of much more importance to frame good 
 laws and to give true guarantees for liberty, than to proclaim 
 abstract rights, which will never prevent an arbitrary act. There 
 is always cause to fear that these beautiful tents serve to cover 
 merchandise of every kind, and sometimes the saddest contraband 
 of despotism. A declaration of rights has also the inconvenience 
 of making too much abstraction of the past, of taking no account 
 of facts. They would have done well to have inhaled the spirit 
 of the following words of Mirabeau :— " Liberty never was the 
 fruit of a doctrine worked out in philosophical deductions, but of 
 every-day experience.'' But it was not possible that the phi- 
 losophy which had made the Revolution should keep in the back- 
 ground on the day of its OisWz^ib0ilh[osc®&\y, when they had 
 
 E 2- 
 
52 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 once made up their mind to put general principles at the head of 
 the constitution, it was necessar}' to be complete, and to re- 
 member, as Grigoire reminded, " that man has not been thrown 
 at hazard on the corner of the earth which he occupies ; that if he 
 has rights, it is necessary to speak of Him from whom he holds 
 them ; if he has duties it is necessary to remember Him who 
 prescribes them." Without the declaration of duties, the declara- 
 tion of rights is incomplete, and even dangerous ; it passes by in 
 silence the right of God, and it is thus that men wish to be free 
 without knowing how to be just. 
 
 We are astonished, at the first glance, with the ambiguous 
 language of the Declaration of Rights on religious liberty. This 
 astonishment ceases when we remember, on the one hand, the 
 opinions declared by the Church of France in this respect, and 
 the scandal which the idea of the equality of worships would have 
 produced in its bosom, and, on the other hand, the influence of 
 the school of Rousseau on the greater part of the innovators. The 
 articles proposed, which were articles i6, 17, 18, of the Declara- 
 tion, were thus worded: "The law not being able to reach secret 
 offences, it belongs to religion and morality to supply the defici- 
 ency. It is then essential, for the good order even of society, 
 that both should be respected. The maintenance of religion 
 requires a pubhc worship. Respect for public worship is then 
 indispensable. Every citizen who does not disturb the estab- 
 lished worship ought not to be molested." 
 
 This wording left a national religion, with most of its incon- 
 veniences, to exist, and this religion, in France, was evidently 
 Catholicism. There was no other pubUc worship acknowledged! 
 than its own, and the vague assurance that every citizen who 
 would not disturb it, should not be molested, in no wise secured 
 the legal existence of the religious minorities. These articles 
 applied to CatholicisnP^^f^feipgg^Rhe Social Contract, and 
 
FIRST DEBATE ON LIBERTY OF WORSHIPS. 53 
 
 the general term — religion — only caused the monopoly to be con- 
 secrated. Thus, the party of the high clergy were very well satis- 
 fied j it was all that they could, for the moment, obtain. They 
 ably availed themselves of the vague style of the Declaration. 
 " Religion is the basis of empires," said the bishop of Clermont. 
 He quoted the fine saying of Plutarch, "that we might sooner 
 raise a city in the air, than found a republic which should not have 
 for principle the worship of the gods." A lay deputy, M. de la 
 Borde, very weU comprehending what the bishop meant by this 
 admirable maxim, protested with energy against all pretension of 
 commanding religious opinions. " That would be," he exclaimed, 
 "to carry into the heart of the citizens the most cruel despotism." 
 He appealed to the sad effects of intolerance in Europe. 
 
 "I confess," said he, "that I am afflicted to see Christians 
 invoke the civil authority for a religion which ought to maintain 
 itself only by the purity of its doctrine. Assuredly, these powers 
 of the earth have nothing in common with religion. Liberty of 
 religion is a good which belongs to all citizens. Let us respect 
 the worship of others in order that they may respect ours. Our 
 worship ought to carry no hindrance to the exercise of religions." 
 
 That was to demand religious liberty with all its consequences. 
 The Assembly was not prepared to take so decisive a step. They 
 would not have struck out, for a fundamental reason, the articles 
 of the Declaration of Rights which restrained the liberty of worships. 
 It was necessary to lead them to it by a formal reason. Mirabeau 
 understood that, and, by an act of skilful tactics, he arrived at his 
 ends, not without having first magnificently proclaimed the right 
 of conscience : — 
 
 "I do not come to preach toleration. The most unlimited 
 liberty of religion is, in my eyes, so sacred a right, that the word 
 toleration, which tries to express it, appears to me, in some man- 
 ner, itself tyrannical, since the existence of the authority, which 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
54 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 has the power to tolerate, infringes on liberty of thought by the 
 fact that it does tolerate, and that thus it might have the power 
 not to tolerate." 
 
 Passing rapidly from the question of basis, to the question of 
 form, it was easy for him to establish that the proposed articles 
 should lay down duties and not rights. To profess a religion, to 
 celebrate a worship, is to fulfil a duty; that does not spring then 
 from the Declaration of Rights; it is necessary to set aside articles 
 1 6 and 17, and to remit the discussion of them to the elaboration 
 of the constitution, contenting themselves with laying down the 
 general right of the free exercise of worship for all citizens. 
 
 " I beseech," said Mirabeau, in concluding, " those who antici- 
 pate, by their fears, the disorders which will ravage the kingdom, 
 if liberty of worship is introduced, to reflect that toleration, to 
 avail myself of the consecrated word, has not produced among 
 our neighbours, poisoned fruits, and that the Protestants, inevitably 
 condemned in the other world, as every one knows, have tolerably 
 arranged their affairs in this, doubtless by a compensation due to 
 the goodness of the Supreme Being." 
 
 These words called forth sharp protestations in the ranks of the 
 
 right. Let us remark that Camus, who played so considerable a 
 
 part in the elaboration of the civil constitution of the clergy, was 
 
 in the number of the opponents. Viscount Mirabeau defended, 
 
 in the most facetious manner, the faith of his fathers, remarking 
 
 that, with hberty of worships, each age and each temperament 
 
 would have its religion; the young people will be Turks, the 
 
 usurers Jews, and the women of the religion of Brahma. 
 
 The disputed articles were withdrawn from the Declaration 
 
 of Rights, after a discourse of Talleyrand's, who skilfully 
 
 summed- up the argumentation of Mirabeau. It was a first 
 
 success for the partisans of religious liberty. The Assembly had 
 
 before it only the i8th article, thus couched : " Every citizen who 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
MOTION OF M. DE CASTELLANE. 55 
 
 does not disturb the established worship, ought not to be 
 molested." They could not be satisfied with it. M. de Castellane 
 had proposed the following amendment; "No man ought to be 
 molested for his religious opinions, nor disturbed in the exercise of 
 his worship." Religious liberty could not, be better stated. A 
 smart discussion took place, not on the first part of the amend- 
 ment, which no one would have ventured to dispute, and which, 
 besides, secured no real right, but, on the second part, the main- 
 taining of which was the very consecration of liberty of worships. 
 The author of the motion defended it with perfect clearness. He 
 appealed to natural law, which authorises liberty of opinions, and 
 to the Gospel, which forbids us to do to others that which we 
 should not wish them to do to us. He observed that it is 
 intolerance and not toleration which excises religious wars, and he 
 nobly concluded with these words: "To hinder a man from 
 offering the tribute of his gratitude to the Divinity, is to tyrannise 
 over consciences." Mirabeau supported him by one of his most 
 elevated speeghes, which most clearly bear the stamp of a superior 
 reason. To those, who pretend that worship is an object of 
 external police, and that it belongs to society to regulate it, he 
 opposed the following dilemma: "Are they Catholics — they con- 
 fess by that that religion is a purely civil thing; it ceases to be of 
 Divine institution, and they thus break with Catholicism; are they 
 statesmen — I tell them that it is not true that worship is a thing 
 of police, although Nero and Domitian may have said it to for- 
 bid that of the Christians." Worship, consisting in an act of 
 adoration, it is absurd to say that the inspector of police has the 
 right of directing the oremus (let us pray) and the litanies. The 
 police, in order to prevent anyone from disturbing public order 
 and tranquilUty, watches in the streets, in the squares, and around 
 the houses, but they do not meddle with regulating what is done 
 inside. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
$6 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 "I find it absurd, then," cries the great orator, in words which 
 we should wish to engrave in every mind, " that, to prevent the 
 disorder which might arise from your actions, it is necessary to 
 forbid your actions ; assuredly, that is very expeditious ; but it is 
 permitted me to doubt that any one has this right. To watch that 
 no worship, not even your own, disturbs pubhc order — that is your 
 duty ; but you ought not to go further. They speak to you in- 
 cessantly of a dominant religion ! Dominant ! gentlemeii ? I do 
 not understand this word, and I have need that it be defined to 
 me. Is it an oppressing worship that is meant? Is it the worship 
 of the prince? But the prince has not the right to dominate over 
 consciences. Is it the worship of the greater number? But 
 worship is an opinion. Now, opinions are not formed by the 
 result of votes. Your thought is your own — it is independent 
 Nothing ought to dominate over justice; nothing is dominant 
 except individual right." 
 
 Would that, some months later, Mirabeau, himself, had remem- 
 bered these principles, whose reaKsation we must still await in the 
 bosom of a society which believes in scarcely anything except the 
 right of the State and of majorities in all things. The motion of 
 M. de Castellane raised one of the most violent storms which had 
 broken out in the bosom of the Assembly; the right passionately 
 set themselves to cause the second part of it to be suppressed. 
 M. de Castellane had the weakness, himself, to abandon it. One 
 of the most affecting incidents of this debate was the apparition, 
 at the tribune, of Rabaud^Saint-Etienne. When he pronounced 
 these words — " f am the representative of a great people" we see, 
 rising in his person, that innumerable company of the persecuted ; 
 all those glorious outlaws whom the system of religious unity had 
 sown in all the countries of the world; those galley-slaves, more 
 glorious still, who had preserved liberty of souls under a defaming 
 costume; those heroic nien and women, sabred by the dragoons of 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
AMBIGUOUS VOTE. 57 
 
 the great king, or subjected to all punishments ; and, in short, this 
 Church of the desert, which had celebrated its worship in fright- 
 , ful solitudes. The presence alone' of Rabaud-Saint-Etienne at 
 the tribune of the National Assembly, whilst proving with &laithe 
 progress already accomplished, brought to mind, with an eloquence 
 which no speech could equal, what crimes and misfortunes are 
 caused by State religions. It seems that at sight of him they 
 should have felt it their duty to vote with acclamation the article 
 of M. de Castellane. " He who attacks the liberty of others," 
 said Rabaud-Saint-Etienne, "deserves to live in slavery. A worship 
 is a dogma ; a dogma holds to opinion, opinion to liberty. In- 
 structed by the long and bloody experience of the past, it is time, 
 at length, to break down the barriers which separate man from 
 man, Frenchman from Frenchman.'' Rabaud did himself honour 
 by pleading not only for his co-religionists, whose sufferings and 
 ignominies he depicted in a lively manner, but even for the Jews, 
 whom he eloquently named, "that people, always proscribed, 
 wandering, vagabonds over the globe." To those who appealed 
 to the example of the neighbouring people against religious liberty, 
 Rabaud answered thus : " French nation — you are made not in 
 order to foUow example but to give it" "My country is free,'' 
 said he, in concluding, " let it show itself worthy by causing the 
 same rights to be shared by all its children." The National 
 Assembly stopped at a half measure, by voting the following 
 article, on the proposition of the bishop of Lydda: "No one 
 ought to be molested for his opinions, even religious, provided 
 that their manifestation does not disturb the public order estab- 
 lished by law.'' It was sufficiently ambiguous not to offend, and 
 not quite to satisfy any opinion. The majority was very much 
 more quickly formed when the question was of laying hands on 
 the property of the Church, than of consecrating the religious 
 
 liberty of all citizens. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
58 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 Mirabeau expressed his displeasure with the resolution of the 
 Constituent in a vehement article in the "Courrier de Provence."* 
 
 " We cannot," we read in that article, " dissemble our grief 
 that the National Assembly, instead of stifling the germ of in- 
 tolerance, has placed it, as in reserve, in a declaration of the rights 
 of man. The apostles of religious liberty maintain that it is 
 superior to all laws, and can never receive any limit from the civil 
 power. Restrictive laws, in the matter of religion, are absurd in 
 themselves, for they enjoin men, who have such differerit measures 
 of intelligence and of reason, to see evidence in the same dogmas 
 and truth in the same doctrines. These laws are immoral, since 
 they change nothing within, and make only vile 'men who traffic 
 with their creed. These laws are impious; what impiety is there 
 more flagrant than that of interposing between man and the 
 Divinity in order to say to man : "We forbid thee from serving 
 God in this manner ;" and in order to say to God : " We forbid 
 you from receiving the homage which is offered to you under a 
 form which is not ours." 
 
 Mirabeau next grinds to powder the sophisms constantly 
 opposed to liberty of worships. He chastises, as it deserves, thaT 
 hypocritical concession of the interior liberty of the conscience, 
 which grants only what no tyranny has been able to invade. " If 
 the religion of your brethren enjoins upon them pubhc worship, 
 by forbidding them to exercise it, you wound their conscience.'' 
 To those who pretend that religious liberty will favour the preach- 
 ing of immoral dogmas, he answers that licentious doctrines can 
 be preached only in secret, and that where several religions watch 
 over each other, all are purified. We cannot fear corruption 
 ' except in the bosom of a dominant religion, which has nothing to 
 dread. In short, if we are threatened with rehgious indifference, 
 
 * " Courrier de Provence," No. 31. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
SPIRIT OF THE MAJORITY OF THE ASSEMBLY. 59 
 
 under the regime of liberty, Mirabeau disperses this chimerical 
 peril. " People are indifferent about the religion which they have 
 received from their nurse and frorn their masters without examina- 
 tion and without proofs. A belief, based on authority, is only 
 superficial, and has no roots.'' 
 
 We have finished all that concerns the ecclesiastical and reli- 
 gious question in the first period of the Constituent. Surely, the 
 majority of this great assembly was animated with a true love of 
 liberty. It is not possible better to characterise its general spirit, 
 that which, above all, animated obscure members, aloof from 
 all coteries, and strangers to ambition, than has been done in a 
 simple and charming page by a man, to whose testimony we shall 
 often have to appeal in the course of this work — Durand Maillane, 
 the conscientious historian of the ecclesiastical committee of the 
 -Constituent. This committee had been named the 20th of August, 
 1789, in order to occupy itself with the part of the constitution 
 which touched the interests of the Church of France. 
 
 " Who does not remember," says the honest writer, " those first 
 sittings at Versailles, when it was necessary to carry the steel to the 
 '^juick; the good and free provincial deputies, without art as with- 
 out eloquence, chimed together in all their opinions. They rose 
 and gave each other the hand, without speaking to each other, 
 without knowing one another, all impelled by the same sentiments, 
 which the same tyranny, the same excesses, had excited in all 
 parts of France.. We, of Provence, by the side of those from, 
 Frenche Comte — who were most of them of high stature — we 
 directed ourselves to the support of good motions, by raising the 
 voice. It was a curious thing, which then excited only' laughter 
 or pity. "See, see," said they, "these big children — what do they 
 want? They know well what they want — these great men — and 
 they will obtain it, or they will perish ; they want the most reason- 
 able, the most precious thing in the world — their liberty, the ces-- 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
6o THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 sation of abuses, the total regeneration of the French nation. We 
 knew that our cause was that of the people, that its justice was 
 felt by all, that it was singularly supported in the capital. Thus 
 working at our constitution, as the Hebrews wrought at their 
 second temple, the trowel in one hand and the sword in the other, 
 we all marched in tune, carrying away everything under our steps, 
 mowing down all abuses as with a scythe, without being able 
 either to measure or to stop our march. Eternal thanks be 
 rendered for it to the generous people of Paris. Behold us, at 
 length, arrived with their help and by means which allowed neither 
 sparing nor capitulation with any sort of abuse, behold us arrived 
 at our liberty — which they will not make us lose except with 
 life."* 
 
 Would that this love of liberty had been as enlightened as it 
 was ardent and sincere in the majority of the assembly, above all, 
 for the grave questions which were submitted to the ecclesiastical 
 committee ! The results obtained were, without doubt, of great 
 importance. The Church was no longer an order in the State, 
 and toleration had been inscribed on the pediment of the consti- 
 tution of the country; but neither the independence of the religious 
 society, nor liberty of conscience had been truly included and 
 secured. These first errors were to react in the most grievous 
 manner on the deliberations which were to open in the month of 
 November of the year following on the organisation of the Church. 
 
 * " Histoire apologetique du Comite Ecclesiastique de T Assemblee 
 Nationale," parDurand Maillane, 1791, pp. 210-212. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
chapter it 
 
 Discussion, on the Property of the Clergy. — Attitude of the different 
 Parties. — Speeches of Mirabeau, of Maury, and of Malouet. — 
 Suppression of the Religious Orders,— The payment of Worship. 
 
 The first reforms effected by the Constituent were not only- 
 serious in themselves, but also by what they caused to be foreseen ; 
 for it was not possible to be satisfied with them; they called for 
 their complement, so much the more that the legislators of 1789, 
 conformably to the genius of the French race, wished to recon- 
 stitute society logically and rapidly by taking their point of 
 departure not in facts but in ideas. The first method, which is 
 the English method, would have required considerations for the 
 past ; the second urges to chimerical innovations, because every- 
 thing seems indefinitely possible at the point of view of abstract 
 principles. The re-organisation of the Church of France was far 
 from being achieved in the month of September, 1789; it seemed 
 scarcely commenced ; meanwhile this Church had already lost its 
 most essential privileges, and, first of all, that of depending only 
 on itself to determine its debt towards the country. It had fallen 
 under the regime of the common right, and it could no longer put 
 its privileges and property under the shade of the sanctuary by 
 confounding them with the holy things whose examination is for- 
 bidden to the profane. The discussion on the tithes was a grave, 
 precedent. Its over-hasty renunciation of so great an advantage 
 had given the measure of its fright, but this very renunciation 
 brought the question ©/^,#^ /^»}j6?i§%^l property before the 
 
62 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 National Assembly. There would have been sufficient to call it 
 forth, in the general reforms effected in the constitution of society; 
 the Church was the "greatest proprietary of fiefs in the kingdom, 
 it therefore fell under the blow of all the new laws which abrogated 
 the feudal system. It had, at any cost, to harmonise its organi- 
 sation with the new social state, unless it remained in it as a great 
 wreck, a colossal and incommodious ruin of the ancient regime. 
 Let us not forget, either, the increasing necessities of the financial 
 distress — this goad of the urgent needs of a nation which in its march 
 towards its great destinies, met with the most vulgar of obstacles, 
 famine, and which the anxiety about daily bread arrested in its first 
 start. The gulf of bankruptcy was opened, at the voice of Mirabeau, 
 under the appalled look of France; each hour brought it nearer to 
 it, and to fill it up the Revolution had under its hand immense 
 properties whose titles were delivered to discussion. The instinct 
 of preservation as well as the spirit of innovation, drives the Con- 
 stituent to occupy itself with the property of the Church ; but the 
 interest or the peril of the Revolution is so pressing that there is 
 room to fear lest a great measure from which the consecration of 
 religious liberty might go forth, should be taken hastily, and lest, 
 in suppressing the acquired right at the same time as the abuse to 
 be lamented, it should rouse ardent resistances which, in their 
 turn, will transport themselves even to violence and injustice. 
 On one side there will be a wish to seize all, on the other to pre- 
 serve all ; conciliation will become impossible ; the true solution 
 will, perhaps, be delayed for a century, and we shall have in the 
 upshot neither the Free Church nor the Free State. 
 
 Let us rise above all the prejudices of parties in relating the 
 debates and the resolutions of the Constituent on ecclesiastical 
 property. Let us remember that under the question of property 
 there was enlisted a vital question of liberty. 
 
 Let us, first of all, su®fMgs^/rjgB?(li-(Jto®onstitution of the eccle- 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL PROPERTY BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 63 
 
 siastical property in the ancient French monarchy. It is the only 
 means of well understanding the discussion respecting it in the 
 Constituent. The Primitive Church, in the heroic age of perse- 
 cutions, lived on the offerings of Christians, poorly and gloriously, 
 being content with strict necessaries, and seeking abundance only 
 for the holy prodigality of its alms. There was nothing fixed and 
 constrained in the offerings of the faithful; they rose to consi- 
 derable suras when Christianity was established in the large towns, 
 at Alexandria, at Carthage, and, above all, at Rome. Under 
 Constantine it became an official and authorised religion; the 
 Church obtained not only the right of possessing, but it was also 
 largely enriched by imperial munificence. Inheritances began to 
 flow to it; the sermons of St. Augustin describe with indignation 
 pious inveiglings. It is known of what worth to the Church, 
 about the year looo, was the universal fear of the near end of the 
 world; it appeared convenient to escape the judgment of God by 
 lavishing on His anointed, property on which they could no longer 
 reckon, and by giving large portions of a land which the fire of the 
 last judgment was about to devour. The development of the mo- 
 nastic life opened for the Church new and inexhaustible sources of 
 riches, so that, despite inevitable vicissitudes, it had ended by being 
 the greatest proprietary in all Catholic States, and specially in 
 France. We have already told to what an enormous sum its 
 revenue amounted, hardly diminished by the gifts which it granted 
 to royalty in order to preserve immunity from taxation. But the 
 more it had become a considerable body in the State, the more it 
 was subordinated to the civil power in the acquisition or the 
 administration of its properties. It was entangled in a close net- 
 work of ordinances which hindered it from disposing of its pro- 
 perty at pleasure, and even constrained it to restore a portion of 
 it to the royal treasury. We are much less astonished at the bold 
 measures of the Consfj^^^m^ jn |gsgecy o the ecclesiastical pro- 
 
64 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 perries, when we see to what degree these last had been placed 
 under the good pleasure of the representative of the State in 
 ancient France. 
 
 It is necessary to distinguish between tithes and benefices, and 
 in benefices between secular and regular. They had for a long 
 time debated to know whether tithe was of Divine or of human 
 right; the Constituent had decided the question in a summary 
 manner, but already, under the ancient monarchy, the lawyers 
 pretended that if the right of tithe is inherent in the Church, it 
 was incumbent on the civil power to determine its nature, shares, 
 and arrears ;* that was to attribute to it high surveillance over one 
 of the most important properties of the Church. " Tithes," says 
 Fleury, " are established to give temporal subsistence to those 
 from whom we receive spiritual food. They ought, then, to be 
 regularly paid to the pastors.f This rule admitted innumerable 
 exceptions, for the greater part of the large tithes belonged either 
 to the bishops, or to the monasteries, and they were distributed 
 at the pleasure of their proprietors. As for the parish ministers, 
 they had the small tithe, or la portion congrue — a miserable pension 
 in money assigned by the bishop to the parish priest for his support 
 The tenth part of the tithes, called the decime, belonged origmally 
 to the pope, who had granted it to the king. The decime had be- 
 come a kind of permanent tax since the Assembly of Milan in 1580. 
 
 We have no longer to return to the question of tithes decided 
 by a sovereign vote. The benefices remained. Benefice was the 
 name given to an ecclesiastical office, to which was joined a certain 
 
 * See the very curious book entitled, ■" Traite de rautorite des rois 
 touchant I'Administration de I'Eglise." Par M. L. Voyer de Boutigny, 
 Master of Requests, pp. 388— 390. London. 1754. 
 
 t " Institution au droit Ecclesiastique." We borrow from this book 
 the greater part of our information on the ancient organisation of the 
 ecclesiastical property.^.^.^^^^ ^^ Microsom 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL PROPERTY BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 65 
 
 revenue which could not be separated from it. The secular bene- 
 fices were the bishoprics, and dignities of chapters ; the regular 
 comprised the abbey and monastical offices. The State had 
 beUeved itself directly interested in the distribution of these im- 
 mense riches; therefore the ordinances of the kings of France, 
 on presentations, resignations, collations, and the taking possession 
 of benefices, were without number. At first the king himself 
 directly nominated to the most important benefices, such as the 
 ■ bishoprics and the prelacies ; for his presentation to the pope 
 was equivalent to a nomination; all prelates owed to him on 
 entering on their charge, the oath of fidelity. As for the other 
 benefices, they were conferred by the bishop or his chapter 
 by election, but most frequently the collation of a benefice 
 could not be given except on the express designation of the patron 
 founder or of the direct heir of the founders. It is known 
 how lavish French royalty had been of its domain towards the 
 Church ; all these foundations extended so much the royal prero- 
 gative for the distribution of benefices. Besides, the right of 
 regale remitted to the prince the nomination to all benefices 
 during the vacancy of the bishoprics and archbishoprics. Under 
 colour of a joyous accession, he conferred the first prebend which 
 fell vacant after the inauguration of his reign in all cathedral 
 churches. The oath of fidelity authorised hiin to (S)ufer in the 
 same way the first prebend in each newly-filled bishopric. By the 
 indult, he obtained from the pope the right to designate at his 
 pleasure a counsellor of the parliament, to whom the collator of 
 any benefice whatsoever, remitted his right of election.' Iiij fine, 
 thanks to the right of commendam, so largely conceded by the 
 pope, — a right which permitted, under certain clauses, to separate 
 the ecclesiastical function from the possession of the benefice and 
 from the enjoyment of the revenues, — thanks to the facility of 
 levying pensions on tlfi(S5^K?p'eW:3Mcifotha^hurch, — the king found 
 
 F 
 
6u THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 in these properties one of the most abundant resources of his 
 interested liberalities or of his capricious favours. 
 
 But it was especially in the administration of the ecclesiastical 
 property that the power of the State made itself constantly felt. 
 "The Church," says Fleury, "has neither the same Hberty as 
 private people of acquiring real estate, nor the same liberty of 
 alienating it."* The alienation of their property was forbidden 
 to the clergy, not only by the canons of the councils, but also by 
 the ordinances of the kings. When the sale of an inheritance had 
 become necessary for one reason or another, the chapter which 
 was possessor of it had, after having obtained the authorisation of 
 the bishop, to demand letters patent, by which the king permitted 
 the alienation. These letters patent were not registered at the 
 parliament until after that, on the conclusions of the Attorney- 
 general, an information de commodo et incommodo had taken place. 
 A great number of royal ordinances were designed to see to the 
 preservation of the property of the Church, which was thus con- 
 sidered in a special manner under the surveillance of the State. 
 The civil power, which watched with a jealous care lest the 
 ecclesiastical property should be perverted, because it saw in it a 
 great public and national interest, had taken minute precautions 
 against its indefinite increase. It was already a maxim universally 
 acknowledged in France in the seventeenth century, that no re- 
 gular community could establish itself nor erect monasteries in the 
 kingdom, without the express permission of the king.f The edict 
 of the month of August, 1749, concerning the establishment and the 
 acquisitions of the people of mortmain, went so far as to forbid 
 ecclesiastics and communities from making new acquisitions. In 
 order to obtain an exemption it was necessary to obtain letters 
 patent, which were granted only after payment of the amortize- 
 
 * Fleury, '• Institution au droit Ecclcsiastique," I. p. 345. 
 t " Autorite des R^^^/f/ftaai^ Mcrosoft® 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL PROPERTY BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 67 
 
 ment* to the king and indemnity to the lord of the manor. 
 There was paid to the lord of the fief a certain sum for the indem- 
 nifying of the fines for alienation {lots et ventes), which he would 
 have had the right to expect in the future in keeping his property. 
 The amortizement was paid to the king to indemnify him for the 
 inheritance falling into mortmain. Such was, in its general 
 features, the constitution of the ecclesiastical property uader the 
 ancient French monarchy. We shall see, later, that the lawyers 
 had already drawn from the principles of this legislation, suffi- 
 ciently complicated, the boldest consequences, those even at which 
 the French Revolution arrived only when driven by financial dis- 
 tress. When we shall have recounted the debates and the resolu- 
 tions of the National Assembly, we shall acknowledge, proofs in 
 hand, that it has only followed the advice of the counsellors of 
 Louis XIV. 
 
 A month had passed away since the celebrated night of the 
 4th of August The generous resolutions taken in those hours of 
 enthusiasm, and confirmed in the deliberations of the following 
 days, were to open in the future sources of riches and prosperity, 
 by destroying feudality ; but their first effect was to aggravate the 
 financial crisis. Every reform commences by disturbing the 
 social order, and disarranging its equilibrium. The decrees of 
 the Constituent had rather unchained than satisfied the popular 
 passions. War on the country seats {chateaux) had broken out 
 in all parts ; money was concealed, and insufficient harvests 
 added to the public distress. The formidable debt bequeathed by 
 the ancient monarchy increased every day. Neckar was at his 
 wits' end. His cry of alarm, in passing from the mouth of 
 
 " * Amortizement, the act or right of alienating lands or tenements 
 to a corporation, which was considered formerly as transferring them 
 to dead ha?ids, as such alienations were mostly made to religious 
 houses for superstitious /aig(t(E%c/;^ft6faatS(jft® 
 
 F 2 
 
63 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 Mirabeau, had become a thunder-clap which permitted no longer 
 either delay or half-measures. The plan of a voluntary impost 
 was discussed, a sort of gratuitous gift to which all classes should 
 have contributed. Mirabeau had just descended from the tribune 
 when, in the interval between two of his most magnificent extem- 
 porary speeches, an unknown orator arose, and proposed to ask 
 of the Church the sacrifice of its plate, which, according to him, 
 amounted to 140 millions.* Contrary to all expectation, the 
 Archbishop of Paris arises and declares that the clergy are ready 
 to abandon all the plate which is not necessary to the decency of 
 worship. The clergy wished to avoid, at any price, a debate on 
 their properties, and they attempted, by multiplying gratuitous 
 gifts and voluntary renunciations to turn aside the dreaded 
 initiative of the Assembly. The measure was voted on the 29th 
 of September. We do not understand that the clergy, who knew 
 very well what was awaiting them, had not sought at first to 
 elaborate a plan of reform for their financial organisation. Such 
 a plan had become necessary, from the time that they had 
 renounced tithes. It was a great fault on their part not to have 
 shown more boldness in being beforehand with the National 
 Assembly in their legitimate resolutions : a sure means of anti- 
 cipating and preventing imphident and excessive measures. On 
 the contrary, the heads of the clergy in the Assembly are occupied 
 only with preserving their privileges. All their votes are subor- 
 dinated to this desire, which betrayed itself on each occasion. 
 Thus, the first time there was a question of paper money in the 
 National Assembly, the clergy drowned with their murmurs the 
 voice of the orators who wished to deal thoroughly with this 
 grave question, and drew upon themselves this cutting word from 
 Mirabeau :■ — "Do the clergy fear that the establishment of some 
 
 * Si"in^^^^g^t)j),,.^gj,i^ber, 1789. 
 
PROPOSITIONS OF TALLEYRAND AND OF MIRABEAU. 69 
 
 paper money will bear on their property?"* But these vain 
 murmurs had less influence on the Assembly than the cry of 
 distress of a gre^t country, which was perishing whilst having 
 under its hand pledges of riches capable of saving it. Unhappily 
 immediate utility prevailed over strict justice, and expediency 
 over long-sighted policy. 
 
 In the address, drawn up by Mirabeau in the name of the 
 National Assembly, to implore patriotic gifts, we read these 
 words : — " That treasures accumulated by the piety of our fathers 
 for the service of the altars, will not have changed their religious 
 destination by going forth from obscurity for the service of the 
 country. ' Behold the reserves which I have collected in pros- 
 perous times,' says holy religion. ' It was not for myself, it was for 
 you, for the State, that I have raised this honourable tribute on 
 the virtues of your fathers.'" The question was without doubt as 
 yet only about voluntary offerings, but a very grave principle was 
 laid down, which was, that the treasures of the Church would not 
 change destination by passing from its hands to those of the 
 State. It was difficult for the latter to escape the temptation of 
 facilitating this passage. It was the nth of October when, for 
 the first time, the formal proposition of seizing the goods of 
 the clergy was brought before the National Assembly, and 
 by an irony of destiny, it was introduced by one of them- 
 selves, a young bishop, who represented in his person the two 
 privileged classes of the kingdom ; it was from the disdainful 
 irtouthof Talleyrand-Perigord that fell, to the great scandal of his 
 caste, but amid the applauses of all the representatives of new 
 France, words the most bold in their cold precision that the 
 Assembly had yet heard. Talleyrand was the organ of the 
 committee of twelve members which had been nominated on the 
 
 * Sitting of the jsrd of October, 1789. 
 Digitized bylVlicrosoft® 
 
70 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 28th of August to discuss the guarantees of a loan of eighty 
 millions. He commenced his speech by exhibiting the picture of 
 the needs of the State and of the expenses which its political 
 regeneration will impose on it. The resources employed or pro- 
 posed hitherto are insufficient. " There is one immense resource 
 which may consist with respect for properties : it exists in the 
 wealth of the clergy. A dealing with it is inevitable." Setting 
 out from the fact that the clergy are not proprietors like other 
 proprietors, that the nation enjoys a right extended over them as 
 over all corporations, so that it can destroy the aggregations of 
 this order which might appear useless to society, he concluded, 
 that if the nation guarantees the subsistence of the beneficiaries, 
 and draws from the abundant source of the ecclesiastical pro- 
 perties only to relieve the State, the intention of the founders will 
 be fulfilled, and justice will not be violated. The orator then 
 sketches a vast financial plan which was to result in filling up the 
 deficit Two days afterwards, Mirabeau, who did not see himself 
 without jealousy outstripped in a reform so radical, laid down the 
 following proposition : — 
 
 " In a season of fear and terror,'' said he, " it is important to 
 show that the nation has never had such splendid, such abundant 
 resources. I ask, then, that two principles should be decreed : 
 1 St. That the ownership of the property of the clergy belongs to 
 the nation, on condition of its providing for the support of the 
 members of this order; — 2nd. That the disposal of this pro- 
 perty shall be such that no parish priest shall have less than 
 1,200 livres, with lodgment." It was useful that the question 
 should be thus presented in all its grandeur, and that the prin- 
 ciples should be debated for themselves. The discussion lasted to 
 the 2nd of November ; it was as complete as possible, and every 
 opinion was freely expressed. It had besides been already taken 
 
 up by the press. Numerous pamphlets had viewed the question 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
PROPOSITIONS OF TALLEYRAND AND OF MIRABEAU. 7 1 
 
 in all its aspects, without speaking of the famous article of 
 Turgot in the " Encyclopedic" on "Foundations." Sieyes had pub- 
 lished some cutting pages under this title : "Summary Observations 
 on the Ecclesiastical Properties." He replied to those who saw in 
 the clergy only a moral body : " Is the nation then anything else ? 
 You will in vain cause it to be declared to the nation that the 
 property called ecclesiastic belongs to the nation. I do not 
 know what that is except to declare a fact which is not true. 
 Then, even if seizing the favourable moment, you caused it to be 
 declared that the property of Languedoc belongs to Guienne, I 
 do not conceive how a single declaration could change the 
 nature of the rights." The ecclesiastical foundations relieved the 
 people of an enormous tax for the support of the altars. " By 
 what strange reversal of ideas," said Sieyes again, " would the 
 ecclesiastics appear to you supportable, if you have them at your 
 charge, and you cannot suffer them because they are at the 
 charge of no one?" The advocate-general Servan, in replying 
 to Sieyes, in a very remarkable pamphlet, went so far as to say 
 that the nation, which has right of life and death over each 
 citizen, has the same right over bodies politic. What kind of 
 property is to be acknowledged to a body which is not even 
 proprietor of its own existence ? The soil of a nation belongs to 
 the people who dwell on it. But a country cannot do without the pub- 
 lic service : individuals or bodies charged with this service are then 
 servants of the nation. The wages are rigorous, the mode of pay- 
 ment is not* Such theories might lead very far, and it would not 
 have been difficult logically to deduce from them a very advanced 
 socialism. The debate on the ecclesiastical property was then al- 
 ready strongly prevailing outside the Assembly when it was brought 
 before it Tet us limit ourselves to mark its principal phases. 
 
 * " Histoire de la Revolution Fran5aise," by Louis Blanc, pp. 321, 322. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
72 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 They commenced by philosophical generalities on the right of 
 property ; this was, perhaps, the most serious part of the dis- 
 cussion, for subtle analyses, in such matters are in great danger of 
 putting everything in question, and there is no primordial right of 
 human society which cannot be dissolved in this crucible. So 
 long as they rested on what may be called the high philosophy of 
 property in general, in the examination of its constituent elements 
 they fought in the clouds, but it is from the bosom of these very 
 clouds that there may issue at any moment the most terrible 
 social question. The party of Babeuf might have amply profited 
 by these debates, if it had already existed. Maury also was right in 
 saying, in a speech otherwise excessive in basis and in form : — " I 
 am going to prove to you that with your principles you are con- 
 ducting us to the agrarian law ; in fact, every time that you ascend 
 to the origin of properties, the nation will ascend with you. It will 
 place itself at the epoch when it issued from the forests of Germany, 
 and will demand a new division." * No orator held on long to 
 these general considerations. The debate quickly turned on the 
 ecclesiastical property itself and on the value of its special titles. 
 
 Three groups of opinions were successively formed, and stoutly 
 held the field even to the end. We have at the outset, as always, 
 two extreme opinions, that which does not wish to concede 
 anything unless it be some reforms, the opportunity and extent 
 of which shall be decided by the privileged themselves, and that 
 which acknowledges only the right of the State. The first opinion 
 has for its natural organ the high dignitaries of the clergy, but 
 they were in the error so often renewed since then of identifying 
 the cause of religion with that of their properties, and of making 
 it depend on their real estate. "The sale of our property," 
 exclaimed the bishop of Clermont, "would remedy nothing. 
 
 * Sitting of the 13th of October. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
OPINION OF THE RIGHT. 73 
 
 Soon there would be no more ministers, no more religion." The 
 bishop of Nimes, that of Uzes and the archbishop of Aix, main- 
 tained the same thesis ; the last with extended developments, pre- 
 sented in a tone of tearful sensibility ; he concluded, nevertheless, 
 on the necessity of great reforms, provided that they were 
 canonically accomplished. This word only caused uneasiness, 
 for we, have never seen a serious reform canonically accomplished, 
 and without external pressure. The Abbes and laics sus- 
 tained the heat of the combat Maurj-, with an impertinence 
 which was not sufficiently redeemed by a real talent, the Abbe 
 de Montesquieu, and the Abbe d'Eymar with gravity and 
 logic, Camus, with his judicial precision and Jansenist severity. 
 The partisans of this opinion relied on the fact of the uncontested 
 possession, on the unalterable character of the foundations and 
 the regular accomplishment of the conditions attached to their 
 enjoyment, and in short on this that the ecclesiastical pro- 
 perties having been given without the concurrence of the nation 
 and not to the nation, the State had no right over them. The 
 law, according to the Abbe Montesquieu, did not establish the 
 ecclesiastical body ; it could not unmake it. Could it be that the 
 clergy was for ever bound to certain rights towards the nation, 
 and that the nation was not bound towards them ? 
 
 The orators of the right at last appealed to prescription ; they 
 repelled the pay of the State, because it was altogether precarious and 
 humiliating. " The absolute ruin of the secular and regular clergy 
 seems to be decided on in this assembly," said the Abbe Maury, 
 "but if it is the force of reasoning that it is necessarj- to combat, 
 we cannot despair of our cause. You have put the creditors of 
 the State under the safeguard of the honour of the nation. Religion 
 itself is the safeguard of the empire. The creditors of the State 
 are proprietors; their property is sacred. I place in your hands 
 
 this profession of solemn faith. The clergy possess — since they 
 Digitized by IVIicrosofm 
 
74 THE CHURCH ANT) THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 have acquired, or because they have received. Let it be proved 
 that they have usurped." Then the fiery abbe demanded by what 
 right they examined so closely the most sacred properties whilst 
 they accepted without scruple the shameful gains of stock-jobbing 
 {agiotage). According to him the property of the clergy belonged 
 to the nation, as the province of Burgundy belonged to it. "What 
 would you say of a ruined lord of the parish who, after having 
 assembled his creditors, should abandon to them the funds with 
 which he had endowed his canton?" Such language might be 
 clever, but it was only specious, for it took no account of the real 
 difficulties of the question. The question was of establishing that 
 the ecclesiastical property entirely came into the common right, and 
 for that it would have been necessary to go forth from general ideas. 
 The opponents of the high clergy took care to fill up this gap. 
 We are surprised to meet in their ranks some parish priests, but 
 .^•^The low clergy had been sufficiently ill-treated by the great digni- 
 taries of the order not to put forth a great zeal to defend privileges 
 from which they had been carefully excluded. The small stipend 
 had certainly reason for a grudge against the benefice. The Abbe 
 Gouttes said, without evasion, that riches had done much injury 
 to religion, "by extending the contempt due to some individual 
 ecclesiastics to all pastors without distinction."* M. Juliet, parish 
 priest of Chevigne, maintained the same radical opinion, support- 
 ing himself on the sovereignty of the nation. The deputies of the 
 left did not content themselves with laying down these bold theses, 
 they maintained them by a terse argumentation, but which had the 
 great inconvenience of considering only the interests of the civil 
 power by entirely subordinating to it that of religion. They 
 insisted strongly at the outset on the fact that the clergy were not 
 the real possessors of their property, since they were only its 
 
 * Sitting of the 12th of October. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
OPINION OF THE RIGHT. 75 
 
 administrators under certain conditions. Barnave, from the first 
 sitting, declared that the clergy, existing for the nation, the latter 
 could destroy the order at will ; and, with much stronger reason, 
 take possession of their property and administer it according to its 
 good pleasure. Religion was thus reduced to be no more than a 
 public service, an administrative function. There was the capital 
 error of the new men, too faithful inheritors of the most inveterate 
 prejudices of the ancient monarchy. In reality they wished for a 
 paid worship, because they wished a worship subordinated to the 
 civil power. 
 
 The discussion made a great step when the lawyer Thouret 
 began to speak ; he raised the gravest objection against the main- 
 tenance of the ecclesiastical properties by establishing that they 
 differed completely from ordinary properties. In fact, the pro- 
 perty of corporations cannot be assimilated to that of private 
 persons. Individuals, existing before the law, have rights which 
 they hold from nature, imprescriptible rights; such is the right of 
 property. Every corporation, on the contrary, exists only by the 
 law, and its rights depend on the law; law can modify them, 
 destroy them; the constituent power is then master of ruling 
 according to its judgment the conditions of their existence.* The 
 consequence of such a principle was clear of itself. " Ought not 
 the national interest," said the deputy Chasset, in the same sitting, 
 " to prevail over the interest of a corporation?" The young 
 Garat entered into the heart of the question, when he passed in 
 review all the restrictions imposed by the laws on the free use of 
 the ecclesiastical properties, such as the prohibition to augment or 
 alienate them without a special authorisation. He appealed to the 
 constant traditions of the ancient monarchy, which conferred on 
 the prince the right of nominating to the bishoprics and to the 
 
 * Sitting of the 23rd of October. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
76 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 abbeys, of receiving the revenues of vacant benefices, and even of 
 dividing or of uniting the property of the clergy. The nation had 
 always interfered in the foundations, so that when the funds did 
 not suffice to pay the service, it obliged the heirs to add to these 
 funds. From these incontestable principles, Garat drew a con- 
 clusion truly enormous : it was that the State was so completely 
 master of religion, that it had the right to abolish the Christian 
 religion, its worship, and its ministers, and to apply its funds to a 
 more moral religion, supposing, by an impossibility, that there 
 should be found one superior to that at present professed. " It is 
 of importance," said he, in concluding, " that the functionaries 
 should be paid only by the nation; if they are proprietaries, they 
 may be independent* This speech thus combined in a dangerous 
 blending, truth and error; its conclusion shows how much the evil 
 genius of the Contrat Social hovered over all this discussion. 
 Chapelier sharpened in some sort the argumentation of Garat, 
 and rendered it more cutting; he insisted on the necessity of the 
 Constituent being consistent with itself. After having destroyed 
 the orders, how leave to the clergy all that which constitutes an 
 order? " Had these clergy been proprietors, would they be so 
 still? Has not this corporation, this order, ceased to exist? I 
 see it no longer, except among the proud ruins of an iihmense 
 revolution ; it has become the jpatrimony of history. If the clergy 
 preserve their property, the order of the clergy is not destroyed. 
 You necessarily leave to it the facility of assembling; you con- 
 secrate its independence." Always is the question of liberty 
 mixed up with the question of property. Petion produced a great 
 irritation in the Assembly by unsparingly attacking the moral 
 inconveniences of the riches of the clergy. " It is the immense 
 riches of the ecclesiastics," exclaimed he, "which have ruined 
 
 * Sitting of the i4th of October. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
SPEECH OF MALOUET. 77 
 
 their morals." Cries of '■^ order" are heard. The president, who 
 was Camus, the old advocate of the clergy, declared that he could 
 not call an orator to order for having said that which was printed 
 everywhere. 
 
 Between the two extreme opinions, a more moderate opinion 
 made its way. The Abbe Gouttes, and the Abbe Gregoire, appear 
 to have rallied around it, for both thought that there should be 
 left to the clergy a part of their property, and they loved liberty 
 too sincerely to aspire to the rank of functionaries. The most 
 eloquent organ of this opinion was Malouet, whose speech is full 
 of sense. If there had been sought a reasonable conciliation 
 between ancient and new France, they could not have done better 
 than adopt his propositions.* Malouet acknowledged, with the 
 left, that religion, no more than royalty, could be withdrawn from 
 the national sovereignty. There was his error, and that of all the 
 liberal party of his time, who knew not how to distinguish between 
 the inalienable domain of conscience and that which belongs to 
 the State. It was always, as with Rousseau, the collective 
 sovereignty taken for liberty. After this concession, it was of no 
 use to pretend that the property of the Church has not been given 
 to a corporation always revocable, but that it has been subdivided 
 into so many distinct endowments as its ministers had services to 
 fulfil, that th right of the donor has not been contested, and that 
 all these transactions have received the seal of law. These 
 restrictions were carried away by that imprescriptible right of 
 radical reform which Malouet acknowledged to the sovereign 
 people. If he did not conclude, with Thouret and Barnave, on the 
 alienation of the property of the Church, it was because he dis- 
 puted, to the National Assembly, the right of deciding questions 
 so grave as that, without having a special mandate from the 
 
 * Sittgyf/i^tJi^i/dffo-d^^tober. 
 
78 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 sovereign people. So long as the legislators had not been invested 
 with it they could reform, but not transform, and above all aboHsh. 
 Let us leave all these strongly debatable political metaphysics, 
 and let us come to the truly practical and wise part of the speech 
 of Malouet. What he wished, above all, to avoid, was the un- 
 chaining of the clerical passions, and the distraction which they 
 would produce in the country at the hour when it had need of all 
 its strength to pass this great crisis of renovation. "When I 
 remember," said he, with as much wisdom as eloquence, " the 
 memorable day on which we adjured, in the name of the God of 
 peace, the members of the clergy to unite themselves to us as our 
 brethren, to trust themselves to our fidelity, I shudder with the 
 mournful sentiment which they may experience and transmit to 
 their successors, in seeing themselves despoiled of their property 
 by a decree to which they would not have consented. Let this 
 consideration, gentlemen, in the stormy times in which we are, 
 have with you some weight. It is precisely because we hear it 
 said in a threatening tone : '■It is necessary to take the property of 
 the clergy r that we ought to be more circumspect in our decisions. 
 Let us not suffer that men should, some day, impute to terror, to 
 violence, operations which an exact justice may legitimate, if we 
 impress them with its stamp, and which will be more profitable to 
 the State, if we substitute reform for invasion, and the attainments 
 of experience for uncertain operations." Malouet demanded, 
 before all, that they should not lose sight of this, that the principal 
 object of the foundations, after the support of worship, was to 
 secure the subsistence of the poor. " So long as there shall be in 
 France," said he, '-men who are hungry and thirsty, the property 
 of the Church is entailed to them by the intention of the testators, 
 before being reversible to the national domain. The poor are our 
 creditors in the moral state as in the social and political. The 
 greatest enemy of libertv ftPd of good "M^ls is poverty. Let us 
 
SPEECH OF MALOUET. 79 
 
 destroy this scourge which degrades us, and, as a consequence of 
 all our dissertations on the rights of man, let a law of succour for 
 suffering man be one of the religious articles of our constitution. 
 I should wish to bind the cause of the poor to that of the creditors 
 of the State, who will have a mortgage, still more assured, on the 
 general competence of the French people than on the foundation 
 property of the clergy.'' Malouet well understood that these 
 measures of public charity, which he claimed, should be executed 
 by means of the property of the Church, but he demanded, with 
 great reason, that the sacrifices to be made by this respectable 
 body, should be so compatible with the dignity and rights of the 
 clergy, that its representatives might freely consent to them. With 
 these reserves, he thought it was necessary to carry imjjortant 
 reforms into the use made of ecclesiastical property. It was 
 reasonable, according to him, to divide the rich benefices into 
 two, to suppress the abbeys in proportion as they became vacant, 
 to reduce the number of the bishoprics, chapters, monasteries, 
 priories, and all simple benefices; he rejected only the general 
 alienation of the ecclesiastical properties, which seemed to him 
 neither useful nor just. Although he was mistaken in his fore- 
 castings on the possibility of making a great operation of public 
 credit on the immense properties of the Church, he was right in 
 rejecting the idea of a pensionary clergy. Malouet wished to 
 remit to an ecclesiastical commission the care of proposing a 
 plan of reform which should reduce, to what was strictly necessary, 
 the benefices of the secular or regular clergy, whilst taking account 
 not only of the maintenance of worship, but also of the subsistence 
 of the poor. All the rest of the property of the Church should be 
 applied to the needs of the State. Whilst awaiting the definitive 
 elaboration of this plan, there should be a suspension of all nomi- 
 nation to benefices and of all admission of novices into the reli- 
 gious orders. We V^§^keWbpS^}^,i¥ih>^^^^ *"^ "^^'^ ™ ^^^^^ 
 
8o THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 propositions the elements of an equitable conciliation. They 
 would have merited an attentive study and a profouhd discussion, 
 but they were too contrary to the passions which clashed in the 
 Assembly, to have any chance of being taken into serious con- 
 sideration. It must also be admitted that the priests employed 
 every means to agitate minds, and drove their opponents to 
 extreme measures. They put into circulation a feigned petition 
 from the poor of different parishes to the Assembly, to protest 
 against all sale of the property of the clergy, under the pretext that 
 they would be deprived of their right of alms secured by the 
 foundations. * 
 
 In order that victory might be obtained on one side or the 
 other, it was necessary that Achilles should go forth from his tent. 
 It was for Mirabeau to close the discussion by carrying the ma- 
 jority. It is to be regretted that his proposition, supported by two 
 great speeches, was so radical If he had taken the initiative of 
 conciliation, what evils would he not have spared to his country 
 and to the cause which he served. His vast mind was worthy 
 of seizing the right of the religious conscience not only in its 
 grandeur, which he had already done, but with all its consequences. 
 He will himself furnish to us more than one proof of it, but he 
 was chief of a party, and, consequently, very dependent At this 
 epoch it was necessary for him to march in the vanguard of the 
 Revolution. Let us acknowledge, moreover, that he preserved in 
 this discussion great moderation of manner. Mirabeau summed 
 up the whole debate with a wondrous clearness. He viewed his 
 subjects from too great a height to be contented with a calculation 
 of interest in such a question. Never, besides, were considerations 
 borrowed from the moral order absent from his speeches. Great 
 eloquence may sometimes desert the cause of justice, but it ought, 
 
 * " Histoire de la RevoJsi^^effiJ'Wftkfeo'ftfey Louis Blanc, II., p. 328. 
 
SPEECH OF MIRABEAU. 8 1 
 
 at least, to evoke the image of it, for, to the honour of human 
 nature, base thoughts will never move a numerous assembly. 
 " I have the honour of declaring to you," said he, " that for the 
 remainder of my entire life, I shall always examine if the principle 
 is just or unjust. There is no utility except in what is just. Now 
 nothing is more just than to declare that the property of the 
 Church belongs to the nation." Mirabeau established it by giving 
 a clearness and a new force to the argument drawn from the 
 difference between the rights of the citizen and those of a body 
 which could not exist except by the good pleasure of the State. 
 " Since the foundations, always multiplied by pride, would absorb, 
 in the long run, all the lands and all the private properties, it is 
 necessary that we should be able in the end to destroy them. If all 
 the men who have lived had had a tomb, it would have been 
 necessary, in order to find lands to cultivate, to overturn these 
 barren monuments, and to move the ashes of the dead to nourish 
 the living." Mirabeau distinguishes three kinds of foundations, 
 those which have been made by kings, those which are the work 
 of corporations and of political aggregations, and those of simple 
 individuals. Now, that which has been given by the head of the 
 nation, or by any one of the political aggregations which compose 
 it, has been given by the nation itself There is, then, no difficulty 
 for the first two kinds of foundations. As for the third, that which 
 proceeds from the generosity of private persons, the nation by ap- 
 propriating them to itself under the condition of fulfilling the 
 charges of them, inflicts no blow on the right of property : for what 
 is a private property? It is a property acquired by virtue of the 
 laws. But no formal law has constituted the clergy a permanent 
 body in the State. The clergy, then, in accepting these founda- 
 tions, ought to have expected, that the nation might one day 
 destroy this common and political existence, without which it 
 
 can possess nothing. We cannot disown that there is some 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 G 
 
82 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 subtlety in this argumentation, and that the definition of property 
 on which it reposes is dangerous. If it is the law alone which 
 constitutes it, how can we escape from the conclusion that the law 
 can undo that which it has done ? It would be better to abide by 
 it only for the special character of ecclesiastical property. Mira- 
 beau returns, also, with a grievous persistency to the advantage of 
 having a functionary and paid clergy? In identifying religion with 
 the public services, with the magistracy, with the army, he forgets 
 his own principles on the inalienable right of conscience. In his 
 second speech, which carried the vote, he was more precise; he 
 applied himself with reason to defend the right of the State with 
 respect to corporations. Evidently the nation has the right of de- 
 ciding that the clergy cannot exist as a political aggregation, unless 
 it is pretended that a nation is bound either by the will of some 
 of its members or by its ancient constitution. If the nation has 
 abrogated the political association, the property possessed by it can 
 revert neither to the foundations, because they have been given 
 without reversibility for the ]iublic service, for the support of the 
 altars, or the relief of the poor; nor to private churches, because 
 that would be to revive the corporation which it is desired to 
 destroy; nor to the clergy, who possessed only as mandatory of 
 the dissolved political aggregation. It is, then, to the nation that 
 they return by right, since it was for it that the clergy had received 
 these riches. It is evident, that without the liberalities of the 
 faithful, society would hav.e been obliged to give to the clergy 
 fixed revenues. The property of the Church is distinguished from 
 fiefs in this, that the latter have been givennot to a body but to indivi- 
 duals, whilst the former is similar, in every point, to the crown do- 
 main, which is also the requital of a great public service. Kings are 
 neither the masters nor the detainers of it; it is the Government 
 which administers it to the profit of the State. Mirabeau apologises 
 for all this political metaphysics. Thouret had already wittily said 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
RESOLUTION OF THE ASSEMBLY. 83 
 
 that it was impossible to do otherwise, when by the subject of dis- 
 cussion they were in full metaphysics ; for such bodies as the clergy, 
 which have no real existence, belong of full right to this domain. 
 
 The discussion was closed after the speech of Mirabeau, and 
 his motion was voted on the 5th of November, under this amended 
 form: "All the property of the clergy is at the disposal of the 
 nation, on condition of providing in a suitable manner for the 
 expenses of worship, for the support of its ministers, and for the 
 relief of the poor under the surveillance and in conformity with 
 the instructions of the provinces. According to the arrangements to 
 be made for the ministers of religion, there cannot be offered less 
 than 1,200 livres, not including lodgment and garden pertaining 
 to it." 
 
 Before decisively assigning the value of this debate and raising 
 anew the grave'question so abruptly decided, and which is to-day 
 far from being settled, it is well to remind the detractors of the 
 French Revolution that the National Assembly in this radical 
 measure has only imbibed the principles of the ancient French 
 monarchy. We have the proof of it in a very remarkable book, 
 composed by a master of requests at the express command of 
 Louis XIV., in order to define the extent of the prerogatives of 
 the Crown in ecclesiastical matters. We refer to the "Traite 
 de I'autorite des Rois, touchant I'Administration de I'Eglise'' 
 (" Treatise on the authority of Kings touching the Administration 
 of the Church.*") Written in the clear, precise, and beautiful 
 language of the seventeenth century, with that natural logic, with 
 that art of well-connected reasoning which is one of the best 
 qualities of the French mind, this treatise, to which we shall have 
 to return more than once, unites and connects all the maxims Of 
 civil and religious despotism which the lawyers had laid down for 
 
 * This book was not made public until the following century. 
 Digitized hy Microsoft® 
 G 2 
 
84 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 the benefit of the royal power. On the question of the ecckr 
 siastical property, the author, after having examined the ordi- 
 nances which severely regulated its acquisition or usage, examines 
 how far the rights of royalty extend in what concerns its alienation. 
 He declares, at the outset, that the Church cannot alienate her 
 property except by permission of the prince, because she is under 
 the protection of kings, as a minor under the guardianship of his 
 tutor. On the contrary, there are cases in which the king can 
 ordain by his absolute authority the alienation of the property of 
 the Church. There is no difficulty when the question is either 
 of the property of the Church, of which he is the feudal lord, or 
 of that of which he has been the founder. But he has powers 
 extended over other propert)-, at first, as protector of the Church, 
 called to take care of her interests of every nature, and then, as 
 political magistrate, responsible for the prosperity of the State. 
 " It cannot be denied that the property of the Church is bound 
 to contribute to the expense of the State. The ecclesiastical 
 lands belong to the Church, only on condition of satisfying real 
 charges, of which the first is to contribute to the expense of the 
 State." Now, it is to the political magistrate alone that it belongs 
 to fix the civil and political obligations of the Church, because all 
 that is within the province of the political government is in sub- 
 jection to him. It is for him to judge of the times and of the 
 share of the rents. The sovereign could not, in this matter, 
 depend on a foreign power, such as the Court of Rome, which 
 may ignore, or feign to ignore, the pressing needs of the State.'' 
 " I say, further," adds the zealous lawyer, " it cannot be doubted 
 that it belongs to the prince to require of full right that which is 
 necessary to the State ; otherwise it would be to give to him a 
 mutilated authority, or, rather, it would be to imagine a ridicu- 
 lous sovereignty, to figure to ourselves a political magistrate power- 
 ful enough to judge of his necessities and of his needs, and too 
 ^ ' ° Digitized by Microsoft® ' 
 
THE REVOLUTION TOO FAITHFUL TO THE ANCIENT REGIME. 85 
 
 feeble to supply them."* The counsellor of Louis XIV. acknow- 
 ledges that, save in the case of pressing necessity, the edicts which 
 extend to the alienation of the lands of the Church may not be 
 passed without the participation of the spiritual power, whilst the 
 prince has the right of fixing the revenues of this property, which 
 appear to him demanded by the needs of the State. But all re- 
 strictions fall in case of urgent necessity. " For example, when 
 the question is of repelling an invasion of enemies, it cannot be 
 denied that the king has absolute authority to use the property 
 of the Church as that of others, for the defence of the State, "f 
 
 We very well understand how, in setting out from these prin- 
 ciples, Machault, in 1749, proposed the alienation of a part of the 
 property of the ChurcL The Constituent had only drawn the- 
 natural consequences of them in their boldest decrees on the 
 property of the Church, for, heir of the political sovereignty which 
 belonged to the prince under the ancient regime, it had, according 
 to the maxims of the monarchical jurists, the right and the duty 
 of estimating the needs of the State and of applying to them the 
 property of the Church in case of urgent necessity. Now, what 
 necessity more urgent than the danger of bankruptcy? We are, 
 then, entirely in the tradition of the reign of Louis XIV. ; Talley- 
 rand and Mirabeau have in this matter only been animated by its 
 maxims of government. That leaves us only to be concerned 
 about the liberal character of the measures to which they at first 
 constrained the National Assembly. It is possible to-day to esti- 
 mate them with more impartiality. 
 
 Let us, first, acknowledge the special right of the civil power 
 pver the property of the Church. It is indisputable that no cor- 
 poration should be absolutely independent in a well-ordered State ; 
 
 * " Autorite das Rois,"pp. 407—421. 
 
86 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 as soon as it ceases to be a simple association, as soon as it 
 possesses and becomes a veritable corporation, it is necessary that 
 it should be placed under the control of the civil power, unless we 
 admit several states having equal rights in the same country, 
 which would be equivalent to anarchy. If corporations obtained 
 for their properties the same immunities as individuals, they would 
 very soon be stronger than the State, because their property, not 
 being subject to the fluctuations of inheritances, accumulates in 
 their hands with an incredible rapidity, and might end by 
 absorbing the best part of public riches, whilst rendering them 
 unfruitful. So in all times, in ancient France, religious corpora- 
 tions have been severely subordinated to the civil power. They 
 have lived only by favour of its express authorisation, and on 
 condition of conforming themselves to the legislation of the 
 country for the acquisition or the alienation of their property. It 
 could not be denied that the State has the right, if it judged 
 proper, to withdraw its authorisation, and to dissolve the little 
 societies which were injuring the great, or which would not lend 
 themselves to the reforms judged necessary for the general good 
 of the nation. Let us maintain, nevertheless, that it never has 
 the right of suspending an essential liberty; the general good does 
 not permit to inflict a blow in any way whatsoever on the con- 
 science of the citizens, and to restrain the individual or collective 
 manifestation of their beliefs. Thus, so long as religion does 
 not step out of its province, it should not, in any of its forms, 
 depend on the good pleasure of the State. It belongs to the 
 civil power neither to authorise nor forbid it, for here the civil 
 power clashes with a primordial right of the individual. The 
 representatives of religion, who are loudly indignant at the aliena- 
 tion of the property of the clergy by the Constituent, ought to 
 reserve their indignation for the alienation by the State of a 
 domain far otherwise ^acjred-^lj|_t^of^e religious conscience 
 
THE RIGHT OF THE STATE TOWARDS CORPORATIONS. 87 
 
 shamefully trampled upon by the 'ancient monarchy. If religion 
 in itself is inviolable, it is so no longer when it has ended in a true 
 political society, a corporation which is owner of a portion of the 
 soil. As such, it falls under the power of the State, as we have 
 sho\vn, and its independence decreases in proportion to its poli- 
 tical importance, except the government of society should quickly 
 pass into its hands. That which is political in its coristitution 
 naturally subjects it to the fluctuations of opinion on the best 
 organisation of the State. When everything around it is reformed, 
 it should not continue immovable, else one generation, by its pious 
 foundations would have for ever riveted a great nation in the 
 institutions of the past, and, as M. Laboulaye has very well put it, 
 "the land would belong no more to the living, but to the dead."* 
 Not less evident is it that a single generation could not pay for 
 the others, and bear all the weight of the reforms which it had not 
 been able to foresee, and which secular abuses have rendered 
 necessary. Besides, in strict justice, the State is bound to secure 
 a comfortable position to the survivors of an antique order of things 
 which it abolishes; but when it has done that, it has paid its debt 
 to the past, and the nation may freely organise itself on the plan 
 which seems conformable to its interests. 
 
 It is, then, a grave mistake to consider the Catholic Church 
 and the State as making, in 1789, a new compact on certain 
 unalterable conditions, so that the salary of the clergy would be an 
 indemnity due to this Church in exchange for the alienation of its 
 property. Nothing of the kind took place at this period. The 
 State used its right to suppress a corporation which had no longer 
 a place in the new society. After this, nothing could prevent it 
 from suppressing the salary of the clergy, if it saw good to com- 
 
 * See the observations, full of sense, of the eminent civilian, ''Etudes 
 
 Morales et Pohtiques.'' .1862. pp. 122— ^7. 
 ^ Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
88 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 plete its first reforms. But if its right was entire, it remains to be 
 known if it made a wise use of it, and, above all, if it took the 
 best means of providing for the service of the altar. 
 
 In bringing about a great reform, it was to the interest of the 
 Revolution not to exasperate the numerous and influential class on 
 which it bore, in order not to raise a formidable opposition. Those 
 who, at the end of the eighteenth century, imagined that religion 
 was incapable of agitating the country, took the frivolous drawing- 
 room, where they had passed their evening in gay discourse, for 
 the faithful image of the nation. Despite the scandals of the high 
 clergy, and the polite incredulity which had become fashionable, 
 the religious sentiment was still the most considerable power with 
 which the Revolution had to deal, and already it reanimated itself 
 in the very place where it had seemed extinct; it is what always 
 happens in social crises which, by shaking the soil under the feet 
 of man, make him raise his eyes towards heaven. The radical 
 measure which the Assembly had passed, and which was to 
 become still more grave in the execution, was calculated to rouse 
 the clergy and all that numerous party which every day brings to 
 the help of religion, not only its, more or less well-founded apolo- 
 gies, but also the great and mournful events of life, everything that 
 bends the human soul and breaks its pride. Be it thought good 
 or bad, it is not the less certain that religion is instinctively sought 
 and invoked by suffering humanity. Now, the National Assembly 
 was not capable any more than any political power, of re- 
 placing the ancient forms by a new religious form. There was, 
 then, great imprudence in strongly irritating the representatives of 
 the Church of- France, by rejecting every compromise, and, at the 
 first onset, voting the most radical measure. Already at this stage, 
 they should have sought with care, with ardour even, a concilia- 
 tion which would preserve the public peace. Now, this conci- 
 liation had become possible. The clergy, under the pressure of 
 Digitized by Microson® 
 
 \ 
 
THE TRUE SOLUTION. 89 
 
 circumstances and of opinion, in the fear of losing all, would 
 have gone very far in reforms and sacrifices. They had given a 
 striking proof of this by renouncing tithes; there might have been 
 found considerable resources for the needs of the State, without 
 declaring the general alienation of the property of the Church. 
 
 There was, besides, another reason for trying a different way, 
 and this last appears to us much more important, because it is 
 not borrowed from simple considerations of prudence, but from 
 those permanent principles which ought to preside over the re- 
 lations of political and religious society. It is for their mutual 
 interest to be independent of one another; the credit of^a sub- 
 jugated Church will be so soon thoroughly lost as to deprive it of 
 all moral power, and then repression will be required in proportion 
 as religious influence becomes more feeble, or else it will groan 
 under the yoke, and incessantly try to break it, a course which 
 will profoundly disturb the pubhc peace; general liberty will be 
 soon suspended by the coercive measures which the State will 
 take in self-defence. If, on the contrary, religious society is free 
 and independent for all that does not fall under the laws, it pre- 
 serves its dignity without endangering the tranquillity of the 
 country. So long as it moves at its ease in its own sphere, all 
 chance of conflict and collision with the civil power is avoided. The 
 Constituent might surely have prepared a situation so desirable, 
 but in order to that it would have been necessary to renounce the 
 treating religion as a simple public service, and its ministers as 
 officers of a national administration; in other words, it would have 
 been necessary to be more boldly revolutionary than they have 
 been, and to offer to the Church a greater liberty than she had ever 
 enjoyed, in exchange for the diminution of her riches. That is to 
 say, they ought never to have had recourse to the deplorable 
 system of paid worship. Had they not at their disposal immense 
 
 wealth, of which they might preserve a part whilst submitting it to 
 ' ^ Di§tiz€a by Microsoft® 
 
90 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 the common law? What prevented them from constituting by this 
 means a Church which should be at once independent and 
 attached to New France? It is impossible to re-organise, when 
 too late, the plan which would have united all these advantages. 
 Surely, there was sufficient intelligence in the assembly, sufficiently 
 precise and detailed knowledge of the situation of the country, to 
 end in a rational combination. They had only to welcome, at the 
 outset, the proposition made at several times by the represen- 
 tatives of the high clergy, to abandon an important portion of 
 their property and to labour for the reform of abuses. It was not 
 necessary to discuss their sincerity, events stronger than men had 
 set aside unreasonable claims. The National Assembly would not 
 have abandoned the right of deciding all in the last resort, but 
 the nomination of the ecclesiastical commission, asked for by 
 Malouet, would have appeased much opposition. 
 
 The first resolution, then, to be taken would have been to 
 interdict, until the new order, not only every new foundation, but 
 also every admission of a novice into any convent whatsoever, and 
 every nomination to a benefice. Important resources would have 
 been found in the reforms which gained universal assent, or, at 
 least, to which no one would have ventured to refuse his adhesion. 
 Thus, the union of the houses of the same order, the abolition of 
 all accumulation of benefices, the sale of unoccupied buildings 
 and grounds, not comprehended in the rural property of the 
 Churches, monasteries, both hospitals and benefices, — these are 
 so many measures which would have put considerable riches at 
 the disposal of the nation. Malouet estimated that the reforms, 
 suppressions, and reductions immediately possible, would have 
 permitted ,an annual sum of thirty millions to be levied, and a 
 successive alienation of four hundred millions of landed property. 
 The archbishop of Aix offered, in the sitting of the 12th April, 
 
 1700, progressive sales made by the clergy of France for a sum of 
 ^ ° Digitized by MicrosoM) 
 
THE TRUE SOLUTION. 91 
 
 six hundred millions. That should not have been the resting- 
 point, for we maintain still the sovereign right of the Assembly. 
 An essential difference had, in all times, been established between 
 royal foundations and those which came from, private individuals. 
 The first, which were in considerable number, had always appeared 
 much more dependent on the State than the other. Their aliena- 
 tion would have roused much fewer scruples. Perhaps it would 
 have been found that the property remitted to the possession of 
 the State, either by this alienation, or by reforms universally 
 agreed to, offered sufficient resources. It would have been just 
 to use at first these funds in order to realise the intentions of 
 the founders of benefices, by maintaining the great charitable 
 institutions which a State could not do without — hospitals, 
 benevolent establishments — then the instruction of the people, 
 which was one of the first debts they were bound to discharge 
 towards them. The sale of the alienated portion of the property 
 of the Church would have amply sufficed for these indispensable 
 creations, and would have facilitated the great financial operations 
 intended to relieve the national credit, which the religious agita- 
 tions were about so miserably to lower. Out of the landed 
 property remaining to the clergy, there would have first been paid 
 the pensions voted to those who should lose their position by the 
 effected reforms, then there would have been left to the clergy 
 themselves the care of providing for their own maintenance. 
 They would, doubtless, have lost the exemptions which made 
 them a privileged corporation; their property would have been 
 taxed like that of private persons, and the precautions against 
 mortmain would have been preserved. 
 
 Ecclesiastical property has been maintained in countries where, 
 it is true, neither liberty nor the progress of wealth have been 
 arrested by it. It is sufficient to name North America, which 
 
 was very soon to effect the great reform for which the French 
 ^ Digitized fiy Microsoft® 
 
92 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 Revolution was not yet ripe. Even under the regime of our civil 
 code, collective properties may be assured for a great number of 
 years. Theie would have been much less restraint in such 
 transactions, if French legislation had been conceived with greater 
 breadth on this point, which would have been the first conse- 
 quence of the existence of non-paid worship in France. With a 
 political liberty solidly guaranteed, the clergy would have been 
 left unfettered to govern themselves, as they do wherever they 
 find a free soil. We firmly believe that it is in this way only that 
 we ought to attempt the very delicate solution of the relations 
 existing between the religious society and the State. It was there 
 that, according to unexceptionable documents, the great states- 
 man who wished the free Church in the free State was seeking it. 
 This thought entered at each instant into the intimate conver- 
 sations of M. de Cavour, as we may satisfy ourselves by the 
 testimony of his secretary. 
 
 It was not for the honour of laying down a principle of political 
 right that the National Assembly had voted on the 2nd of 
 November the general alienation of the property of the clergy ; 
 it had the firm intention of finding there an efficacious resource 
 for relieving the finances of the country. Thus, measures are 
 about to succeed each other, in order to place at the disposal of 
 the nation this considerable guarantee destined to relieve its 
 credit. The high clergy, sustained by the right, will make a 
 desperate effort to defend their property, foot by foot, but it is no 
 more than .a combat of the rear-guard in a battle already lost. 
 Their passionate resistance will have only too much echo outside, 
 it will be so much the more easy for them to agitate the country 
 the longer they have disputed the ground in the Assembly. The 
 Ecclesiastical Committee, which had been nominated on the 20th 
 of August, saw its powers extended soon after the decree of the 
 
 2nd of November, for it had not only to prepare the settling of 
 ' Digitized by Microsoft® ^ ^ ° 
 
THE TRUE SOLUTION. 93 
 
 the ecclesiastical properties, but also to elaborate the plan at once 
 financial and constitutional, from which was to go forth the re- 
 organisation of the Church of France.* Composed at first of 
 fifteen members among whom figured on the left, Durand 
 Maillane, Lanjuinais, and Treilhard, a clever lawyer of the Par- 
 liament of Paris, and on the right, the bishops of Clermont and of 
 Lugon; it was increased by an equal number of members, when 
 the discussions, which broke out in consequence of the vote of the 
 2nd of November, put an end to the deliberations. Among the 
 new members were distinguishable Dom Gerle, the Carthusian, 
 a revolutionary very capable in an hour of enthusiasm of serving 
 the reaction j the abbe de Montesquieu, a skilful and moderate 
 defender of the interests of the clergy ; some liberal parish priests, 
 like the abbe d'Espilly and the parish priest of Souppes ; and a 
 liberal deputy, the representative Chasset. The committee, thus \ 
 reinforced, was divided into three sections ; the first was charged 
 with the reconstitution of the Church of France, and the two 
 others with all questions connected with the ecclesiastical property. _ 
 A special committee of tithes was formed to enact definitively J 
 concerning this ancient revenue of the Church. After the vote 
 which decided their alienation, the members of the right tendered 
 their resignation, but it was not accepted. The Ecclesiastical 
 Committee pursued their labours with the greatest assiduity, and 
 it was on the various reports which emanated from them, that 
 were decreed the gravest measures which overturned the Church. 
 The committee, in its different sections, set itself to prepare the 
 complete execution of the decrees of the Sovereign Assembly ; the 
 task was singularly facilitated by its bold and conscientious labours 
 which exactly reflected the errors and the passions of the moment. 
 
 * See on the whole internal history of the Ecclesiastical Committee, 
 
 the book already cited by Durand Maillane (1791). 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
94 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 Talleyrand, satisfied with having opened the breach, had taken 
 no part in the debate on the less radical proposition of Mirabeau, 
 but he knew very well that his initiative in such a question would 
 never be forgiven him. He demanded, on the 7th of November, 
 that seals should be placed on the safes where were deposited the 
 titles of the ecclesiastical properties, and that an inventory 
 should be made of the chattels. It was a kind of taking pos- 
 session. The Assembly hesitated some days before so prompt an 
 execution of its decrees on the goods of the clergy. It con- 
 tented itself at first with placing them under the safeguard of the 
 King, of the tribunals, and of the administration. Treilhard, in 
 the midst of an extraordinary agitation, and despite the clamours 
 of the right and the persistency of Maury, who took the 
 tribune by assault, obtained a vote two days later that the 
 King should be requested to suspend the nomination to benefices 
 with the exception of cures. On the 19th of November he 
 resumed the motion of Talleyrand, excepting only the parish 
 priests from the formality of the sealing. This exception appeared 
 an insult to the high clergy; the bishop of Clermont complained 
 of it with bitterness. Several other orators protested in the name 
 of the dignity of the Church. They quoted, in the way of objec- 
 tion, the depredations already indicated. On the motion of the 
 abbe d'Ablecourt, the Assembly voted a decree which enjoined on 
 all the incumbents of benefices, to make, within two months, on 
 open paper, a detailed declaration before the royal and municipal 
 judges, of the effects movable and immovable, belonging t'o the 
 benefices. This declaration, after having been affixed to the 
 doors of the parish churches, was to be sent to the Assembly. No 
 one stopped at the singular objection of the abbe de Montesquieu 
 that such a declaration would be difficult to a good number of 
 the commendatory abbes who had never seen their abbeys. 
 France, at the hour BfgMSd^mh%§}>m> ^as not occupied in 
 
ALIENATION OF THE PROPERTY OF THE CLERGY. 95 
 
 taking into consideration so shameful an abuse. Some months 
 later, on Friday, the 5 th of February, the Assembly required for 
 the ecclesiastical pensions the same declarations as for the bene- 
 fices properly so called ; fraudulent declarations were to entail the 
 loss of all emolument. These measures indicated the firm intention 
 of the nation to use largely the resources which it had opened up 
 to itself Every time that the financial question came up in the 
 deliberations, the decisive moment was more nearly approached. 
 
 On the 4th of December, Talleyrand, on the occasion of a 
 debate on the Discount Bank (Caisse d'escompte), plainly proposed 
 to apply to the national debt the sale of the royal domain and 
 of the ecclesiastical properties. He did it without entering into 
 any new development, as if he was claiming the simplest and least 
 disputable measure. That, also, was a kind of taking possession. 
 Treilhard, on the i8th December, supported the proposition of 
 Talleyrand, on the plea that the nation could not too soon with- 
 draw from the clergy the administration of their property, in order 
 to restore them entirely to the holiness of their vocation, and thus 
 bring back the days of the primitive Church. In order to facili- 
 tate this return to the heroic age of Christianity, Treilhard formally 
 demands the immediate alienation of four hundred millions of the 
 properties of the clergy, chosen from the list of those which did 
 not produce revenues, as the houses and ecclesiastical estabhsh- 
 ments of the towns. These four hundred millions were to serve 
 as a security for the paper money, the issue of which would, for 
 the moment, save the Revolution. This proposition was voted on 
 the 20th of December, although the abbe de Montesquieu had 
 combated it with his elegant and moderate language, and the abbe 
 Maury with his undignified impetuosity. In vain did a portion of 
 the right quit the Assembly ; in vain did the orators remark that 
 the Decree of the 2nd of November imposed the condition of 
 
 consulting the provinces. This frail barrier could not arrest the 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
96 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 sovereign Assembly in a day of supreme peril for the country. 
 All demands for adjournment were rejected.* On the i6th of 
 March, 1790, the proposition of the Commune of Paris, to pur- 
 chase alienated property to the amount of two hundred millions, 
 was eagerly welcomed by the Assembly. The Commune thus 
 entered as an intermediary between the nation and the public, and 
 issued on this certain and palpable security, a circulating paper 
 money suitable for facilitating transactions. Two hundred millions 
 more were to be yielded to the municipalities of the departments. 
 The clauses of this great measure were carefully debated, and a 
 commission of twelve members was nominated for this purpose. 
 Thus fell the boundaries which had hitherto withdrawn the 
 domain of the Church from all conversion into- personal property 
 (mobilisation). That of the king was equally put at the disposal 
 of the nation. An abyss was, indeed, really opened between 
 ancient and new France. In the gulf were about to disappear the 
 monastic orders whose sentence of death had been long since pro- 
 nounced. Then would come all the difficulties and perils of the 
 reconstitution of a Church materially pulled down, but which 
 would again find moral power in its days of trial ; for deprivation 
 would restore to it dignity, and the exaggerations, often unjust, of 
 its adversaries would, in a certain measure, justify its acts of re- 
 sistance. 
 
 The property of the Church was yet to provoke two great battles 
 in the midst of the Assembly — the first on the occasion of the re- 
 ligious orders; the second on the substitution of State pay for 
 tithes, It had been formally declared that the entire Church of 
 France was a corporation existing by the good pleasure of the civil 
 power. It was easy for private corporations, which had been 
 
 Jrmed in its bosom, to foresee the fate which awaited them. Thus, 
 le of the first cares of the Ecclesiastical Committee was to pro- 
 )se to the Constituei^^J^g^l^^j,^^ggy|ie religious orders which 
 
DISCUSSION ON THE MONASTIC ORDERS. 97 
 
 covered France. The question was complex. Apart from the great 
 financial interests which were bound up with it, it trenched on one 
 side on religious liberty, since the law acknowledged monastic 
 vows, and shielded them with its formidable sanction. The 
 current of public opinion impelled to a great reform. The 
 monastic life, formerly honoured, piously active in clearing the soil 
 for the profit of the poor, and in cultivating the still more naked 
 and arid ground of human intelligence in ages of barbarism, had 
 fallen into a state of decay which its most eloquent apologist 
 acknowledges and stigmatises with a noble frankness.* The 
 orders devoted to contemplation having lost the mystic enthusiasm 
 which alone sustains the soul on these heights, fell into trifling idle- 
 ness and childish devotion : they fell lower still, into shameful 
 disorders, the scandal of which passed beyond their cloister walls, 
 and made only too much noise in a jesting society. The teaching 
 orders obtained more indulgence, because they rendered more 
 services ; it is, nevertheless, certain that they taught the children 
 of the well-to-do classes more Latin than religion. How could it 
 be forgotten that the generation which had for its acknowledged 
 chiefs Voltaire and the Encyclopedists, had gone forth from their 
 colleges? As to the mendicant orders, they inspired the most 
 profound contempt. The convents of women were little better 
 than those of men. The spirit of the age, which was elsewhere 
 breathing revolt against the beliefs of the past, was quenched in 
 these retreats. The fervour and enthusiasm, without which a life 
 so exceptional is impossible, were there replaced by dryness. 
 Doubtless true piety was not totally absent from the cloisters, but 
 it did not reign there. In the day of severe trial it became evident 
 that more than one pure and tender soul was still sheltered there; 
 but these humble virtues were not distinguishable in ordinary times 
 
 See " Les Moin^jj^j^j^^^J^};^. de Montalembert. 
 
98 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 on the dull ground of a religion of routine. Good was still done by 
 a lingering impulse, or, rather, by means of charitable institutions 
 largely endowed and skilfully organised ; but nowhere burned one 
 of those glowing hearths of Christian love which reveal the real 
 presence of the God of the Gospel. 
 
 Meanwhile, opposition to the monastic life increased every day. 
 Voltaire had devoted to it an ironical and biting chapter in his 
 "Essai sur les Moeurs." He had indignantly pointed out the 
 licence which the superiors of convents took of administering 
 justice with closed doors, and of acting amongst themselves the 
 part of lieutenant in criminal proceedings. He complained bitterly 
 that France had more convents than all Italy. He boldly con- 
 cluded by demanding the restoration to the State of a part of the 
 citizens of whom the monasteries were depriving it Diderot had 
 devoted to this subject a romance, animated with his fiery elo- 
 quence in its first part, but stained with such infamies in the 
 second, that it decidedly leaves the domain of literature to find its 
 parallel only in the most impure pages of Lucian. " La Reli- 
 gieuse" (The Nun) was not printed 'till 1795, but all literary 
 people were acquainted with the manuscript; we find the burning 
 trace of it in more than one speech delivered in the National 
 Assembly. The abolition of the Order of Jesuits in France, the 
 numerous suppressions of the religious communities ordained by 
 Joseph II., had opened the way to a more radical reform in Europe. 
 
 There was a talk also in the Church of reforming the religious 
 orders, but every one knew that they would talk of it a century 
 before setting to the work. No serious project had been proposed 
 in the Assemblies of the clergy. At Rome nothing was so much 
 dreaded as favouring the spirit of progress, which they likened to 
 the spirit of the devil. The State, more clear-sighted, and, above 
 all, more impatient than the Church in the presence of abuses 
 from which it was the fi£g|/jto^§^ffe|,.and^e disappearing of which 
 
DISCUSSION ON THE MONASTIC ORDERS. 99 
 
 was to fill its exhausted treasury, boldly undertook a reform, in 
 which the free concurrence of religion would have been indispen- 
 sable. The question was, in fact, of reconciling the incontestable 
 rights of the civil power, with that delicate respect for the religious 
 conscience which is as good in policy as it is healthy in morality. 
 The properties of convents, like those of corporations in general, 
 depended in a particular manner on the civil power; for it is 
 evident that in the absence of a powerful control, the soil might be 
 completely withdrawn from the laws of the country, and entire 
 France might become by degrees an appendage of the States 
 of the Pope, with the fine institutions which there flourished, 
 upon a land devoted to fever and barrenness. But still it was 
 necessary to know how to moderate the exercise of its right, in 
 order not to commit a supreme injustice by pushing it to its last 
 rigour ; it was specially necessary, in laying a prudent hand on the 
 properties of monastic corporations, not to touch the free convic- 
 tions of the soul, the beliefs, the scruples of the religious sentiment, 
 in order not to enslave the one in freeing the other. The 
 National Assembly knew not how to avoid these rocks. 
 
 It was on the 19th of December, 1789, that Treilhard, in the 
 name of the Ecclesiastical Committee, gave inhis report on the re- 
 ligious orders. The discussion did not commence until the 22nd ? ' 
 of February, 1790. The reporter expressed himself in moderate 
 language; he commenced by acknowledging the services rendered 
 by the religious orders in the epochs of faith and fervour ; then he 
 proved, without declamation, their profound decay, the disorders 
 which had been introduced into the greater part of them, and the 
 urgent need of a reform called for on all sides. It was at once j 
 evident that the principle of liberty of conscience, proclaimed; 
 by the Assembly, was opposed to the State maintaining! 
 the perpetuity of vows by legal constraint. In acting thus, the 
 civil power exceeded i^g,|s?j^£l^Sfii9ftso^ '"^.de itself judge of 
 
 H 2 
 
100 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 thoughts and beliefs, and it strikingly denied the spirit of the new 
 institutions. So much was it worth while then to preserve the 
 very Christian king, guardian of the faith in the name of his 
 sword. The Ecclesiastical Committee was then founded to pro- 
 pose that the civil authority should abstain from all interference in 
 order to maintain the external effect of vows, and should leave to 
 each the care of his conscience. It was equally to give proof of 
 sound judgment to leave to the religious, who should have the 
 vocation of the cloister, pious asylums where they might conform 
 themselves to their vows, whilst pensions should be assured to 
 those who should go forth from the convents. Unfitted for ordi- 
 nary hfe, they ought not to undergo the consequences of a sudden 
 reform. Camus^ Gregoire, and all the Jansenists of the Assembly, 
 pleaded the cause of the learned orders who had slowly amassed 
 the treasures of national culture ; but there was little disposition to 
 be much occupied with the libraries of the Benedictines, when the 
 question was of the very existence of the religious orders. The 
 passionate protestations of the" high clergy, declaring by the mouth 
 of the bishop of Clermont that the measure proposed took away 
 from religion a shelter, from the citizens resources, from the 
 Gospel apostles — could not weigh much with men, witnesses of all 
 the scandals of the monastic life in the eighteenth century. 
 
 The bishops and their adherents made an attempt, too often re- 
 newed since then, which consisted in interrupting an embarrassing 
 debate on a question of money, by a great religious demonstration. 
 The Bishop of Nancy demanded, in the sitting of the 13th of 
 February, that before pursuing the discussion, it should be acknow- 
 ledged that the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion was the 
 ^national religion. That was to bring back the most inextricable 
 confusion between the temporal and the spiritual, and thereby to 
 reconstitute the ancient regime on its most worm-eaten basis ; this 
 was especially to i^riQf^^%a'^h&dl^?0^ hedge of holy things. 
 
DISCUSSION ON THE MONASTIC ORDERS. lOI 
 
 Charles de Lameth justly stigmatised these tactics : " When it 
 is a question of low temporal interests and of money," said he, 
 "they come to speak to us of the Divinity. If, in order to 
 save a wealth so ridiculous in the eyes of reason, so contrary to 
 the spirit of the Gospel, they cite the uneasiness of the people 
 about our religious sentiments, if they have the absurd and 
 criminal design of arming fanaticism to defend abuses, if ever this 
 intention could be conceived, I denounce it to the country.'' 
 
 The order of the day rejected the motion of the Bishop of \ 
 Nancy; but the same proposition was to come up again some 
 days later in a still more insidious form, and to raise many other 
 tempests. Petion, Garat the elder, spoke almost in the tone of 
 Diderot of the disorders of the convents ; they wandered from the 
 political question in discussing the monastic institution in itself, 
 and, above all, the passive obedience which it claimed. They 
 forgot that civil society has nothing to do with the diverse forms 
 which the religious sentiment may put on, so long as they are not 
 at variance with morality. It has. no other commission than to 
 consecrate the liberty of all citizens by refusing legally to acknow- 
 ledge perpetual vows. These engagements themselves, apart from 
 all State sanction, could not be interdicted without committing a 
 veritable abuse of power ; unhappily the extreme left was only too 
 much disposed to it An excellent speech of the Abbe de 
 Montesquieu to some degree counterbalanced their influence. 
 We are surprised to find there the clear distinction between the 
 spiritual and the temporal. "The law and the monk," said he, 
 " the monk and the law; behold what we ought to respect. 
 You are men, all that is human pertains to you; you are men, all 
 that is spiritual pertains not to you." The orator concluded from 
 these principles that the State had not the right, authoritatively, to 
 break a contract passed between the monk and the Church, but 
 
 neither had the Church the right to demand the support of the 
 
 Digitized Bp Microsoft® 
 
102 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 State in order to assure perpetual vows. He demanded that the 
 National Assembly should decree that the law no longer acknow- 
 ledges monastic vows, — that it places no hindrance to the going 
 forth of the religious of both sexes from their convents ; but that 
 all who wished to- remain in the cloisters should be free to dwell 
 there. The decree of the Assembly was couched in nearly these 
 terms; only Thouret caused to be added to it the suppression of 
 the religious orders, with a prohibition of introducing any new ones 
 into France. This was a direct blow to liberty of conscience, for 
 it was to declare beforehand that the principle of liberty of asso- 
 ciation should be suspended for every religious order, even though 
 it should submit itself entirely to the laws of the country. This 
 fatal mistake has lasted even up to our days. More than one 
 public man believes himself liberal for having contributed to expel 
 from his country the society of Jesus, or some other religious order. 
 He imagines that for this noble deed all meannesses will be for- 
 given him both in this world and in the next When, then, will 
 men believe in liberty for all ? 
 
 The convents for women had remained intact by the decree of 
 the Assembly. For the moment, then, they had to regulate only 
 the board of the monks who should break their vows. But it 
 was important to decide whether they should put them all on a 
 level, or take into account, in the fixing of the indemnities, their 
 previous circumstances; if, for example, the monks coming out 
 from a rich monastery, into which they had entered only by paying 
 a large sum of money, were to be placed upon the same footing 
 as the monks belonging to mendicant orders. Treilhard, in the 
 sitting of the 17 th of February, declared that he could not be of 
 the opinion of several of the members of the Ecclesiastical Com- 
 mittee, who were for admitting no difference in the board; but he 
 supported this opinion weakly, without appearing to hold much 
 
 to it. It was, nevertheless, the cause of justice; for, to put into 
 Digitized by Microsoft® ■ 
 
P^SCUSSION ON THE MONASTIC ORDERS. 103 
 
 the same rank the rich Benedictine and the mendicant Capuchin, 
 
 was to give to the decrees of the Assembly an unjust retroaction 
 
 in extending it, according to the expression of Mirabeau^ even to 
 
 habits contracted under the safeguard of the law; it was, under 
 
 pretext of equality, to sanction a real inequality. Thus the 
 
 Assembly, which was that day calm enough to listen to the 
 
 language of reason, voted the motion of Treilhard. Robespierre 
 
 had, nevertheless, declared at the tribune, that if a distinction 
 
 were to exist, it ought to be in favour of the mendicant monks. 
 
 This saying is profound; it gives the measure of demagogic 
 
 equality, which is only aristocracy on the reverse side. They 
 
 assigned a pension of 800 livres to the mendicant monks up to 
 
 fifty years of age, and 900 to the monks not mendicants; above 
 
 fifty, the pensions rose on a scale equitably regulated. By the 
 
 express motion of Barnave, the Protestant, and of Gregoire, the 
 
 Jansenist, the Jesuits were comprised in the decree of the 19th 
 
 of February, 1790 : " The first act of rising liberty," the deputy of 
 
 the left had nobly said, " ought to be to repair the injustices of 
 
 despotism.'' The same principle was applied in the sitting of the 
 
 ] 8th of March, to the pensions of the monks who should remain 
 
 in the houses retained. Voydel, from the first an implacable 
 
 adversary of the clergy, wished to fix the pensions so low that it 
 
 would be for the interest of all the monks to break their vows. 
 
 This would have been to recruit active citizens by poverty and 
 
 famine, and hypocritically to consummate an odious attempt 
 
 against liberty of conscience. The Assembly was not ripe for 
 
 such violence. In order to avoid profound trouble in inheritances 
 
 and scandalous quarrels, some wise measures were also decreed 
 
 to preserve the family contracts passed under the ancient laws of 
 
 the country at the time of the entrance of the enfranchised monks 
 
 into the monastic orders. 
 
 One of the gravest questions, destined to raise the most violent 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
104 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 Storm, still remained to be discussed in the midst of the Assembly; 
 it was to know to whom should pass the administration of the 
 wealth of the Church, which had been placed at the disposal of 
 the nation on the 2nd of .November, 1789. Already a portion 
 had been aUenated, but the greater part was still disposable. 
 What should be done with it ? Should this immense wealth be left 
 provisionally to the clergy ? That was not possible after they had 
 been morally deprived of it. Understanding by what a precarious 
 title they would possess their domains, knowing that the aliena- 
 tion pronounced in principle was always on the eve of being 
 realised, protesting, besides, against measures which appeared to 
 them the height of injustice and impiety, they would have been 
 in the most unfavourable condition for properly administering 
 wealth which was about to escape them. It was the present and 
 not the future which troubled the Assembly, and it was much more 
 occupied in finding immediate resources than in securing revenues 
 for calmer periods. Besides, the idea of putting religion under 
 State patronage by paying its ministers, had already prevailed in 
 the discussion of the preceding year. The ecclesiastical state had 
 been unceasingly represented as a public service analogous to the 
 marine and magistracy. This opinion had, unfortunately, the 
 majority in its favour; financial necessities and accepted principles 
 urged to the same conclusion. Although all understood that it 
 was inevitable, the party of the high clergy tried a last effort to 
 prevent this final blow, after which there would remain nothing 
 for them but powerless submission or open war with New France. 
 On Friday, the 9th of April, these memorable debates opened. 
 Chasset read the report of the Tithe Committee, which, as we have 
 seen, was a department of the Ecclesiastical Committee. In its 
 cool precision, it betokened the decree of death of the whole 
 ancient constitution of the GaUican Church. Chasset hmited 
 
 himself to drawing, with desperate logic, conclusions from the 
 Digitized by Microsofm 
 
REPORT OF CHASSET. I05 
 
 jecree of the 2nd of November: " An immense debt overpowers 
 
 IS," said he ; "we have wealth wherewith to pay it ; for what do we 
 
 vait ? The decree of the 2nd of November is nothing so long as 
 
 :he clergy are not dispossessed." Such was the urgent question ; 
 
 jut as to the principle involved, Chasset boldly said : " Worship 
 
 s the duty of all; all are supposed to practise it, because the 
 
 :emple of the Lord is open to all. The holy militia are sustained 
 
 'or the benefit of all, just like the army. It is just and constitu- 
 
 ional to maintain the expenses of worship for all by means of a 
 
 jeneral tax." Thus, to pay its debts, despotically to govern 
 
 ieligion, and to place the bishops under its control like the 
 
 admirals and generals, such is the double advantage which the 
 
 State will find in the regime of a paid and official worship. This 
 
 thought will unceasingly re-appear in the discussion, and will 
 
 excite an opposition which would have been more worthy if, in 
 
 defending the independence of the clergy, it had not attacked 
 
 religious equality and the right of conscience proclaimed by the 
 
 Revolution. Chasset, conformably to the' principles laid down by 
 
 him, at once proposed that the property of the Church should 
 
 be henceforth administered by the assemblies of the department 
 
 and of the district; that the tithes should be abolished from 
 
 the ist of January of the following year; and that the maintenance 
 
 of all the ecclesiastics should be, from that time, paid in money 
 
 according to the scale voted by the Assembly. Chasset caused 
 
 it, at the same tim_e, to be known to the Assembly that the first 
 
 section of the Ecclesiastical Committee had fixed the totality of 
 
 these livelihoods in the plan of the Constitution which it had 
 
 worked out for the Church of France, at the sum of 133,884,800 
 
 francs. Comparing this sum with that not long ago so vexatiously 
 
 levied by the tithe on agriculture, he concluded that, thanks to 
 
 the new regime, the country would realise important savings whilst 
 
 Suppressing deplorable abuses, What hehad said to the Assembly 
 
I06 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 of Other plans of the Ecclesiastical Committee was not of a 
 nature to calm the discussion, for his communication opened up 
 views of still graver measures which would decidedly deliver the 
 Church to the -civil power. 
 
 The debate commenced two days later. The most lively emo- 
 tion reigned in the Assembly. The right shuddered with anger 
 and indignation at each word which brought back the conclusions 
 of the report of Chasset; for, in their opinion, it was the very 
 extinction of religion that was about to be pronounced. Thus, 
 they multiplied passionate observations and indignant appeals to 
 the God of their fathers. To hear the members of the high 
 clergy, one would have said that the funeral pile of martyrdom 
 was erected at the foot of the tribune. The question, however, 
 was only that of burning some rental title-deeds. To raise the 
 arms to heaven and to cry out, " Blasphemy and Persecution!" 
 was altogether beside the mark ; for people were led to think, by 
 such exaggerations, that Catholicism in France was not a belief, 
 but an establishment. The noble conduct of a great number of 
 these same priests on the approaching day of peril was happily about 
 to show that it was not so. We can see, from the commencement 
 of the discussion, to what an extent the minds of men were 
 excited. An obscure member of the majority had hardly pro- 
 nounced some words on the happy effect of a measure which 
 should free the clergy from all the bustle of a great temporal 
 administration, than his voice was drowned by murmurs. An 
 abbe, still more obscure, cried out, " I entreat the ecclesiastics 
 not to answer a word to all that is about to be said. Let us put 
 ourselves into the hands of God, we are His ministers, and let us 
 abandon ourselves to His holy providence." The Abbe Gregoire, 
 in a sensible speech, combated the propositions of the Committee 
 of Tithes, and demanded that the clergy should be endowed with 
 
 territorial lands, which appeared^to him altogether more sure and 
 Digitized by Microsoft® ° 
 
THE DEBATE IS ENTERED UPON. I07 
 
 honourable; but except some country priests, no one is checked 
 
 by so moderate an opinion which preserves the right of the State. 
 
 The strife continues to rage between those who wish the Church 
 
 to remain a great and rich corporation, and those who would 
 
 reduce her to nothing more than a simple department of the 
 
 administration of the country. These last spoke with the haughty 
 
 and imperious calmness of men sure of conquering ; in their eyes, 
 
 the point was gained since the 2nd of November. The nation 
 
 declared mistress of the property of the Church, can do with it 
 
 what she wishes; the principle carried its consequence. They 
 
 did not fail to oppose to the violent claims of the high clergy the 
 
 ancient tradition of a Church gloriously poor, which conquered 
 
 the world without riches and without sword. " The enemies of 
 
 religion,'' said Treilhard, " have found their arguments in the 
 
 contrasts of a poor God who had not where to lay his head, and 
 
 the ministers of that same God who lived surrounded with all the 
 
 appliances of wealth and luxury." "When religion," adds Thouret, 
 
 " sent its ministers into society, did it say to them, ' Go, prosper 
 
 and accumulate ?' No, it said to them, ' Preach my morality and 
 
 my principles.' When it was necessary to assure their subsistence, 
 
 it said this single word, ' It is just that the priests should live by the 
 
 altar.' And we say, by an exact version of this sentence, ' It is 
 
 necessary that the public functionary should live by his functions.'" 
 
 There, indeed, is the inmost thought of the debated scheme, and it 
 
 is also its severest condemnation; for I do not see the advantages 
 
 of a functionary clergy passing from the extreme docility which 
 
 dishonours them to the political intrigues which trouble the State 
 
 without morally raising it. The civil constitution of the clergy is 
 
 quite in germ in these words; we shall soon see it develop from 
 
 them. "We have decreed the sale of 400 millions," said Thouret, 
 
 again ; " either the nation has right to the whole, or it had no 
 
 right to the part. Well, it is necessary to act. Can there be a 
 ° Digitized by Microsofm 
 
Io8 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 moment more pressing? Was there ever a National Assembly 
 clothed with higher prerogatives?" 
 
 The anger of the right rose like a swelHng wave after each 
 new speech of its adversaries: they roared rather than discussed; 
 In vain did some of their orators endeavour to establish that the 
 subsidy of the clergy would cost more than tlie ancient state of 
 things. It was known that if the tithes and the landed property 
 in reality left the Church less rich than the proposed payment, her 
 defenders would not have expressed so vehement an indignation in 
 the present discussion. The Bishop of Nancy by turns invoked the 
 interest of religion, placed thenceforth at the mercy of an unhappy 
 war or of a bad harvest, and that of the poor, deprived of the alms 
 which accrued to them, threatening the public treasury with an 
 increasing deficit in consequence of the imposition of new taxes. 
 He finished his speech by a grand protestation, which was ap- 
 plauded by all the members of his party; standing with uplifted hand 
 as for an heroic oath he cried : " I declare that we cannot participate 
 in, nor adhere, nor consent to the decree which may be enacted 
 on this matter, nor to all that may ensue." The Archbishop of 
 Aix is still more pathetic: "See, then," cried he, " the abyss to 
 which you have conducted us— the abyss where they wish to pre- 
 cipitate us. What has become of the promises which you made 
 us in the name of the God of peace?" After having called tc 
 mind the rapid succession of measures atteilipted on the eccle- 
 siastical property, each new decree annulling the guarantees which 
 accompanied the preceding ; after having anew offered a voluntarj 
 and considerable sacrifice of a loan of 400 millions, the prelate 
 pronounced these words of an ancient bishop : " You can despoi 
 us of our property, we do not give it you." The Abb6 de Montes 
 quieu, generally master of his words, gave proof of a sensitivenesi 
 in bad taste, which showed to what an extent he was moved 
 His speech is without msUksibi^lSr^m/okes the abstract right 
 
ANGER OF THE RIGHT. ■ 109 
 
 property for the sake of again raising the general' question already- 
 decided in November, and, then he seeks to move the Assembly 
 with pity for the fate of the dispossessed ecclesiastics. " What 
 genius of destruction," said he, "has passed over this empire? 
 I believe the sentiments of the Assembly to be pure, sincere; but 
 I believe that it is deceived. See the misfortunes which are 
 spread kround; it seems that here is the department of suffering; 
 there are some men who have devoted themselves to the over- 
 whelming of their fellow-citizens with sorrow; as soon as they 
 appear at the tribune, it is said, ' Come a sacrifice ! again one 
 more misfortune ! '" He finished by invoking " the God and the 
 religion of his fathers." 
 
 It was then that an incident took place which assumed the 
 greatest proportions and threw all Paris into the liveliest agitation. 
 Dom Gerle, a Carthusian, gained to the party of the Revolution, 
 whilst remaining attached to his order and his Church, thought to 
 conciliate the two causes which divided his heart as they divided 
 the Assembly, by renewing a motion already previously made by 
 the Bishop of Nancy, and which consisted in asking a formal vote to 
 proclaim that the Catholic religion was the national religion. " In 
 order. to close the mouths of those who calumniate the Assembly," 
 said Dom Gerle, " and to tranquillise those who fear that it may 
 admit all religions into France, it is necessary to decree that the 
 Catholic, Apostohc, and Roman religion is, and Shall for ever 
 remain, the religion of the nation, and that its worship shall 
 alone be authorised." Such a motion trampled under foot liberty 
 of conscience, caused an incessant threatening of persecution to 
 hover over religious minorities, and permitted the high clergy to 
 re-possess themselves of their privileges on the first opportunity. 
 Voted by the Assembly, it would have put an end, at the outset, 
 to the renovation of France, by riveting it to the most fatal 
 
 error of the ancient regime- , .If.jt passed, it mattered little what 
 Drgmzed by Microsoft® 
 
no THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 measures of reform were votedj the spirit of the past, sanctioned 
 with eclat, would have quickly overturned the fragile edifice of a 
 contradictory constitution. We understand the enthusiasm of the 
 right, and their eagerness to sustain a motion so important for 
 them, and so much the more useful that it did not come from 
 their ranks. Maury was heard, on going forth from the sitting, 
 to say in crossing the Tuileries, "We hold them!" A vast 
 plan of counter-revolution was immediately concocted, and pre- 
 parations were made for getting up a'scene calculated powerfully 
 to strike the public attention. The first day there was only a 
 skirmish, but by the vivacity of the words exchanged, it might be 
 perceived' that there was going to be a decisive collision between 
 the ancient regime and the Revolution. 
 
 Scarcely has Dom Gerle made his motion, than it is drowned in 
 acclamations. An objection from Charles de Lameth changes 
 this enthusiasm into fury. The Bishop of Clermont, thinking 
 himself in his pulpit, reminds them that a Christian ought to con- 
 fess his faith as soon as he is invited to do it, and that a Catholic 
 assembly has not even the right to discuss that which ought to 
 be a spontaneous sentiment. The right, as usual, rose quite 
 agitated, and one of its members, the old Goupil de Erefeln, 
 invoked the names of Clovis, Charlemagne, and Saint Louis. 
 Charles de Lameth asks where is the necessity of making a public 
 profession of faith in religion in the name of an assembly " which 
 has realised the first principle of the Gospel by humbling the 
 proud, and placing under its protection the people and the most 
 feeble. Has it not' realised these words of Jesus Christ: 'The 
 first shall be last?' " This sarcasm was not calculated to calm the 
 partisans of the motion of Dom Gerle. The same orator points 
 out its terrible gravity in a moment when fanaticism is awaking 
 on all sides, and awaits only a weapon to strike its adversaries, 
 
 Would it not be folly to forge this weapon and to sharpen it at the 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
AGITATION IN PARIS. Ill 
 
 National Tribune? The right, who know that the motion is 
 lost if it is discussed, wish to take the vote, and wish it the 
 more eagerly that Mirabeau rises to speak. In vain did the 
 majority of the Assembly pronounce in favour of postponing the 
 discussion till the morrow ; the party of the clergy do not even 
 answer to a roll-call required by it, and they do not withdraw until 
 long after the officials, with the view of preparing a theatrical 
 demonstration for the following sitting. 
 
 The news of the sitting quickly spreads in Paris ; the great city 
 is profoundly stirred, agitation is diffused, the biting and cutting 
 pen of Camille Desmoulins denounces the designs of the clergy 
 with that sarcasm which causes at once both laughter and trem- 
 bling. The journal — "The Paris Chronicle" — profusely circulated 
 in the faubourgs, informs the people, " by three hundred patriotic 
 trumpets of colporteurs,'' that the deputies of the right are met in 
 the church of the Capuchins to lay their plans for the morrow, so 
 as • to obtain by surprise a vote which should re-establish the 
 famous alliance of the altar and the throne. The denounced 
 gathering had in fact taken place; the leaders of the party had 
 decided that if the motion of Dom Gerle was rejected, they would 
 go forth at the same instant from the hall, traverse the Tuileries 
 in a body, to place in the hands of the king a solemn protestation 
 against an impious refusal. In order to give more eclat to this 
 protestation, they agreed all to repair to the sitting in black coats, 
 with swords at their sides. But the Court feared such a proceed- 
 ing, and the keeper of the seals warned the bishops and the 
 nobles that the king would not receive them.* At the same hour, 
 there was not less agitation at the Jacobins, at the Palais Royal, 
 and in the cafes. The district of the Cordeliers had decided on a 
 general enrolment to sustain the National Guard against the reac- 
 
 * " Memoires du Marquis de Ferrieres," I., p. 420. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
112 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 tionary plottings; at the cjub of the Jacobins they had persuaded 
 Dom Gerle to withdraw his motion. Bailly and Lafayette, 
 fearing a bloody collision, doubled all the guards, and assembled 
 considerable forces around the hall where the sittings were held. 
 The crowd occupied all the space left free by the soldiers. Its 
 irritation against the party of the bishops betrayed itself by violent 
 murmurs. The deputies of the right were hooted and hissed on 
 their way to the Assembly. 
 
 The stormy atmosphere outside contributed to increase the mental 
 excitement at the decisive moment of the debate. An amendment 
 had been proposed the previous evening to guarantee the security 
 of dissident worships, on condition that they should remain in the 
 shade. It was scarcely spoken of on the second day, because it 
 was understood that so vain a palliative left to the proposition all 
 its gravity, and tended to nothing less than to reconstitute the 
 religion of the State. It is impossible to reproduce this memorable 
 discussion, to repeat this cross-fire of interpellations, these hurried 
 interruptions, these calls to order imposed by the president. More 
 than once considerable sections of the Assembly rose, as one man, 
 with a single cry. Nevertheless, despite this disorder in a discussion 
 which moved the depths of hearts and thoughts, the question did 
 not for an instant cease to be presented with the utmost plainness 
 between the ancient claim which demanded official religious unity, 
 and the new claim which desired liberty of conscience. Words of* 
 profound meaning, and which deprecated as well the subjugation of 
 the Church as its exclusive domination, were pronounced at dif- 
 ferent times. The representative Bouchotte, thus answers an 
 unknown abbe, who demanded, in the name of the clergy of 
 France, that it should be decreed that the public exercise of the 
 Catholic religion should alone continue to be maintained as a 
 constitutional law of the State, that such measures should not' be 
 decreed in a political. Assemblv, as ^e consequence of such a 
 
DISCUSSION ON THE MOTION OF DOM GERLE. 1 13 
 
 decree would be to hinder the reform of all abuses proceeding 
 from the confusion of the temporal and the spiritual. The Baron 
 de Menou said, very sensibly, that if he loved to profess his 
 attachment to the Catholic religion, it did not follow that he should 
 require such a declaration from all the citizens. " My conscience 
 and my opinion," adds he, " belong to myself alone. Why should 
 I make my opinions dominant opinions ? There can be no domi- 
 nant religion; open your annals, you will see of what misfortunes 
 religious wars have been the source. Would you wish that the 
 National Assembly should become the instrument of the misfortunes 
 of the people? Ministers of religion, restored to yourselves, to your 
 functions, seek that a law be cherished, for the glory of which all 
 human laws can do nothing ! Do not go to put weapons into the 
 hand of God ! " M. de Menou proposed an order of the day, induced 
 by the debate, which, after having been modified a little by M. de 
 la Rochefoucauld, became the principal subject of deliberation. It 
 declared that "the majesty of religion, and the profound respect 
 which is due to it, do not permit it to become the subject of de- 
 liberation." Cazales could not obtain a hearing ; and it was with 
 great difficulty that M. de Virieu succeeded in resuming, in his own 
 name, the proposition of Dom Gerle. The right, so eager for the 
 voting the evening before, demand that the debate should recom- 
 mence, whilst the left are decided to make an end of it In vain 
 does the Abbe Maury cling to the tribune; he is compelled to quit 
 it by a formal vote, whereupon the big Viscount de Mirabeau takes 
 an oath to die as a martyr on his seat if they do not decree that 
 the Catholic religion is the religion of the nation. The strife is re- 
 newed, when the question, to which of the two propositions the 
 priority shall be granted, comes on for discussion. The fiery 
 D' Espremfoil boldly says that the respectful tone of the motion of 
 La "Rochefoucauld adds hypocrisy to insult; violently repulsed 
 from the tribune, he ^fe^zlJ/ fe^teW^^ ^^^^^ '^°^'^^' browned 
 
J 14 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 by murmurs: — "When the Jews crucified Jesus Christ, they said to 
 him, ' We salute thee, king of the Jews.'" * In vain was Mirabeau 
 already in conference with the Court; the genius of the Revolu- 
 tion possessed him too completely for him, on such a question, to 
 keep back the thoughts which were seething in him : it was neces- 
 sary that the burning lava should burst forth. Already, several 
 times, he had wished to ascend the tribune; he had interposed 
 from his place by cutting words, which had drawn upon him an 
 insulting interpellation from the Count de Clermont Lodeve ; but 
 he did not deign even to take notice of it, so completely did he 
 belong, at this hour at least, to the cause of liberty. Thus, when 
 M. d'Estournel, deputy of Cambrfesis, dared to appeal to the oath 
 which Louis XIV. had made on the 25th January, 1675, to main- 
 tain at Cambria the Catholic religion to the exclusion of any other, 
 Mirabeau could no longer contain himself, and opposing historic 
 remembrance to historic remembrance, he launched this vehement 
 apostrophe at the last speaker: — "I shall observe to that one of 
 the orators who has spoken before me, that there is no doubt that, 
 under a reign signalised by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 
 and which I shall not qualify, all kinds of intolerances may have 
 been sanctioned; but since historic citations are permitted in this 
 matter, I entreat you not to forget that here, from this tribune 
 where I speak to you — and his gesture completes his thought — may 
 be seen the window whence the hand of a French monarch, armed 
 against his subjects by execrable factionists, who mingled temporal 
 interests with the sacred interests of religion, fired the arquebus 
 which was the signal of Saint Bartholomew. I say no more of it: 
 there is no room to dehberate." 
 
 The majority of the Assembly, in demanding the vote, believed 
 that they had put an end to the debate; but the clerical party re- 
 
DEFEAT OF THE MOTION. > I15 
 
 newed it on the occasion of each amendment. The Abbe Maury 
 
 presented one which was only the proposition of Dom Gerle, 
 
 scarcely modified, but he could not, under this pretext, get a 
 
 hearing for the long speech which oppressed him. The Viscount 
 
 Mirabeau was not more fortunate. The Marquis de Foucault 
 
 contends that the armed force which surrounds the Assembly 
 
 takes away all liberty from discussion; that the province which he 
 
 has the honour of representing has not sent him to deliberate amid 
 
 the tumult of arms; and that, supposing the National Guard to have 
 
 been convoked for the safety of the deputies, previous intimation 
 
 of it ought to have been given, in order that they might not be 
 
 terrified. The word was unfortunate in the midst of a French 
 
 Assembly. So the unlucky orator was forced to declare that as for 
 
 himself, he was not frightened. " Never," added he, " have fear 
 
 and fright taken possession of me, and they never shall." Then of 
 
 what did he complain? His last words were lost in bursts of 
 
 laughter. General Lafayette won great applause by assuring the 
 
 Assembly that there was not a National Guard who would not give 
 
 the last drop' of his blood in order to lend a strong hand to the 
 
 execution of its decrees, and to secure the personal inviolability of 
 
 its members. The Abb6 Maury and the Viscount de Mirabeau 
 
 were not less hooted, and'incurred some danger on going forth from 
 
 the sitting. The order of the day of La Rochefoucauld had been 
 
 voted in these terms : — ^" The National Assembly, considering that 
 
 it neither has nor can have any power over consciences and religious 
 
 opinions ; that themajesty ofreligion, and theprofoundrespect which 
 
 is due to it, do not permit it to become the subject of deliberation ; 
 
 considering, further, that the attachment of the National Assembly 
 
 to the Cathohc, Apostolic, and Roman worship should not be put 
 
 in doubt at the very moment when this worship is about to be 
 
 placed by it in the first class of the public expenses, and when, by 
 
 a unanimous movem^^.^it ^as^grov^ its respect in the only 
 
 I 2 
 
Il6 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION; 
 
 way which could be suitable to the character of the Nationa 
 Assembly, has decreed, and does decree, that it neither can no 
 ought to deliberate on the motion proposed, and that it is abou 
 to resume the order of the day concerning the ecclesiastica 
 property." 
 
 The evening was still very agitated : the Tuileries were closed 
 and the sentinels doubled; the democratic press continued t( 
 breathe hostility against the clergy. " Our enemies," we read in th( 
 " Annales Patriotiques,"* " have spoken of separation and of pro 
 testation. Yesterday morning they tried everything to prevent thi 
 decree which is about to declare the nation the owner of the pre 
 perty of the clergy. Has not God said to us, ^ Leave all and folhtt 
 mel ' But the artifice of the aristocratic priests is known; the; 
 wish, if religion is declared national, to conclude therefrom that thi 
 clergy cannot be deprived of their territorial property, and, if thi 
 motion is rejected, to cry out impiety, sacrilege, and to cause th^ 
 defenders of the people to be stoned to death by fanatics." Ther 
 was again, after the sitting, a gathering of the members of the righ 
 at the Capuchins. They decided that they would not protest, bu 
 that they would make a declaration. On the morrow, the 14th c 
 April, the rough draft of a declaration was read, which denounce! 
 to all France that the National Assembly had formally refused fr 
 decree that the Catholic religion was the religion of the natior 
 " We believe, in consequence," said the draft, "that it is our dut 
 to make known to the French the dangers which threaten th 
 religion of their fathers, which, if it had been declared national ani 
 dominant, would not, from its tolerant character, have troubled th 
 religious opinions of any individual." The Abbe Maury wishe 
 for a more energetic language. They had not time to decide an] 
 thing, and on the morrow, Sunday, the meeting of the right had t 
 
DEFEAT OF THE MOTION. I17 
 
 separate before the clamours of a riotously-assembled population, 
 who, under pretext of serving liberty, violated one of its most 
 sacred rights. But, if the declaration was not formally drawn up by 
 this section of the Assembly, each of its members charged himself 
 with the care of protesting on his own account, and of spreading 
 irritation in the country. We shall soon see its dangerous effects. 
 At Paris, the war of the pen is carried on with great vivacity. 
 The Abbe Maury was bantered in numerous pamphlets of an in- 
 sulting tone^ the most biting was that entitled, "Testament of the 
 Abbe Maury." " The Acts of the Apostles" jeered the Assembly 
 quite as unsparingly. 
 
 After the defeat of the motion of Dom Gerle, the discussion on 
 the propositions of the Committee of Tithes was completely useless, 
 for the Assembly, by its vote, had accepted it in principle. The 
 debate was continued, especially among the Ecclesiastics ; some 
 parish priests forcibly declaimed against the abuses born of riches 
 in the Church, and the Abbe'd' Eymar had the boldness to answer 
 them that a poor religion, as Christianity at its first appearance, is 
 good for slaves, mutilated by their masters, who have need of 
 being consoled for the pains of life by the prospect of heaven ; but 
 that a rich religion can alone obtain consideration in a flourishing 
 kingdom. The offers which the Archbishop of Aix had made in 
 the name of the clergy were uselessly reiterated ; the Assembly dis- 
 dainfully passed on, and equally ignored the new protestation of 
 the Bishop of Clermont, that they no longer took part in the de- 
 liberation. The articles presented by Chasset were successively 
 voted, and the principle of the payment of worships by the State 
 was sanctioned.* 
 
 * See for this important deliberation of the Constituent " Moniteur," 
 of April, " r Histoire Parlementaire of Buchez at Roux, V. p. 345 — 
 396;" "the Memoires of the Marquis de Ferrieres I. ;'' "1" Histoire of 
 M. Louis Blanc," coniaQisiUz947ljyMiimsst€&>siccount of it. 
 
Il8 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 The result of these memorable debates was essentially contra- 
 dictory. The Assembly had rightly refused to proclaim a national 
 religion, and it prepared a civil religion. To the fiery partisans of 
 the union of the Throne and Altar, the orators of the majority had 
 replied that religious convictions are not determined by vote; that 
 what touches conscience belongs to the individual ; and that no one 
 has the right to render his own opinions dominant. Meanwhile 
 the payment of worships had been voted on this preamble, de- 
 veloped by Chasset, " that worship is the duty of all, that all are 
 supposed to practice it, and that the holy militia is maintained just 
 as the army for the benefit of all." If the Catholic worship is con- 
 sidered by the Legislator as the duty of all, we do not see why he 
 should refuse to proclaim it national worship, nor do we more 
 clearly comprehend on what principle rests this right of individual 
 convictions to which the Baron de Menou had appealed with so 
 much plainness. In putting religion, in the same category with the 
 army, the marine, and the magistracy, they fall back into the rut, 
 out of which they wished to get, at the time they were repu- 
 diating with eclat the principle of a State religion. On the other 
 side, the party of the bishops and nobles were not less illogical 
 in taking their stand on the independence of the Church, in 
 order to spurn the pay of the Government at the very moment 
 they were demanding that the Catholic worship should be formally 
 adopted by the civil power. It. was to place themselves on the 
 ground of legal prescriptions, which, favourable one day to their 
 faith, might, on the morrow, turn against them, without their having 
 the right to complain; it was to desert the inviolable asylum of 
 liberty of religion which is the individual conscience; it was to 
 forget that this last should be placed beyond the reach of the civil 
 power as well for privilege as for constraint, for all privilege 
 proceeds from good pleasure, and good pleasure is the negation of 
 "S'^'- Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
INCONSISTENCIES OF BOTH PARTIES. 1 19 
 
 But the gravest matter wasj that the clerical party demanded a 
 monopoly, and wished to establish their right to the exclusion of 
 the right of the religious minorities. Now, right is indivisible; 
 we obtain it for ourselves only by claiming it for others. Accord- 
 ingly, an official and paid clergy was an advance on a privileged 
 and dominant clergy. Religious equality triumphed; but we 
 must be on our guard against confounding it with true religious 
 liberty which is inseparable from the independence of the spiritual 
 society. It would be unjust to be as severe on the majority of 
 the Assembly as on the party of the bishops. The difference was 
 great between a grievous inconsistency, and a return, pure and 
 simple, to the ancient regime. The adoption of the motion of 
 La Rochefoucauld was an important triumph for the liberal cause. 
 The preamble which declared that the National Assembly could 
 exercise no -power over consciences, and that the majesty of 
 religion did not permit it to become the subject of deliberation, 
 was sufficient to condemn beforehand all the abuses of power to 
 which they were too soon to allow themselves to be driven. 
 The separation of the temporal and the spiritual was acknow- 
 ledged in principle j and Mirabeau admirably summed up in two 
 strokes the doctrine which had prevailed, when he cried out: 
 "This Assembly is national and not theological!" Let us know 
 how to discern progress in the vacillating march of humanity, 
 always divided between its reason and its passions. 
 
 We have suflSciently dwelt upon the faults and inconsistencies 
 of our fathers in this phase of the French Revolution, and we 
 shall have more than one occasion to point out the fatal results 
 of their errors ; all that they refused to the independence of the 
 religious society has been to the detriment of general liberty. 
 But the abolition of a State religion, properly so called, supported 
 by monopoly and oppression, was a valuable conquest. Worship 
 was no longer iorSA^^^ys bWio^o^S^"^' ^s the leaders of the 
 
I20 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 right had imprudently demanded; religious equality in respect to 
 rights, if not to emoluments, was acknowledged. 
 
 The National Assembly could not adopt the motion of Dom 
 Gerle without contradicting themselves, after the measiares which 
 they had taken in favour of the Protestants and of a section of the 
 nation less unhappy in the past, but placed under the ban of a 
 more overwhelming contempt. The Jews also participated in the 
 reparative work effected by the Constituent. In the sitting of the 
 nth of February, 1790, the Assembly took into consideration a 
 motion in favour of the Protestants who demanded a decree " to 
 prevent the despotism of the deceased Louis XIV. from weighing 
 on their posterity," and to order the restitution of the " confiscated 
 property to the Reformers expatriated at the time of the revoca- 
 tion of the Edict of Nantes." A formal decree restored all the 
 rights of French citizens to the descendants of the refugees, on 
 the sole condition of returning to France and taking the civic 
 oath. Already eligibility to all employments had been restored 
 to them. The decree which levelled all the barriers standing in 
 the way of the Protestants, was passed on the 24th of December, 
 1789, on the occasion of the Declaration of Rights. The article 
 of eligibility is thus expressed : " The National Assembly decrees, 
 I St, that the non-Catholics, who shall otherwise have fulfilled all 
 the conditions prescribed in preceding decrees relating to election, 
 shall be eligible in all the departments of administration without 
 exception; 2nd, that the non-Catholics are qualified for all civil 
 and military employments as other citizens." The loth of March 
 following, Rabaut Saint-Etienne, the son of the old Huguenot 
 minister on whose head a price had been so many times fixed in 
 his long apostleship in the desert, wrote to his father: "The 
 president of the National Assembly is at your feet." He had 
 succeeded the Abbe de Montesquieu in the chair of the Con- 
 stituent. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
CIVIC RIGHTS GRANTED TO THE JEWS. 121 
 
 The decree of the 24th of December contained, in regard to 
 the Jews, a reservation thus couched: " Without meaning to make 
 any innovation in reference to the Jews, concerning whose con- 
 dition the National Assembly refrains from pronouncing any 
 opinion." How can we be astonished at this postponement, 
 when we remember that a few years ago, free England still 
 refused to the Jews the right of taking a real part in political life, 
 by placing on the threshold of the parliament an oath which no 
 Jew could take? Finally, it was not so much the religious position 
 of the Jews which awakened the scruples of the Assembly as their 
 extreme unpopularity in certain provinces, as Alsace, where they 
 prevailed and oppressed the people by their usuries. There was a 
 momentary coalition for the purpose of opposing their political 
 re-instatement. To the honour of Robespierre, be it told, he 
 refused to countenance such a manoeuvre. " None of the indi- 
 viduals of this class," said he, on the 23rd of December, "can be 
 deprived of the sacred rights which the title of man gives him. 
 This cause is the general cause; it is necessary to decree the 
 principle." The principle had been admirably laid down the 
 evening before by Count de Clermont-Tonnerre. " Leave con- 
 sciences free; let sentiment and thought, freely directed towards 
 heaven, not be crimes which society punishes with the loss of social 
 rights, or else proclaim a national religion, arm it with the sword, and 
 tear up your Declaration of Rights." The deputies of Alsace in 
 the issue carried with them the Assembly and Mirabeau himself, 
 although he had said that in the new government all men 
 should* be men and citizens. They recoiled before the furious 
 hate of the Alsatian peasants. The postponement was pro- 
 nounced. 
 
 The question was soon brought up again, at first by a petition 
 
 from the Jews of Bordeaux, who demanded that New France 
 
 should not remain behind the ancient monarchy, which had 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
122 THE CHURCH A.ND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 granted, by letters patent, to the Jews from Portugal, Spain, and 
 Avignon, settled in the south of France, the rights of active 
 citizens. The Assembly could only confirm a demand so just by 
 its decree of the 28th of January, 1790; it still maintained the 
 postponement for the German Jews. The Jews of Paris presented 
 the same day a petition strongly supported by the representative 
 Godard, lawyer to the parliament. They had the honour of the 
 sitting, and their petition was inserted in the " Moniteur.'' They 
 showed that France should, from motives of justice and interest, 
 grant without delay to all Jews the rights of citizenship, because 
 they were domiciled in this empire, and served tHeir country by all 
 the means in their power. " There can be,'' they said, "only two 
 classes of men in a state, citizens and foreigners ; to prove that we 
 are not foreigners, is to prove that we are citizens." It was only 
 in its last session but one, on Wednesday, the 28th September, 
 1791, that the National Assembly yielded to these just demands. 
 The decree was as liberal as possible. It declared that " the 
 National Assembly, considering that the conditions necessary to 
 be a French citizen are fixed by the Constitution, and that 
 every man who, uniting the said conditions, takes the civic oath, 
 and engages to fulfil all the duties which the Constitution imposes, 
 has a right to all the advantages which it secures ; revokes all post- 
 ponements, reserves and exceptions inserted in preceding decrees 
 relative to individual Jews who shall take the civic oath." 
 
 The comedians had not to wait as long as the Jews for the 
 acknowledgment of their rights of active citizens. The Assembly 
 resolved the question in their favour in the month of December, 
 1789, the same day on which it was raised by the Abbe Maury, 
 with a display of austerity strange enough in his mouth. The 
 orator forgot that the least respectable of comedians is he who 
 conceals under a priestly dress all worldly passions. 
 
 Let us not depreciate the great work of the Constituent ; let us 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
CIVIC RIGHTS GRANTED TO THE COMEDIANS. 1 23 
 
 estimate at its proper worth so precious a conquest as equality 
 before the law assured to all beliefs ; but neither let us forget that 
 equality does not supply the place of real independence. We 
 shall see, only too early, what the measures contrary to religious 
 liberty have cost the Revolution, into what violent and fruitless 
 agitations they have precipitated it, and how they have driven its 
 representatives to fresh acts of violence, — a sad circle in which a 
 fatal error too long enclosed it. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Cbaptec in. 
 
 The Civil Constitution of the Clergy. — The Assembly transformed into 
 
 a Council. 
 
 The day on which the National Assembly decreed the payment of 
 worships, from the motive that religion is a great public service, 
 and that its ministers are ofificers of morality, they thereby bound 
 themselves to organise this like all other branches of the public 
 service; a first fault drew another after it, and a generous 
 Assembly was about to inflict the greatest blow upon that hberty 
 which they were so desirous of establishing. We do not deny that 
 they found themselves in face of numerous and crying abuses; but 
 for the civil power to wish authoritatively to repair religiotis wrongs, 
 and to set up for a council, when it was simply a political Con- 
 stituent, was by the deplorable confusion of the temporal and 
 spiritual, to fall again into the mortal error of the Ancient French 
 society, and to sanction the most fatal of its abuses. Born of the 
 coalition of the philosophers and Jansenists, the civil Constitution 
 of the clergy was an intolerant revenge against the intolerance' of 
 a Church which had retained force when she had lost respect, 
 maintained the bull Unigenitus, and caused the writings of free 
 thinkers to be burnt on the Greve ; and this at a time when she had 
 no longer the ardent faith which gives sincerity to fanaticism. • No 
 fault was more grave and deplorable in its results. It rendered 
 legitimate, acts of resistance which were only odious when they 
 claimed the privilege of an exclusive State religion, and which 
 
 covered themselves with the shield of right as soon as they had to 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
BILL OF THE CIVIL CONSTITUTION OF THE CLERGY. T25 
 
 defend the sanctuary; they were from that time established to 
 invoke religious liberty. With the passionate ability of political 
 parties, they opposed all the new institutions, as well the wise 
 and glorious reforms, as the abuses of power. The reaction was 
 organised in the most dangerous manner, from the moment that 
 the Revolution awoke by its measures the drowsy religious con- 
 science, and awoke it to give it battle. 
 
 The warmest friends of liberty have acknowledged that the civil 
 Constitution of the clergy was the work rather of a religious sect 
 long oppressed than of a political Assembly. " Finding the oppor- 
 tunity favourable for drawing down vengeance on their oppressors," 
 we read in the " Memoirs of Alexander Lameth," " or, at least, 
 for reducing them to powerlessness, the Jansenists of the Assembly, 
 for the most part members of the parkments, conceived the idea 
 of making their doctrines prevail; and the hope of succeeding 
 therein was strengthened in their mind by the thought that they 
 were approaching more nearly to the republican forms of the 
 primitive Church." * The Jansenists exercised the preponderating 
 influence in the Ecclesiastical Committee, and the Bill of the 
 Civil Constitution was presented to the Assembly by Martineau, 
 who was one of the most respected adherents of the sect. This 
 fact alone shows how much the discussion which was about to 
 open surpassed the sphere of a political Assembly. This latter 
 was to transform itself into a theological arena ; and the two great 
 parties which had divided the Church of France were going to 
 meet in a doctrinal combat, of which the disciples of Voltaire and 
 Rousseau should be the judges. 
 
 Before resuming the debate, opened on the 27th of May, 1790, 
 on the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, let us give a rapid analysis 
 
 * " Histoire de I'Assemblee Constituante," by Alex. Lameth, II. 
 P" ^ ^"^ ' Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
126 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 of the Bill. It was divided into four titles. The first, concerning 
 ecclesiastical offices, substituted for the ancient boundary of the 
 Church of France an entirely new boundary, modelled on the 
 division of the country, into eighty-three departmeats. All the 
 ancient bishoprics, which were not included in the designations of 
 the Bill, were suppressed. The kingdom reckoned no more than 
 ten metropolitan districts ( arrondissements ). The sth Article was 
 thus worded : " It is forbidden to every Church or parish of the 
 French empire, and to every French citizen, to acknowledge in any 
 case and under any pretext whatsoever, the authority of bishops or 
 metropolitans whose see shall be established under the rule of a 
 foreign power, or that of its delegates residing in France or else- 
 where." The import of such an Article is easily perceived; it 
 was almost the overturning of the Papal authority. The whole 
 numerous and expensive episcopal and archiepiscopal staff was 
 suppressed, as well as the titles and offices not included in the 
 Constitution, such as prebendaries, canonries, abbeys, priories, &c. 
 The cathedral church became a parish church. The seminaries 
 were not to exceed the number of the bishoprics. But the gravest 
 measure of this title was that which radically transformed the epis- 
 copal power, by taking from it sovereign authority in the diocese, 
 and by giving to it an habitual and permanent council, composed 
 of the vicars and directors of seminaries, without the help of which 
 it could accomplish no act of jurisdiction in what concerns the 
 government of the diocese and seminary (Art. 15). The parishes 
 were reduced like the bishoprics; the towns or cities not com- 
 prising more than six thousand souls were to be content with one 
 only. 
 
 Title II. was the most decidedly innovating, for it substituted 
 election for the canonical forms used in the nomination of titulary 
 ecclesiastics, &c. It declared in its ist Article: " Reckoning from 
 
 the day of the publication of the .presrat decree, there shall be 
 Digitized by Mibrosofmi ' 
 
BILL OF THE CIVIL CONSTITUTION OF THE CLERGY. 127 
 
 known but one way of providing for cures and bishoprics, that is 
 to say, the form of elections by ballot and absolute plurality of 
 votes." No religious condition was in:iposed on the electors; the 
 vote was to take place after mass on the Sunday morning, but the 
 same ticket was available for political and religious elections : 
 Jews and Protestants could, like Catholics, take part in these 
 elections. The electors of the Departmental Assembly nominated 
 the bishops (Art. 3), and those of the district Administrative 
 Assembly nominated the parish priests, under the sole condition 
 that the elected should have fulfilled the ecclesiastical functions 
 for a time determined by the law. They left to the metropolitan 
 the right of examining the new bishop, as to the bishop that of ex- 
 amining the elected parish priest, but both could object to the 
 election only by assigning the reason of refusal in writing, and after 
 deliberatic^ in the Episcopal Council. The rejected dignitary could 
 always have recourse to the appeal because of abuses (Pappel comme. 
 d'abus), (Art. 17, Art. 36). The power of the bishop, already 
 •limited on this point, was still more so in what concerned the 
 election of his vicars; these last are really his colleagues, since 
 they have a dehberative voice in his council. He can choose 
 them only in his diocese on certain determined conditions, and he 
 cannot depose them except by the advice of the council, in con- 
 sequence of a deliberation which shall have taken place by a 
 plurality of voices, with knowledge of cause. 
 
 Title III. fixes the pay of the clergy, that is to say, it reduces 
 it considerably. The Bishop of Paris has only 50,000 francs ; the 
 pay of the other bishops varies from 20,000 francs to 12,000 francs, 
 according to the importance of their bishopric. The same prin- 
 ciple of reduction is apphed to the parish priests and to the vicars. 
 
 Title IV. imposes the law of residence on all those who are 
 
 clothed with an ecclesiastical office, and places them under the 
 
 surveillance and authority <jf the municipaHties. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
128 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 This fii'st cursory view of the Bill reveals all its gravity. In vain 
 do the fervent apologists of the French Revolution contend that il 
 respected the dignity and independence of the religious society, by 
 contenting itself with purely external reforms which did not touch 
 dogma. To disturb to this degree the organisation of the Catholic 
 Church — to decide the very delicate question of its relations with 
 the Papacy — entirely to transform the episcopate, by making of it 
 a kind of Constitutional sovereignty with responsible ministers — to 
 settle the whole ecclesiastical edifice on popular election, w^s 
 evidently to do a reforming work which, coming from a political 
 Assembly, was an abuse of power without excuse. It matters little 
 that this or that proposed reform was good in itself, and was right- 
 fully claimed from the most ancient traditions of Christianity. 
 Nothing could redeem the vice of its origin'; the Church was, in 
 the issue, placed in absolute dependence on the civil po-frer. Hfer 
 representatives were right in protesting against such a Bill, and in 
 disputing the territory foot by foot after having combated the prin- 
 ciple of it in general discussion; only it was, indeed, late to claim 
 a reforming council. If they had first laboured to remove the 
 scandalous abuses which struck all eyes,- they would have been 
 listened to sooner when they declared themselves prepared to 
 remove them. What a misfortune for the Church of France not 
 to have sooner, and for her own sake, participated in the eager 
 demand for reform which agitated the generation of 1789. 
 
 The discussion, opened on the 27th . of May, was wanting in 
 
 dignity and eclat — the game was lost beforehand. The clergy had 
 
 exhausted grandiloquent protestations in the discussion raised by 
 
 the motion of Dom Gerle. However determined they were this 
 
 time in their resistance, their marchings out with great display 
 
 from the hall of the Assembly had the effect of previously-arranged 
 
 clap-trap, and as they finished by re-entering with the deputies of 
 
 the right who had followed them, this retreat to a sacred mount 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
GENERAL DISCUSSION. 129 
 
 whence they so soon descended again in order to dispute a shred of 
 privilege, no longer astonished anyone, and the deUberation con- 
 tinued as if nothing had occurred. The general discussion was 
 not prolonged. What purpose would it have served ? The oppo- 
 sition of principles was radical. 
 
 The Archbishop of Aix, in an agitated and confused speech, ex- 
 pressed the grief and indignation of his party. He declared, not 
 without dignity, that in the present deliberation, the question was 
 of an order of things which kings and magistrates were bound to 
 obey. " Since the committee recall to us our duty, they will 
 permit us to remind them of our rights. We must bring- to their 
 recollection the indispensable authority of the Church. The 
 question is of the truths of religion, — of purely spiritual jurisdic- 
 tion. The Church alone can take care of the spiritual. We can 
 in no wise renounce the forms prescribed by councils. We propose 
 to you to consult the Galilean Church by a National Council." 
 Such a proposition was unassailable. It was the only liberal one, 
 and it would certainly have passed, if the Assembly, in adopting 
 the principle of the payment of worship, had not already reduced 
 the Church to a mere department of the Administration. Treilhard, 
 in the sitting of the 29th of May, caused the hand of the State to 
 be rudely felt by the defenders of the independence of the Church. 
 In the first part of his speech he establishes the utility, the time- 
 liness of the proposed reforms ; he forcibly points out the disorders 
 of the ancient state of things which sanctioned the most scandalous 
 inequality amongst the ministers of the same worship, which put 
 the elections of beneficiary ecclesiastics at the mercy of the in- 
 trigues of a corrupt court, too often ruled by the caprices of a 
 favourite, and engendered a thousand grievous disorders to the 
 greatest detriment of Christianity. All these reflections were, in 
 fact, perfectly just. The orator was equally right when he showed 
 that the scheme approg^jig^ijigt^feo^ primitive Church than 
 
130 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 the present organisation of the Church of France ; and that the 
 choice of the apostle who replaced Judas had not been otherwise 
 made than by popular election. — Only, to reason in a theological 
 manner at the National Tribune was a great mistake, and what 
 would have been perfectly in place in a Church convocation, was 
 out of place in a political Assembly. Treilhard in vain affirmed 
 that dogma alone is of Divine institution, and eludes the cogni- 
 zance of the civil power; discipline, which touches the inmost 
 organisation of religious society ought, for the same reason, to be 
 dependent on it. When he cried out at the end of his speech : 
 "Your decrees will inflict no blow on this holy religion, — they 
 will restore it to its primitive purity, and you will be truly 
 Christians of the Gospel" — he contradicted himself; for if these 
 decrees truly restored the Church to its primitive purity, they had 
 a considerable religious import, and the pretence of making, by 
 decree. Christians according to the Gospel, was the heaviest blow 
 to a religion which ceases to be holy from the day in which it is 
 nothing more than a political institution. 
 
 No new argument was presented in the general discussion. 
 The parish priest, Leclerc, energetically developed the opinion 
 sustained by the Archbishop of Aix; he showed clearly that the 
 scheme bordered on Presbyterianism, that is to say, on the most 
 radical change in the organisation of the Church, and the Church 
 was not to be consulted ! Goulard, parish priest of Roanne, sup- 
 ported him by analogous considerations, and he foreshadowed, in 
 gloomy anticipation, the abasement into which a paid and official 
 clergy would fall. To vote the bill, according to him, was to 
 undertake an actual reformation, and to follow in the wake of 
 Luther. He was not mistaken. The end of his speech is very 
 fine, very elevated. " If you sincerely wish the reform of abuses, 
 authorise the assemblies of the provincial councils. I beseech 
 you, by the faith, by this^Kmt i^cilitia^olfminciple of the division of 
 
GENERAL DISCUSSION. 13I 
 
 the powers which is repugnant to the confounding of the civil power 
 and the ecclesiastical jurisdiction ; I beseech you, in the name of 
 the God of peace, to reject every innovation which would alarm 
 the faithful. The intention of the nation is not to transform you 
 into a council." 
 
 The intervention of Robespierre, on the opening of this im- 
 portant debate, has not been sufficiently remarked. He brought 
 to it the thought of Rousseau in all its intolerance. A civil re- 
 ligion was one of his most cherished projects. Jealous of securing 
 to the people an undivided sovereignty which he confounded with 
 liberty, Rousseau had comprehended that the greatest obstacle to 
 this despotism of the multitude would come, from those free 
 beliefs of the soul which escape the power of majorities. He had, 
 therefore, taken all his precautions against this invincible rebel, 
 which is called the religious conscience. He had beforehand 
 sacrificed it to his hundred-headed idol, by conferring on the 
 people the right of imposing, under penalty of death, the religion 
 which seemed to them the most useful to the public weal. Robes- 
 pierre brought these fine maxims to the tribune with the insolent 
 rudeness of the flatterers of the multitude. Setting out from the 
 principle that priests are simple magistrates in the social order, 
 he drew from it three conclusions : First, that it belongs to society, 
 that is to say, to the State, to determine what functions are useful ; 
 whence results the right of suppressing all ecclesiastical offices 
 which appear to it superflueus, and particularly those which re- 
 ceive foreign investiture. In the second place, this magistracy, 
 as others, ought to depend absolutely on the people, and to 
 emanate from their electoral urns. In fine, it belongs to the 
 people alone to proportion the pay to the utility of the office. 
 Robespierre goes further, and insinuates that the people have the 
 right to constrain their priests to be married, in order to attach 
 them by real ties iodi^^^S^icrolAfm^^ not possible to treat 
 
 K 2 
 
132 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 conscience with greater insolence, or more outrageously to profane 
 the inalienable sanctuary of religious belief. We see what remains 
 to God after the democratic Caesar has taken all that he imagines 
 to accrue to him. The national divinity is to issue from the 
 ballot-box and to follow all its contingent chances. These maxims 
 sanctioned the most abominable tyrannies. 
 
 The battle was fought and lost by the right at three different 
 times for each of the principal titles of the bill.. The first title 
 raised two principal questions, that of the ecclesiastical juris- 
 diction, and that of the extent of the episcopal power. According 
 to canonical right, as interpreted by the Ancient Church of France, 
 religious authority confers not only powers on priests, but deter- 
 mines also, in order to avoid conflicts and disorders, the sphere 
 in which they shall be exercised. The scheme of the Civil 
 Constitution overturned the whole ancient jurisdiction by sup- 
 pressions and unions. The whole of the theological discussion 
 always ended with the decisive argument of the omnipotence of 
 the State, which the vote of the Assembly hastened to apply. 
 The prohibition to acknowledge the authority of the foreign 
 bishops was softened by the following addition, which was only a 
 vain palliative : " The whole without prejudice to the unity of the 
 faith and of the communion which shall be maintained with the 
 visible head of the Church." It could be no longer a question except 
 of an entirely mystic communion. The second question was more 
 fully discussed ; it touched on the exten t of the episcopal power. An 
 important section of the Assembly wished to suppress the superior 
 grade of the episcopal hierarchy, and no longer to acknowledge 
 either archbishops or metropolitan bishops. In reality, what they 
 1 desired was the acknowledgment of the equality of all bishops, 
 I not excepting the Bishop of Rome. Treilhard gave distinct utter- 
 ance to this principle, amid the furious clamours of the right, 
 and, despite the sol^^ij^g^^^^^jj,^f the bishop of Clermont, 
 
DISCUSSION OF THE ARTICLES. 133 
 
 " Saint Peter," said he, " presided at the Council of Jerusalem, 
 but this presidency gave him no jurisdiction over the apostles. 
 I do not know, in the first and second centuries of the Church, 
 any example of a bishop who exercised any jurisdiction over 
 another bishop." Whereupon d'Espremenil cried out, not with- 
 out reason : " I reply to the question of M. Treilhard, that the 
 Assembly is transformed into a schismatic and Presbyterian 
 Council." On the question of the metropolitans, the Assembly 
 adopted the most moderate measure, and the right of appeal was 
 maintained. They decided, almost without discussion, one of the 
 gravest innovations proposed to them, that which gave to the 
 bishop a council with deliberative voice. The remainder of the 
 chapter had no more importance, and was rapidly voted. 
 
 The second chapter had a still more formidable bearing than 
 the first on the Church of France, for it changed its basis by 
 making all the ecclesiastical dignities spring from popular election. 
 Appeal was made to the example of the Primitive Church ; but 
 the people who then chose their ministers were not a confused 
 mass, they were an organised religious society, composed of sincere 
 believers. At the time of these memorable debates the question was 
 to deliver the Church, at all hazards, from indiscriminate political 
 balloting ; for the amendment presented by Gregoire, to the effect 
 that non-Catholics should not take part in the nomination of 
 parish priests and bishops, was rejected ; that of the parish priest, 
 Jaquemard, who demanded that the bishops should be nominated 
 by the ecclesiastical electors, did not obtain a better reception. 
 Robespierre harshly replied that it was not true that the people, 
 as a whole, were too corrupt to make a wise choice, and that the 
 clergy were not purer than the people. Camus was not more 
 happy in proposing that the parish priests should unite with the 
 electors of the departmental assemblies in the election of bishops. 
 Barnave replied that ihat would be tofavour the plottings and 
 
134 'THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 electoral intrigues of the candidates who could act directly in favour 
 of their own election. (^Article 21, of the same chapter, passed 
 without discussion ; it was big with storms, for it imposed on the 
 newly-elected the oath to be faithful to the nation, the law, and 
 the king, and to maintain, with all their power, the Constitution 
 voted by the National Assembly. That was to prepare the 
 most formidable opposition, since the Constitution was no longer 
 simply political ; it touched on the organisation of the Church ; 
 the necessity of directly concurring in its maintenance could not 
 fail to awaken grave religious scruples. The third chapter, which 
 treated of the pay of the new clergy, provoked an eloquent speech 
 from Cazales, who endeavoured to prove that religion would hence- 
 forth be separated from charity, and that being no longer able to 
 bestow its benefits on poverty, it would fall into discredit. Robes- 
 pierre replied that the founder of Christianity had instituted a 
 poor clergy; that legislators were not to submit the life of men, 
 the happiness of the people, to the caprice and arbitrary will of 
 a few dignitaries; and that it was much better to succour the 
 destitute by the administration, whilst founding true equality. 
 Chapelier observed that the poor curates with limited incomes 
 had shown a much more active charity than the pompous prelates. 
 There was some cavilling about figures; but the propositions of 
 the Ecclesiastical Committee passed almost entire, although the 
 Abbe Gouttes and the Abbe Gregoire had requested that the parish 
 priests should receive the half of their pay in landed estates. The 
 title on residence passed without difficulty. 
 
 The whole of the bill was adopted on the i 7tli of June. The 
 thought which inspired it clearly sprung from that word of Camus, 
 pronounced on the ist of June : " The Church is in the State, 
 the State is not in the Church. We are a National Convention ; 
 we have assuredly the power to change religion." This was to forget 
 that liberty does not ^g^i^]^^ ^X.p^§^ the sovereignty of the 
 
RETROSPECTIVE APPLICATION ADMITTED. 135 
 
 State, even when this sovereignty is collective and has constituted 
 itself into a National Convention, but rather in restraining and 
 arresting it before conscience, before thought, before all that de- 
 pends solely on the individual. The sequel of events was to 
 prove that the most popular State cannot, with impunity, touch 
 the affairs of the soul, and that when it has become entangled in 
 so delicate and perilous a regulation-making, it is sure to provoke 
 the most indomitable resistance. 
 
 A measure to complete the Civil Constitution of the clergy re- 
 mained to be taken. The question was of regulating the pay of 
 the ecclesiastics at present in office. Should the new law have a 
 retrospective action? Should the reductions bear on the large 
 salaries of the dignitaries of the high clergy, who had entered into 
 orders on certain conditions, the abrogation of which they could 
 not have foreseen ? , Such was the question which presented 
 itself After a very lively discussion, and despite the ridiculous 
 claims of Roederer, who demanded a pecuniary compensation for 
 the unfortunates who had accepted an eternal separation from the 
 fair sex, the vote of the Assembly on the 23rd of June, had a 
 retrospective application. It was decided that, dating from 
 January ist, 1791, the archbishops and bishops whose eccle- 
 siastical revenues did not exceed 12,000 livres, should suffer no 
 reduction, and that those whose revenues exceeded that sum, 
 should have 12,000 livres more than the half of the overplus, 
 unless the whole should exceed 30,000 livres, with the exception 
 of the Archbishop of Paris, whose pay was fixed at 75,000. The 
 use of the ecclesiastical buildings and gardens was left to the 
 ecclesiastical dignitaries. The Civil Constitution of the clergy 
 was thus put into force as soon as decreed. 
 
 It is just to acknowledge, on behalf of the Revolution, that this 
 Constitution was only a rigorous application of the maxims of 
 the ancient monarchy. It was simply GalHcanism to the utmost. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
136 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 We may be convinced of this by reading the famous opinion 
 requested by Louis XIV., on his rights touching the administra- 
 tion of the Church, from Le Vayer de Boutigny, one of his 
 masters of requests.* The learned lawyer distinguishes between 
 the politicaland mystical body in the Church. In all her external 
 snd social Ufe she depends entirely on the prince, for she is in 
 the State and the State is not in her. The mystical body, com- 
 prehending doctrine, discipline, sacraments, it would seem, ought 
 to escape from all purely earthly domination. Nothing of the 
 kind ; the prince is not only a political magistrate, he is also the pro- 
 tector of the Church, and all that escapes him as magistrate, he 
 seizes again as protector. Not content with protecting the Church 
 against her adversaries by putting his sword at her service, he 
 protects her also against herself, and watches over her with a 
 jealous care. Doubtless, he does not interfere with faith, but as 
 soon as faith is translated into public acts, that is to say, as soon 
 as it manifests itself, it falls under his control. Sometimes it is 
 the guardian of the State who does not permit the Church to 
 inflict a blow on its sovereignty, or on the interests of the country; 
 sometimes it is the protector of religion who does not suffer her 
 to be misled by an ill-advised zeal. " God," naively says the 
 author, " wished that His Church should have the simplicity and, 
 according to the world, the weakness of children. Therefore has 
 he given her kings as tutors to protect and succour her in all 
 things in which she is not capable of defending herself "f The 
 Church can never abandon to the State "anything necessary to 
 salvation," that is to say, all that is of Divine command and of 
 faith. But if the question is of a matter not necessary to salva- 
 tion, and which tends only to greater perfection, she must yield 
 to the laws and necessities of the State. In fact, all that is not 
 
 * See p. 83 of this book. ]■ Page 174. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
THE CIVIL CONSTITUTION FAITHFUL TO THE ANCIENT REGIME. 137 
 
 necessary to salvation, that is only of a greater perfection, is not 
 of the express command of God, it is only counsel. On the con- 
 trary, the laws of the State are by the express command of God, 
 who orders us to obey princes, and they are consequently of 
 obligation for salvation itself* According to our master of re- 
 quests, the Church resembles a vessel ; the helm is in the hands 
 of the spiritual authority, but the captain, who alone can make 
 the crew work bj instilling a salutary fear, is the State. This 
 comparison, worthy of a counsellor of Louis XIV., sufficiently 
 reveals the spirit of the system. It might be foreseen what the 
 captain would do in a day of peril and tempest The boldest 
 measures of the French Revolution in regard to the Church, were 
 thus justified beforehand from the point of view of the purest 
 monarchical tradition. , 
 
 But no one made these reflections. Men were ranged in two 
 widely-separated camps j on one side the innovators, who did not 
 go far enough, and on the other, the representatives of the ancient 
 society. These last imagined that the very foundations had been 
 removed, whereas the maxims of their fathers were being turned 
 against them. Thus their exasperation knew no bounds ; and in 
 all France resistance, already roused since the vote on the property 
 of the clergy, was being organised, and about to drive the Assembly 
 to new acts of violence and iniquity. 
 
 * Page 83. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
C&apter iio. 
 
 First resistances of the Clergy. — Troubles at Nimes and at Montauban. 
 — The Political Oath imposed, on the Clergy. — Pathetic scene in: 
 the Assembly. — Address of Mirabeau to the Nation.^Pamphlet of 
 Camille Desmoulins. 
 
 The spirit of liberty, we have acknowledged, had visited more than 
 one presbytery and cloister at the end of the eighteenth century. 
 It had even imposed itself, with all the power of a triumphant 
 opinion, on some high dignitaries of the episcopacy. We still think 
 that it might have been possible, if not entirely to rally the. Church 
 of France to the cause of the great refonns, to avoid, at least, 
 wounding her to the heart, and raising in her the most invincible 
 resistance, that which rests on the scruples of conscience. The 
 majority of the Clerical Chamber had rallied to the Third before 
 even the king had spoken. This considerable success rendered 
 advisable a cautious, prudent policy, full of consideration towards 
 allies so useful and whose influence penetrated so far into all classes 
 of society. We have seen that the opposite line of policy was fol- 
 lowed by the National Assembly, which suffered itself to be quickly 
 driven to radical measures calculated profoundly to irritate that 
 portion of the clergy whom neither very strong democratic passions, 
 nor Jansenist rancours, too well justified, had placed at the head of 
 the Revolution. The clerical opposition was particularly danger- 
 ous, because it was completely organised and armed. It therefore 
 excited the strongest alarm and the most vehement anger; it drove 
 
 the Assembly obstinately to maintain its faults, to proceed at once 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
WAR BREAKS OUT BETWEEN THE REVOLUTION AND RELIGION. 139 
 
 to extremes, and to make laws as people make war — with the sole 
 thought of crushing a powerful adversary. In order to comprehend 
 how the Assembly came to impose the political oath on the eccle- 
 siastics, it is necessary to follow in the provinces the progress of 
 the religious reaction in which the Pope took the initiative. 
 
 It was the Revolution which commenced the war. The people 
 of Paris, favourable enough at first to the priests, speedily accus- 
 tomed themselves to see in their costume a symbol of the ancient 
 regime, and after the events of October, they showed themselves 
 much disposed to insult them. Gregoire bitterly complained, in the 
 sitting of the 8th of October, 1789, that, disregarding the patriotism 
 of the parish priests, the people of Paris outraged them, and 
 addressed to them the most frightful threatenings. He demanded 
 that the Assembly should make special proclamations for the 
 safety of the deputies of the clergy, a motion which was rejected, 
 on the observation of Mirabeau, that it was not necessary to put the 
 members of the Assembly under the safeguard of a new decree, 
 after that which' had assured their inviolability. On the 15th of 
 October, the Archbishop of Paris, who had already been obliged 
 to defend himself, in a charge, against the .accusation " of having 
 maintained, with the king, the interests of the rich and powerful 
 against the poor and feeble," asked for passports, and led the way 
 in emigration. Towards the middle of the same month, a sense- 
 less charge of the Bishop of Treguier envenomed the religious 
 contests. He took openly the side of the ancient regime, and 
 attributed to himself the part of Thomas of Canterbury against 
 dangerous novelties. He overcharged the picture of the civil 
 troubles with the .most sombre colours, and uttered a cry of alarm 
 which was a true tocsin-ring in Brittany : " Religion is annihi- 
 lated," said he ; " its ministers are reduced to the sad condition of 
 clerks appointed by brigands." Rehgious liberty was openly stig- 
 matised in this episcopal libel, which ended with an appeal for the 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
140 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 coalition of the nobles and peasants against the Third Estate. 
 This imprudent provocation led, after a smart debate, to a severe 
 order of the day, which sent the bishop before the tribunal 
 appointed for judging crimes of high treason. This unfortunate 
 affair caused extreme irritation, which rendered most difficult, from 
 the first, the conciliation between liberty and religion. The 
 clerical opposition increased with each new measure which in- 
 flicted a blow on the ancient ecclesiastical organisation of France. 
 The decree of the 2nd of November concerning the property of 
 the clergy was scarcely passed, than on all sides the strife com- 
 menced. At Toulouse, in Beam, in Cambresis, the nobility and 
 clergy assembled the States on the ancient footing as if nothing had 
 passed in France. The Assembly immediately decreed that, up to 
 the time when it should be occupied with the new judiciary 
 power, all the parlements of the kingdom should remain in abey- 
 ance. There was resistance at Rouen and at Metz ; in this last 
 town the high clergy had held factious assemblies, which clearly 
 showed from what quarter resistance proceeded; Already civil 
 war might be foreseen in Provence. The charges of the bishops 
 breathed fire among those Southern races so easily roused. In 
 proportion as they put into execution the decree of the 2nd of 
 November concerning the property of the clergy, the opposition 
 increased, and became ripe for open revolt. The violent demands 
 of the right within the Assembly had their counterpart outside in 
 furious clamours and acts of violence. Thus the resolution which 
 was passed, after the suppression of the monastic orders, to make 
 an inventory of the property of the different religious houses, set 
 all the South in a blaze. We have here the appropriate materials 
 for a grand melo-dramatic scene, calculated to strike the eye, to 
 kindle the imagination, and to inflame the religious passions. The 
 convents, having suddenly become the asylum of all the virtues, 
 
 and the dwelling of God himself were surrounded by an excited 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
EFFECT OF THE MEASUJIES OF THE ASSEMBLY IN THE COUNTRY. 141 
 
 crowd, surging with suppressed anger, ^ through which the magis- 
 trates were obhged to force their way to accompHsh an act which 
 appeared an abominable profanation. The next step of the ad- 
 vancing wave would end in riot This step was quickly taken in 
 towns where the rivalry of the two worships kept up religious 
 passions ; for the fervid Catholics of the South could not forgive 
 Protestantism for existing, and requiring no longer to conceal itself 
 in order to escape proscription. Religious equality was, in their 
 eyes, the grand iniquity of the Revolution. 
 
 Civil war broke out openly immediately after the National 
 Assembly had refused to proclaim Catholicism as the religion of 
 the State. The ignorant and bigoted masses of Nimes, Uzes, and 
 Montauban, showed as much fury against those who had abolished 
 an odious privilege, as the people of Paris had shown against its 
 supporters. On one side as on the other, the first part belongs 
 to violence, and liberty goes forth bruised from the collision of 
 these blind and brutal forces. As soon as the news reached the 
 South, of the rejection of the motion of Dom Gerle, and of the pro- 
 testations to which the vote of the Assembly had given rise, they 
 prepared themselves, under the instigation of the clergy, to send 
 to Paris urgent demands in favour of religious unity. On Tuesday, 
 the 20th of April, there was a numerous assembly in the church 
 of the White Penitents at Nimes. They unanimously decided 
 to demand of the King and the National Assembly, that the 
 Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion should be declared, by 
 a solemn decree, the religion of the State, and alone enjoy the 
 honours of public worship, without any change in the ecclesiastical 
 hierarchy being tolerated. Such measures were not pacifically 
 taken in a town like Nimes ; this delibei'ation had been preceded 
 and followed by a great effervescence of the population, who inter- 
 preted, in their way, the principle of religious unity, by crying out, 
 whenever the ProtestagJ^.^haggei^dJ^o^ss by-X///, kill I Men 
 
142 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 with white cockades, armed with guns, kept up in the town an 
 agitation which foreboded the gravest issues. Similar dehbera- 
 tions and manifestations had taken place at Uzes and in Alsace ; 
 the Jews in this latter country had been subjected to ill-treatment 
 The Catholic party had chosen the worst soil for planting their 
 flag ; they claimed what was most to be regretted in the ancient 
 organisation of religion in France, that which most deeply 
 wounded the sentiment of justice. This was beginning ill in a 
 strife where the faults of their adversaries were soon to give 
 them so many advantages. They prepared themselves to defend 
 the rights of conscience, whilst demanding that they should be 
 obliterated from the constitution of the country — a singular con- 
 tradiction, which will astonish only those who do not know 
 inconstant human nature. The Catholic, party committed in 
 addition the grave wrong of openly demanding the full re-estab- 
 lishment of the royal authority. This grievous mingling of politics 
 and rehgion weakened beforehand the force of their resistance to 
 the encroachments of the civil power. The National Assembly 
 prosecuted the fomenters of the troubles at Nimes, and sum- 
 moned to its bar the chief persons who signed the petition of the 
 Catholics of that town, despite a speech of Malouet, who en- 
 deavoured to invoke in their favour the right of meeting and of 
 discussion. But it would have required very superior sense to 
 give the benefit of the new regime to men who had sho^vn them- 
 selves its mortal enemies. This lofty justice, which would have 
 been the height of wisdom, could not be expected in an Assembly 
 from which emanated the Civil Constitution of the clergy. What 
 was learned of this scheme, so legitimately rejected by the Ca- 
 tholics, contributed not a little to aggravate the agitation in the 
 South, which assumed, at Nimes, in the course of the month of 
 June, all the character of a civil war. Religious susceptibilities 
 were not alone in plaj5;g^feg}}gpr;}K^§Sfl%) lever, on the part of the 
 
AGITATION AT NlMES, 1 43 
 
 ancient regime, to raise the masses. This clearly appears from 
 these words of Froment, the true author of these troubles and the 
 agent of the emigrant princes : " A strong passion can be quelled 
 only by one still stronger, and consequently religious zeal can 
 alone quell republican delirium."* The strife broke out on the 
 occasion of the municipal elections. 
 
 The Catholic party of Nimes, always faithful to the detestable 
 cause of State religion, and not wishing to admit the equality in 
 the eye of the law of all religious opinions, were firmly resolved to 
 prevent the election of the Protestants. They succeeded in com- 
 posing the municipality of their adherents; this was to assure 
 themselves impunity for their factious plottings. Their fury 
 knew no bounds when they learned, in the month of April, the 
 honour conferred on Rabaud by the National Assembly. A 
 placard was posted which bore these insulting words : " The in- 
 famous National Assembly has just put the climax to its crimes 
 by choosing a Protestant for the presidency." The decree, which 
 entrusted to the departmental administrations the management of 
 the property of the clergy, hastened the explosion of fanaticism. 
 A true league was organised ; companies of volunteers had hoisted 
 the white cockade, which was soon replaced by red crests. They 
 called themselves companies of the cross, and had formed them- 
 selves in opposition to the National Guard, recruited, without 
 distinction, from all ranks of the population ; the dragoons of 
 the Civil Guard, distinguished by their patriotism, particularly 
 excited the animosity of the fanatics. All means were employed 
 to ■ inflame passions already sufficiently excited. Banquets and 
 vehement speeches were multiplied, churches were opened for 
 nocturnal meetings, incendiary pamphlets, representing religion as 
 
 * Froment. " Precis de mes operations pour la defense de la 
 
 rovaute at de la reliigion, pendant le cours de la Revolution, 1815." 
 ' Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
144 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 proscribed and the King as captive, were profusely distributed. 
 The Protestants were designated in these libels as ungrateful 
 vipers whom numbness alone puts out of condition to injure ; 
 warmed by benefits, they revive only to give death.* 
 
 Strife broke out on the 13th of June between the red crests 
 and the dragoons; the provocation proceeded from the first. On 
 the morrow, the country people descended on false reports; but 
 the greater part of the peasants returned to their hearths as soon 
 as they comprehended that it was desired to make them defend 
 thfi counter-revolution. Meanwhile the Protestants of the neigh- 
 bourhood were alarmed, and arrived during the day. They would 
 probably have retraced the road to their mountains, like the 
 Catholic peasants, if they had not been shot at from the convent 
 of the Capuchins, on the place of the Esplanade. Furious, they 
 threw themselves on the red crests. Froment, posted at the 
 castle, thought good to interrupt conferences for peace by a 
 treasonable fusillade. That was to break up all and to deliver the 
 town to the strongest party, justly indignant, but exasperated by 
 anger. More than three hundred Catholics were put to death, 
 whilst in the country Protestant blood flowed in torrents. Im- 
 partial history must acknowledge that the misfortunes which 
 happened at Nimes were the natural effect of an abominable plot 
 worthy of the time of the Guises. . The party who provoked the 
 lamentable events of June, were not defending the liberties of the 
 Church, but what was most odious in its privileges and most 
 insensate in the pretensions of fanaticism. 
 
 Analogous facts had occurred the preceding month at Mon- 
 tauban. The officers of the municipality had been able to 
 efiect the sale of the suppressed convents only amid the greatest 
 perils, and had been obliged to pass through a crowd rendered 
 
 ' De Felic^.^.^^i^s^.^r^es P^estants,"p. 56. 
 
RIOT AT MONTAUBAN. 1 45 
 
 •furious by the charge of the Bishop. On the threshold, groaning 
 women remained on their knees as if to defend the sanctuary. 
 The Hotel de Ville had been invaded ; six dragoons, five of whom 
 were Protestants, had been massacred; others had been dragged 
 to the cathedral, wax-taper- in hand, to ask forgiveness. At this 
 news, the National Guard of Bordeaux had, of their own accord, 
 set out in order to avenge the Revolution, but already calm was 
 restored in the streets, if not in the minds of men. All this news,- 
 arriving in quick succession at the Assembly, prompted to severe 
 measures, but above all drove it, by exasperating it, to treat the 
 Church as an enem)-.* 
 
 These street disturbances were infinitely less grave than the 
 resistance which was being organised over the whole surface of the 
 country under the auspices of the high clergy. That an energetic 
 protestation, in favour of the independence of the Church, must 
 arise from the midst of the bishoprics and presbyteries, was 
 inevitable. Unhappily, under this name they understood not 
 merely the maintenance of their rights, but also the sanction of their 
 privileges : passions madly re-actionajy compromised a cause which 
 in itself was just. We shall constantly find in the episcopal charges 
 this fatal mingling of a sincere attachment to the liberties of the 
 Church with an absurd hatred of political liberty. The communi- 
 cations from the court of Rome especially present this contradiction. 
 
 The resistance was not decidedly organised until after the decree 
 which imposed the political oath on the clergy, but it became 
 more and more pronounced and disciplined during the months 
 which preceded. It is necessary to distinguish during this period 
 
 * See on these disturbances the " Moniteur," and vols. V. and VI. of 
 "I'Histoire Parlementaire," by Buchez and Roux; as likewise the 
 4th vol. of " I'Histoire de la Revolution," by Louis Blanc ; the 5th vol. 
 of that of" Michelet," and the 2nd vol. of the " Memoires de Matthieu 
 
 Dumas." 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
146 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 between public acts and secret correspondences. What is put 
 in train is of greater import than what is accomplished. Whether 
 it be in acting on the irresolute mind of the King, or in stimulating 
 the courage of the opponents of the clergy, charges and blustering 
 protestations have much less importance than letters sent from 
 Rome. From the month of March of this year, 1790, the Pope 
 takes an openly hostile attitude with respect to the Revolution; 
 not content with blaming the measures which struck at his rights, 
 he involves in the same condemnation all reforms, even the most 
 just.* From the 7th of March, 1790, in a secret consistory, he 
 had held a doleful and. bitter language on all that had taken place 
 in France since the opening of the States General. He did 
 not hesitate to say that this ancient monarchy, struck by its own 
 children, was approaching its ruin.f After complaints, based on 
 the encroachments of the political power, the Holy Father did not 
 hesitate to condemn, without evasion, the National Assembly for 
 having decreed liberty of conscience. He was indignant that 
 non-Catholics should have been declared capable of filling every 
 kind of municipal office, civil or military. J Political liberty was 
 treated as a vain phantom, and the limitation laid upon royal 
 power was represented as an unworthy violence, which was hence- 
 forth to prevent the very Christian king from avenging the rights 
 of the Church. We know what these words signified in the 
 language of the Roman conclave. Thus, we see that they are 
 the most elementary principles of modern society, which the Pope 
 
 * See on the relations of the Pope with the French Revolution :— 
 1st. The " Brefs et Instructions de N. S. P. Pie VI. depuis, 1790, 
 jusqu a 1796." Two vols. Rome, 1796. 2nd. " Documents inedits 
 relatis aux affaires religieuses de la France, 1790 a 1800," published by 
 B. P. Theiner, Paris, 1857. Firmin Didot. 
 
 t " Ad perniciem redacta est.'' 
 
 X " Habiles facti sunt Acatholici ad orrinia gerenda Municipalia, 
 
 civilia, militaria munera." Brefs, p. 4, 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
THE HOLY FATHER CONDEMNS THE REVOLUTION. 
 
 147 
 
 expressly curses ; what he regrets, is the ancient regime, with its 
 most odious abuses.. He associates with the cause of despotism 
 that of the liberties of the Church, and clearly shows that the 
 rights of the clergy are alone sacred in his eyes. This deprives of 
 all value his protestations against those decrees of the Assembly 
 which aimed a blow at the religious conscience, for what he would 
 wish to see re-established is a hundred times worse than what he 
 combats. Between the regime of the Edict of Nantes and the 
 Civil Constitution of the clergy no comparison is possible. From 
 the first day of conflict the Papacy, forgetting its prudent reserves, 
 takes part against New France, and has for liberty only anathe- 
 mas. We must not forget, in excuse of the Revolution, this 
 attitude of the chief of Catholicism, who had bepome the chief of 
 political reaction. Behind the Church the National Assembly saw, 
 without ceasing, the ancient regime. That was not sufficient to 
 justify its acts of injustice, for eminent policy consists in not 
 allowing itself to be dragged out of its way by the faults of its 
 adversaries. 
 
 We may see, by the intimate correspondence of the Vatican, 
 how much the Holy See had swerved from the policy of neutrality, 
 which alone becomes it in face of the changing fortunes of a 
 country in revolution. The following year, it was for some days 
 believed in Rome that the King had succeeded in escaping : the 
 Pope wrote to him immediately. His letter breathes the most enthu- 
 siastic joy, not only that he (the King) has been able to get out of 
 that abominable city of Paris to rejoin the emigrants, but also that 
 he shall very soon be able to re-enter his kingdom as a conqueror, 
 there to re-establish his ancient power, to restore th^ old laws, 
 and thus break the resistance of his people.* The same wishes 
 
 * " Receptate pristinam potestatem tuam, redactas leges, juraque 
 omnia restituta." ' Theiq^-^jq^ Microsoft® 
 
 L 2 
 
148 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 are expressed to the Count de Provence. Doubtless these letters, 
 like the speech of the Pope at the consistory of the 9th of March, 
 1790, were not intended to be made public; but what is there 
 which is ever entirely secret in the political world ? What was 
 thought and said at Rome was well known at Paris. A mortal 
 war had begun, which proved very damaging both to the Church 
 and the State. 
 
 In the interval which elapsed between the vote on the Civil 
 Constitution of the clergy and the royal sanction, the letters of 
 the Pope to Louis XVI. and to the clergy of France, are numerous 
 and urgent. The moment of issuing the brief, which shall divide 
 in twain the Galilean Church, has not yet arrived ; it is necessary 
 to be first assured of the support of an important portion of the 
 clergy, and to labour at Rome to revive the zeal of its most in- 
 fluential members, whilst seeking to act strongly on the conscience 
 of the King, that he may refuse his sanction to the decree of the 
 Assembly. Not only does the Holy Father address himself 
 directly to him by energetic letters, perfectly calculated to cast 
 trouble into his vacillating and timorous mind,* but he invites 
 the Archbishops of Vienne and Bourdeaux, members of his council, 
 to influence his determination. It is certain that Louis XVI., at 
 this time, strongly desired that the Holy Father should authorise 
 the Civil Constitution of the clergy, to enable him to sanction, 
 without scruple, a decree to which he felt that he could not long 
 oppose his veto, for the pressure of public opinion was becoming 
 irresistible. On the 28th of July, he wrote to the Pope an almost 
 supplicatory letter: "Your HoHness,'' says he, "knows better 
 than any one of what moment it is to preserve the ties which 
 unite France to the Holy See. You will not question that the 
 most powerful interest of religion, in the present situation of 
 
 * B3ftBe?*t&tr WflP®ffl(Sly, 1790. 
 
THE POPE REFUSES HIS SANCTION TO THE CIVIL CONSTITUTION. 149 
 
 affairs, should be to prevent a fatal division.* The Cardinal de 
 Bernis, the ambassador of France to the Holy See, was charged 
 to present a memorial in support of this request. In this docu- 
 ment, written in Italian and accompanied with a confidential note, 
 the Cardinal shows the imminent perils which surround the King 
 of France, placed between a roused people and an Assembly 
 which is no longer its own master, so much does it submit to the 
 influence of agitations from without. He entreats the Holy 
 Father to give at least a provisionary sanction, which would remit 
 the positive decision to calmer times, and would not prolong a 
 situation intolerable and dangerous for the King; for if prudent 
 delays have very often succeeded at the court of Rome, they 
 would now operate only to spread the most terrible exasperation 
 in France, the consequences of which no one can foresee.! 
 The Cardinal de Bernis does not conceal the indignation with 
 which so many wicked attempts against the rights of the Church 
 inspire him, but he is not the less convinced that it is neces- 
 sar}- to give them a plausible reason for avoiding greater mis- 
 fortunes. 
 
 The Pope, in his reply, simply announces that a convocation 
 will be summoned to examine the proposals of the Cardinal de 
 Bernis, but already he causes it to be understood that no concession 
 is possible, because the boundaries which separate the temporal 
 and the spiritual power have not been maintained. Scarcely has 
 the King sanctioned the decree, than the Pope sends to him from 
 Rome an energetic protestation, which puts the climax to his 
 grief by making him foresee the brief which will decide the 
 question and constitute the schism in France. The National 
 Assembly had been much irritated by the delays of the Pontifical 
 answer. They knew that a formidable opposition was being 
 
 * Theiner, I., P-oJ^fced /jy M/croso^Theiner, I., p. 267. 
 
150 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 organised against them, and they were in a manner goaded byli 
 into their frequently imprudent precipitancy. 
 
 The correspondence of the Pope with the bishops was not less 
 active. Resistance is recommended to all; to the most impetuous, 
 as to the Bishop of Saint-Pol de Leon, there is added the counsel 
 of prudence, but on condition of not covenanting with the in- 
 truders. The Archbishop of Sens, disposed to range himself undei 
 the n,ew Constitution, is severely reprimanded; he is reminded 
 that it is necessary to bear every thing rather than to yield. The 
 Bishop of Toulon is approved in his vehement indignation. The 
 Abbe Thoumin-Devonspons, who had just been chosen to the See 
 of Laval, is encouraged to reject a degraded episcopacy; he is 
 urged to make his refusal publicly known.* The direction ol 
 the movement of resistance is at Rome, and everything is pre- 
 pared to make it still more active. 
 
 Several public acts, which emanated from the high clergy, 
 operated strongly on public opinion during this period of ex- 
 pectation. The most important was the Statement of principles on 
 the Constitution of the clergy, by the bishops deputed to the National 
 Assembly. \ We find there all the arguments presented at the 
 tribune of the Assembly, with a great abundance of learned quota- 
 tions. The tone is dignified and moderate; the incompetence 
 of the political power to re-organise the Church of France is esta- 
 blished with force and eloquence. The Archbishop of Aries, who 
 drew up this statement, had the good sense not to insert in i1 
 recriminations against the establishment of political liberty, and 
 not to mingle the cause of the ancient regime with that of the in- 
 dependence of the Church. Words like these claim only oui 
 
 *" Briefs of Pius VI.," vol. I. 
 
 \ " Collection Ecclesiastique," by the Abbe Barruel, p. 15 1. Paris 
 1792, 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
PROTESTATION OF THE BISHOPS TO THE ASSEMBLY. 151 
 
 approval: "If the civil power wishes to make changes in the 
 order of religion, without the concurrence of the Chilrch, it con- 
 tradicts principles without destroying them. We desire to know 
 the will of the Church in order to re-establish a necessary agree- 
 ment between the civil and ecclesiastical powers, and to maintain 
 by their union repose of consciences and public tranquillity. It is 
 necessary that the Church be represented as well as the natiori. 
 We cannot confound the exercise of the power of the citizens 
 with the expression of the belief of the faithful. We have pro- 
 posed the calhng of a national council. People seem to reason 
 on the discipline of the Church as on the policy of States. 
 It is not accordant with political interests and local differences 
 to be able to change the principles of a religion whose dogmas 
 are the objects of a supernatural faith, and whose morality is 
 universal." The bishops concluded by saying that, desirous of 
 avoiding the schism, they could not transfer it into their principles, 
 and that their duty was to await with confidence' the answer of 
 the successor of Saint Peter. This statement of principles, after 
 having been signed by the bishops and the greater number of the 
 parish priests sitting in the Assembly, received the adhesion of 
 104 French bishops, seven foreign bishops who had boundaries in 
 France, and of a considerable number of parish priests. It gave 
 rise to lively debates in the press. 
 
 The bishops would have done well ~to have kept to this mani- 
 festo, written with as much ability as moderation; but each of 
 them followed his impulse, and irritating charges were multiplied. 
 Many amongst them were not content with reproducing the" course 
 of argument of the statement in more lively forms ; they added 
 thereto violent anathemas against the Revolution, thus forgetting 
 that in going forth from the religious domain, they were losing the 
 right of reproaching the State for making incursion into it. On 
 both sides the line otidejgMrgatiQn. b^een the two powers was 
 
152 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 effaced by the passions of the moment. Thus, the Bishop of 
 Toulon, in an admonition to the faithful of his diocese, published 
 the first of July, 1790, after a protestation directed against the 
 Civil Constitution of the clergy, indulged in language altogether 
 factious: "Alas ! my brethren," said he, "the unhappy experience 
 that you have of the independence that has been preached to you, 
 of the sovereignty that has been attributed to you, and with which 
 you have been flattered, ought to effect a salutary change upon 
 yourselves, and to prostrate you at the feet of the virtuous and 
 benevolent monarch who governs you, in order to entreat him to 
 resume the authority of which you could never have the right to 
 despoil him. He is good, you know it, and will govern you as a 
 father." A coup d'etat could not be more unctuously demanded. 
 The Revolution was painted under the liveliest colours as a huge 
 crime for which it was necessary to implore forgiveness. " What 
 is, then," cried the Bishop, " this regeneration which has been 
 solemnly promised you ? In place of the happiness which you 
 desire to enjoy, I see everywhere only confusion, disorders, and 
 anarchy."* The Archbishop of Vienne, better inspired in other 
 circumstances, bitterly complained that the sheep of the, flock, in 
 place of meekly following their pastors, had set themselves to lead 
 them. A flock, held in subjection by the sceptre of the King and 
 the crook of the priest, is what the nation ought to be in the eyes 
 of this too sincere apologist of the ancient regime; but he was 
 wrong in saying it all aloud to emancipated France. He equally 
 protested, in an indirect way, against liberty of conscience and 
 liberty of the press;! these imprudences were soon tO' be very 
 dearly paid for. The proclamation and putting into execution of 
 the Civil Constitution of the clergy by the departmental adminis- 
 trations,, gave rise to protestations more effectual, because they 
 
 * See the " Collecti^^;^b|^ar)^ey^. 529. t Page 474- 
 
INCENDIARY MANDATES. 153 
 
 issued in a veritable resistance against the decrees of the Assembly. 
 The Bishop of Senez, whose See had been suppressed, addressed 
 the most lively protestations, on the 8th of November, to the 
 mayors and. municipal counsellors who had posted the decree on 
 the great door of the cathedral church. We read there words 
 like these : " If such is the Revolution, so extravagantly extolled, 
 if, like that proud king of whom the prophet Daniel speaks, it 
 tramples under foot the saints of the Most High, and believes that 
 it has power to change times and laws which the Lord has esta- 
 blished — you will know, gentlemen, that the oracles have not ceased 
 in Israel, and that a bishop does not turn with every wind of 
 doctrine." 
 
 The Bishop of Leon expressed himself in terms not less energetic, 
 in answer to the administrators of his district, who had designated 
 him as the ancient bishop of Leon : " In vain; will the National 
 Assembly," said he, " pass decrees ; in vain will their agents urge 
 their execution ; when man commands what God forbids, it is God 
 alone whom we must obey." The Archbishop of Auch replied to 
 the procureur syndic of die department of Gers, who pressed him 
 to conform to the Civil Constitution of the clergy: "I shall 
 repeat, without ceasing,, these words of John the Baptist, '■ Non 
 licet P" A voice more touching and moving made itself heard; 
 it came from beyond the tomb and as it were from the borders of 
 eternity; it was that of the Bishop of Quimper, who, seeing his 
 end approaching,, had beforehand protested against the -election 
 of a successor submissive to the new decrees. He declared that 
 the ecclesiastic who should submit to them would be only an 
 intruder, and that besides the Civil Constitution of the clfergy 
 was only a culpable outrage against the eternal truth of Christi- 
 anity. Resistance, even at the expense of the greatest sacrifices, 
 appeared to him an imperious duty. This posthumous piece was 
 
 destined, by its very exaggeration, to produce a great etfect in a 
 ■^ Digitlzkd by Microsoft® 
 
T54 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 province already strongly disposed to fanatacism, and where the 
 
 insinuations of the defunct bishop against mistaken toleration in 
 
 favour of Jews and Protestants were only too much welcomed. 
 
 The Bishops of Soissons and of Clermont addressed leiters as firm 
 
 but more moderate in expression to the departmental authorities. 
 
 The first declared that he was ready to subscribe to the decrees if 
 
 they were approved by the Holy Father. The Bishop' of Verdun 
 
 took on himself the tone of a prophet. " Impiety," cried he, " has 
 
 at length raised the mask; it marches with unplifted head; it 
 
 aspires to nothing higher than to be seated on the debris of the 
 
 temples and altars which it shall have overturned. Every thing is 
 
 consummated." Resistances were as determined at Nantes, at 
 
 Lyons, and at Treguier. 
 
 Such words did not circulate in a country, already profoundly 
 
 agitated, without producing new disturbances. Riots broke out at 
 
 Strasbourg, in the Pas da Calais, and at Uzes, where they spoke of 
 
 nothing less than of avenging on the Protestants the CathoHc blood 
 
 shed at Nimes. The resistances of the bishops and chapters were 
 
 every day renewed. The administration encountered obstinate 
 
 refusals at Lyons, at Nantes, at Lisieux, at Vg.nnes, as at Clermont 
 
 and at Quimper. It was in these circumstances that, in the sitting of 
 
 the 29th of November, Voydel presented to the Assembly a report in 
 
 which all these facts were embodied, detailed and grouped with art. 
 
 It closed with these words, which sufficiently indicated that the 
 
 time for concessions was past : " Ministers of religion ! cease to 
 
 shroud yourselves with pretexts; avow your weakness — you 
 
 regret your ancient opulence, you regret those prerogatives, those 
 
 marks of distinction and of pretended pre-eminence. Think 
 
 that the Revolution has made us men. . . . There is still time; 
 
 disarm, by a prompt submission, the people irritated by your 
 
 resistance. The decree which I am about to present is rather a 
 
 measure of indulgence than a severe law." This measure of 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
PROPOSAL TO BIND THE PRIESTS ' TO THE OATH. 1 55 
 
 indulgence consisted in subjecting to the oath all titulary ecclesi- 
 astics ; the question was not only of swearing fidelity to the law 
 and obedience to the civil authorities, it was necessary to under- 
 take the engagement to maintain in all its power the Constitution 
 decreed by the National .Assembly and accepted by the King, under 
 penalty of deposition from different ecclesiastical offices. " In the 
 case in which bishops and parish priests failed in their oath, they 
 should be not only deprived of their pay or pensions, but also lose 
 the rights of French citizenship. No measure was more impolitic 
 or more strongly calculated to carry religious agitation to its height 
 The Assembly would have been in the right in demanding from 
 the clergy a general oath to the law and to the King ; this require- 
 ment flowed logically from the position which they had taken in 
 granting them salaries ; and the participation of several of their 
 high dignitaries in insurrectionary movements amply justified such 
 a decree, but it was necessary not to exceed that if they wished to 
 reach the factious. To make the oath bear directly on the Civil 
 Constitution of the clergy, that is to say, on a measure which 
 profoundly wounded the conscience of a considerable number of 
 honourable priests, was to transform resistance into a sacred duty; 
 to provoke a schism which must add to the political divisions 
 the gravest religious dissensions ; to hurl defiance at venerable 
 convictions, and to enter upon a path at the end of which was 
 dictatorship and proscription. The discussion which took place 
 on the proposition of Voydel, clearly showed what perils they 
 were marching to meet ; but they thought no more of them than 
 if they had been in the heat and smoke of battle. Henceforth 
 they had but one desire, that of crushing their enemy, and they 
 cared little for crushing with him the liberty which they had wished 
 to establish; so much are unchained passions stronger than 
 principles. 
 
 The debate was opened by a demand far adjournment presented 
 
156 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 in the name of the right. It was concentrated on this point much 
 more than on the Bill itself; for, in obtaining the adjournment, 
 the right reserved the rights of the Papacy whose answer they were 
 awaiting. The left urged to an immediate conclusion, precisely in 
 order not to acknowledge the right of the Church. From the 
 commencement the discussion assumed an extraordinary anima- 
 tion. Cazales could with difficulty draw up, in the midst of 
 murmurs, the demand for adjournment ; the Bishop of Clermont 
 renewed at the tribune one of those sad and solemn protestations, 
 of which he had been accustomed to make himself the organ, 
 amid the acclamations of his party. He had, nevertheless, time 
 to declare that the Church was resigned to the loss of her property, 
 but as to her liberties, she could not bend, but must demand a 
 council. Mirabeau pronounced, in order to answer him, or rather 
 to refute the Statement of Principles of the bishops sitting in the 
 Assembly, which had just appeared, one of his most eloquent 
 harangues, but destitute of his great political wisdom, which he 
 too often sacrificed to his passion for popularity. He had 
 preserved silence during the discussion of the Civil Constitution of 
 the clergy; perhaps he had comprehended that it inflicted a blow 
 on that liberty of conscience which he had so admirably defended 
 the year preceding. It was, in reality, in opposition to his 
 principles on the essentially individual character of religion, as 
 we may be convinced by, reading the address which he proposed 
 to the Assembly some months later, to calm the minds of men. 
 But Mirabeau, like passionate natures, was capable of great 
 inconsistencies; left to himself and to reflection, he was rarely 
 mistaken on the principles of public right and the conditions of 
 liberty ; but, in the heated atmosphere of the Assembly, he obeyed 
 sudden fits of anger, which betrayed him into deplorable errors. 
 The intrigues and murmurs of the right put him beside himself; 
 
 and when the left and the galleries applauded Barnave, the part of 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
FIERY HARANGUE OF MIRABEAU. 157 
 
 moderator and defender of law became impossible to him. He 
 flung himself into the melee, and he struck harder even than 
 those whose violence he ought to have tempered. Thus, in this 
 discussion, he was recalled to moderation by Petion, and at the 
 first stroke, surpassed in arbitrariness the most exaggerated 
 disciples of Rousseau. The tone of his speech, which is some- 
 times declamatory to excess, indicates a state of feverish excite- 
 ment. His exordium is at once skilful and vehement: "Whilst 
 from all parts," says he, " the enemies of pubhc liberty accuse us 
 of having sworn the destruction of religion, I rise at this moment 
 to entreat you, in the name of the country, to sustain with all the 
 might with which the nation has clothed you, this religion 
 threatened by its own ministers, and which never totters except 
 under the blows with which the pride and fanaticism of the priests 
 have too often outraged it." This is the radical idea of his dis- 
 course. The enemies of religion, by their intrigues, compromise 
 the cause which they pretend to defend; they would wish to drive 
 the Assembly, by their resistances, to attack the very basis of this 
 Divine religion, "in order that your fall into impiety may impress 
 upon you an odious character, and enlist the piety of the people 
 in the dispersion of the legislators from whom France expected its 
 regeneration. They wish to charge religion with the task of 
 punishing you and avenging them. They know to what dangers 
 they expose it, but they have made the sacrifice. They are 
 resolved to make it run all the hazards of this terrible collision, 
 and to see it crumble on its ancient foundations, provided that in 
 falling, it bury in its ruins your laws and liberty.'' Mirabeau 
 refuted, first and foremost, the objection that was made to the 
 new episcopal jurisdictions by taking his stand on the independence 
 of the primitive Church. "The priesthood, entirely detached from 
 the social regime, and in their state of political nullity, could, from 
 the depths of. the %pi^% /,^toos{,^ had constructed their 
 
rS THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 sanctuaries, quietly regulate those limits and demarcations, which 
 signified no more than the sharing of apostolic cares. Then, these 
 austere and indefatigable workmen knew no other source of their 
 frugal subsistence than the alms of those who employed their 
 ministry." 
 
 How was it that this great mind did not perceive, in the midst 
 of the inextricable difficulties in which the Revolution was 
 struggling, that this first condition of Christianity, so well charac- 
 terised by him, could alone secure liberty and peace, and take 
 away from parties their most formidable weapon ? To this end 
 there was no need to return to the catacombs ; the absence of a 
 State-appointed and salaried clergy was sufficient. But the hour 
 of calm reflection was past, and Mirabeau was occupied solely 
 with the desire of breaking down resistances which irritated him. 
 In his estimation the Assembly had done enough for religion in 
 granting to it a large subsidy and external homage, as though the 
 highest mark of respect towards it were not liberty. " It is at the 
 moment," says he, with admirable eloquence, " when we confess, 
 in the face of all nations and of all ages, that God is as necessary 
 as liberty to the French people — it is this moment that our bishops 
 have chosen to denounce us as violators of the rights of religion." 
 If it was true that religion was as necessary as liberty to the French 
 people, why did they not leave it free in its own domain, instead 
 of pretending to regulate it ? Miraljeau committed the error, on 
 the question of the jurisdictions, of rushing into theological 
 distinctions, in which it was easy for Maury to embarrass him. 
 He entirely recovered himself in the part of his speech in which 
 he treated of the new mode of election for the- ecclesiastical offices. 
 He was magnificent and terrible in reminding the Court prelates 
 of the shameful methods by which they had too often obtained 
 their ecclesiastical dignities, and by demanding of them if they 
 
 had the right to be indignant at a mode of election which would 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
FIERY HARANGUE OF MIEABEAU. 1 59 
 
 purify the episcopate and prevent it from being at the mercy of a 
 
 palace intrigue : " I do not wish," said he, " to recount this pubHc 
 
 and scandalous iniquity, which drove the healthy and laborious 
 
 portion of the ecclesiastical order far from the dignities of the 
 
 sanctuary; which caused to flow into the bosom of idleness and 
 
 ignorance all the treasures of religion and of the poor; and which 
 
 crowned with the sacred tiara brows covered with public contempt 
 
 and branded with the stamp of all the vices." Mirabeau ended his 
 
 speech by denouncing, with wrathful energy, the intrigues of the 
 
 clergy, who, instead of seeking to direct the Revolution by wise 
 
 instructions, openlyor secretly attacked it. He concluded by outbid- 
 
 ing the proposals of the Ecclesiastical Committee. He demanded 
 
 that they should sentence to the forfeiture of his office every | 
 
 bishop who had applied to the Holy See for investiture, and every/ 
 
 ecclesiastic who should have protested against the Civil Constitu-^^ 
 
 tion of the clergy ; he wished that sermons and charges should be 
 
 submitted to a severe surveillance ; that bishops and parish priests 
 
 should be able to choose their vicars only out of a number of 
 
 ecclesiastics determined by popular election ; that no priest should 
 
 be able to exercise the ministry of confession without having taken 
 
 the civic oath; and that, in order not immediately to increase a 
 
 clergy already too numerous, all ordinations should be suspended 
 
 till the new order. 
 
 It is sad to see how far the passion of the moment and the 
 
 thirst for a popularity which was decreasing, could allure this great 
 
 mind, so capable of comprehending hberty, at least, by the 
 
 intellect. We have s,aid that he was thought unreasonable, even 
 
 by the extreme left, and that Petion combated his proposition, 
 
 and held to that of the Ecclesiastical Committee. Neither the 
 
 measured speech of the Abbe de Montesquieu, nor the passion of 
 
 Maury, could triumph over the impatience of the Assembly, who 
 
 wished to admit of no delay, because all delay was a homage to 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
l6o THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 the Papacy, and a renunciation of their own omnipotence. Th( 
 adjournment demanded had no more implacable enemy than th( 
 Jansenist Camus, for, in rejecting it, he gratified his most cherishec 
 convictions and his strongest passions. It was for him the bes 
 opportunity of treading under foot the pretensions of Ultra 
 montanism, and of laying low in the dust that Papal power fron 
 which his sect had had so much to suffer. Thus his speech 
 resembled a theological discourse full of rough vigour. A greal 
 impression was produced when he recalled the words by which Saint 
 Augustin declares himself ready to resign his ecclesiastical offices 
 for the peace of the Church, and when he urged the opposing 
 bishops to follow this great example. The Assembly applauded 
 him with transport, and, despite the feeble effort of Cazales, the 
 decree on the oath was voted Saturday evening, November 27 th — 
 a fatal date in the history of the Revolution, for it consummated 
 the divorce between New France and religion, prepared the 
 greatest storms, and preceded the most violent measures. The 
 statue of Liberty was very decidedly veiled, according to the 
 famous image of Montesquieu, and it was to be learnt, by cruel 
 experiences, that the regime of right is not established by arbitrary 
 power. 
 
 The decree of the 27th November immediately produced an 
 immense agitation in the countrj-. The revolutionary press sus- 
 pended it as a sword over the Church of France, and was pleased 
 still more to sharpen its edge. The King, who had, until then, 
 hoped to reconcile his duties as a sovereign with his conscience as 
 a Catholic, saw himself reduced to one of those desperate situa- 
 tions in which either alternative is equally fatal, — in which 
 resistance seems as impossible as concession. To sanction the 
 decree, was to break with Rome; to fexercise the right of veto, 
 was to brave the triumphant Revolution. The unhappy prince 
 
 was placed between excommunication and deposition. The 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
PERPLEXITY OF THE KING. l6l 
 
 Assembly had reduced him to extremity, whilst shaking in the 
 gravest manner the Constitutional edifice which it was at that 
 moment raising. The royal veto was, as is well-known, the fer- 
 menting cause of the terrible disturbances which broke out the 
 year following, and ended in the loth of August, and in the judg- 
 ment of the prince. Thus it was the dictatorship assumed by the 
 Assembly in religious questions that inaugurated the bloody 
 crisis, in which the great victim sacrificed was, after all, liberty, 
 humbled, and suppressed by so many crimes. It is certain that, 
 from the autumn of 1790, Louis XVI. despaired of reconciling 
 himself with the Revolution, and formed his first plan of flight at 
 the instigation of M. d 'Agoult, Bishop of Pamiers. He entered 
 into conference with the Marquis de Bouille, and in the rnonth 
 of November took the resolution to have recourse to foreign 
 arms. On the 3rd of December, he addressed a letter to the 
 King of Prussia, in which he openly claimed his help against 
 the factious persons who wished to destroy the remnants of the 
 monarchy.* It was then that the King quite involuntarily entered 
 on that path of duplicity from which his honest nature would have 
 turned him aside if his character had had a firmer temper. 
 Cunning is the resource of weak and undecided natures. If he 
 was wrong in deceiving the Assembly, it must not be forgotten that 
 he had been reduced to the last extremity, and pursued even into 
 the last shelter of his conscience. They allowed him no truce 
 until he should have sanctioned the decree of the 27th of 
 November; they were stopped neither by his reservations nor 
 his promises. Twice -did the president of the Assembly bring to 
 him imperious summonses, rendered still more harsh by the 
 speeches which had preceded them. Camus openly declared that, 
 
 * See "Les Memoires de Louis de Bouille," p. 17, v. 32 ; see* 
 « Buchez and Roux ^"^^Wii^WSMmi '^"^•' P' '72- 
 
 M 
 
l62 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 in face of the obstinate resistance of a part of the clergy, force 
 ought to be appUed.* This was to demand of the King to inaugu- 
 rate persecution against his own rehgious faith. The Assembly 
 voted that their president should go to the King the next day, to 
 signify to him that they were not content with his engagement to 
 sanction the decree later on ; that they did not admit even a delay 
 of three days, which a member of the Assembly had requested; 
 and that an acceptance, pure and simple, was immediately required. 
 When the King had given it in a letter, which might be regarded as 
 his moral abdication, so stamped was it with humility, the Assembly 
 might believe that the conflict was for ever terminated. They did 
 not know that that very day Louis XVI. had suffered this word, so 
 full of bitterness, to escape him : " I would rather be King of Metz 
 than continue King of France in such circumstances; but it will 
 soon be ended."-|- The King was alluding to his plans of flight; 
 no one then suspected them, unless it was Marat, such clearness of 
 vision does hatred sometimes impart.]: 
 
 The decree of the 27th of November had scarcely been sanc- 
 tioned, when the majority of the Assembly took means for its imme 
 diate execution. They allowed no truce to the ecclesiastics who 
 made part of the National deputation; they summoned them without 
 delay to come and take the oath at the tribune. That was clearly to 
 show that they were at open war, and that they were seeking only to 
 crush and to humble their enemies; but it was also to offer to the 
 latter the opportunity of a great moral triumph by rendering their 
 resistance illustrious. The Assembly themselves raised the pedestal 
 of the counter-revolution, for they provoked a pathet,ic scene in 
 which honour should be entirely on the part of the high clergy. 
 
 Nothing can give an idea of the extraordinary animation of 
 
 * Sitting of Thursday, December 22, 1790. 
 
 t "Buchez and Roux Histoire Parlementaire,'' VIII., p. 170. 
 
 I Ibid. p. 175. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
PATHETIC SCENE IN THE ASSEMBLY. 1 63 
 
 these famous sittings, the echoes of which reverberated so terribly 
 throughout the country. Riot, hardly restrained, was muttering at 
 the doors of the Assembly; the public galleries bent under the 
 stamping of the spectators, who were playing a too active part in 
 the drama ; fiery interpellations crossed one another, and the anger 
 of the left was only equalled by the passionate indignation of the 
 right. Words of moderation were not even heard. Both sides re- 
 jected whatever tended to soften the conflict. In vain, in the 
 sitting of December 27th, 1790, did Gregoire endeavour to dissi- 
 pate the scruples which the Civil Constitution of the clergy raised, 
 by affirming that the Assembly wished to inffict no blow on dogma, 
 or on the authority of the head of the Church. He persuades only 
 those who were already of his opinion, and he was followed only 
 by some parish priests. The insertion of his speech in the pro- 
 ceedings had no influence with opponents who rightly thought that 
 an individual opinion, however respectable, did not change the 
 nature of things, and that the explanation of a deputy should not 
 prevail over the formal vote of an Assembly. Gregoire was not 
 more happy when,. in the sitting of the 4th of January, after the 
 persistent refusals of a considerable part of the deputies of the 
 clergy, he endeavoured to weaken the import of the oath by affirm- 
 ing that the Assembly did not judge consciences, and did not 
 demand an internal assent, but simply obedience to the law. The 
 Bishop of Lydda in vain, added that he was persuaded that the 
 National Assembly did not wish to encroach on the spiritual juris- 
 diction. He reaped the applauses of the left; but the attitude of 
 the high clergy was only the more firm and decided. On the 2nd 
 of January, the Bishop of Clermont had brought to the tribune a 
 protestation, moderate in form ; the violent murmurs which drowned 
 his voice gave to it much more power than if he had been able to 
 finish it. "There is no longer an Assembly," cried the Deputy 
 Foucault, indignant a^i^h§eaV^m9ks9M^^ majority. After the 
 
 M 2 
 
164 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 most Stormy altercations, it was decreed that no opponent shoul( 
 have the right to declare his motives at the tribune, and that th( 
 oath should be taken pure and simple. The Bishop of Clermon 
 answered this summons by this word : " I cannot in conscience. 
 Cries of rage stopped him. Meanwhile the non-possumus of th' 
 violated conscience was going to have an immense echo, and i 
 was more easy to pass to the order of the day on such an inciden 
 in the midst of the Assembly than in the country. The same ever 
 ing the Bishop of Clermont published, in a pamphlet, the restrictiv 
 oath, which he had not been able to explain at the tribune 
 Violently questioned at the sitting on the morrow, he replied b 
 this beautiful speech, upon which all those should meditate whi 
 see an attempt on public morality in the refusal of the oath :- 
 " You will always reproach yourselves for having inflicted a penalt 
 on a man who has refused to take the oath. It is to say to him 
 ' Whatever your conscience says to you, take the oath.'" In orde 
 to have done with this slow work, Barnave demanded that th 
 delay granted by the decree to ecclesiastical functionaries, member 
 of the Assembly, should not be extended beyond the next da} 
 and that the refusal of the oath should be considered as equivalen 
 to a resignation. Cazales could only delay the vote some moment 
 by an eloquent speech, in which he limited himself to the reques 
 that they should not hasten to this degree repressive measures, fo 
 to require the oath before the answer of the Pope, was to pu 
 honourable citizens to the alternative of being impious or rebeli 
 " Religion and honour," adds he, "have always been a powerfi 
 barrier against despotism of every kind." 
 
 No barrier could any longer stay the Revolution in its fury. ] 
 might be perceived when, on the observation of the orator, ths 
 the Assembly, in acting with rigour, would be forced to depos( 
 perhaps, sixty or eighty of its members, several voices were heard t 
 cry out, " So much thg^^jg^^^ ^^^gMS^e evening, a bill posted c 
 
PATHETIC SCENE IN THE ASSEMBLY. 165" 
 
 thej walls of Paris, in the name of the Municipality, and which was 
 thoiught to reproduce the decree of the 27th of November, extended 
 the i obligation of the oath to all ecclesiastics, whether functionaries 
 or ?hot, and declared all those who refused it disturbers of the 
 putjlic peace. It was simply a forgery. When it was denounced 
 with just indignation by Mirabeau, who reminded the Assembly that 
 they had never thought of rendering this oath obligatory in itself, 
 but simply of declaring the refusal of the oath incompatible with 
 suqh functions, Bailly explained this fact by an error of the copyist 
 In reality, the copyist had mistaken only the date, for popular 
 passion did not admit the distinction of Mirabeau, and it was soon 
 to carry with it the national representation. They did not take 
 into consideration the proposition of Malouet to seek out the guilty, 
 but they immediately accepted that of Bamave to summon the 
 ecclesiastics of the Assembly to come and take the oath at, the 
 tribune, under penalty of deposition. The impatience of the 
 majority was such that' they repelled all that could facilitate the 
 execution of their own decrees, and went so far as to refuse the 
 insertion in the proceedings of the explanations on the oath of 
 Gregoire and Mirabeau. One would have said that they wished 
 to leave open no door, little or great, which would permit the 
 representatives of ancient France to re-enter into the Constitution. 
 It openly aimed at putting them ouside the law. 
 
 On January 4th, at the morning sitting, commenced the grand 
 scene of the refusal of the oath. It was as the counterpart of that 
 which has rendered for ever illustrious the hall of the Tennis- 
 Court. Nothing but the most sectarian party spirit can deny its 
 grandeur. I am aware what political passions, ever to be re- 
 gretted, were mingled with that noble resistance to an unjust 
 decree ; I am aware that with religion were associated the counter- 
 revolution, and regret for the ancient regime, with its abuses and 
 
 privileges : but it is not the less true that on that day, despite this 
 ■ -^ Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
1 66 , THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 fatal and culpable mingling, religion defended its rights, and tt 
 served them by great sacrifices, offered in the midst of the gra'| 
 perils. In fact, popular effervescence had reached its height, 1 
 up by frantic lampoons. At the very moment when the presic | 
 summoned the ecclesiastical deputies, amid the silence, full of 
 pectation and anxiety, which reigned in the Assembly, there m ight 
 be heard the vociferations of the multitude, who were stro: agly 
 disposed to show, by their acts, that for them liberty was i ;oii- 
 founded with their good pleasure. No one having answered ^i the 
 summons of the president, the roll-call commenced. The Bishop 
 of Agen was the first to ascend the tribune; the uproar fFom 
 without grows stronger, and scarcely has he opened his mouth than 
 from the left several voices cry out, " No words. Do you take the 
 oath; yes or no?" The Bishop expressed himself with calmness 
 and gentleness : "You have made a law," said he; "by the 4th 
 Article you have said that the public ecclesiastical functionaries 
 should take an oath, the form of which you have decreed; by the 
 5 th Article, that if they should refuse to take this oath, they should 
 have forfeited their offices. I feel no regret for my place, no regret 
 for my fortune; I should feel it for the loss of your esteem, which 
 I wish 'to merit. I pray you then to accept my assurance of the 
 pain I suffer in not being able to take the oath.'' The first eccle- 
 siastic called after the Bishop of Agen is a simple parish priest, M. 
 Fournes. He pronounces only these words : " I will say with the 
 simplicity of the first Christians, ' I gain glory and honour in fol- 
 lowing my bishop, as Laurentius followed his pastor.'" .... 
 Decidedly the roll-call was turning against the intentions of the 
 Assembly, and serving only to give more eclat to resistance. They 
 resumed the collective summons. They obtained only a single 
 oath pure and simple. Cazales demanded that at least the 
 Assembly should declare that it had not wished to touch the 
 
 spiritual. "It has not touched it, and that suffices," cried 
 Digitized by MicrosoWS) 
 
PATHETIC SCENE IN THE ASSEMBLY. 167 
 
 Mirabeau. This last attempt at conciliation was thus brusquely 
 set aside. The Bishop of Poitiers spoke in these terms: "I am 
 seventy years of age; I have passed thirty-five of them in the 
 episcopate, where I have done all the good that I could do. 
 Overwhelmed with years, I do not wish to dishonour my old age 
 — I do not wish to take an oath." Murmurs broke out, and the 
 Bishop descends from the tribune saying, " I will take my lot in ' 
 penitence." 
 
 It was necessary to finish, and Barnave had again the sad honour 
 of hastening the denouement. They voted on his proposition that the 
 president of the Assembly should repair to the King to beg him to 
 give orders for the prompt and entire execution of the decree of 
 the 27th of November towards those members of the National 
 Assembly who are ecclesiastics and public functionaries. It is 
 grievous that the Abbe Maury judged fit to terminate this great 
 strife by a ridiculous facetiousness, asking that the decree should 
 come into force only at the end of sixty years. The oath question 
 was unceasingly brought up again before the Assembly during the 
 following days. They returned to it as to a siege; for some, it 
 caused remorse; some ecclesiastics, who had submitted to the 
 decree, sent explanations and mitigations, whereupon the Assembly 
 disdainfully passed to the order of the day;* for others it is a 
 means of serving hateful passions, witness that unknown abbe, who 
 wished that they should act with severity against the refractory 
 clergy, and subject them to a sort of inquisition;! for all it is a con- 
 stant embarrassment — a subject of envenomed quarrels — a leaven 
 of implacable' discord. 
 
 In prospect of the vacancies which the refusal of the oath 
 was certain to occasion in the course of the year 1791, Mirabeau 
 caused to be decreed by the Assembly, after a tumultuous delibera- 
 
 * Sitting of January 2nd, 1791. {Sitting of January 5 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
l68 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 tion, the eligibility to all episcopal sees of whomsoever should 
 have been five years parish priest in France, and the eligibility to 
 all cures, of every priest who should have had any function what- 
 soever in the same body. The Ecclesiastical Committee was 
 invited to present a scheme of instruction on the Civil Constitution 
 of the clergy suited to calm the passions. Some days later, on the 
 occasion of rather serious religious disturbances in the department 
 of la Somme, Barnave, whom we always see in the breach to 
 combat the party of the bishops, and who will not, on any con- 
 sideration, be surpassed in energy by Mirabeau, demanded a 
 decree for the replacing of the refractory ecclesiastics ; but he was 
 very wrong, in a moment when the popular passions were quite 
 disposed brutally to suspend the right of meeting and association 
 to the detriment of the Catholics, to denounce in violent terms the 
 political society founded by the deputies of the right, by stigma- 
 tising it as a perfidious and factious association. These words 
 were as culpable as illogical in the mouth of a friend of liberty, 
 for they might be turned, that very evening, into lamentable 
 violences. We comprehend how they excited in a portion of the 
 Assembly an indignation which manifested itself by a sort of 
 assault on the tribune. Malouet had every reason to protest in 
 these terms : " I demand that in the very bosom of the Revolu- 
 tion, in the midst of this city which has witnessed the birth of the 
 Constitution, which has done everything for liberty ... I demand, 
 I say, that liberty, that public and individual security be not 
 outraged with impunity at this tribune."* 
 
 The decree required by Barnave was presented by Chasset at 
 the sitting of the next day. It stated that after the expiration of 
 the delay granted by the decree of the i8th December preceding, 
 to the functionaries absent from France, proceedings should be 
 
 * Sitting of Tuesday, January 25, 1791. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
DECREE AGAINST THE REFUSAL OF THE OATH. 1 69 
 
 taken to replace the public ecclesiastical functionaries who should 
 not be present and who should not have taken the civic oath, as 
 well as other ecclesiastics who should not 'have taken the oath 
 within the time fixed by the law. Cazales, rather to honour than 
 to prevent the defeat of his party, invoked, for the last time, the 
 rights of the Church, which an adjournment of the putting into 
 execution of the decree of November 27th would have reserved, 
 by leaving to her time to receive the answer and directions of her 
 sole legitimate chief. But to name the Holy Father at the 
 tribune was sufficient to raise such a tumult that no voice could 
 succeed in subduing it. In the midst of the cross-fire of the 
 interpellations, the Abbe Maury was heard to say to his party : 
 "Gentlemen, allow it to be done; it will not be long." "We 
 have need of this decree," added he, addressing himself to his 
 adversaries, " two or three more like that, and all will be at an 
 end " It was to desert the ground of right for the field of 
 battle, where reason belongs to the strongest; the hasty Abbe 
 made his cause pay dearly for his insults and jesting defiances. 
 When Cazales could again be heard, he brought forward consider- 
 ations well worthy of being maturely weighed. He insisted on the 
 dangers of the religious schism which was being prepared. " I 
 say that almost all the bishops of France, and that the parish 
 priests in great part believe that the principles of religion forbid 
 them to obey your decrees ; that this persuasion is strengthened 
 by contradiction, and that these principles are of an order superior 
 to your laws ; that when you shall have driven the bishops from 
 their sees and the parish priests from their presbyteries, in order to 
 conquer this resistance, you will not have conquered it — you will 
 be on the first step of the career of persecution which is opening 
 before you." The orator then presented a striking picture of the 
 consequences of schism, and of the profound disturbance which it 
 
 would cause in consciences. "You will see," said he, "the 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
170 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 Catholics wandering over the face of the empire, follow into 
 caverns, into deserts, their persecuted ministers, in order to 
 receive from them valid sacraments ; then in all the kingdom the 
 Catholics will be reduced to the same state of poverty and perse- 
 cution into which the Protestants were plunged by the revocation 
 of the Edict of Nantes — that act which roused to indignation your 
 sense of justice, which made your humanity groan." Mirabeau 
 won loud applause by saying that those who indulged in such 
 sinister prognostications, perhaps took their wishes for their ex- 
 pectations. Events speedily proved that Cazales had been only 
 too true a prophet, that the violence which was to compromise 
 and dishonour the Revolution was only just at its commence- 
 ment. 
 
 The Assembly published, at the same time as the decree of , 
 January 26th, the address explanatory of the Civil Constitution of 
 the clergy, which had been drawn up by the Ecclesiastical Com- 
 mittee. They hoped thus to neutralise the grievous consequences 
 of the clerical opposition. Mirabeau had presented a bill which 
 was much applauded on the first reading, but which was not 
 definitively accepted. He appears there at his full height, with 
 his magnificent language, sometimes a little declamatory, with 
 that large comprehension of the conditions of liberty which raises 
 him so high above all the disciples of Rousseau, but also with 
 that thirst for popularity which was the peculiar weakness of the 
 tribune, and which ends by the orator following at the heels of 
 those whom he ought to guide. There is consequently in this plan 
 of address the m6st inconceivable contradiction. Mirabeau begins 
 by stating the principle of the relations of religion to the State, so 
 luminously, so admirably, that at the first step he has stumbled 
 upon the formula of the future, in order to conclude by an apology 
 for the Civil Constitution of the clergy, inconsistent and even em- 
 barrassed whenever it is not relieved by a burst of passion. It is 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
RILL OF MIRABEAU. 171 
 
 quite the Monster of Horace : he begins, with liBerty to end in the 
 foulest despotism. 
 
 We better understand this strange anomaly when we explain 
 the plan of this address. In the first part, Mirabeau defends the 
 Assembly for not having, as the bishops desired, proclaimed a 
 national religion. In the second part, on the contrary, he wishes 
 to justify the measures taken authoritatively to reform the Church 
 of France, and he is inconsistent in his turn. Thus in this memo- 
 rable strife every one is right and wrong by turns. Let us confess, 
 however, that from a situation so compHcated, Mirabeau, from the 
 midst of the obscurity, knew how to emit magnificent lightning 
 flashes, which, for the moment, illuminate the whole horizon and 
 afford presentiments of the great solution of the future. Mirabeau 
 was not a believer, but an instinct of his genius revealed to him 
 the indispensable union of liberty and Christianity. "Liberty," 
 said he in commencing, " liberty which, as well as our faith, comes 
 from heaven, seems to point to faith as the companion of its eter- 
 nity and divinity." He magnificently vindicates the Assembly for 
 having refused explicitly to decree that the Catholic, Apostolic, 
 and Roman religion is the national religion. " To declare the 
 Christian religion national would have been to blast the most 
 deep-seated, most essential character of Christianity. In general, 
 religion is not, it cannot be-asocial relation^ it is a relation of the 
 individual man with the Infinite Being."' Here is the. true indi- 
 vidualism established and stated at the first stroke ! " Could you 
 comprehend," continues Mirabeau, '' what they wished to tell you, 
 if they spoke to you of a national conscience ? Well ! religion is 
 no more national than conscience ; for a man is not truly religious 
 because he is of the religion of a nation ; and if there should be 
 only one religion in the universe, and that all men should be 
 agreed to profess it, it would still be true that each of them would 
 
 have a sincere sentiment of religion onlv as fjlr as each should be 
 Digitized byiVlicrosoft® 
 
172 THE CHURCH AND THE' FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 of his own religion, that is to say, in as far as he would still follow 
 this universal religion if mankind should come to adjure it. A 
 national religion cannot be proclaimed because truth is not de- 
 cided by vote, and because men touch one another only by the 
 superficies of their being, whilst they remain isolated by thought 
 and conscience. Only institutions established to produce poUtical 
 effects can be national, and religion being nothing but the corres- 
 pondence of the thought and spirituality of man with the Divine 
 thought, with the universal spirit, it follows that it cannot, in this 
 view, take any civil or legal form." If that is true of religion in 
 general, it is especially true of Christianity, which assumes to be 
 the absolute and universal religion. It might as well be declared 
 that the sun is the star of the French nation as to proclaim Chris- 
 tianity the religion of France. Its real detractors are those who 
 wish thus to confine it within the frontiers of a country, instead of 
 leaving it as the rallying point and the centre of unity of the 
 human race placed by God in the midst of the universe. " It is 
 you," says Mirabeau to the bishops, " it is you who outrage the 
 religion of our fathers ! You wish that, like to those false religions, 
 born of the ignorance of men, accredited by the rulers of the earth, 
 and mixed up in the political institutions as a means of oppression, 
 it should be declared the religion of the law and of the Caesars." 
 The highest tradition of Christianity is contrary to these preten- 
 sions. "Its ministers would have refused a legal existence, 
 because it was necessary that God alone should appear in that 
 which was solely his work. Of all the sages who have applied 
 themselves to instruct men and to render them good and happy, 
 Jesus Christ is the only one who has hot considered them under 
 any political relation, and who has, in no circumstance, mingled 
 with his instructions principles relative to the legislation of empires. 
 Whatever be the influence of the Gospel on human morality, 
 neither Jesus Christ nor His disciples ever caused it to be under. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
CONCLUSION FULL OF INCONSISTENCY. 173 
 
 Stood that the evangelical institution should enter into the consti- 
 tutional laws of nations. The Gospel is an entirely spiritual 
 economy offered to mortals in so far as they have a destination 
 ulterior to the ends of civil society, and above all, political rela- 
 tions ; it is proposed to man as his second reason, as the supple- 
 ment of hjs conscience, and not to society as a new subject for 
 legislative measures. In short, the Gospel has demanded, in 
 appearing in the world, that men should receive it, and that 
 governments should permit it. Such is the exteirnal character 
 which distinguished it in its origin from> all the other religions 
 which had tyrannised over the earth, and it is this which ought 
 to distinguish it, even to the end of time, from all those forms of 
 worship which subsist only by their incorporation with the laws of 
 empires." 
 
 One is confounded and almost humiliated for the human mind 
 in passing from the exposition, so clear and strong, of these im- 
 mortal truths to the embarrassed justification of the Civil Consti- 
 tution of- the clergy, by which they were so flagrantly violated. 
 It is of very little consequence to know how Mirabeau attempts 
 to prove that a religion which could not be national may never- 
 theless become in reality the religion of the public, and be 
 regulated under this title by the civil power. The second part of 
 the address is only a repetition of his speech on the political oath 
 imposed on the priests; we find there the same theories hazarded 
 on the universal jurisdiction of the bishops, the same angry pro- 
 testations against the abuses of the list of benefices, the same 
 extemporised theology, in fine, that ridiculous blending of the 
 Father of the Church and of the tribune which had. already 
 astonished the Assembly. A splendid peroration, which sketched 
 in outlines of fire the regeneration of France by liberty, and 
 which veiled, under a purple hue, all the sophisms and contra- 
 dictions of a speech ■w^^Jjp.g^iMJWeifehe most beautiful theories 
 
174 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 on the independence of the conscience by the apology for a civil 
 religion. But time was soon to dissipate the errors of this power- 
 ful mind; and if the great truths which he had caught sight of and 
 proclaimed, could not save France, they j-emained graven for 
 posterity in his incomparable language; the day when we shall 
 know how to comprehend and apply them, the faults of the first 
 Revolution will be repaired. 
 
 The address of Mirabeau was such as to call forth, on the first 
 reading, enthusiastic applause, but on reflection, it was doubtless 
 found too bold and too liberal. Accordingly, it was replaced by 
 a tame document elaborated by the Ecclesiastical Committee, 
 which was restricted to affirming that the independence of the 
 Church had been preserved, and which, in the midst of the 
 unchained passions, spoke a language without energy and without 
 warmth, as incapable of moving the heart as of persuading the 
 intellect. This address was not even noticed, it obtained only a 
 universal disdain ; whilst that of Mirabeau preserved for the 
 future an importance so much the greater that it had no official 
 character. * 
 
 Whilst the National Assembly was endeavouring, after so many 
 stormy debates, to propose to the divided parties a derisive paci- 
 fication which did not rest on the equality of rights, the violence 
 of the people of Paris, and the still more culpable violence of the 
 demagogic press, rendered all reconciliation impossible. The 
 Revolutionary papers overflowed with insults and threatenings 
 against the refractory clergy. The journal of Marat, from the 9th 
 of January, urged the people to hoot and ridicule the priests who 
 should be found caballing; the populace had already shown them- 
 selves sufficiently docile in following such counsels. Camille 
 Desmoulins applied his brilliant facetiousness and keen, pointed, 
 
 * See the " Mpniteur " of January 25th, 1791. 
 Digitized by Microsom ^ ^ ' '^ 
 
PAMPHLET OF CAMILLE DESMOULINS. 175 
 
 cutting Style to the jeering of the high clergy. He published, at 
 the commencement of January, in his " Revolutions de France et 
 de Brabant," a pretended sermon of the parish priest of Saint- 
 Gaudens, which was a biting and implacable satire on the party 
 of the bishops. These light and piercing darts were launched by 
 a sure hand, and were destined to excite as much delight in one 
 camp as fury in the other. He had taken for the text of his 
 derisive sermon these words, attributed' to an old cardinal on the 
 occasion of the Civil Constitution of the clergy : " The bishops 
 were on the throne, and religion on the ground; France has Just 
 put the bishops below and religion on high." The talent of the 
 journalist, as marvellous as it is insulting, shines in these pages. 
 On the question of jurisdiction, he wittily said that to hear Maury, 
 it would seem that Jesus Christ, like Numa, would have pronounced 
 the penalty of death on any one who should offend even lightly 
 the god Termes, or should displace only a boundary. Nothing is 
 keener than his piece on clerical election. We can imagine with 
 what galling anecdotes and keen strokes the list of benefices in- 
 spired him. He quoted this profound word of James I. : " So 
 long as I shall have the power to nominate judges and bishops, 
 I am certain of having laws and a gospel which will please me." 
 " How have our bishops governed since the concordats? How 
 little does their guilt crosier resemble the crook of the Apostles 1 
 You are not ignorant how Saint Ambrose chastised the emperor 
 Theodosius; it was because this bishop had been nominated by 
 the people of Milan. But name to me a bishop of France who 
 has reproached our tyrants for their slothfulness, their cruelties, 
 and their wars. In what concerned the demand for a national 
 council, Camille Desmoulins said, "that the council of 1 791 would 
 not fail to imitate that of 1179, which granted for itinerancy, io 
 the rural dean, two horses ; to the archdeacon, seven horses ; to the 
 bishop, twenty horses; ta the archMshop^hventy-five horses; to the 
 
176 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 cardinal, forty horses. As for the Pope, as the fathers of the 
 council held their sittings in his palace of the Lateran, as they 
 dined at his table in the Lateran, they did not trace with their 
 crosiers the boundary of the stables of the Holy Father, but per- 
 mitted him to have studs as numerous as Solomon. But although 
 that was the time of the great riches of the Pope, he was not yet 
 rich enough to have as many horses in his stable as he had asses 
 in the council." After an ironical comparison of the pretensions 
 of the bishops with the words of the Gospel and the institutions 
 of the Primitive Church, Camille Desmoulins dissuaded from 
 violence against the refractory; he wished that they should not 
 tear from them their robes of lawn, but that they should restrict 
 themselves to famishing them by the refusal of maintenance. 
 " After that, the refractory bishops were welcome to their episcopal 
 throne, and to stand there like Saint Simeon Stylite on his column. 
 We shall see if Heaven will send down manna on them, or if it 
 will send them, as to Saint Paul the hermit, a raven which has its 
 beak sufficiently cloven to bring to each of them every day a 
 pound loaf . . .When they are not paid, you will very soon know, 
 my very dear brethren, that this sort of demons which are called 
 Pharisees, or princes of priests, is not cast out except by fasting."* 
 Such a pamphlet belongs to history, for it presents the 
 popular opinion of the moment under the most lively form. It 
 served equally as a sharpened goad to the contrary party; the 
 sentiment of honour, so powerful in France, would have sufficed to 
 the high clergy to contradict these sarcasms, and to prove that they 
 knew how to suffer privations and even persecutions. But, before 
 resigning themselves to martyrdom, they wished to be organised 
 and to fight; and the word of command was about to come to 
 them from Rome. 
 
 * Buchez and Rgj^^-fJ^JJigyj^^lj^entaire," VIII., p. 393. 
 
CJjaptcr t). 
 
 The Schism Constituted. — Correspondence with Rome. — Consequence of 
 the Legislative Measures in the Cotint7y.- — Splendid Debate on 
 Religious Liberty, on the occasion of the opening of the first 
 Church of the Nonjurors. — Speeches of Sieyes and Talleyrand. 
 — End of the Constituent Assembly. 
 
 We have seen that the Pope had delayed the sending of his 
 official answer to the bishops who had consulted him on the Civil 
 Constitution of the clergy, whilst giving it clearly to be under- 
 stood by his letters what was his invariable determination. Pro- 
 bably he had waited for events; he would, doubtless, have desired 
 that a sudden success of reaction should have diverted the pros- 
 pect of the schism which his definitive brief was about to con- 
 stitute. The affair of Avignon had just engaged the Assembly, 
 and it was easy to foresee what would be its issue. The county 
 of Avignon and the county Venaissin had formed, since the 
 thirteenth century, a part of the states of the Holy Father ; but 
 the possession had been more than once disputed by the kings of 
 France, although they had always in the issue returned to him. 
 From the point of view of the ancient European right, confirmed 
 by diplomatic acts, the Papacy legitimately possessed the county. 
 But the new right, based on the popular sovereignty, could not 
 fail to enter into conflict with the ancient right in this little ponti- 
 fical territory, subjected to the regime of the Middle Ages in the 
 centre of a country over which was passing the breath of political 
 renovation. It was iiiB3^#§felSytj(?/c§feKftiiis contagion of liberty. 
 
 N 
 
178 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 The question was raised on the 12th of November, I'jSg, by the 
 Abbe Bouche. In the month of March of the following year, the 
 agitation commenced at Avignon. The people of Avignon had, 
 of their own accord, given themselves a municipal organisation, 
 against which the Pope hastened to protest. They took a further 
 step and formally demanded their re-union to France. The parti- 
 sans of the re-union persevered in this desire through the bloody 
 strifes which broke out at Cavaillon, at Carpentras, and at Avignon 
 itself They did not allow themselves to be discouraged by the 
 delays of the Assembly, who were afraid of too quickly exciting a 
 European war; boldness was less easy to them, in a question 
 which was encompassed with grave diplomatic difficulties, than in 
 the affairs of the interior. In the month of August, 1 7 90, the 
 Pope had addressed to all the sovereigns a pastoral letter to prove 
 to them that the possession of this shred of land by the Holy See 
 concerned entire Europe, and was bound up with the first interests 
 of order and religion. He complained with bitterness of the in- 
 gratitude of subjects whom he had loaded with benefits, and who 
 had enjoyed the most paternal regime. But it was exactly this 
 paternity, transported into the political domain, which galled 
 them. The question of Avignon came up several times before 
 the National Assembly. The majority were very decided in prin- 
 ciple in favour of the people of Avignon, but they hesitated 
 before the grave complications which they dreaded. These hesi- 
 tations were to come to an end only when the Revolution should 
 have no longer considerations to maintain with Europe. 
 
 The debates on Avignon present great interest; one might 
 believe them of yesterday on the circumstances of the present 
 time. A solemn discussion was opened in November, 1790. 
 The clerical party appealed to historic right, and displayed a truly 
 Benedictine learning in order to maintain Avignon under the 
 Papal yoke. They aggg^ g^|9>,.j9,|J^anger of disturbing the 
 
DISCUSSION ON THE ANNEXATION OF AVIGNON. 179 
 
 ancient sovereignties ; but when they went so far as to boast of 
 the Pontifical regime in the political sphere, and to invoke the 
 ancient liberties of the county, an immense burst of laughter inter- 
 rupted their orators. Some members of the left committed the 
 error of following them on the ground of historical right in con- 
 testing the donation made by Joan of Naples; but these vain 
 cavils fell before a possession of long duration. It was much 
 more logical to invoke, like Petion, the popular right, and to 
 affirm that the people of Avignon were no longer the Pope's, 
 since they no longer wished to be under his yoke, and that it 
 comported with the dignity and greatness of the Assembly boldly 
 to acknowledge that kings belong to the peoples and that the 
 peoples do not belong to the kings.* It was the very principle of 
 the French Revolution which was asserted. It was easy for Petion 
 to set forth all the vices of a clerical organisation which united 
 the two powers in the same person, and conferred a sacred and 
 irrevocable character on the faults and errors of an authority 
 irresponsible, since it believed itself infallible. Mirabeau, in the 
 name of the Ecclesiastical Committee, proposed to the Assembly 
 not to decide the fundamental question, on account of the diplo- 
 matic difficulties, but to confine themselves to maintaining the 
 public tranquillity in this little country, which could not move 
 without agitating the whole South. But Mirabeau did not make 
 it less clearly understood that the right of the Avignonese appeared 
 to him self-evident. In the month of May of the following year, 
 the Assembly declined, in the same spirit, the proposition to vote 
 the annexation of Avignon and of Venaissin, but they were . so 
 very decided on the basis of the question that, as soon as 
 circumstances permitted, they voted before dissolving, in the 
 sitting of the 13th of September, 1791, the re-union of Avignon 
 
 * Sittine pf November i6th, 1790. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 N 2 
 
l8o THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 to France, in consideration of an indemnity, the amount of which 
 was not fixed. They had prepared this measure in the month of 
 June, by nominating commissioners charged to seek the pacification 
 of the country, and to ascertain the popular wish. The county had 
 been occupied by miHtary since the month of January. The Pope 
 knew what he might count upon respecting the final result of this 
 affair. Reasons of doctrine and discipline apart, he had then a 
 personal grievance against the Revolution; the question of territory 
 weighed, as always, with a great weight on his decisions. 
 
 Three important documents emanated at this time from the 
 Court of Rome; they were destined to set on foot an organised 
 resistance in the bosom of the Church of France. The first is a 
 brief of the loth of March, 179^, on the Civil Constitution of the 
 clergy. It is not yet the final decision of the Holy Father, for he 
 asks the French bishops to communicate to him their opinion. 
 Nevertheless, this preliminary brief already decides all the pending 
 questions, either as to the diocesan jurisdictions and the admission 
 of laymen in elections, or as to the primacy of the Holy See, the 
 privilege of the episcopal authority, and the alienation of eccle- 
 siastical property. Unhappily, the Pope joins to some claims, 
 founded on the liberties of the Church, a summary condemnation 
 of the most precious conquests of the Revolution, although he 
 does not appear to defend the ancient regime. What did he, 
 then, when he openly branded the acknowledgment of equaUty 
 and political liberty in the Declaration of Rights? "The neces- 
 sary effect of the Constitution decreed by the Assembly,'' says he, 
 "is to annihilate the Catholic religion, and with it the obedience 
 due to the laws. It is in this view that they establish as a right 
 of man in society this absolute liberty, which not only secures the 
 right of not being disturbed for one's religious opinions, but which 
 also grants that license of thinking, speaking, writing, and even 
 of printing with impunity in the^.matto of religion, all that the 
 
LETTER FROM THE POPE TO THE BISHOPS. l8l 
 
 most unregulated imagination can suggest; a monstrous right, 
 which, nevertheless, appears to the Assembly to result from the 
 equality and liberty natural to all men.'' Further, the Pope treats 
 as chimerical the liberty of thinking and acting,* and rises with 
 energy against the refusal of the Assembly to declare Catholicism 
 the national and dominant religion. Nevertheless, he protests as 
 strongly against the intrusion of the laity into questions of disci- 
 pline. That is to say, that they are competent to vote privilege, 
 but that they are not competent to repress abuses. The brief is 
 terminated by a violent sally against the Bishop of Aulun, de- 
 nounced to the Universal Church as an infidel for having taken 
 the oath to the Civil Constitution of the clergy. The retractation 
 and martyrdom of Thomas a Becket are placed in contrast to him, 
 whilst the chastisement of Heliodorus is recalled to the spoliators 
 and profaners of the sanctuary. The National Assembly is com- 
 pared to Henry VIII. The Pope announces an approaching 
 excommunication for the recalcitrants, and concludes by asking 
 the bishops if they knew of any means of preventing the schism. 
 After hurling such defiance at the Revolution, it was foolish to 
 hope for a reconciliation. This brief was accompanied by a 
 letter to Louis XVI., which contained the explicit condemnation 
 of the Civil Constitution of the clergy, and was perfectly calculated 
 to shake the timid conscience of the King. "Your Majesty," 
 said the Pope, " is under engagement, by a promise deposited in 
 our hands, to live and die in the bosom of the Catholic religion, 
 and this promise was for us a powerful reason for consolation. 
 But for you. Sire, it will become henceforth an inexhaustible 
 source of bitterness and sharp - vexation, when you shall have 
 learned that by your sanction you shall have detached from the 
 Catholic unity all those who shall have had the weakness to take 
 
 * " BriefsCB^/JKiHifliflA^cradj^ pp. 126, 127. 
 
1 82 THE CHURCH AND THE TRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 the oath required by the Assembly." In fine, the Pope accused 
 the King of having been waiiting to his coronation oath. We 
 comprehend how these severe declarations were destined to throw 
 into confusion the irresolute heart of a sincerely pious prince. 
 They hastened the moment when all concession would be im- 
 possible to him, and when his tardy and powerless resistance 
 would lead to the fall of his throne and precipitate the Revolution 
 into the utmost violences. 
 
 The bishops deputed to the National Assembly hastened to 
 reply to the Pope. They could not do otherwise than acquiesce 
 in his judgment on the Civil Constitution of the clergy. They 
 recounted the means of conciliation which they had indicated, 
 and which all ended in the convocation of a national council 
 Nevertheless, they took exception, in courteous language, to some 
 of the political theories of the Holy See ; and declared that they 
 accepted, without scruple on their part, the great principles of 
 liberty and equality put on the frontispiece of the new Constitution 
 of France. " We have desired," said they, " to establish the true 
 empire of political liberty in an hereditary monarchy. Political 
 equality may be extended or restricted according to the different 
 forms of government." The bishops made profession of toleration 
 for all opinions in civil life, and forcibly established the distinction 
 of the two powers. It was to no purpose to quote Bossuet : they 
 spoke a very. different language. Politics drawn from Holy Scrip- 
 ture was no longer their chart, and they were much in advance of 
 Rome. To be convinced of this we have only to glance at the 
 notes with which the editor of the briefs of Pius VI. has enriched 
 this answer of the high dignitaries of the Church of France. They 
 breathe the most senseless absolutism, whilst in France reconcilia- 
 tion between religion and the Revolution was possible on the 
 ground of right and liberty. Unhappily, persecution was about to 
 bring back French 6j|tk*li<»?im/tft)it«<instincts and remembrances ; 
 
ANSWER OF THE BISHOPS. 1 83 
 
 and the spirit which ruled at Rome, and which had already 
 appeared in more than one charge, was about to seize it again as 
 its evil genius. The bishops pointed out, at the end of their 
 letter, all the difficulties and perils of their situation: "When 
 oaths, contrary to our consciences, are the laws imposed on us ; 
 when we are treated as refractories because we do not wish to 
 commit perjury ; when, by an event which has no parallel, a 
 hundred and twenty-eight bishops are deprived of their sees, 
 without resignation, without forfeiture, and without trial, what are 
 the means which remain to us to reconcile the principles of the 
 Church with the will of the civil power ?" "We shall submit to 
 our destiny," they add, " whatever it be, with the courage which 
 rehgion inspires. Rise, most Holy Father, to all the wisdom 
 and liberty of your ministry j go forth from the midst of those 
 considerations and private fitnesses which expire with us. We 
 occupy a small point in time, as in space, and our fate cannot 
 enter into the balance with the destinies of empires and the pro- 
 mises of the Church. We know what are the examples which the 
 Church gives us, and we have learnt how to suffer for her. Let 
 principles be in safe keeping ! " The bishops concluded by offering 
 their resignation if the schism could yet be avoided. Assuredly 
 this letter remains a beautiful monument in the religious history of 
 France ; we find therein the inimitable accents of the Christian 
 conscience. 
 
 From the 13th of April the Pope had given his final decision in 
 a letter to the Church of France, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, 
 chapters, clergy, and people of the kingdom.* He therein declares 
 that none of the faithful caii any longer doubt that this new Con- 
 stitution of the Clergy is established on heretical principles. He 
 protests against the consecration of Expilly, the new bishop of 
 
 * " Briefs of Pius VI.," I., p. 280. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
1 84 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 Quimper, and against all the new elections, on the ground that 
 the Churches belong to their former pastors. The Pope addressed, 
 in fine, a solemn appeal to all the Catholics of France, and adjured 
 them, in the name of their eternal salvation, to remain faithful to 
 the ancient laws of the Church and to the Holy See ! 
 
 Henceforth all agreement became impossible ; there were two 
 Churches in France, that of the Pope and that of the Revolution; 
 the Constitutional and protected Church, and the refractory and 
 persecuted Church. To the honour of the first, the hour of perse- 
 cution was soon to strike for her, for the bastard regime which she 
 inaugurated was not likely to live. Besides, the popular outbursts 
 of anger raised by the resistance of the nonjuring clergy were not 
 long to distinguish between the two Churches, and it was religion 
 itself that they were soon about to curse and proscribe. Out of a 
 hundred and thirty-one bishops, four only accepted the Civil Con- 
 stitution of the clergy ; a multitude of chapters and second-rate 
 parish priests and pastors sent in their adhesion to the Pope.* 
 
 The opposition movement then immediately assumed a very 
 great importance. Resistance was organised on all sides ; it had 
 been prepared by the charges of the bishops, and their answers to 
 the departmental administrations, when the latter summoned them 
 to put into execution the decree of the Assembly on the Civil Con- 
 stitution of the clergy. To the charges which we have cited, it is 
 necessary to add the pastoral instructions of the Bishops of Bou- 
 logne, Poitiers, Lyons, Digne, Uzfes, Bayeux, Soissons, Sisteron, 
 Puy, Grasse, and Trfeves. Several of these bishops had also the 
 opportunity of formally declining to acknowledge the competency 
 of the civil authorities. t All firmly maintained the light of the 
 
 * " Briefs. of Pius VI.," I., p. 277. 
 
 f These charges may be read in the third volume of the collection 
 of Barruel. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
PRINCIPAL BISHOPS OF THE NEW CLERGY. 1 85 
 
 Church, and when the Assembly had voted the general deposition 
 of the nonjuring bishops, they had had time to recruit numerous 
 and fervent adherents, who were about to sustain their cause in 
 their absence. 
 
 Only four of the former bishops had decided to take the oath ; 
 these bishops were naturally maintained in their sees. They pro- 
 ceeded by election to the replacing of the others in the dioceses 
 maintained by the law. Gobel, Bishop of Lydda, was chosen 
 metropolitan of Paris. Expilly and MaroUes, ecclesiastical 
 deputies, were chosen in the departments of Finistere and Aisne, 
 and were consecrated at Paris by Talleyrand-Perigord ; Gregoire 
 was chosen at Blois, Claude Le Coz at Rennes, Lamourette at 
 Lyons, Moise in the department of the Jura, The high constitu- 
 tional clergy were, in general, recruited with honourable men, but 
 of moderate position and talent. The most eminent bishop was 
 indisputably Gregoire, a strong character, who was to bend neither 
 before the bloody Saturnalia of demagogism, nor before the threat- 
 enings and promises of despotism. His new position was in 
 perfect agreement with his convictions; naonewas more attached 
 to the Revolution, he loved it with an enthusiasm which might 
 prompt him to an imprudent language, but never to. a culpable 
 act. He was, besides, neither a great thinker, nor an. eloquent 
 orator, but he was cut, in some sort, out of that rock with which a 
 new society is solidly constructed. He had faith and heroism. 
 Lamourette was noted among, the insignificant apologists of Chris- 
 tianity who had endeavoured, in the eighteenth century, to combat 
 the prevailing opinion ; but he had that, tame goodness which 
 leaves not even a trace in times of agitation, and contest. Claude 
 Le Coz was honoured for the courage which he displayed in the 
 defence of the nonjuring priests, and for his devotedness to the 
 person of the King. He defended, with all the energy of a sincere 
 
 conviction, the Civil Constitution of theclergy. As for the Bishop 
 ' Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
1 86 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 of Lydda, he was one of those souls, without consistence, whom 
 revolutions toss at their will as the waves roll the seaweeds. In 
 reality he was, as we shall see, full of scruples respecting the Civil 
 Constitution of the clergy, and one of its least convinced defenders; 
 nevertheless, he was for ever to dishonour his name by the most 
 scandalous apostacy.* 
 
 Among the members of the ancient clergy of France who had 
 not quitted their see, two were poor and obscure : they were 
 ^ de Jiirente, Bishop of Orleans, and de Savines, Bishop of Viviers ; 
 two were celebrated, but little esteemed : they were Talleyrand- 
 Perigord, more of a politician than a bishop, who was soon about 
 to enter into ordinary life, in order to display there qualities little 
 compatible with his first vocation, and Lomenie de Brienne, who 
 had been as fickle as a minister as he had been as a prelate. The 
 Pope had received from this last a letter in which he foreshadowed 
 his adhesion to the Civil Constitution of the clergy. The Pope 
 answered him in severe terms, accusing him of inflicting on the 
 Roman purple the greatest possible dishonour by the taking of 
 the civic oath and the consecration of new bishops. " Such 
 acts,'' said the Holy Father, " are detestable crimes." Brienne 
 answered by sending in his resignation as cardinal. The Pope 
 announced that he accepted it, in a secret consistory held the 
 26th of September, 1791. After having enumerated the services 
 rendered to the Church by the Archbishop of Sens, the Holy 
 Father passed in review his culpable acts, and did not hesitate to 
 place in the first rank of crime what he had done as minister to 
 ■ assure toleration to the Protestants. He reproached him with 
 having restored in part the fatal Edict of Nantes. Thus the Holy 
 
 * See on the Constitutional clergy the 12th volume of the " Histoire 
 de TEglise de France," by the Abbe Guettee, pp. 254 — 263 ; and on 
 the persecutions against the nonjurors the " Histoire de I'Eglise de 
 France sous la Revol^^io^l'J^^^nutl^ 
 
FIRST MANIFESTATIONS OF THE NEW CLERGY. 187 
 
 See continued the apologist of religious persecution, at the very- 
 moment when it was claiming the liberties of the Church. There 
 was no surer means of injuring his cause. The elections to the 
 bishoprics and cures were not everywhere easily effected. In 
 certain parishes it was necessary to repeat the balloting seven or 
 eight times : fanaticism spread absurd or ridiculous reports. It 
 was pretended that at the moment of the election of Expilly, the 
 thunder had rolled, and that the sky was suddenly obscured the, 
 day of his entry into Quimper. They spoke of sudden numerous 
 deaths among those who had taken the oath. These last were 
 more and more an object of horror and fright to the partisans of 
 the ancient Church. 
 
 The first public manifestations of the constitutional clergy were 
 not of a nature to raise their dignity. The new Bishop of Auch 
 presented himself at the bar of the Assembly to bring to it his 
 homage. He pronounced a violent discourse against the refractory 
 clergy, in which he spoke of the torches and poniards of fanati- 
 cism. He concluded by a pompous apology for his conduct, and a 
 protestation of passionate attachment to the Civil Constitution of 
 the clergy. " Now, O Lord," cried he, " Thou mayest dispose of 
 my life." Nothing was more insipid than the letter of the Bishop 
 of Paris to the constitutional clergy and the faithful of his diocese. 
 " Let us preach to our flock,'' said the Bishop, " that next to the 
 Divine law, nothing is more sacred than the law of the State, 
 that it is to be wanting to the first not to obey the second." 
 Thus, all which is given to Csesar is given to God; there is neither 
 distinction, nor reserve. France had found, at the first stroke, 
 the model of religious officials. Gobel surpassed himself in the 
 charge which he published on the occasion of the death of Mira- 
 beau, in which, according to his own expression, he poured 
 out his ingenuous soul. He bitterly regrets not to be able to 
 sing the national son^. C^^^r^, ^^^r^^^hat will go, that will go), 
 
1 88 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 on the occasion of the restoration of the great man to whom he 
 is indebted for canonically exercising on the flowery banks of the 
 Seine, the ministry which he had exercised sadly and without 
 glory among the rocks and eternal snows of Switzerland, for it is 
 the pure hand of Mirabeau that has placed him in the See of 
 Paris. " Who would have thought," cried he, with compunction, 
 " that a venerable archbishop would be proscribed to make room 
 for Gobel ! How the talent of the great man whom we weep 
 to-day shines forth with splendour in this admirable work ! " At 
 this thought the sensibility of the Bishop knows no bounds. "We 
 must have civic priests, civic bishops, and a religion entirely 
 civic!" That nothing might be wanting to the ridiculousness 
 of this piece, it ends by a homage to the domestic virtues of 
 Mirabeau, proclaimed the father of the new church. This in- 
 comparable piece, destined to be sent into every department, 
 district, and section, is signed by the bishop and his secre- 
 tary, Courte Queue.* We may imagine the effect which such 
 language produced on the adherents of the ancient clergy. Some 
 months later, Gobel presided at a ridiculous farce, which mingled 
 the Carnival with the most holy ceremonies of the Church. 
 Children, who had made their first communion at his hands, had 
 been promenaded in Paris with great display. To the club of the 
 Jacobins, they had explained the principles which were taught 
 them. " You have put in broad day-light," they were made to 
 say, " this sublime truth, repeated so many times, but in vain, by 
 Voltaire, under the reign of the despots : ' The virtue of men is 
 not in creed.' " Gobel, we see, had not far to travel to inaugurate 
 the worship of reason. They presented these interesting neophytes 
 to the Assembly. Their orator recited in their name a foolishly- 
 potnpous speech, in which he welcomed the Revolution, and de- 
 
 * Buchez and Roux 
 
 ■D^g/Wl^^J^/ll^r^loW*^'-^^'" ^^■' P- 4°^- 
 
RIDICULOUS MANDATE OF GOBEL. 1 89 
 
 manded that these children of religion might become the children 
 of the country by the adoption of the National Assembly : then all 
 took the civic oath in chorus. The grave Treilhard, who presided 
 at the sitting, answered in the same tone : " There is no longer 
 childhood," said he, "when the question is of the country, and the 
 ices of old age are melted and grow warm for the defence of the 
 empire." The left applauded, and demanded the printing of 
 these masterpieces. On which the right burst out into ironical 
 laughter, treating as a masquerade the scene which had just taken 
 place. One of the most stormy disputes ensued, in which they 
 were near passing from hard words to blows — a worthy conclusion 
 of the exhibition of the communicants of- Gobel. Decidedly the 
 constitutional clergy were badly represented at the centre of in- 
 telligence. 
 
 The popular irritation against the priests who had refused the 
 oath only increased. Vile caricatures held them up to public con- 
 tempt. The Easter festivals, which were to place before the 
 conscience of each of the faithful, the great question dividing the 
 country, inflamed the passions of the multitude. Some unsup- 
 pressed convents had been the object of shameful violence, at the 
 commencement of the month of April, under pretext that the 
 services had been celebrated there by refractory priests.* Nuns 
 had been whipped in public. The Municipality was obliged to 
 post a proclamation to put an end to these frightful scenes, which 
 as much shocked public modesty as they were hurtful to liberty, 
 promising at the same time that measures_ should be taken to. 
 interdict the churches of the State to the refractories, t These dis- 
 turbances led to a resolution of the directorship of the department 
 of the Seine, declaring that the temples which should not be 
 
 * Buchez and Roux, " Histoire Parlementaire,'' X., p. 197. 
 t " Moniteur'' of April loth, 1791. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
190 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 acknowledged necessary to the constitutional worship, should be 
 sold, and appropriated by the purchasers to the uses which suited 
 their purpose. It was clearly stipulated that private persons 
 should be free to appropriate such or such a religious edifice 
 to the celebration of any worship whatsoever, on condition of 
 placing over the external door of the temple an inscription to 
 indicate its use, and to distinguish it from the churches belonging 
 to the nation. The authorisation of the department was declared 
 necessar}' for this inscription during the course of the year 1791. 
 It was, doubtless, feared that it might contain some indirect appeal 
 to resistance, or some provocation to riot. The agitation was not 
 less in the departments. The days appointed for taking the oath 
 were terrible days. The magistrates, in their scarfs, and followed 
 by the armed force, repaired to the churches at the hour of service, 
 and often strove hard to obtain the civic oath willingly or by 
 violence. In Champagne, a parish priest was killed by a gun shot, 
 before the altar, at the moment when he was explaining his re- 
 fusal of the oath. * 
 
 Already the greater part of the high clergy had emigrated. 
 Most of the bishops had crossed the frontier, but from thence 
 they acted with the greater effect on their ancient dioceses, and 
 employed all means to stimulate the spirit of resistance. It 
 served the King nothing to have sanctioned the decrees. It was 
 known that, in reality, he had not yielded, and that his scrupulous 
 piety was alarmed at receiving the sacraments from a constitu- 
 tional priest. As he made no show of his private sentiments, 
 the wisest course would have been to have respected them. It 
 would, doubtless, have been difficult to acknowledge as official 
 chaplain, a prelate who had refused to submit to the oath ; but it 
 was necessary to close the eyes on the private conduct of the 
 
 Digitized by MMosbn® 
 
THE KING PREVENTED FROM REPAIRING TO SAINT-CLOUD. 191 
 
 King, and not to fetter his individual liberty. Meanwhile, a popular . 
 outbreak prevented him from repairing to St. Cloud to celebrate his 
 Easter. It had been provoked by a placard which the club of 
 the Cordeliers had caused to be posted on Sunday, the 27th of 
 April, and which ran as follows : " The society, on the declaration 
 made to it that the first public functionary of the nation suffers 
 and permits refractory priests to harbour in his house and there 
 publicly to exercise, to the scandal of the French and of the law, 
 public functions which are prohibited; that he, has even to-day 
 received the Easter communion and heard mass from one of the 
 refractory priests, denounces to the representatives of the nation 
 this first subject of the law, as refractory to the laws of the Consti- 
 tution." It was surmised that the King was setting out to rejoin 
 the refractory bishops. He had, on the 17th of April, to repair 
 to the Assembly to get acknowledged his liberty of going and 
 coming, which he found it more prudent or more clever for 
 the moment not to use. " It is astonishing," said the King, 
 "that after having given liberty to the nation, I myself am 
 not free !" 
 
 Relying on the resolution of the Directory of the department, 
 which permitted the letting of religious edifices for any worship 
 whatsoever, some citizens had rented the church of the Theatines 
 to open it for the use of the nonjuring priests. The Directory had 
 accepted the following placard : Building consecrated to religious 
 worship by a private society. Peace and liberty. The people of 
 Paris had a fine opportunity of showing their respect for liberty, 
 for the question was of maintaining the right of a minority whose 
 principles they detested. Unhappily, under the excitement of the 
 press and clubs, they were incapable of restraining their passions. 
 The very day on which, for the first time, the worship of the 
 unsworn Catholics was to be celebrated, an insulting and threaten- 
 ing placard was posted on the door; the crowd stationed itself in 
 
 " '^ Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
192 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 the Street, resolved to let no one enter, and to join issue with 
 any one whatsoever who should attempt to cross the threshold of 
 the church. Orders had indeed been given to a detachment of 
 the National Guard, but they were so ambiguous that the National 
 Guards did not suppose that they were to protect the right of the 
 Catholics. Thus the most precious of liberties was outrageously 
 violated on the first occasion. In vain was it pretended that the 
 required placard had not been posted at a suitable time. Before 
 all placards there was the glorious frontispiece of the Constitution, 
 the Declaration of Rights, which was no more than a dead letter, 
 or a scrap of paper, if it was to protect only the strong and to 
 abandon the weak to the oppression of the rabble. The part 
 taken by La Fayette in these circumstances was very honourable. 
 He had seen in action, in America, the most extended religious 
 liberty; he would have wished the same i^e^m^ for France. "The 
 remedy proposed," we read in his Memoirs, " of leaving, after the 
 example of the United States, each society to support its temple 
 and its ministers, was rejected on all sides."* Although very 
 hostile to the party of the high clergy, he knew how to respect iji 
 them the right of conscience; and he authorised the refractories 
 to open a chapel in his own mansion.f When the people tumul- 
 tuously assembled to prevent the King from going to celebrate 
 his Easter at Saint-Cloud, he gave in his resignation, so odious 
 appeared to him this blow to religious liberty in the person of the 
 prince. He withdrew' it only on the assurance that no similar 
 attempt should be renewed. He energetically protected the non- 
 jurors of the Theatines, and entreated them to celebrate their 
 worship, despite the opposition of the people. They refused. 
 "For two days,'' writes the General on the occasion of these 
 
 * " Memoires de Lafayette," III., p. 39. 
 
 f " Memoires de Lafayette," IIL, p. 60. Idem, p. 172. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
NEW DEBATES ON RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 1 93 
 
 events, " I pass my life in discussions and arrangements which 
 have relation to the full and immediate maintenance of religious 
 liberty. The real aristocrats are vexed because we separate 
 religion from their opposition. The Ecclesiastical Committee 
 spoke to me to-day of precautions against the refractories. I said 
 that the National Guard was an instrument which would play all 
 the airs that were wished, provided they did not change the key, 
 which was the Declaration of Rights." 
 
 The affair was brought before the Assembly, and gave rise to a 
 very fine debate, the theoretic conclusions of which were in the 
 direction of liberty; but it was a very chimerical liberty so long 
 as it was abandoned to all the caprices of riot. , This debate was 
 provoked by the Directory itself, which had protested, by a very 
 plain proclamation, against the blow given to religious liberty. 
 The Assembly began by discussing the resolution which had 
 regulated the exercise of worship in the different religious edifices. 
 This resolution, apart from the clauses already mentioned, enacted 
 that the municipality should nominate, for each parish church, a 
 public officer under the name of prepose, who should have the 
 care of the edifice. A section of the Assembly thought that they 
 saw in this creation of a public office by a municipality, an en- 
 croachment on their right; it was, according to them, an act of 
 legislation. But it was not on this point that the discussion 
 specially bore. The Directory had forbidden all ecclesiastical 
 duties in the parish churches, by other priests than those paid by 
 the nation, and attached by name to the said church, or authorised 
 by a private license of the Bishop. The letting of religious 
 edifices for the celebration of any worship whatsoever, was 
 authbrised by means of certain formalities; the Dissenting chapels 
 could not then fail to be multiplied, once that the temples of the 
 nation were closed to the nonjuring clergy; nothing was better 
 
 calculated to hasten the realisation of the schism. It was what 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 O 
 
194 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 the first authors of the Civil Constitution above all dreaded. 
 Treilhard and Camus claimed warmly in favour of the nonjuring 
 priests the right to celebrate mass in all temples. They alleged 
 that the refusal of the oath implied only the loss of the official 
 function and stipend, but did not entail the loss of the general 
 rights conferred by sacred orders. "The ecclesiastics," said 
 Treilhard, " who were public functionaries and who have refused 
 the oath, have become only ordinary ecclesiastics. . Both have 
 preserved the right to exercise everywhere ecclesiastical functions. 
 It would result from this resolution, that contrary to its wish, 
 the nation would be schismatic. You would have only a single 
 worship paid by the nation, but there would be another worship." 
 Treilhard wished thus, in some measure, to re-establish religious 
 unity. What he demanded was unrealisable, as Sieyes proved in 
 a bold reply; the two clerical parties could not meet at the foot 
 of the same altars, without provoking scandalous strifes, the ap- 
 parent right which they would have granted to the nonjuring 
 priests to celebrate Divine service in the official churches, would 
 have been a motive for their refusing to them the libert)' of having 
 religious edifices of their own. Doubtless, the measures of police 
 to which the Directory submitted the opening of the new places 
 of worship, were to be regretted; but the right remained intact 
 The Assembly, after a stormy discussion, soured by violent tirades 
 of Maury, who never spoke with less dignity, sent back the reso- 
 lution of the Directory to the Committee of Constitution; but it 
 did not the less remain in operation whilst awaiting the legislative 
 solution of the question, and it was in agreement with its pre- 
 scriptions that the church of the Theatines had been opened by 
 nonjuring priests. So, after the riot which closed it, these ptiests 
 had for principal defenders, Talleyrand and Sieyes, who admirably 
 established the true principles in what concerns religious liberty. 
 
 Mirabeau was no longer there to sustain, with his powerful voice, 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
SPEECH OF TALLEYRAND. I95 
 
 a cause which he had illustrated by same of the most magnificent 
 bursts of his eloquence. 
 
 The first occasion of this new debate was the report presented 
 by Talleyrand, in the name of the Committee of the Constitution, 
 on the decree of the Directory of the department of the Seine. 
 He strove to conciliate, in his speech, the two opinions which 
 had been advocated before the Assembly, and to give a reason 
 as well to those who wished that the refusal of the oath should 
 not be a cause of exclusion from the celebration of the sacred 
 offices in the churches of the State, as to those who, with the 
 Directory, wished that the free exercise of worship should be 
 granted to dissident priests. It was on this point especially that 
 Talleyrand insisted ; for the riot, which had closed the church of 
 the Theatines, showed how much the people were still strangers 
 to this first of liberties. "It is time that it should be known," 
 said he, " that this liberty tif opinion does not make in vain a 
 part of the Declaration of Rights, that it is a full, entire liberty, a 
 real property, not less sacred than all the others, to which every 
 protection is due." Talleyrand showed that this liberty of opinion 
 was illusory if it was tiot respected outside the official worship. Not 
 only did it imply that no religious condition should be attached 
 to the exercise of the civil functions, from the most humble to the 
 most elevated, so much that the King himself preserved the full 
 independence of his conscience, but also, " that it would be per- 
 mitted to all private persons to assemble, for the celebration of 
 any religious worship whatsoever, in an edifice of which they 
 should have acquired the disposal, on condition of submitting to 
 the laws.'' The orator rejected, with indignation, the sophism so 
 often used, which reduces liberty of worship to inward liberty 
 of conscience. " If it ought to be free to each," said he, " in the 
 eyes of his fellows to have a religious opinion different from those 
 of others, it is clear that [t^Siteqi^ftfmc&Phim to manifest it, 
 
 o 2 
 
196 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 without which he would eternally lie to his conscience; thence, 
 evidently follows liberty of worship. And let it not be thought 
 that we here combat fanaticism in order to substitute for it a 
 culpable indifference. It is respect for conscience that we wish to 
 render sacred. It is the triumph of true religion that we think to 
 secure in leaving around it only means of persuasion, and in 
 showing that it has nothing to dread from the competition of its 
 rivals." 
 
 Passing to the deplorable facts which had just taken place at 
 Paris, Talleyrand expressed regret that the people had not been 
 prepared to respect religious liberty by an explicit proclamation 
 of the great principles embodied in the Declaration of Rights; and 
 whilst showing what this proclamation ought to have been, he 
 cast severe blame on the violence of a mistaken multitude. 
 Religious liberty had no meaning if it did not protect all dis- 
 sident opinions, as well those of the ftonjuring Catholics as those 
 of the Protestants. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes, with 
 all its bloody consequences, had been provoked precisely by those 
 who would not have two worships and two altars. The inevitable 
 effect of persecution must be to fortify the dreaded movement, for 
 the hope of martyrdom always gives new strength to religious 
 opinions. Talleyrand boldly declared that he attached no weight 
 to the scruples of the priests who refuged the oath ; but after all, 
 foolish as they were, these scruples existed, and troubled con- 
 sciences. Violence ought not to be done to them through love 
 for liberty, " which must be respected even in its most fiery adver- 
 saries." "It is necessary," added he, " that those who think, or 
 who do not think us schismatics, may be able to call us such 
 without fear, if that suits them ; it is necessary, consequently, 
 that the worship which they desire to celebrate apart, whether it 
 differs from ours or not, be as free as every other worship ; with- 
 out that, religious \^S^ijz.s^ t]^^c«ssoS^'^\.y name. We become 
 
SIEVES DEFENDS THE SAME CAUSE. 1 97 
 
 again an intolerant people, we justify all persecutions whatsoever. 
 Let us say that this liberty, added to so many others, is one of 
 those great benefits, by which our constitution will be every day 
 more strengthened, and which will procure for it, sooner or later, 
 the homage and gratitude of the human race." 
 
 The Abbe Sieyes, in the name of the Directory of the depart- 
 ment, developed the same principles with his usual precision and 
 firmness of speech, directing its sharp point against the Jan- 
 senists of the Assembly. He severely characterised the violences 
 of the multitude, and refused the name of people those mis- 
 chievous mobs which had threatened religious liberty. " Behold, 
 then," said he, putting the question with his accustomed 
 plainness, " citizens disturbed in their meeting ; this meeting has 
 a religious object; but does there exist a law which prohibits 
 assemblies having a religious object, when moreover these assem- 
 blies are peaceable and without arms ? We do not know such a 
 law. The National Assembly has said to all : ' You shall not be 
 disturbed on account of your religious opinions, you are subject 
 only to the law. Your liberty is secured to you ; rely on its being 
 efficiently protected. Shall we tell you that opinions are free, but 
 only in the mind, only when one is alone, or when there are but 
 few persons ?' But what then would the National Assembly have 
 done more than what existed under the ancient regime !" Sieyes 
 attacked one of the most frequent objections made to the full 
 exercise of religious liberty, that which, to the reproach of the 
 human mind, or rather of the French mind, so slow to be 
 enlightened on this point, has come up more than once in our 
 day in the judiciary or parKamentary debates. Religious liberty 
 has been acknowledged, it was said, in 1791 as in 1864, but from 
 thence to its public exercise there is an immense interval to be 
 crossed, and it belongs to the legislators to regulate the practice 
 of this right. " But," replied Sieyfes, " between the National 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
198 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 Assembly which acknowledges religious liberty, and the citizens 
 who, in consequence, avail themselves of this liberty, where is 
 the interval to be filled ? Can you say that in promulgating, in 
 the most solemn manner, the great principle of religious liberty, 
 your true intention was that people should be deprived of it until 
 a new order ? Can a liberty exist in principle and not in con- 
 sequences ? And what will the citizens enjoy, when you tell 
 them that they are free, if it is not the consequences of this 
 liberty, that is to say, the applications of the principle 1 Liberty 
 would then be only a depot of abstractions, the key of which the 
 legislator would have reserved to himself, in order that he may 
 give out little by little, and at his pleasure, some portions proper 
 to the circumstances. If such is the liberty they wish to give us, 
 it is not worth the Revolution." To those who objected that 
 religious liberty is full of perils, because it agitates the minds of men, 
 Sieyes replied that all liberty presents the same dangers. Besides, 
 these perils increase with all the efforts that are made in the 
 Assembly to oppose a universal toleration. This universal tolera- 
 tion is wished for so long as it benefits the worships to which 
 they are indifferent, but it is restrained, refused, so soon as they 
 are in presence of the worship, the free exercise of which offends 
 the opinions of the moment. Then let them speak no more of 
 religious liberty, and let them make a law of proscription which 
 permits no more ambiguity. This law, the Ecclesiastical Com- 
 mittee will in vain prepare ; it will in vain go forth from the 
 initiative of this part of the Committee, " which seems to have 
 seen in the Revolution only a splendid opportunity of making the 
 apotheosis of the manes of Port Royal," the Directory will reject 
 it as attacking the primordial rights inscribed in the Declaration 
 of Rights. As a conclusion to this admirable speech, of which 
 we have wished to give a complete idea, because it deserves to 
 be re-perused in all the courts of justice in the empire, Sieyes 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
THE RELIGIOUS AGITATION INCREASES. 1 99 
 
 demanded " that the National Assembly should declare, that the 
 principles of religious Uberty which had dictated the decision of 
 April nth, of the Directory of Paris, were the same which they 
 had acknowledged in their Declaration of Rights." 
 
 A parish priest who had resigned, and who wished liberty 
 for himself, but not for others, deserved to be interrupted by 
 the ironical laughter of the Assembly, when he exclaimed with 
 the accent of an jndignant prophet : " Behold the moment 
 arrived ! It is proposed to you to estabUsh the abomination of 
 desolation in the holy place. Flee the countries, formerly so 
 
 Christian, where they now adore the god Baal Flee, flee, 
 
 cross the mountains . . . ." Despite this ill-timed sail/, and the 
 withdrawal of the right, who clearly showed this time that they 
 dreaded, above all, the moderation and justice of their adver- 
 saries, the conclusions of the report of Talleyrand and of the 
 speech of Sieyfes, were voted by a large majority. The principles 
 of 1789, on the fundamental article of religious liberty, were thus 
 sovereignly fixed and interpreted by the National Assembly. 
 Whoever does not admit it with all its consequences, and who- 
 ever distinguishes it from the full liberty of worship, can no longer 
 appeal to them except in derision. • Unfortunately, it was going 
 to be with this right as with all the others, the revolutionary wave 
 was about to pass over it and to cover it with its foam, but it does 
 not the less remain as a rock rooted in the soil, in order to be one 
 of the corner-stones of the edifice in the day of its definitive con- 
 struction. 
 
 It may be readily perceived to what degree the National 
 Assembly were in advance of the people of Paris, on whom they 
 had, nevertheless, so many times leaned. Despite the noble dis- 
 cussion of the month of May, the Church of the Theatines, 
 scarcely re-opened by the nonjuring priests, was invaded on the 
 
 2nd of June ; the crowd dispersed the faithful, and destroyed the 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
200 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 altar. Lafayette had to come in person to quell the riot ; and 
 Bailly wrote, in the name of the municipality, a letter of thanks to 
 the battalion of the National Guard who had lent assistance to 
 the law. In it he claimed respect for conscience, but in tame 
 language, Uttle calculated to act on the masses ; and condemned 
 fanaticism under the banner of the Revolution, as well as under 
 that of the Church. The men of 1789 are more and more 
 powerless in their resistance to the passions of the people : they 
 made too much use of them to stop them at their pleasure. 
 Besides, they more or less participated in them, whilst respecting 
 religious liberty in principle ; and it is with effort that they resist 
 the irritation into which they are thrown by the clerical reaction. 
 This last gains strength every day. It spreads like a fire over the 
 whole surface of the country. It is not only the Catholic South, 
 where it is so easy to awaken fanaticism, which resists ; it is also 
 the calmer but more energetic North. Great disturbances broke 
 out in the Cote-d'Or and the Pas-de-Calais. The Bishops of Gap 
 and Senez courageously resisted every summons of obedience to 
 a law which wounded their conscience. The latter took, at the 
 tribunal of Castillon, the attitude of an ancient confessor. His 
 firmness was much admired, and had an extraordinary influence 
 over his clergy. He obtained the retractation of a priest who 
 had taken the oath ; and he did not cease, from the depth of his 
 exile, to direct resistance to the decrees of the Assembly.* In 
 Finisterre, in Anjou, and Maine, the agitation of minds was not 
 less great ; and in the first of these departments several priests 
 were imprisoned for some days. Others were, under the slightest 
 pretext, deprived of their ecclesiastical pensions. 
 
 The removal of the ashes of Voltaire to the Pantheon, effected 
 with that mingling of theatrical pomp and silly sentimentality so 
 
 Barruel, " Histoire de I'Eglise de France sous la Revolution,'' p. 71. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
REMOVAL OF THE ASHES OF VOLTAIRE TO THE PANTHEON. 20I 
 
 frequent at that period, was a new challenge of Revolutionary 
 France to Catholic France. . One of the motives alleged by the 
 Assembly for decreeing these supreme honours to Voltaire was, 
 that he had prepared the nation for liberty. They were about, 
 too soon, to see what secret bond unites irf eligion to despotism ; 
 nevertheless the majority of the Assembly had the manifest 
 intention of not overstepping the limits of moderation. Thus, 
 when the Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld, Archbishop of Rouen, 
 was accused of having interdicted some priests of his diocese for 
 having taken the oath, it was decided that there was no ground 
 for his impeachment,* after a short but smart debate, in which 
 Cazales entreated the Assembly not to take the first step in the 
 way of persecution. It is true that the vote was justified some 
 days after on the ground that the Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld 
 had written his letter before having had official knowledge of the 
 nomination of the new constitutional Bishop of Rouen. This 
 was to announce to the nation that, for the future, no offence of 
 this kind should pass unpunished. The brief of the loth of 
 March had been followed by several others, which circulated 
 throughout France, and quickened resistance. In the sitting of 
 the 9th of June, Thouret proposed to forbid, under penalty of 
 civic degradation, the publishing any act of the Court of Rome 
 which should not be confirmed by the Assembly, and promulgated 
 by the King. This proposition, in its generality, was about to 
 suspend the liberty of the press ; for it absolutely prohibited the 
 manifestation of the thoughts of a whole, party under their most 
 solemn form. Regnault de Saint-Jean d'Angely rightly observed 
 that what might be prevented was the publication of bulls under 
 the title of laws of the country, but not as simple documents. 
 Malouet professed this time again the most elevated liberalism. 
 
 * Sitting of June 8th, 1791. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
202 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 amid the murmurs of the Assembly. "If you have mosques," 
 said he, " you cannot hinder the muftis from instructing the true 
 believers in their worship. Tyranny commences where the legis- 
 lative body says, ' That portion of worship is legitimate ; this is 
 culpable.' " The Assembly decided that the interdiction proposed 
 by Thouret should be restricted to public ecclesiastical func- 
 tionaries. They thus kept themselves in their path of moderation, 
 and were followed, in this course, by a few departmental adminis- 
 trations. Some sisters of charity had manifested opposition to 
 the new regime in the department of the Cote d'Or ; the people 
 had threatened them. The Directory undertook their defence ; 
 but, whilst leaving to them the care of the sick, it forbade them 
 the work of instruction, which was a public function. The 
 minister of the interior wrote them a sensible letter, in which he 
 asked them to leave to those whom they tended the same liberty 
 which they claimed for themselves.* 
 
 The flight of the King, which took place at the end of June, 
 rendered moderation impossible : the revolutionary passions be- 
 came irresistible. It was much noticed, in the manifesto designed 
 to explain his departure to the French nation, with what emphasis 
 it dwelt upon the pressure which had been exercised upon him in 
 religious aifairs. " On recovering from his illness," it said, " the 
 King was disposed to go to St. Cloud. They availed themselves 
 of the reverence which they knew he cherished for the religion of 
 his fathers, in order to arrest him. Then he was obliged to order 
 the removal of his chapter, to approve the letter of the minister 
 to the foreign powers, and to go to the mass of the new parish 
 priest of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois."| Thus the alliance between 
 the counter-Revolution and the nonjuring clergy became more 
 
 * " Moniteur" of the 17th of June, 1791. 
 
 t "Moniteur" of June 22nd. 
 
 Digitized by Microsofi® 
 
THE FLIGHT TO VARENNES PRECIPITATES THE CRISIS. 203 
 
 and more evident before the Assembly. It is not astonishing that 
 the clerical opposition should have excited more uneasiness and 
 anger from the day on which the fugitive King had openly 
 espoused its cause before France and the foreigner. An obscure 
 deputy named Legrand, in an alarming report on ecclesiastical 
 affairs, presented the 4th of August, invoked the safety of the 
 people, that is to say, the democratic State reason, in order to 
 suspend the laws of justice and liberty, and thus crush the 
 resistance of the refractory clergy. He ventured to propose, 
 before this great assembly which had voted the rights of man, to 
 constrain all the nonjuring priests of the departments of the Nord 
 and Pas-de-Calais, particularly agitated at this moment, to with- 
 draw to thirty leagues from these departments, under penalty of 
 imprisonment and privation of stipend. This was to open the era 
 ,of proscription en masse. Maury arose immediately, and ironically 
 saluted the Assembly in retiring. The moment had not yet come 
 for such measures ; it was necessary to await a new legislature. 
 The men of 1789 could not contradict themselves in a manner so 
 iniquitous, despite the impulse of their passions, and the pressure 
 of the popular fury. The proposition of Legrand was sent to the 
 Ecclesiastical Committee, and to that of Investigation, with which 
 was joined the Committee of the Constitution. It was not to re- 
 appear till under the Legislative, but then with singular aggravation. 
 The Constituent bequeathed to it likewise a measure which was 
 only sketched, but which was' to realise one of the most liberal 
 and useful of reforms. It was the separation of civil and religious 
 cats. So long as it was not executed, religious liberty was without 
 security. They satisfied themselves with admitting the principle 
 on the proposition of Bailly and the municipality of Paris.* The 
 last day of September, 1791, the Constituent transmitted its 
 
 * May, 1791. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
204 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 powers to that stormy Legislative which was to carry away the 
 monarchy, and to found the repubhc on the ruins of liberty. 
 
 Let us not be unjust towards the great Assembly, which, in a 
 society full of abuses and prejudices, had to lay the foundations 
 of a new order. Assailed with all sorts of difficulties, a prey to 
 the contrary passions which caused mutual exasperation, placed in 
 face of a royalty which it mistrusted, urged on by a people igno- 
 rant, but weary of their yoke, and impatient to humble those who 
 had so long crushed them, it had to touch on all questions at 
 once, to resolve them under the goad of the most pressing 
 necessities, under the fire of the hottest strifes. It was not 
 possible that, in such conditions, it should raise a durable edifice ; 
 for it too often made laws, as one erects batteries, against the 
 enemies of a day. The true constitutionalists — those who wished 
 to maintain liberty and power, and to connect the future with the 
 past — had no chance of succeeding in so violent a crisis. Mira- 
 beau, who in reality thought as they, had to compensate for his 
 reasonable speeches by the impetuosities of the tribune. It must 
 also be confessed that the provocations and intrigues of the right 
 rendered wisdom very difficult. In such circumstances, the school 
 of Rousseau had fine play for its absolute principles, its bold 
 theories, its democratic tumult which permitted arbitrary measures, 
 and its very marked tendency to sacrifice liberty to equality. 
 Although restrained by the English school, and by the superior 
 talents of its opponents, it contributed largely to push the Revo- 
 lution to extremes, and to take away from the governmental 
 machine the counterpoise without which liberty is incapable of re- 
 sisting the transport of the passions. Allied to Galilean Jansenism, 
 it impelled the Assembly into its greatest faults in ecclesiastical 
 matters. After having restrained religious liberty in the Declara- 
 tion of Rights, despite an incomparable speech from Mirabeau, 
 
 the Constituent were still further wrong in voting the regime of 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
FINAL JUDGMENT ON THE CONSTITUENT. 205 
 
 the payment of worship, and organising a functionary clergy. 
 They sought to subject the clergy to the government by the 
 Civil Constitution and by the oath ; they carried constraint even 
 into conscience. It was thus that, in the very temple of liberty, 
 the old idol of the State had been replaced |on the altar by legis- 
 lators who thought themselves bold innovators, and who were 
 resuscitating the most worn-out pretensions of the ancient mo- 
 narchy. They had at least proclaimed liberty of conscience 
 outside the official worship ; but the people did not wish it ; anj 
 it was going to disappear in the tempest which was already howling, 
 and which was to carry away both throne and altar. Neverthe- 
 less great rights had been invoked. A generous enthusiasm, 
 mingled, doubtless, with imprudent fits of anger, had animated 
 this great assembly. It is to it, in the issue, that every develop- 
 ment of liberty in this country will ever re-attach itself; for, 
 if it has compromised all, it has caught sight of all, and nothing 
 will ever replace the patriotic flame which devoured it. A 
 terrible winnowing, moreover, was about to separate the 
 chaff from the good grain. The exposure of its errors on the 
 relations of the two powers was quickly to result, with irrefragable 
 evidence, from the conflicts which it had prepared. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
BOOK II. 
 
 THE LEGISLATIVE AND THE CONVENTION TO THE PROCLAMATION 
 OF THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 Chapter i. 
 
 Religious Strife under the Legislative Assembly. 
 
 The Constituent had maintained, unto the end, the principle of 
 liberty of conscience ; but the Declaration of Rights was a very 
 insufficient check to restrain a country agitated by religious strife. 
 What could the abstract idea avail against boiling passion? Let 
 us not forget, besides, that if the Constituent had remained faithful 
 to the liberal idea, it had only too much submitted to the in- 
 fluence of popular passion, and had helped to unchain it by the 
 most grievous measures. Nevertheless, the men of 1789 could 
 not contradict themselves so far as openly to suspend religious 
 liberty. They were to defend it in the few rare positions which 
 they had preserved in the Directory of Paris and in the Legisla- 
 tive Assembly, where they formed only a weak minority; but 
 their resistance was to be neither very long nor very efficacious. 
 The fatal theory of the public safety, which is as the plenary in- 
 dulgence of politics, more fatal even in democratic societies than 
 in absolute monarchy, was about to annul, for a time, the most 
 precious conquests of the Revolution. Violent hands were pre- 
 paring to throw the yt^iJ^^n^iM^ AM;«S&B!^uieu had. spoken, over 
 
DISPOSITION OF THE NEW ASSEMBLY. 207 
 
 the Statue of liberty, although it had been only just placed on its 
 pedestal, and this pedestal had been transformed, for a moment, into 
 an altar, to such a degree had the New Assembly shown an idola- 
 trous attachment to the Constitution of 1791. It.was soon seen of 
 what worth were those homages, so solemnly expressed on the day 
 when Camus, the keeper of the records, placed on the tribune the 
 book of the law of the French people. The rude insolence which 
 the Legislative Assembly, from its outset, showed to the King, was 
 a violation of the spirit of the Constitution; for, to humble a royalty 
 already rendered so dependent, was, in fact, to suppress it. The 
 want of regard and respect inflicted on it a sort of moral forfeiture. 
 The other articles of the Constitution were not to be more respected. 
 It was because, in reality, the question for the Legislative Assembly 
 was less of governing and founding than of combating and de- 
 stroying. Composed in great part of new men, the most of them 
 very young, who had signalised themselves by their revolutionary 
 ardour, and had been brought by their administrative functions 
 to struggle with the reaction in the departments, it was born in a 
 day of anger and defiance. It had received from the passions of 
 which it was the daughter, the formidable command to beat down 
 all that was an obstacle to the Revolution, and first and foremost 
 the religious resistance which was being organised on all sides, 
 and assuming frightful proportions. Urged by its own inclinations 
 towards this declivity of democratic arbitrariness, it had, in order 
 to hold it back, neither the ascendency of the great orators and 
 great politicians of the Constitutional party, whom an imprudent 
 measure of the Constituent had put aside in order to replace them 
 by mediocre men, nor' a compact right opposing the greatest 
 names and highest positions of the country to radical measures. 
 On the right was seated this phantom of the Constituent, without 
 influence and almost without talent. The centre, without settled 
 convictions, belonged ii%it^ ^SjtriWRg^fit^rty, and was by its inert 
 
2o8 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 weight to precipitate the march of the violent. Royalty, hesitating 
 and tottering, passed from concessions wrested from its weakness, 
 to resistances which served none but its adversaries; for they 
 lasted until the -revolutionary waves acquired an irresistible force 
 in hurling themselves against the obstacle. A senseless press, 
 which was subject to no penalty and could proceed to the last 
 excesses against persons ; riot permanently organised and mistress 
 of the galleries in the hall of Assembly; debates of the clubs be- 
 coming ever more stormy; the intoxication of the combat in the 
 two camps ; the constant suspicion of treason in high places, and 
 plots among the low and everywhere ; what was wanting to such a 
 situation to make the strain beyond measure ? 
 
 It may be said that for the left of the Legislative Assembly 
 nothing was a curb and everything was a goad. The left, it is 
 known, was, in the Legislative, the brilliant group of the deputies 
 of the Gironde, behind whom appeared already, as their natural 
 heirs, the future Mountain, who were then separated from them 
 only by a more rude energy, a more cruel temperament, and 
 habits more foreign to polite society. We shall see, that- in the 
 religious strife, the Girondists have shown as much violence and 
 injustice as their enemies; and if they have not raised the political 
 scaffold with their own hands, they, at least, prepared its first steps 
 by the measures of proscription which they voted. It is certain 
 that they sacrificed right and liberty to reasons of State. Now, 
 this is the fundamental point of the political catechism of the 
 Mountain. Their eloquence, their youth, their easy generosity, 
 mingled with so much harshness towards the conquered party, 
 above all their courageous death, cast an illusion over their faults. 
 We must not view them solely in their last and noble attitude; 
 for this liberty, which their proud heroism invoked in their last 
 hour, they had too often denied in their political career, and even 
 they had, under this dgpeji^tf^^^^Jjjj^d laws of proscription. 
 
SITUATION OF THE COUNTRY. 209 
 
 They had wished to found liberty by arbitrary power — a sure 
 means of ruining it and themselves — by leaving it, bloody and 
 stained, to barbarous hands, which were long to dishonour it. 
 Docile and passionate disciples of an incredulous age, they were 
 about to carry into the repression of clerical resistances all the 
 prejudices of a materialistic philosophy, incapable of respecting 
 God in the human conscience. They gave to the world the 
 shameful spectacle of Voltairian persecutors. But let us not forget 
 all that tends to excuse them, all that was likely to exasperate 
 the contest, all that complicated it by mingling the saddest re- 
 actionary passions with a holy cause, for, in the confessors who 
 fill us with admiration, we recognise emigrants allied to the 
 foreigner, and intriguers prepared to make capital even of mar- 
 tyrdom. 
 
 Let us give a rapid sketch of the situation of the country in its 
 religious aspect at the opening of the debates of the Legislative 
 Assembly. The taking of the oath and the replacing of the 
 nonjurin^ priests continue to provoke an agitation more or less 
 formidable according to the departments. At one time it is the 
 party of the Revolution which is the strongest, and then the re- 
 fractories underwent every kind of ill-treatment; they make them 
 wait for, or "even refuse to them, the payment of their pensions. 
 At another time it is the sworn priest who is hunted with throwing 
 of stones ; which happens in communes where he has found only 
 a few electors to nominate him. The refractory priests have pre- 
 served the right to say mass in the churches of the Constitutional 
 clergy ; they can also rent places for celebratiiig their worship after 
 a declaration made to the municipal authorities, but they are con- 
 stantly balked of their rights, by the shameless violences of which 
 they are the object, and which became for them the occasion of 
 new persecutions, for the very disturbances of which they are the 
 victims, are imputed iais<fcra]h^ja<Mft;rtfaeft€Scplosions of public anger 
 
 p 
 
210 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 against them are laid to their charge. If in the rural districts 
 they often preserved their old ascendency, in the towns they are 
 at the mercy of popular tumults. One would have thought that, 
 at Paris, they would have met with more toleration than in the 
 departments, inasmuch as they had the whole Constitutional party 
 in their favour. Lafayette, before resigning the general command 
 of the National Guards, earnestly recommended, in his farewell 
 proclamation, respect for religious liberty. " Liberty," said he, 
 " would never be sufficiently established among us, if the intoler- 
 ance of reUgious opinions, covering itself with the mantle of, I 
 know not what patriotism, should dare to admit the idea of a 
 dominant and a proscribed worship." * The Directory, persevering 
 in its line of conduct, pubHshed a very resolute proclamation after 
 an odious aggression of the populace which had invaded the Irish 
 College, in the street of Carmes, in order to prevent the celebra- 
 tion of the nonjuring worship, thus at once offending civil liberty 
 and the rights of hospitality, as stated in the proclamation. The 
 Directory declared that the few measures of precaution which it 
 had decided upon for the celebration of worship, were not appli- 
 cable to an establishment founded by foreigners, and it recom- 
 mended to the municipality "to watch, that for the future, no 
 blow should be inflicted on religious liberty, nor on the right 
 which every individual has of practising in his own way, and of 
 causing to be exercised, by whomsover it pleases him, the religious 
 worship which he judges fit to prefer, whatever the worship be, 
 so long as he does not disturb the public tranquillity. •[• The 
 municipality was animated by quite another spirit, and much dis- 
 posed to minister to the passions of the people of the suburbs. 
 Instead of conforming themselves to the decree of the Directory, 
 
 * " Monitetir'' of October nth, 1791. 
 
 t "Moniteur" of the 17th of October. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
POPULAR VIOLENCES AGAINST THE NONJURORS. 211 
 
 ■made in April, they had the presumption to put each place of 
 worship belonging to the nonjuring priests under the surveillance 
 -of the Constitutional parish priest of the quarter. It was only on 
 this condition that they had permitted, in the month of October, 
 the re-opening of four new churches. Such an authorisation was 
 a mockery and could not be honourably accepted,* for the dissi- 
 dent Catholics were by no means disposed to admit this high 
 jurisdiction of the clergy from whom they had separated. 
 
 Street violences were renewed every day, and cowardly attacks 
 were made on the feeble and unarmed. At the college of the 
 Irish, women were whipped on leaving the church. At the 
 seminary of the Irish, a woman was brutally torn from the con- 
 fessional. The house of the English ladies at the Jardin des 
 Plantes was the theatre of similar scenes. The municipal 
 police interfered only to give satisfaction to the populace by 
 closing the attacked churches. A magistrate, with whom a com- 
 plaint had been lodged, confined himself to saying that the people 
 w»e not ripe. In consequence of these outrages, the Catholics of 
 ' Paris not attached to the new worship sent to the King an address 
 to represent their sad condition. " Sire," said they, " the 
 Catholics of Paris see themselves for more than six months 
 exiled from the'ir temples, deprived of their worship, a butt to 
 all the outrages of fanaticism, without their having been able 
 to obtain a hearing for a single grievance. Disciples of a Master 
 who, dying on the cross, prayed even for His executioners, 
 children of a religion whose first law is love, and 'whose first boon 
 is peace, they thought it their duty at first to stifle their com- 
 plaints, and to concentrate in themselves the bursts of their grief ; 
 but now, when the promulgation of the Constitutional laws should 
 calm the effervescence of minds, we venture to speak to you of 
 
 *"' yiSma^ <af msf^m>oi October. 
 
 P 2 
 
212 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 our rights to the common liberty, and to demand the protection 
 of the laws for the exercise of our worship. We desire and wish 
 only peace ; the constitution of the kingdom gives us rights ; it 
 is time that we should be able to enjoy them." The petitioners 
 were wrong in not being content with the free exercise of public 
 worship, but in demanding also that the State should gratuitously 
 abandon some temples to them. That was to leave the ground 
 of the common right and to weaken their just claims.* 
 
 In the departments the attitude of the nonjuring clergy was 
 bolder, because they were often sustained by the population. 
 We may be convinced of it by reading the report drawn up by 
 Gallois and Gensonne, who, since the month of July, had been 
 sent by the National Assembly on a mission into the west of 
 France.f They found La Vendee well disposed to submit to the 
 new rigime in all that did not concern religion. "This people," 
 said they, " withdrawn from the common centre of all resistances, 
 disposed by their natural character to the love of peace, to the sen- 
 timent of order, to respect for the law, reaped the benefits ofithe 
 Revolution without experiencing its storms. Nothing then was 
 easier than to attach them to the constitution, if their very lively 
 and tenacious religious faith were respected. Their religion has 
 become for them the strongest, and, as it werfe, the only moral 
 habit of their life." Not knowing how to distinguish between 
 religion and the priest, they believed that their faith was torn from 
 them, when they saw carried off the men whom they regarded as 
 the only mediators between earth and heaven. They attached 
 themselves to them with a sort of wild affection which might 
 easily lead them to revolt, transformed in their eyes into a sacred 
 duty. The nonjuring priests did not fail to keep up these dis- 
 
 * Theiner I., p. 336. 
 
 + anting of the 0th of October, 1791. 
 
 ' Cffgitized b/Microsoft® ' ^ 
 
REPORT OF GALLOIS AND GENSONNE. 
 
 213 
 
 positions. The ancient Bishop of Lucon multiplied pastoral 
 letters to preserve the true faith. In a letter dated from Luijon, 
 the Bishop forbids his ancient clergy to cross the threshold of 
 churches profaned by the priests who had taken the oath, and 
 invites them to open new places of worship. " In parishes," 
 writes the Bishop, " where there are but few rich proprietors, it will 
 be difficult without doubt to find a suitable place, and to procure 
 sacred vessels and ornaments : then a simple barn, a portable 
 altar, a cotton chasuble, pewter vessels will suffice, in this case of 
 necessity, to celebrate the holy mysteries and the Divine office. 
 This simplicity, this poverty, by recalling to us the first ages o^ 
 the Church and the cradle of our holy religion, may be a pow- 
 erful means to excite the zeal of the ministers and the fervour of 
 the faithful. The first Christians had no other temples than their 
 houses." The Bishop ordained that they should keep secret 
 registers for the acts of baptism, marriage, and burial ; that when 
 they could not dispense with carrying the body of the deceased 
 to the cemetery of a parish delivered to a priest who had taken 
 the oath, they should take care to retire with precipitation, as 
 soon as he should defile the holy ground with his presence, and 
 that, in short, every priest, driven from his parish, should establish 
 himself in the neighbourhood to offer the help of his ministry to 
 his former flock. Zealous missionaries, established in the centre 
 of the country, travelled over it in every direction to preserve 
 fidelity to the proscribed worship, and they distributed profusely 
 popular catechisms which announced the most terrible judgments 
 of heaven on whomsoever should be on terms of agreement 
 with the intruders. No marriage blessed by them was valid, and 
 every ceremony in which they had officiated was no more than a 
 sacrilege. These instructions bore their fruit : families were pro- 
 foundly divided, and municipalities broke up in order not to lend 
 themselves to an a.ct[^§ifj^c^i^)^f^ that of presiding at the 
 
214 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 election of an intruder. The replacing of the ancient clergy had 
 been very slow and incomplete. In all the communes where it 
 had been effected, the irritation of the people was profound ; the 
 adherents of the refractory priests could not see, without indig- 
 nation, the ancient and venerable Church delivered to a minority, 
 low and even infamous in their eyes, whilst they were condemned 
 to journeys of several leagues to celebrate their worship. On 
 Sundays and solemn feast-days, entire villages and market towns 
 were seen deserting their hearths. It may easily be imagined 
 with what bitterness the peasants would return in the evening, 
 harassed by fatigue. The agitation of the country had appeared 
 so alarming to the Commissioners of the National Assembly that 
 they had judged it well to support their exhortations on the 
 excellence of the Civil Constitution of the clergy, by quartering 
 troops of the line in the most exasperated parishes. But the best 
 soldiers, even commanded by Dumouriez, could not restore tran- 
 quillity.* There was need not of soldiers, but of hberty. The 
 Commissioners had found the department of Deux-Sevres all in a 
 blaze ; civil war would not have failed to burst out immediately if 
 they had listened to the excited revolutionists, who demanded that 
 all the refractory priests should fix their residence at Niort, thereby 
 anticipating one of the most grievous measures of the Legislative. 
 Gensonn^ aiid Gallois had the good sense to oppose this sense- 
 less project. They assembled the fifty-six municipalities of the 
 district of Chatillon, and were quite astonished at the moderation 
 of these peasants who had been represented as factious. They 
 simply asked that their parish priests should be left to them. 
 "There is still one point," say the reporters, " on which all the 
 inhabitants of the country are united : that is, liberty of religious 
 opinions which," they said, " had been granted to them, and 
 
 See the second volume of the "Memoirs of Dumouriez,'' p. 126. 
 Digitized by Microsofi® 
 
RISING IN THE SOUTH. 215 
 
 which they desired to enjoy. The same day, and the day fol- 
 lowing, the neighbouring country places sent to us numerous 
 deputations to reiterate to us the same prayer. We solicit no 
 favour," said they unanimously, " but that of having priests in 
 whom we have confidence. Several amongst them attached so 
 great a value to this favour that they assured us they would wil- 
 lingly pay, in order to obtain it, the double of their tax. These 
 very men, who had been represented to us as furious, deaf to every 
 kind of reason, have left us with their souls full of peace and 
 happiness, when we have made them understand that it was in 
 the principles of the New Constitution to respect liberty of con- 
 science." These words of one of the chiefs of the Gironde 
 contain the severest condeinnation of all the measures of the 
 Revolution ; in ecclesiastical affairs they prove that civil war 
 could have been avoided by a loyal practice of the Constitution. 
 What a condemnation for every kind of measure of public 
 safety ! Let us acknowledge that if they violate right they pre- 
 serve nothing, security no more than honour. 
 
 Whilst La Vendee was preparing for insurrection, analogous 
 causes were bringing about the same effects on other points of the 
 country. At Montpellier the populace had disturbed the cele- 
 bration of the mass by a nonjuring priest in one of the churches 
 conceded to both worships. The Catholics had repelled these 
 scandalous attacks by uttering this single ciy : Opening of the 
 Churches ! Liberty of worships /* That was to appeal from the 
 Revolution furious, to the Revolution wise and liberal, from that 
 which spoke in crossways and clubs, to that which, by the voice 
 of Mirabeau, had proclaimed universal toleration. Unhappily, 
 whilst the Catholic populations were sincere in the vindication of 
 this great principle, and were sustained by a considerable number 
 
 * Sitting of the 17th October, 1791. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
■ 2 1 6. THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION; 
 
 of courageous priests who exposed themselves on their account to 
 all perils, the chiefs of the royalist party outside were seeking to 
 take advantage of the agitation of consciences. They thought 
 only of restoring the ancient regime, and of reviving with it, those 
 same persecuting principles which they so indignantly condemned 
 when they were turned against themselves. We have a striking 
 proof of this anomaly in a memorial of the Abbe Maury to the 
 Holy Father on the decisions which he ought to take with regard to 
 the Church of France. This curious document, although of a date 
 a little later than the opening of the Legislative Assembly, clearly 
 reveals the true thought of the leaders of the Catholic party, at 
 the moment when the simple combatants, who were not in the 
 secret of their chiefs, were covering themselves with so unsullied a 
 glory by suffering and dying for liberty of conscience. This 
 liberty is cynically disowned in the memorial of the fiery and in- 
 corrigible Abb6. He openly claims the reconstitution of all 
 the privileges of the ancient Church, the restitution of its pro- 
 perties, the abolition of all the precautions taken by the monarchy 
 against the possessions of mortmain ; the sanction of the most 
 detested abuses, and first and foremost the maintenance of the 
 revocation of the Edict of Nantes. 
 
 We read in this memorial the following words : — " A great King 
 whom every one recognises under this title, Louis XIV., who had 
 so well studied the spirit of his nation, had learnt, by the disasters 
 of his predecessors and by his personal experience, that the 
 French character could not be allied with the public exercise of 
 two parallel religions, and that for them it is in some sort with the 
 unity of a national worship as with the unity of the Supreme 
 Being. That is to say, if it is wished to admit several, there is no 
 longer any." Maury declared that the participation of the Pro- 
 testants in the French Revolution, justified the revocation of the 
 
 Edict of Nantes, and that it was necessary to return to the tradi- 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
STRANGE MEMORIAL OF MAURY. 21 7 
 
 tions of the great reign by treading underfoot a vain philan- 
 thropy. He proposed nothing less than to withdraw civil rights 
 from the reformed, and demanded their being put outside the law. 
 This fine scheme was to be flanked by a bull of excommunication 
 against the philosophers and Jansenists. This is what the counter- 
 revolution ventured to propose : surely it showed itself as exag- 
 gerated and foolish in its way as its most violent adversaries did 
 in theirs. His counsels were not ill-received at Rome. The Pope 
 did not content himself with defending, according to his right and 
 duty, the great maxims of his Church ; he decidedly constituted 
 himself the chief of the reaction in Europe, and boldly declared 
 himself conjointly responsible for the ancient regime. Already we 
 have seen him strike, with his anathemas, not only the Civil Con- 
 stitution of the clergy, but also the elementary principles of social 
 justice and political liberty. He was unhappily surrounded by an 
 absolutist Camarilla, which was pleased to confound the most just 
 with the most wicked cause. In the commencement of this year, 
 1791, the ChevalierJ;d' Azara, ambassador of Spain, had caused 
 to be conveyed to him a confidential memorial by the Cardinal de 
 Bernis, who was on the eve of being replaced as ambassador of 
 France by a moderate representative of the Revolution. This 
 memorial strongly counselled the Court of Rome to refuse to admit 
 the Count de Segur into the diplomatic body, and thus openly to 
 break with the new rigime. The Chevalier d' Azara sought to* 
 establish a complete joint responsibility (solidarite) between the 
 Papacy and absolute monarchy. The temporal power of the Holy 
 See is represented by him as the bulwark of uncontrolled monarchy 
 and the rampart of the Catholic faith. Once that this temporal 
 power is set aside, the Revolution will be everywhere triumphant.* 
 
 * " The destruction of the temporal dominion of Rome would open 
 a way easy enough to s.^v^rt^^^(jfthjr^n^ons."-Theiner I., p. 314. 
 
2l8 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 Now, at Rome, to receive a representative of the Revolution, is to 
 receive a missionary of anarchy, an agent of the impious revolt 
 which wishes to attack the temporal power of the_ Holy Father as 
 the sacred shield of his sovereignty. The enterprise appears easy 
 in face of a disarmed royalty, and it is well known that the effect 
 of it will be universally felt If the Holy Father baffles this intrigue 
 by a positive refusal, all princes will comprehend that he is their 
 defender, and a holy league will be formed for keeping off the 
 cursed contagion of the Revolution.* 
 
 Such were the counsels listened to at Rome. The prejudices 
 born of temporal power were already weighing in a grievous 
 manner on the decisions of the chief of Catholicism. He was not 
 content with being the father of the faithful, the defender of reli- 
 gion, but remembering that he was a sovereign, he espoused the 
 cause of the kings, his brethren, against the people. The religious 
 question lost its simplicity by becoming mixed with political con- 
 siderations; the interests of caste were mingled with the holy 
 resistances of conscience, and the Revolution thought itself justified 
 in all its violences against the religious dissidents, because it saw 
 in them the champions of absolutism and the allies of the 
 foreigner : which was not true except of a certain number amongst 
 them. We are, besides, never authorised, either in morals or in 
 politics, to commit the same faults as our adversaries, for there are 
 •no surer means of losing our advantages. It is of moment to 
 take account of this position, so complicated, in order to compre- 
 hend the great debates which were opened in the Legislative As- 
 sembly on the occasion of the religious disturbances; unfortunately 
 the right was not free from alloy on either side, and each party 
 found in the grav6 wrongs of the contrary party a specious excusa 
 
 ='= This curious piece, of which the text is Italian, is in the first 
 volume of Theiner, pp. 313 — 319. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
MASSACRE OF LA GLACIERE. 219 
 
 for its own errors. The only really great thing in these deplorable 
 circumstances was, that humble martyrs, priests, monks or peasants, 
 strangers to political intrigues, suffered and died solely for their faith. 
 The Legislative Assembly had scarcely commenced their 
 labours when they received the news of the massacres of Avignon. 
 They thus learned that a regime of terror was inaugurated in the 
 South, in the centre even of those religious agitations which had 
 first occupied their attention. We have related how this 
 Pontifical boundary was annexed to France, after long discussions. 
 But a decree of the Assembly was not sufficient to extinguish the 
 fire of contrary passions over-excited and heated in the sun of 
 Provence. At the end of a rash enterprise, provoked by the 
 rivalry of the two parties who found themselves in presence of 
 each other at Avignon, Lecuyer, one of the chiefs of the army 
 which defended the Revolution, had been put to death in the 
 Church of the Cordeliers. The furious people had thrown into 
 prison more than a hundred persons, men and women, accused 
 of opposing the new regime. Crammed into the ancient palace 
 of the Popes, in a low and obscure nook called the Glaciere, 
 they had been there massacred on the 6th of October, by a horde 
 of brigands, at the head of whom figured a man well known for 
 his cruelty ; this was Jourdan, since surnamed Covpe-tete. This 
 assassination was accomplished with an unheard-of barbarity, and 
 a red streak was to preserve the trace of it on the wall, as if to 
 render visible to posterity that bloody stain which the hand of the 
 murderers can no more wash out.* We comprehend the horror 
 which the recital of such crimes would produce in the Legislative 
 Assembly. The deputy Lemontey could not read to the end this 
 tissue of horrors, and it was necessary for Isnard to take his place. 
 Nothing was more urgent than the chastisement of these hideous in- 
 
 * See the " Mgs^te^6'/5/flJfe?oi§feNovember, 1791. 
 
220 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 augurators of the Terror. Nevertheless, the Gironde endeavoured to 
 save them, and succeeded therein to its dishonour, thanks to a mi- 
 serable legal obj ection. The National Assembly had decreed, on the 
 23rd of September, 1791, a general amnestyfor all political offences; 
 this decree could not cover the crime of Jourdan and his accom- 
 plices, which took place more than a month after. In order to give 
 them the benefit of a measure, evidently barred by limitation, the 
 orator s of the left pretended that the unionof Avignon to Franer, 
 having not been really proclaimed until the 8th of November, the 
 crimes committed within the territory priorto this date were covered 
 by the vote of the National Assembly, an unworthy subterfuge, 
 which was only a party blow designed to maintain the Gironde at 
 the head of the Revolution, and which was to be an encourage- 
 ment to the overflow of the revolutionary frenzy ! Vergniaud 
 committed the unpardonable wrong of lending his magnificent 
 eloquence to this execrable cause. He had indignation only 
 against the nobles and priests who had fanned the flame of discord 
 at Avignon ; that is to say, that he struck only at the victims. 
 " Let not executioners," said he, in closing his speech, " be the 
 first present that you make to the Avignonese." He forgot that 
 there is something worse than raising a scaffold for great criminals ; 
 it is to sharpen the poniard of assassins by a scandalous im- 
 punity. He succeeded in carrying the Assembly, and the 
 amnesty of the 19th of March, 1792, was an encouragement to 
 the murderers. The effect of it was seen in the month of 
 September of the same year. 
 
 Such a decree gives the measure of justice which might be 
 expected from the Legislative Assembly in all questions remotely 
 or nearly touching religious contests. Everything impels them to 
 arbitrariness and tyranny. Meanwhile, the inextricable difficulties 
 in which they are more and more embarrassed, and from which 
 
 they at moments free themselves only by odious abuses of power, 
 Digitized by Microsoft® ^ 
 
LETTER OF ANDRE CHENIER. 221 
 
 sometimes cause the true solution to spring out of the debate. 
 By dint of gathering the bitter fruits of the signal mistake of the 
 Constituent, candid minds, too sensible to allow the smoke of the 
 combat and the fury of the struggle to obscure their vision, perceive 
 that a false course has been taken in wishing to constitute a civil 
 religion, and that they have carefully prepared all the conflicts 
 which profoundly divide and agitate the country. This opinion, 
 which is timidly expressed in the Assembly, is stated in the 
 " Moniteur " with as much clearness as vigour, by an illustrious - 
 poet, the honour of French literature at that period before being 
 one of the noblest martyrs of liberty. Andre Chenier compre- 
 hended it too well, and served it too courageously to be forgotten 
 by the Terror. By a flash of genius he discovers in succession the 
 cause of the religious agitation which drove some to the most 
 insupportable tyranny, and others to civil war. This cause, this 
 ferment of the most dangerous contests of the moment, was, in his 
 eyes, the blending of the State with the affairs of religion. Andre 
 Chenier was not a believer ; he thought and spoke as a philoso- 
 pher, and even strained his language a little in order to be 
 comprehended by those to whom he addressed himself ; but he 
 showed much more respect for conscience, and for the most 
 sacred behefs of the soul than those Catholics, as blind as they 
 were zealous, who sought only a different application of the social 
 principles of which they were then the victims, and which they 
 would have found excellent if they had served their opinion. 
 " It is time," said he, " that the public mind should begin to be 
 enlightened on this matter, as it has already become on others ; 
 and the Constituent Assembly seems to have done enough for 
 that, since it has given to us the example which it is necessary to 
 avoid, and that which it is necessary to follow. The truly 
 religious zeal of some, and the indifference of others, precipitated 
 it into the idea of ma^ing^a^^iy^.Con^tution of the clergy ; that 
 
2 22 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, 
 
 is to say, of creating one clergy after having destroyed another." 
 The Directory of Paris, by Sieyes and Talleyrand as their 
 spokesmen, had done what it could to eliminate the fatal conse- 
 quences of this measure, by proclaiming the most complete 
 religious liberty. Nevertheless, these great principles are trodden 
 under foot every day by blind hatreds, which tend to nothing less 
 than a general proscription of all the nonjuring priests, a sure 
 means of transforming conspirators into martyrs, by confounding 
 in them the man and the priest, and by making all their speeches 
 appear as a part of doctrine, all- their actions as functions of the 
 Ministry. " Is it by creating a body of priests, who shall be able 
 to call themselves persecuted, that it is hoped to render them 
 little formidable ? Does not a common and indiscriminate chas- 
 tisement tend to form rather than break up a league ? Is it in 
 giving by a law a sort of approbation to these infamous brutalities, 
 of which Paris was again witness a few days ago, and which shame 
 a civilised people, that it is hoped to raise all classes of the nation 
 to that spirit of dignity and respect for the rights of others, with- 
 out which there is no liberty; and must it be left to the malevolent 
 to say that in France all religions are permitted except one ? 
 What does it matter that in reality this religion differs from 
 another or not ? Does it belong to the National Assembly to 
 unite sects and. to weigh differences ? " 
 
 Andre Chenier rightly reproaches the Legislators of the National 
 Assembly with having shown themselves more fit to be theologians 
 than legislators. They had thus compromised the public peace 
 by furnishing an occasion of intrigue and revolt to the factious 
 priests, whom the eloquent writer did not spare, in order, doubt- 
 less, to gain an entrance, by these bitter words, for the great 
 truths which they embodied. He spoke in the light tone of his 
 age, of rehgion, and the Gospel, in which each one finds, accord- 
 ing to him, all that he seeks for ; that did not prevent him from 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
HE DEMANDS THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE. 223 
 
 rising, in concluding, to all the heights of the true principles on 
 the relations of Church and State. " We shall be delivered," said 
 he, "from the influence of such men, only when the National 
 Assembly shall have secured to each entire liberty to foUow^ and 
 invent such a religion as it shall please him, when each shall pay 
 for the worship which he shall wish to follow, and shall not pay for 
 any other; and when the tribunals shall punish with rigour 
 the persecutors and the seditious of all parties. And if some 
 members of the National Assembly still say that all the French 
 people are not sufficiently ripe for this doctrine, we must answer 
 them, ' That may be ; but it is for you to ripen us by your 
 conduct, by your speeches, and by your laws.' In a word, priests 
 do not trouble States, when statesmen do not concern themselves 
 with them ; and they always trouble them when they do concern 
 themselves with them, in whatever manner they concern them- 
 selves." Andre Chenier appealed to history, which affords proof 
 that priestly enmities ■ become causes of mortal agitation for the 
 countries where they run riot as soon as they have succeeded in 
 arming themselves with the public power ; it matters little what mask 
 or name they assume, whether it be Roman or Constitutional. He 
 demanded, in fine," that, in order to secure full religious liberty 
 for all citizens, they should hasten to make a law by which no 
 civil act should any longer have anything in common with the 
 ecclesiastical ministry, and that the Assembly should stifle, by 
 non-interference, the quarrels of priests, instead of taking part in 
 them." This non-interference was, in reality, the greatest mark of 
 respect which a political body could give to religion. * Behold us 
 very far from Bossuet and Rousseau. On that day the poet was 
 truly a vates—a, prophet. Unfortunately, he was not himself in the 
 Assembly to defend these great ideas, which alone could effect, 
 
 * " MonJi^S^'38f^5Ji|„.gpj|^^ October, 1791. 
 
224 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 through liberty, the reconciliation, between the Church and the 
 State. We are about to see them timidly defended, and yet 
 incessantly brought up again before the country, by the growing 
 complications of religious strife. 
 
 The question of the nonjuring clergy was constantly in the 
 order of the day of the Legislative Assembly ; the disturbances which 
 broke out in the departments brought it up almost every day ; it 
 was each time resolved with a severity so much the greater that 
 the King opposed increased resistance to the violent decrees 
 fulminated against the refractory. Everything combined to 
 excite men's minds. The emigrants' were openly preparing to 
 make war on the Revolution, and it was evident to every one that 
 they had their surest ally in the nonjuring clergy. Thus, every 
 time that the Revolution inflicts a blow on the emigrants, with 
 the back of its hand it strikes the dissident clergy. The excep- 
 tional measures provoked against the French who had left the 
 country, are, in a manner, a two-edged weapon, and correspond 
 to measures not less violent against the ecclesiastics who refused 
 the oath. From the opening of the session, the two questions 
 were mingled in an inextricable manner. Meanwhile, the first 
 debate on the refractory priests did not give a presentiment of 
 the iniquitous measures to which they were soon to suffer them- 
 selves to be driven. Nothing indeed, with a single exception, 
 is more tame and confused than this debate. The great voices 
 of the Constituent are no longer there, and the most distinguished 
 orators of the Legislative still hold themselves in reserve. The 
 struggle takes place between mediocre men, whose speech has 
 neither flame nor splendour, although it is often full of gall. The 
 Assembly is, besides, still inexperienced ; the most ridiculous 
 propositions are multipUed, and discussion floats at hazard without 
 being able to take up with anything precise ; it does not cease to 
 
 be enlivened by motions of the most highly-comic character, as 
 ■ Digitized by Microsoft® ' 
 
FIRST DEBATES ON THE NONJURORS. 225 
 
 that of Jean-FranQois Duval, who, after having proclaimed himself 
 a child of nature, noble by the favour of his plough, as the oxen, 
 pure and incorruptible witnesses of his labours could prove him, 
 proposes that every nonjuring priest, who shall not have promised 
 an entire submission to the laws, should be bound to carry on his 
 vestment, at the height of the left breast, a writing bearing these 
 words : — Priest suspected of sedition. Ridiculousness did not 
 prevent violence, for imprisonment and exile were to be inflicted, 
 according to the witty ploughman, on every ecclesiastic who 
 should not have made an act of implicit submission to the civil 
 authority. * 
 
 The question which at once presented itself with perfect clear- 
 ness, was that of knowing if the Constitution should be suspended 
 in order to strike and crush the dissident clergy, if, not content 
 with refusing to them liberty of worship, they should withdraw 
 from them the rights acknowledged to all citizens. The ques- 
 tion was then, of deciding whether to found liberty by liberty, or 
 to give to it the most odious arbitrariness for security. The too- 
 famous Couthon provoked the debate, on the 7 th of October, by 
 a sort of cry of fury against the refractory clergy. He already 
 insinuated that the forms of justice should be departed from, for 
 the reason that it would be difficult for them to procure proofs 
 against the rebellious priests in the countries submissive to their 
 influence. A week later, an unknown deputy, Lejeune, stated 
 precisely the vague accusations of Couthon, declared that the 
 Constitution had no worse enemy than a seditious and fanatical 
 priest, and that they . should concern themselves only with the 
 dangers which he caused to prevail in the country. " It is not a 
 question of religious liberty," said he, " but of the safety of the 
 
 * Sitti.^gg^fet^hp^2^,of^0^ober, 1791. 
 Q 
 
226 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 State." Lejeune took care immediately to show that such a prin- 
 ciple opened the door to all arbitrary measures, for he proposed 
 that the nonjuring ecclesiastics should be obliged, within the fort- 
 night, to fix their residence in the chief town of their department. 
 A Constitutional bishop had the sad honour of following the pre- 
 ceding speaker in the path of intolerance, by substituting a fiscal 
 penalty for restricted residence. Fauchet had a certain flow of 
 words which was taken for talent, even at the Court, where he had 
 preached with success in his young days, and which was connected 
 with a fiery temperament He had signalised himself in the clubs 
 by an attitude very little suitable to his position; his revolutionary 
 enthusiasm had designated him to the suifrages for the Constitu- 
 tional bishopric of Caen, and had led to his nomination to the 
 Legislative Assembly. He carried thither the ardour of a fiery 
 democrat and the sourness of a priest opposed in his own diocese. 
 He was not a wicked man, but he had been spoiled by the clubs, 
 and, wanting in liberal and elevated views, he passionately fol- 
 lowed the impulse of the moment. The orator preserved no 
 measure in his invectives against the refractory clergy. He de- 
 clared that liberty was not compatible with fanaticism. He soon 
 furnished the proof of it by giving the reins to his own revolutionary 
 fanaticism, and by demanding unjust measures against his former 
 colleagues, whom he thus characterised : " In presence of these 
 priests, atheists are angels.'' Fauchet demanded that all the eccle- 
 siastical pensions granted to the nonjuring priests should be 
 suspended, under the pretext that they ought not be paid for 
 rending the country, that by conspiring against it they had lost 
 all right to its gifts. That was to rend a contract placed under 
 the safeguard of the public good faith and to accumulate, in a 
 single decree, the gravest injustices. Fauchet reckoned that 
 poverty would be right to the recalcitrants, and he said, ironi- 
 cally, "As for those igl^aiil/jfqilWftifto^elded in their pretended 
 
UBERAL SPEECH OF TORNE. 227 
 
 conscience, hunger will soon chase these wolves from the sheep- 
 fold, where they will no longer find anything, and the inhabitants 
 themselves will be tired of paying for a worship which they could 
 have for nothing, and which they could have more advantageously 
 and more majestically in the churches appointed by the nation." 
 Sad language in the mouth of a bishop who had something better 
 to do than to speculate on the lowest sentiments of human nature ! 
 Happily, for the honour of this nature, this calculation is always 
 found false; conscience is no more bought with gold than it is 
 bent before the sword. Fauchet was mistaken in date in pro- 
 nouncing his speech; he had uttered it too soon; he excited the 
 indignation of a great part of the Assembly. They justly re- 
 proached him with having preached vengeance in the name of 
 the Gospel. 
 
 Tome, Bishop of the department of Loire and Cher, took upon 
 himself to refute him ; he was much applauded when he appealed 
 to the great principles of religious liberty in favour of the refrac- 
 tory clergy. " Let us guard," said he, " against considering as a 
 political crime the errors of the nonjuring priests; error is not a 
 crime, and fanaticism is increased by resistance. We must be 
 content with punishing open revolt, bearing with schism and its 
 consequences, and leaving to God the care of avenging His glory 
 if He believes it outraged, without carrying a spirit of inquisition 
 into the search after a clandestine worship. Let it be acknow- 
 ledged that the nonjuring priest who seeks to propagate his 
 doctrine uses only the rights of man." Tome rejected as well 
 the fiscal proposition of Fauchet as that of Lejeune. He energeti- 
 cally said of the first, that to reduce to hunger men who had lived 
 in opulence, would be to act with more severity than a corsair; 
 and he branded the second by this energetic speech: "Pray, 
 gentlemen, under the regime of liberty, let there be no punish- 
 ment without judgmeifijj^cfe* fewAfodgnSSit without proceedings." 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH ' REVOLUTION. 
 
 He demanded, in concluding, the most complete respect for 
 religious liberty. This noble language saved the honour of 
 the Constitutional clergy, gravely compromised by the furious 
 harangue of Fauchet. Ducos demanded and obtained the printing 
 of the speech of Tome, '' in atonement for the intolerant speech 
 that had been pronounced the evening before." In vain Fauchet 
 returned to the charge; they thought him ridiculous when he 
 appealed to the pity of the Assembly in favour of the patented 
 and paid clergy, on account of a few stones thrown by women at 
 a parish priest who was displeasing to them; and his proposal 
 to withdraw all pension from the refractory priests, had not more 
 success than at his first speech. The majority of the Assembly 
 was still with Tome. Most of the orators had ranked themselves 
 with his opinion. Davignon demanded that they should put the 
 nonjuring worship on the same footing as the Protestant temples, 
 the synagogues and the mosques, and Monneron, that they should 
 punish the factious, not as priests, but as rebels. Baert declared, 
 with sound sense, that it was necessary either to allow liberty of 
 conscience or to persecute, and that, in reality, the arbitrary 
 measures proposed against the refractory were, only a renewing of 
 the famous motion of Dom Gerle, that is to say, the restoration of 
 a dominant and persecuting religion.* Several orators proposed, 
 as a sure means of maintaining religious Hberty, that they should 
 take away from the clergy the keeping of the civil acts, in order 
 that they might be relieved of all temporal jurisdiction. Hilaire 
 was the first to introduce this opinion. Other orators urged to a 
 still wider application of the liberty of worships, by demanding 
 that their support should be abandoned to the free choice of the 
 faithful. They, doubtless, did not lay down a formal proposition, 
 but they indicated the only reasonable issue to these conflicts, so 
 
 * S3<9<4i^^f6HiMJcf§f (jfi^ctober. 
 
THE TRUE SOLUTION CAUGHT SIGHT OF. 229 
 
 perilous for the Revolution. A deputy, whose speech was full of 
 sense in the main, ended by invectives against those even whose 
 rights he defended. " Their religion," said the orator, " is counter- 
 revolution, and their God is beyond the Rhine." 
 
 It was by these excesses of language that they endeavoured to 
 get passed an equitable proposition. Vaublanc was more consis- 
 tent than the preceding speaker. " Do you wish," said he, " to 
 admit a measure truly Constitutional ? I would propose to you, if 
 the article which secures the ecclesiastical pensions were not op- 
 posed to it, to suppress all payment of the ministers of worship at 
 the charge of the State, and to charge the localities with them." 
 The less radical proposition of Monteze, not to impose the Consti- 
 tutional clergy on parishes which did not wish for them, on con- 
 dition that they should pay their own priests, was supported by 
 several deputies. Ramond vigorously protested against this kind 
 of bastard State-rehgion which the Constituent had established, by 
 re-attaching ecclesiastics to political institutions, and by esta- 
 blishing a paid clergy which would be enriched by the taxes of 
 the citizens, even of those for whom they did not exist. Not yet 
 daring to propose the full separation of Church and State, 
 Ramond demanded that all worships should be paid by the State, 
 and that each section of fifty active citizens forming a Church by 
 themselves, should have the right to participate in the Budget * 
 Such a plan was evidently chimerical, but it was more equitable 
 than that which existed ; and, by the difficulties of execution, it 
 would bring back to liberty and equality of worship, and to its full 
 independence with respect to the civil power. Two of the prin- 
 cipal Girondists forcibly protested against exceptional measures. 
 Ducos set himself to refute the miserable sophisms which distin- 
 guished between liberty of conscience and liberty of worship. 
 
 * Sitting of the 27th October. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
230 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 There could not be a question in the Declaration of Rights of the 
 liberty of opinions, which despotism can never touch, but of the 
 liberty of their manifestation, which alone was on trial. This, then, 
 is the liberty which it was necessary to consecrate and to maintain, 
 under penalty of seeing a burning fanaticism burst forth, provoked 
 and justified by unjust repressions. " The problem to be solved," as 
 was well said by the young orator, who on that day showed himself 
 a faithful disciple of Mirabeau, "is then this : by establishing the 
 liberty of all worships, how are you to prevent any of them from be- 
 coming a constituent part of the social order? It is evident that the 
 Worship which should enter into the constitution of the State would 
 cause all others to experience a great injustice. If it is unjust and 
 impolitic to give the preference to any one worship whatsoever, it 
 follows thence that worships cannot be the object of a law. Sepa- 
 rate, then, from that which concerns the State all that concerns 
 religion ; assimilate the manifestation of religious opinions to the 
 manifestation of all other opinions ; assimilate religious assemblies 
 to all other meetings of citizens ; let all sects have the liberty of 
 choosing a bishop or an iman, a minister or a rabbi, as popular 
 societies have the liberty of choosing from their midst a president 
 and secretaries. Let the law be addressed always to the citizen, 
 and never to the sectary of any religion whatsoever ; in short, let 
 civil and political existence be absolutely independent of religious 
 existence." Ducos did not venture to draw all the consequences 
 of these principles, which would have led him energetically to con- 
 demn the Civil Constitution of the clergy and the oath imposed on 
 the priests. He strove, at least as much as possible, to preserve 
 religious liberty by demanding that the registering of births and 
 marriages should be taken away from the Constitutional clergy, 
 and that the greatest latitude should be allowed to the nonjuring 
 worship. He set himself against every preventive measure. " It 
 is this fatal pretext of preventing crimes," said he with sound 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
SPEECH OF GENSONNE. 23 1 
 
 sense, " which has in all ages favoured the rapid march of des- 
 potism." He proposed, in fine, that the wish of the parishes 
 should be consulted in the nomination to ecclesiastical offices, and 
 should be set above the narrow prescriptions of the Civil Constitu- 
 tion of the clergy. It was, in reahty, to demand the abrogation 
 of the latter. 
 
 The chief speech in this debate was pronounced by Gensonne. 
 He had special claims to the confidence of the Assembly, for he 
 had traversed the principal centres of the religious agitation, and 
 his report was the important piece of the debate. He had re- 
 turned convinced that, with toleration, men's minds would soon 
 be appeased, whilst persecution would quickly transform religious 
 schism into open revolt. The conclusions of his report were en- 
 tirely in this direction. He did not contradict them at the national 
 tribune. Recalling, with an energetic conciseness, the facts of which 
 he had been witness, he showed that the religious disturbances 
 were not the result solely of the intrigues of the absolutist party, 
 but also of the faults of the too ardent friends of the Revolution, 
 who were wrong in treating as public enemies all those who, 
 through weakness, error, or the effect of a timorous conscience, had 
 remained attached to their ancient pastors. " It is thus,'' said he, 
 " that in most of the departments the country people have been 
 persecuted and tormented ; it is thus that they have been led 
 into error by placing their love of country in opposition to their 
 love for the ancient depositories of their confidence ; it is thus 
 that, by a singular mistake, they have identified the love of the 
 Constitution with the adoption of a particular religious system." It 
 follows from these facts, that the only way of appeasing minds is 
 to give full and entire liberty of religion.* And it is at this moment 
 that they talk of restricting the residence of all priests not confor- 
 
 * Sitting of the 28th of October. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
232 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 mists. That such violence should naturally present itself to the 
 mind of a despot is conceivable, but it is strange that the founders 
 of liberty should familiarise themselves with measures so arbi- 
 trary. " No," eloquently exclaims Gensonne, " you cannot do 
 it" Then he sets forth in the lump all .the injustices and 
 illegalities of the condemnation which they demand; it strikes the 
 innocent with the guilty, confounds the judiciary and the adminis- 
 trative power, and re-establishes a sort of inquisition of con- 
 sciences ; the result could only be to root more firmly the dissi- 
 dent opinions. As to considerations borrowed from reasons of 
 State and from public safety, Gensonne branded them by re- 
 calling that the greatest crimes of tyranny, beginning with Saint 
 Bartholomew, had had no other pretext. " Let us profit,'' said he, 
 "by the errors of the National Assembly, and by the lessons of ex- 
 perience ; and let us separate from religion all that belongs to 
 civil order." He demanded, in consequence, that they should re- 
 turn to a loyal and serious practice of the Declaration of Rights 
 in what concerns religious liberty ; that they should reduce to 
 functions exclusively religious, the ministers paid by the nation j 
 that they should take from them the public registers ; that the 
 will of the people should be chiefly consulted in the election 
 of their pastors ; and that in abolishing what remained of 
 the religious corporations, they should entrust the keeping of re- 
 ligious liberty to all the administrations. " Remember," said the 
 orator, in concluding, "that respect for individual liberty is the 
 surest guarantee of public liberty, and that we ought never to cease 
 to be just, even towards our enemies."* The Revolution might 
 still have been saved from anarchy if it had taken these noble 
 words for a motto. Thst day, however, victory remained to jus- 
 tice, for the Assembly, after having voted the printing of the 
 
 * Sitting of the 3rd of November. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
BAD NEWS FROM THE DEPARTMENTS. 233 
 
 speech of Gensonne, decided that a report should be made to 
 them, within a week, on the propositions which he had submitted. 
 This vote was evidently a striking adhesion to the great principles 
 which the Girondist orator had developed, with as much eloquence 
 as good sense. Unhappily, there was in this adhesion more en- 
 thusiasm than settled conviction, and the serious news which 
 arrived in quick succession from the departments, brought back 
 the majority to the most hostile dispositions, and hurried them to 
 the most despotic measures. 
 
 In fact, two days after the speech of Gensonne, an extraordinary 
 courier informed the Assembly that religious agitation had broken 
 out in an alarming manner in Anjou.* The Directory of the 
 department of Maine et Loire sent to the Assembly a report 
 which violently incriminated the nonjuring clergy. It stated 
 that gatherings of four thousand men had been formed on several 
 points of the department, for pilgrimages and nocturnal pro- 
 cessions, and that they had armed themselves with guns, pikes 
 and scythes, when it was wished to disperse them. Already 
 several engagements had taken place with the National Guard, 
 and the popular fury had turned against the Constitutional priests, 
 who were exposed to the greatest perils. Churches, closed by 
 order of the Assembly, had been re-opened by force, and non- 
 juring priests celebrated worship in them despite the interdictions 
 of the law. Any day, the department might be in a blaze and 
 deluged with blood. This report, from which it clearly appeared 
 that the populations had thought of arming themselves only after 
 being invaded in their religious rights, caused as much anger as 
 alarm in the Assembly. Evidently, the blast of the tempest 
 had reached them, and it drove them to extreme severities. We 
 may judge of it at once by the passionate words of Isnard, who 
 
 * Sitting of the 6th of November. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
234 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 exclaimed that moderation had lost all ; that systems of toleration 
 were good for times of calm ; and that there should be no tolera- 
 tion for those who will not tolerate the laws. Whilst the required 
 report was being elaborated, it was learnt that Caen had been the 
 theatre of serious disturbances, that there had been seen there 
 gatherings of ancient nobles and of emigrants returned to France, 
 who had concerted to be present with display in the rehgious 
 services celebrated in the churches by nonjuring priests, in con- 
 formity with the decree of the loth of May. Thence sprung 
 grievous conflicts, which had led to a resolution of the Communal 
 Administration, ordering the refractories to quit their ancient 
 parish. This resolution was quickly followed by a second, which 
 interdicted all who had not taken the oath from celebrating mass 
 in the buildings consecrated to official worship. It had been 
 induced by some contest in which blood had flowed ; it was not 
 the less illegal, since it was in opposition to an unrevoked decree 
 of the Constituent Assembly.* The administrators of the 
 department had therefore refused to countersign this second 
 decree, and they had been approved by the Minister of the 
 Interior. There was here a new manifestation of the great con- 
 flict, which was everywhere breaking out between the legislators 
 of 1789 and those of 1791. The Assembfy belonged to the 
 latter. They were very near impeaching the accused of Caen 
 before the High Court, without having had the depositions com- 
 municated to them : Isnard urged them in this direction. He 
 spoke only of causing the thunderbolt to fall in the midst of the 
 enemies of the Revolution, and of making their heads roll on 
 the scaffold. This impatience could not reconcile itself with the 
 slow forms of justice. " This new sword of the law," cried he, 
 " which liberty has fabricated, must in short go forth from its 
 
 * "Moniteur" of the 12th of November. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
VIOLENCE OF ISNARD. 235 
 
 scabbard " Do we not there see the Mountain constituted in the 
 midst of the Gironde ? Saint- Just and Robespierre will not 
 speak otherwise ; it is true that their practice will be worthy of 
 their theory — a thing not yet possible. The Assembly, through a 
 lingering sentiment of shame, did not wish to accuse without 
 evidence, and demanded the official report of the affair of Caen. 
 They were very ill-prepared to come to an equitable decision in 
 what concerned the refractories. A first Bill was presented on the 
 13th of November ; it was limited to demanding the civic oath of 
 all pensioned priests and of all those who should officiate or 
 preach in any part whatsoever of the kingdom. Religious dis- 
 turbances were to be closely watched and severely punished, 
 but the draft of decree did not contain proscriptions en masse. 
 Accordingly it appeared too moderate. We find again the fiery 
 Isnard in the breach, to demand a law of exception, under pre- 
 text that the priests, having in their hands the most powerful lever 
 for agitating souls, ought to be treated with implacable severity. 
 He demanded nothing less than a decree of exile for all the 
 refractories. " Do you not see," said he, " that it is necessary 
 to separate the priest fi'om the people, whom he leads astray, and 
 to send these pestiferous fellows back to Rome and Italy. Isnard 
 wished that a single complaint should suffice to pronounce the 
 banishment of a priest, and he saw an excess of indulgence in 
 the pretence of judging him only on evidence. Behold what 
 passed for liberal in the month of November, 1794, at that 
 tribune where Mirabeau had so nobly vindicated the right of con- 
 science ! The speeches of Isnard, despite their sophisms and 
 exaggeration, produced a great impression, because they burst 
 forth from a soul on fire as the lava bursts forth from a volcano ; they 
 were perfectly sincere, but that was not a sufficient motive to 
 excuse all which they contained contrary to libert)'. Isnard was a 
 
 tribune convinced, but drunk with passion. The printing of his 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
236 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 harangues was demanded, and it would have been voted if, in his 
 fiery extemporising, he had not suffered himself to go so far as to 
 say: "My God is law; I know no other," which excited the 
 justifiable indignation of the Bishop Lecoz. This God, moreover, 
 did not much restrain him, for the law, such as he comprehended 
 it, was the public safety, that is to say, the popular will with all 
 its caprices. 
 
 On the 1 6th of November, Francois de Neuchateau, who fol- 
 lowed Isnard only too closely, brought, in the name of the 
 Committee of Legislation, the draft of a decree which left 
 nothing to be desired by the partisans of arbitrary power. The 
 civic oath was to be taken within a week by all ecclesiastics not 
 functionaries, under penalty of losing the pensions which had 
 been voted to them by the National Assembly, and of being 
 arraigned, in case of disturbance, for revolt against the country, 
 placed under the surveillance of the constituted authorities, and 
 withdrawn from the commune where the disturbances had broken 
 out. Every ecclesiastic, who should be convicted of having 
 fomented religious agitation, was to be punished with two years' 
 imprisonment ; he was made answerable for all the acts of murder 
 and pillage which might be committed in the riot provoked by 
 him or on his account. The expenses of repression would be 
 laid to the charge of the communes when the intervention of 
 armed force should have been necessary. The list of all the 
 priests who should have refused the oath should be drawn up in 
 all the departments. Extraordinary penalties were reserved for 
 those among them who should be convicted of intrigues with the 
 foreigner. In fine, the Committee of Legislation proposed to 
 replace the oath of the Civil Constitution of the clergy, by the 
 civic oath to the nation, to the law, and to the King ; to substitute 
 for the faulty title of Civil Constitution of the clergy that of: Law 
 concerning the dvil relations and the external rules of the Catholic 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
PROPOSITION OF FRANCOIS DE NEUCHATEAU. 237 
 
 worship in France, and to take away the character of public func- 
 tionaries from the bishops, parish priests, and vicars. Apart 
 from these last clauses, which reveal an intention of separating 
 the religious domain from the civil domain, this monstrous law 
 embodied all iniquities. First, it was tainted with retroactive 
 power, since it rendered the oath demandable for ecclesiastics 
 not functionaries ; secondly, it .violated a sacred engagement, by 
 withdrawing from the refractories the pensions which had been 
 voted, without condition, by the Constituent Assembly. The 
 substitution of the civic oath for the oath taken to the Civil 
 Constitution of the clergy, was a vain palliative, since the first 
 implied the second, for the Civil Constitution was a portion of 
 the General Constitution. Terrible in its repressions, this law 
 preserved a dangerous vagueness in the definition of crime, and 
 it marked out beforehand, and without examination, the non- 
 juring priest as guilty wherever any disturbance broke out ; it 
 rendered him responsible for what he had not, perhaps, been able 
 to prevent. Such a law is a disgrace to the Legislature which 
 patiently heard its recital, and in voting, aggravated it. The 
 attenuating circumstances are in the perils of the country and 
 the intrigues of the emigrants, but it does not the less remain 
 one of the saddest monuments of revolutionary iniquity. In 
 vain did Lemontey demand that ecclesiastics should be permitted 
 to reserve their religious opinions whilst taking the civic oath ; 
 this proposal, greeted by the hootings of the Assembly, was 
 rejected. In vain did Bishop Tome again forcibly remark, 
 despite interruptions and murmurs, that the refusal of the oath 
 by an ecclesiastic not a public functionary, should not be con- 
 sidered as a crime, and was consequently not to be punished by 
 the withdrawal of a pension secured by the Constitution. He 
 only drew down upon himself this odious reply from Fran9ois de 
 Neuchateau : " I woufelg/ffiS9g^i»/c);^rf^tion, if it pensioned the 
 
238 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 nonjurors, to a father of a family who, having in his field 
 venomous reptiles, should take away the food from his children in 
 order to nourish these reptiles." When language is stamped with 
 such violence at the tribune, we may say that street massacres are 
 not far distant. In vain did the right wish to slacken the march 
 of a decision proceeding at a charging pace, as if to crush the 
 enemy, by several times demanding the roll-call. Vergniaud 
 denounced its members as factious, and demanded that every 
 insisting of this kind should be punished with some days' impri- 
 sonment at the Abbaye. The discussion was precipitated in a 
 manner to satisfy the most exacting. The extreme left wished to 
 substitute transportation for imprisonment, in order to remove the 
 destructive wolves from the sheepfold. " It is necessary," said a 
 member naively, " that those who have said : ' Outside of the 
 Church there is no salvation,' should learn that outside of society 
 there is neither pension nor protection of the law to be hoped 
 for." The remark was significant, and it once more reveals the 
 agreement between a certain despotic Catholicism and the school 
 of Rousseau. The Assembly, for the moment, was content with 
 imprisonment, and on the observations of Brissot and Gensonne, 
 they specified, that in order to be imprisoned, it was necessary 
 to have formally and designedly provoked disobedience to the laws. 
 It was a happy amelioration. They did not venture to adopt the 
 only reasonable part of the Bill, that which abolished the title of 
 the Civil Constitution of the clergy. They retained this appella- 
 tion, after a tearful speech from Lamourette, who appealed to the 
 relationship "between this philosophical book which is called the 
 Gospel and the Revolution." He demanded that they should 
 not all at once disband the greatest force which had secured the 
 new regime, " \hsX army more powerful than bayonets." France 
 knew, notwithstanding, by a bitter experience, confirmed every 
 day, what it had cosf,^.f^g^(gpg.£^^|oyunctionary clergy. 
 
INIQUITOUS DECREE OF THE 29TH NOVEMBER, 179I. 239 
 
 On the proposition of Lemontey, it was decided that the reve- 
 nues of confiscated ecclesiastical pensions should form a fund 
 divided between the different departments, to be employed in 
 works for the able-bodied poor and for the relief of the sick poor. 
 That was to forget that charity cannot be separated from justice, 
 and that we have not the right to give alms out of the property of 
 others. The law received its appropriate climax in a supple- 
 mentary article, which hypocritically suppressed religious liberty. 
 Albite had proposed to decree that it should be permitted to every 
 private society to purchase churches and private buildings, in 
 order to make use of them in the exercise of any religious worship 
 whatever, under the surveillance of the constituted authorities. He 
 only reproduced the memorable resolution taken in the month of 
 May, by the National Assembly, on the proposition of the Direc- , 
 tory of Paris. It was the consecration of one of the great prin- 
 ciples of 1789. The motion was accordingly supported by men 
 truly liberal. 
 
 " Endeavour to have, a thousand forms of worship," cried one 
 voice, " they, will respect and mutually protect one another.'' 
 " The law," says Gaudet, " well inspired this time, ought to hover 
 over all worships in order to protect all, and to strike them only 
 when they disturb the public order." But the fanatics of the Civil 
 Constitution of the clergy, like Lamourette, did not wish that 
 religious liberty which would have opposed altar against altar. 
 The Bishop of Lyons insidiously asked, if they owed churches to 
 the enemies of the Constitution. He was supported by the violent 
 party of the Assembly, and the motion of Albite returned from 
 the Committee of Legislation, to which it had been sent, with this 
 addition, "that in order to rent a religious edifice, and to cele- 
 brate worship therein, it was necessary to have taken the civic 
 oath," which was equivalent to suppressing religious liberty in the 
 country. In fact, irog^ffj^^J-^^^j^j^s refused to the minority 
 
240 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 which are out of favour, it is no longer anything but a deception. 
 Francois de Neuchateau justified this grave modification, on the 
 ground that liberty was not due to those who had always cursed it : 
 he did not see that by treading in their steps, he was deciding in 
 their favour. On the 29th of November, the decree passed in its 
 entirety. It was the greatest contradiction that a revolution, based 
 on liberty, had yet been guilty of, for this decree was a real out- 
 rage upon the Declaration of Rights ; and the King, by opposing 
 his veto to it, was much more liberal than the democratic As- 
 sembly, for there was not one of the measures which they pre- 
 sented to him, which did not seriously wound the elementary 
 principles of right and justice. 
 
 Most of the historians of the Revolution have committed the 
 error in judging of this decree, of placing themselves at the stand- 
 point of party warfare and not at that of justice, which was also 
 that of liberty. M. Louis Blanc materially lessens the gravity of 
 the decree of the 29th of November, whilst M. Michelet blames 
 its rigour only in so far as it was applied to the simple faithful.* 
 For the priests, he admits an exceptional severity on account of 
 their extraordinary influence. There are no revolutionary excesses 
 such maxims do not justify beforehand. When the decree of the 
 29th of November was carried to the .council, the ministers who 
 judged the measure as political men, were unanimously of opinion 
 that it was necessary to sanction it, but they encountered an in- 
 vincible resistance from the King, because his conscience was 
 decidedly touched. It is to no purpose to accuse this unhappy 
 prince of having had courage only to defend the priests.f He 
 here served his dearest and most sacred convictions, and if he 
 
 * Louis Blanc, " Histoire de la Revolution," VI., p. 213 ; Michelet, 
 " Histoire de la Revolution, III , p. 343. 
 t Louis Blanc, '' Histoire de la Revolution," VI., p. 214. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
THE KING OPPOSES HIS VETO. 241 
 
 had been listened to, he would have rendered the most signal 
 service to the Revolution. But the latter, rendered furious by the 
 perils which were accumulating on the frontier, thought only of 
 crushing all that was an obstacle to it j and, encountering the royal 
 veto on its path, it gave itself no relaxation until it had swept away 
 the veto with the royalty itself, which could not survive it. 
 
 This question of the veto profoundly agitated the country in the 
 months which followed ; the resistance of the King everywhere 
 arrested the legal repression of religious disturbances, but every- 
 where also exasperated the popular fury. Besides, it was around 
 this question that was fought the grand battle between the men of 
 1789, firmly attached to the Constitution, and those of 179 1, who 
 were much more obedient to passion than to principle, between 
 those who wished liberty above everything, and those who pre- 
 ferred to it democracy. The victory was to remain witlj the latter, 
 for they had on their side the fever and the peril of the nation, 
 and it was in their sails that the tempest blew which threw the 
 country into confusion. 
 
 This strife first broke out at Paris. We have seen that the 
 Directory of the department of the Seine was principallycomposed of 
 ancient Constituents, and represented with eclat the great principles 
 of 1789. It was this majority which had, in the month of May, 
 preserved rehgious liberty. The decree of the 29th of November 
 was, in their eyes, a real attempt against hberty, and they publicly 
 and solemnly expressed their opinion, in a petition to the King, 
 in which they asked him to refuse his sanction. This petition, 
 which the Apologists of the Revolution brand as an attempt at 
 reaction, is stamped, on the contrary, with the most elevated and 
 consistent liberalism. It is the very language of right and of' 
 justice. After having avowed their love for the Revolution, and 
 their hatred of fanaticism, the petitioners, whilst rendering homage 
 to the intentions of th^/iiSseititol^t^/aeeuSgd it of having voted mea- 
 
 R 
 
242 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 sures which the Constitution, which justice, which prudence could 
 not admit They attack the decree of the 29th of November in 
 the first place, as illegally destroying the title to national confi- 
 dence, and as being gravely wanting to the public good faith, which 
 had secured the payment of their pensions to the ecclesiastics who 
 were not functionaries ; in the second place, as arbitrarily creating 
 a category of suspects and causing lists of proscription to be drawn 
 up by the directories of departments ; in fine, as outraging, in the 
 . most flagrant manner, the liberty of citizens, by causing the non- 
 juring priests to be incarcerated wherever religious disturbances 
 should break out. The Directory declared itself incapable, as far 
 as it was concerned, of putting its hand to such measures. 
 "What!" stated the petition, "should we hold this, language to 
 our fellow-citizens ! ' Say, what is your worship ? Render account 
 of your religious opinions ! If you have been ecclesiastics, 
 tremble ; we will fasten ourselves on your steps, we will spy out all 
 your private actions ; however regular may be your conduct, on 
 the first disturbance which shall arise in this immense city, and in 
 which the word religion shall have been pronounced, we shall 
 come to tear you from your retreat, and despite your innocence, 
 we shall be able, vs^ith impunity, to banish you from the hearths 
 that you have chosen.'" The Directory protested, with not less 
 force, against the additional article of the decree which suppressed 
 religious liberty for the refractories. " It is necessary," it said, 
 " that on this point, as on every other, liberty should not retro- 
 grade." The petitioners showed, with as much eloquence as good 
 sense, that the National Assembly, in striking at opinions so 
 severely, only opposed fanaticism to fanaticism, and restored the 
 "odious principles in the name of which the Caesars had persecuted 
 the first Christians, and Louis XIV. had proscribed the Pro- 
 testants. " Should an entire century of philosophy then have served 
 only to bring us bacl^j^^^g ^j^J^gjy^ of the sixteenth century 
 
COUNTER PETITION TO THE ASSEMBLY. 243 
 
 by the very routes of liberty ? Since no religion is a law, let no 
 religion be a crime.'" The Directory admitted all the severities of 
 the constituted authorities against proved crimes, but it demanded 
 that no opinion should be harassed, affirming that the surest way 
 of repressing fanaticism is to deal justly with it. " For all these 
 reasons," the petition stated, " and in the sacred name of liberty, 
 of the Constitution, and of the public good, we pray you, Sire, to 
 refuse your sanction to the decree of the 29th of November." 
 This petition, which Louis Blanc taxes with arrogant, and Michelet 
 with vain abstraction, and which was the most noble and the most 
 courageous homage to the principles in the name of which the Re- 
 volution had been inaugurated, provoked the most violent irrita- 
 tion in Paris. It was bitterly inveighed against in the clubs and in 
 the press, and the people of the league were found, at the end of 
 the eighteenth century, as intolerant in the opposite direction as 
 they had been under the Guises. 
 
 The demagogical party wished to counterbalance the effects of 
 the petition by a grand scene calculated to strike the eye. A 
 series of deputations, representing various sections of Paris, 
 brought to the bar of the Assembly petitions,' or rather protesta- 
 tions, against the proceeding of the Directory. Most of these pieces 
 are stamped with a loathsome coarseness. The orator of the 
 Faubourg St-Antoine summons the refractory priests in this tone : 
 — " Monsters who sweat crime, your God is the God of the pas- 
 sions ; ours is that of clemency." Singular introduction for de- 
 manding proscriptions ! The honours of the sitting were granted 
 to the incomparable pamphleteer of democracy, to that Camille- 
 Desmoulins, who knew how to be witty even in the most extreme 
 violence, and who translated into cruel jests the fury of the 
 people. He was merciless towards the Directory who, in pub- 
 lishing their petition, had, according to him, opened a great re- 
 gister of counter-revoErtJAftnfoai^dMiiirosr^gement of civil war sent 
 
 R 2 
 
244 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 with the signature of all the fanatics, idiots, slaves, and late 
 robbers of the eighty-three departments, at' the head of which 
 are the exemplary names of the petitioners. Camille Desmoulins 
 demanded that they should immediately execute the decree of the 
 29th of November, remembering that the will of the people is 
 sovereign, and that a royal veto would not have hindered the 
 taking of the Bastile. He wished that the Directory should be 
 charged with exciting to disobedience against the law, with having 
 signed a collective petition, and with striving to annul the national 
 representation by a factious appeal to the country. The petition 
 thus terminated : — " Disdain all sophisms, fathers of the country. 
 Doubt no longer the all-powerfulness of a free people. But if the 
 head slumbers, how shall the arm act ? . . . . It is the chiefs who 
 must be pursued. Strike at the head ; thunder against the con- 
 spirator princes ; use the rod against an insolent Directory, and 
 exorcise the demon of fanaticism by fasting.'' It is enough to 
 commit injustice ; it is not necessary to joke about it. The pro- 
 position to deprive all the nonjuring priests of the pensions se- 
 cured by a solemn vote was only the more odious for this merry 
 way of expressing it. In order that nothing should be wanting to 
 the scandal, it was Bishop Fauchet who lent his voice to Camille 
 Desmoulins to read this piece polished with so perfidious a care. 
 The Assembly voted with enthusiasm its being printed and sent to 
 the departments. Such scenes excite profound disgust towards 
 demagogical parties, especially when they find apologists sixty 
 years afterwards. Let them teach us, at least, never to prefer 
 the Revolution to liberty ! 
 
 We have said what was the inflexible decision of the King. He 
 decided in favour of the Directory, acquainting the Assembly, by 
 his keeper of the seals, that he reserved to himself the right to 
 examine. From this moment he became the butt of all their 
 anger. We ask ours^TCg^vir|i^^t ^utra^he had still to undergo 
 
EFFECTS OF THE VETO IN THE DEPARTMENTS. 245 
 
 after the insults which the democratic press had heaped upon him ? 
 Prudhomme ventured, in his journal, to compare the royal veto to 
 a cannon-ball, which the Assembly was dragging along. He 
 ridiculed the Prince, beset day and night by a vindictive wife and a 
 bigoted sister, and rudely reminded him that the House of Bourbon 
 owed all to the nation. " We have made many ingrates," added 
 he — " no matter.'"* Was the red cap, which they put on the head 
 of the King in the month of June following, more insulting than 
 such apostrophes ? 
 
 The effects of the veto were different according to the depart- 
 ments, t At Paris, despite the excitement of the people, despite 
 the growing preponderance of the Jacobins, who obtained the 
 closing of the rival club of the Feuillants, the Directory, supported 
 by the Council of the Ministers, remained for some time the 
 -stronger. Several churches were re-opened to the nonjuring 
 clergy ; the worship in them was not disturbed. A large number 
 of priests from the provinces flowed into the great city, where they 
 concealed themselves more easily from persecution. Meanwhile, 
 irreligion made progress every day, and the tribune of the Jacobins 
 unceasingly resounded with passionate declamations against re- 
 ligion. In the departments, anarchy was at its height. Whilst 
 some Liberal Directories, like that of La Rochelle, followed the 
 example of the true Liberals of Paris, others in Landes and 
 Finistere, passed over the royal veto, and executed the decree of 
 the 29th of November, as though it had the force of law. A con- 
 
 * Buchez and Roux, " Histoire Parlementaire," XII., p. 262. 
 
 •)- See on the state of the Church of France during the year 1792, the 
 third volume of the " Histoire de I'Eglise de France sous la Revolu- 
 tion,'' by the Abbe Joeger; ''Histoire Anonyme du Clerge de France 
 sous la Revolution," Lyon, 1 828 ; and the work of Barruel, already cited. 
 We recall only for memory the " Moniteur," and the collection of 
 
 Buchez and Roux. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
246 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 siderable . number of nonjuring priests had been imprisoned at 
 Brest and Dinan; 'they underwent, without trial, the severest 
 captivity, and they would certainly have died of hunger but for the 
 abundant alms of the faithful. These measures excited a growing 
 fermentation in the parishes from which their ancient priests had 
 been torn. Moreover, in the departments of the Haute-Garonne, 
 Loire-Inferieure, 1 'Ille-et-Vilaine, Mayenne, and Maine-et-Loire, 
 the priests, without being imprisoned, are obliged to assemble in 
 the chief town, some are violently dragged to it ; there they are the 
 object of an inquisitorial surveillance, and what was for them the 
 height of persecution — they are forbidden to say mass. At Nantes, 
 they had to present themselves twice a day at the roll-call. All 
 priests who', in the department of Ille-et-Vilaine, refused the civic 
 oath, were conducted to Rennes. They were forbidden not only 
 to celebrate their worship, but also, under penalty of imprison- 
 ment, to assemble to the number of more than three. The same 
 deeds were reproduced at Angers and Laval. Soon they were no 
 longer content with punishing ecclesiastics: they equally attacked 
 the faithful. At Rennes, they had to pay a fine of six francs when 
 they were caught being present at a prohibited mass. Armed 
 forces scattered their meetings for worship. In vain did the ad- 
 herents of the nonjuring worship conceal themselves in the most 
 retired apartments; they were carefully watched, and the discovery 
 of a chalice or sacerdotal ornament exposed them to severe 
 penalties, or to ill-treatment on the part of the populace. 
 
 Happy were the refractories when they were transferred to the 
 tribunals ! they found there still an almost equitable justice, but 
 for the most part they were subjected to the violent measures which 
 were officially decreed by the Directories or Municipalities. They 
 enjoyed no security even in the cities where the Directories were 
 favourable to religious liberty. Thus at Auch, the Municipality 
 
 closed a chapel of the convent of the Carmelites where mass had 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
PERSECUTION IN THE CONVENTS OF WOMEN AT PARIS. 247 
 
 been celebrated, without restraint, by the nonjuring priests, despite 
 the energetic efforts of the Directory. 
 
 The resistance of the truly liberal authorities had for its sole 
 result to bring about grave scenes of violence. The convents of 
 women, which had not yet been closed, and where the influence of 
 the refractories predominated, were specially marked out for the 
 popular fury. We may judge, by what took place in the month of 
 March, 1792, at the convent of the Dominicans, in Paris, of the 
 cruel persecutions which were inflicted, throughout the whole of 
 France, on the nuns who remained faithful to the Holy See. A 
 band of madmen had thrown themselves into the convent, threat- 
 ening to blow up everything, if the priest who had taken the oath 
 was not immediately received. "I should fear," writes the 
 Superior to the Pope, " to affect your paternal heart too sensibly 
 if I were to enter into the detail of all the vexations which they 
 have made use of to shake our fidehty; if I should depict to it 
 the furious mobs which have surrounded us, the continual threaten- 
 ings of nocturnal pillage, the terror and fright which cast us at the 
 feet of the most holy Virgin. No, I shall not enlarge on all these 
 personal persecutions, because we rejoice, after the example of the 
 apostles, to be found worthy to suffer something for the name of 
 Jesus Christ, and the honour of the Church our mother."* The 
 Superior of the schools of Saint-Charles, of Paris, in a letter equally 
 touching, gives analagous details of the persecutions which she 
 underwent. She relates that, on her refusal to receive the new 
 priest, who was in her eyes only an intruder, the latter applied to 
 a neighbouring club, and secured the concourse of a band of mad- 
 men to do violence to her. On Rogation Sunday, followed by 
 these men in guise of a procession, he crossed the threshold of the 
 convent "Open your chapel," said he; "ring your bell." "I 
 
 * Theiner I., pp. 321, 322. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
248 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 refuse both," relates the Lady Superior; "the cries redouble,, 
 hatchets are distributed, the garden wall is scaled. My faithful 
 companions and I, withdrawn into a chamber and prostrate at the 
 foot of the crucifix, await death — we offer our lives to God." The 
 Lady Superior had the grief of seeing one of the sisters open the 
 chapel to the Constitutional priest; she resisted all besettings, and 
 after having remained three entire days in the midst of the soldiers, 
 she was obliged to disperse the community and take to flight.* If 
 such scenes took place at Paris, it may be imagined to what 
 violence the revolutionary fury was carried in the provinces. At 
 Langres and La Rochelle the nuns were beaten with rods; the 
 same treatment was inflicted on some young girls who had attended 
 the proscribed worship; and the Minister of the Interior cited the 
 case of an unhappy man who was exhumed from the cemetery and 
 interred in an open crossway, for not having wished to be present 
 at the mass of the Constitutional clergy. f The municipal officers 
 sometimes tore children from their parents to cause them to be 
 baptised by priests who had taken the oath, or they inflicted fines 
 on the parents who had not presented their children in the parish 
 church. 
 
 This persecution did not always meet with lambs ready to endure 
 it patiently. It provoked energetic resistances which were within 
 a little of being transformed into open civil war, and it was made 
 the most of by the emigrants. Nevertheless, with prudent and 
 liberal measures, it would have been still possible, at the com- 
 mencement of the year 1792, to restore calm to men's minds; 
 liberty of worship, freely acknowledged and sincerely applied, was 
 sufficient to pacify the provinces, and to cause the gravest conflict 
 between the King and the Assembly to disappear. 
 
 In a writing entitled " New account rendered to the King !" the 
 
 * Theiner I., p. 340. f " Moniteur' of the i8th of February, 1792. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
LIBERAL REPORT OF CAHIER-GERVILLE. 249 
 
 nonjuring clergy protested against all the accusations of rebellion 
 with which they were overwhelmed. " You accuse us of being the 
 authors of all kinds of disturbances which agitate the kingdom; 
 you accuse us of default of payment of the taxes, of the resistance 
 of the people to the free circulation of grain; you accuse us of 
 being in intelliuence with the enemy of the country, of ardently 
 desiring war. How is it that among so many accused priests you 
 have not been able to find a single guilty one? And yet, surely the 
 hostile surveillance of fifty thousand administrative bodies, aided 
 by more than ten thousand, clubs, should have sufficed to discover 
 these plots if they existed. We declare to your Majesty that we 
 are submissive to all the public authorities, and that, after the 
 example of Jesus Christ, we reckon it amongst the number of our 
 duties to pay our taxes. We declare that the most constant and 
 the most ardent of our wishes have for their object the return of 
 peace in the Church and in the State. All our resistance is 
 limited to explicitly believing that the Constitutional worship is not 
 the Catholic worship, and to teaching that it is not. This single 
 point excepted, we are entire in our submission to civil order and 
 to the laws; we are innocent, not only in the eyes of God, but also 
 in the eyes of the law."* It would have been good policy to take 
 possession of these declarations, and not to push to extremity a 
 party which would have been bound by its promises of submission, 
 with the reservation of respect for its rights. 
 
 Such was indeed the advice of the Minister of the Interior, 
 Cahier-Gerville, in the report presented by him to the Assembly 
 on the rSth of February. After having traced a rapid outline of 
 the religious agitation in the departments, in which he pointed 
 out an equal fanaticism in the two camps, he summed up his 
 
 * Jseger " Histoire de I'Eglise de France sous la Revolution," III., 
 p- 107. Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
250 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 appreciation by these significant words : " If, on one side, we see 
 fanatics, on the other we see persecutors ; and it appears that 
 toleration is exiled from this kingdom. In all the departments, 
 religious liberty has been more or less null ; administrators have 
 passed vexatious resolutions which the King cannot help con- 
 demning, as contrary to the Constitution. Their crime is excused 
 by the difficulty of the circumstances. They have put above the 
 law what they have regarded as the public interest. They are 
 not sufficiently penetrated with this truth, that when the law is 
 made, the public safety is in its rigorous observance. What 
 matters it to the State whether a citizen goes to mass or not? 
 All that a good Constitution can do, is to favour all religions with- 
 out distinguishing any. There is in France no national religion. 
 Each citizen ought freely to enjoy the right of exercising such 
 religious observances as his conscience prescribes to him ; and it 
 is to be desired that the time should not be far distant, when 
 each shall pay for his own worship." The minister longed for 
 .the moment when the social state should no longer be authenti- 
 cated by priests, and terminated his report by these remarkable 
 words : " The interests of the priests ought to count for nothing -i 
 in the combinations of the legislator.. The country awaits a just 
 law which can enter into the code of free peoples, and which dis- 
 penses with pronouncing these words: Priests and religion." It 
 could not be better expressed; it was the pure spirit of 1789, 
 freed from all inconsistency, and it was the sure remedy for the 
 internal ills of the country. This report was much applauded, , 
 but it did not lead the Assembly to abandon that fatal policy of ' 
 the measures of public safety which the minister had so justly 
 blamed. Unhappily, he could not long represent moderation in 
 the council of the King; for, the following month, the ministry 
 was dissolved ; the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Delessart, was 
 brought before the Higjjig^Qji^^^^.p^lg^; the Gironde imposed 
 
NEW BRIEF OF THE POPE. 25 1 
 
 its men on the Prince, and the austere and rude Roland, less 
 liberal than democratic, replaced Cahier-Gerville in the Depart- 
 ment of the Interior. Revolutionary intolerance was henceforth 
 supported by the Chief of the Administration, and it was, without 
 fail, going to run riot at its ease. 
 
 On the 19th of March, the Pope had launched a new brief, full 
 of congratulations for the nonjuring priests. This brief was 
 especially designed to refute the Gallican principles expressed in 
 the Statement of Principles, signed by eighteen Constitutional 
 bishops. It was moderate enough in its tone, and it limited 
 itself to unite, in a single monitory, the second and third warning 
 which was to precede the decisive condemnation of the recal- 
 citrants. The same day, Pius VI. published another brief, which 
 conferred on the ancient bishops and on the administrators of their 
 diocese-s, all the powers necessary for absolving in cases reserved 
 for the Holy See, and for making ordinations outside of the 
 ordinary rules. The Pope thus rendered possible the maintenance 
 of an orthodox Church under the grave circumstances of the time. 
 All that proceeded from Rome exasperated the men who were at 
 the head of the movement, because they knew very well that there 
 was the hottest centre of the counter-Revolution. 
 
 The brief of the Pope does not appear to have produced much 
 impression on the Constitutional clergy. Not that some of its 
 most influential members were not shaken : Gobel had had secret 
 conferences with the Abbe Barruel, one of the most active agents 
 of the Ultramontane party ; * but the base soul of the Bishop of 
 Paris might well be crossed by a vague uneasiness ; he was none 
 the less incapable of taking a courageous resolution. The fear of 
 hell brought him back to the Pope, as a greater fright, in presence 
 of a nearer peril, was to withdraw him from religion itself, and to 
 
 * See the letter c3i^exeicle&y'Mi3rbeift&, I., p. 360. 
 
252 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 drive him to a scandalous apostacy. He was a vile, timorous, and 
 ambitious man. The Constitutional Bishop of Rouen, Charrier 
 de la Roche, had given in his resignation without passing to the 
 contrary party; he recoiled before the persecution of the refrac- 
 tory clergy, and he hoped that if his example was followed by the 
 two clergies, the work of conciliation would be much advanced.* 
 He had no imitator. Indeed, the Constitutional clergy began to 
 be divided ; they reckoned a great number of respectable priests, 
 who laboured courageously to raise religion again in France, but 
 they had also been invaded by what may be called the scum of 
 the ancient Church, and they reckoned amongst their ranks some 
 men lost to morals, and mad members of clubs. The question of 
 the marriage of the priests had been agitated for some months. 
 It had been legislatively determined, for the Assembly had decreed 
 that pensions should be continued to the ecclesiastics who should 
 marry. Several Constitutional priests had profited by this authorisa- 
 tion, but the Catholic sentiment, even in the Constitutional Church, 
 had been deeply wounded by it. Aubert, Vicar of Sainte-Mar- 
 guerite, at Paris, had given a great eclat to his marriage, and had 
 succeeded only in producing a frightful scandal in his parish of 
 the Faubourg Saint- Antoine ; he "had basely had recourse to the 
 tumultuous approbation of the clubs. Hence, deplorable scenes, 
 well calculated to bring into disrepute the new Church and the 
 Revolution, for the Assembly committed the error and absurdity 
 of granting the honours of thg sitting to the clerical couple, after a 
 speech from the husband, who insinuated that the Bastile had 
 been taken in order to facilitate his marriage. He was maintained 
 at his post, despite his bishop, by the favour of the clubs.t 
 Later on, despite the energetic demands of several priests of 
 
 * ".Histoire de I'Eglise de France," by the Abbe Guettee, XII., 
 
 p. 288. t jKger, III., p. l88. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft's) 
 
CONTINUATION OF PERSECUTION. 253 
 
 Paris, he was nominated to the cure of Petits-Peres, and installed 
 with great pomp ; his wife occupied a place of honour in the 
 choir. If the days of persecution had not come for the Constitu- 
 tional clergy, they could not have raised themselves from the 
 discredit to which the insulting protection of the enemies of 
 Christianity condemned them. It is certain that they had already 
 formed the scheme of abasing religion, in order the sooner to rid 
 themselves of it. But it was necessary, previously, to crush the 
 refractory priests, and since the admission of the Girondists to the 
 ministry, nothing was spared to realise this design. 
 
 The butcher Legendre had brutally, but faithfully, expressed 
 the intention of the Jacobins, when he cried, at the tribune of that 
 club : " Let the refractory priest be severely punished ; let him 
 carry his head to the scaffold, or his body to the galleys. When 
 a husbandman finds a caterpillar, he puts it under his foot.'' At 
 the season of Easter, the violences against the worship of the non- 
 jurors increased. At Lyons, their churches were invaded by the 
 populace, and the rioters obtained as a recompense from the 
 Municipality, the closing of all the chapels of the convents. The 
 Church of Sainte-Claire, which had not been interdicted, was, on 
 Easter-day itself, the theatre of the most scandalous scenes. 
 Women were covered with mud, then dragged in a sling through 
 the streets of the city before the magistrates, who were silent 
 witnesses of these infamies. But Httle was wanting that the 
 conscience, even of the King, was not directly violated. Guadet 
 had prepared an imperative letter, which was to be signed by his 
 ministers, and in which it was intimated to him to change his 
 confessor. Dumouriez had the good judgment to oppose this 
 design, by saying that he would not permit that the King should 
 be written to in the name of the Council, on the affairs of his 
 conscience; that he might take an iman, a rabbi, a Papist, or a 
 
 Calvinist to direct him. without any one having the right to 
 Drgitized by Microsoft® 
 
2 54 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 meddle with it* Wisdom would have counselled the application 
 of this rule to all the citizens, but the zealous party were less and 
 less inclined to moderation. It was not at the moment when the 
 Girondists had brought the red cap into fashion and done every- 
 thing to excite the revolutionary fever, that they would have been 
 disposed to respect religious scruples. The Assembly, goaded by 
 a ministry which faithfully represented the opinion of the majority, 
 resolutely and rapidly marched to its ends, which were the 
 humiliation of royalty and the putting the refractory clergy outside 
 the law. They commenced by completing the destruction of all 
 which remained of the ancient religious orders. The Constituent 
 had not ventured immediately to dissolve the teaching bodies; 
 they had in many respects deserved well of France. The Legis- 
 lative saw in them the last ramparts of the ancient Church, and it 
 was in haste to reduce them to dust Good Friday, the 6th of 
 April, was well chosen to inflict this blow, so acute to Catholic 
 hearts. Lecoz, Bishop of the Department of Ille-et-Vilaine, strove 
 in vain to hinder this summary execution. The general discussion 
 was immediately closed, and the deputy Lagrevol obtained the 
 abolition of the exception maintained in favour of the Sisters of 
 Charity whom he treated as vermin. Torne claimed, at least, 
 respect for the illustrious orders which were being suppressed, but 
 he finally aggravated the import of the law by demanding in 
 terms, little suitable, the suppression of the ecclesiastical costume. 
 The Assembly, in adopting this measure, forgot how much 
 effect visible signs have on ignorant populations, and what irrita- 
 tion its decision was going very uselessly to excite in the provinces. 
 The Bishop of Limoges, as soon as the resolution of Torne was 
 voted, declared that he sacrificed his episcopal vestments for the 
 maintenance of a National Guard ; and Fauchet immediately put 
 
 * Memoires de Dumouriez. II., p. 255. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
ROLAND FAVOURS THE ILLEGAL PERSECUTIONS. 255 
 
 his cap into his pocket— an act which appeared superb to the 
 galleries. 
 
 The minister Roland knew how with a skilful art to maintain 
 and increase the irritation of the Assembly against the refractory- 
 clergy. On the 16th of April he came to announce that disturb- 
 ances having broken out in Aveyron, opinion accused the non- 
 juring priests of them, and that their transportation was demanded. 
 The Municipality of Montmeyran decreed their expulsion, and 
 calm was re-established, although the measure was unconstitu- 
 tional. The Assembly perfectly comprehended that this recital 
 contained a counsel. On the 23rd of April Roland again drew 
 the' attention of the Assembly to the religious disturbances. He 
 drew a frightful picture of them, the colours of which he 
 heightened at pleasure ; and he was merciless on the refractory 
 priests, whom he represented as madmen, sowing everywhere, in 
 communes and families, hatred and discord. He boldly acknow- 
 ledged the flagrant illegality of repression ; for he informed the 
 Assembly that the departmental or municipal authorities, in most 
 of the departments, had applied the decree of November 29th as 
 if it had had the force of law, and had taken no account of the 
 veto of the King. The nonjuring priests had been restricted in 
 their residence to the chief town, and placed under severe sur- 
 veillance. Very far from blaming these acts, unconstitutional in 
 the highest degree, the minister reported, with evident approba- 
 tion, the apology which their authors presented for them. " What,'' 
 said these, " can religious toleration avail against the pride and 
 avarice of the priests ? It is not a mutinous multitude which rises 
 against the non-conformists, it is the voice of the entire nation.'' 
 Roland demanded, not that these illegal arrests should be stopped, 
 but that they should be rendered constitutional, by voting more 
 energetic measures and constraining the King to sanction them. 
 He gave it clearly to te^un^er^^oo^.to^e Assembly should con- 
 
2S6 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 demn the refractories to transportation, for he cited with praise 
 letter from the Directory of Strasbourg, which demanded a decre 
 of this kind. 
 
 Francois de Nantes laid on the table, on the 26th of Apri! 
 the report which had been required from the Committee c 
 Twelve, charged with the preparation of laws for the internal trar 
 quillity of the kingdom. It is the most ridiculously bombastic am 
 declamatory piece that one could imagine ; he covered with thi 
 faded flowers of his rhetoric an abominable plan of proscription 
 The orator abandoned himself to the most outrageous insult 
 against religion. He bitterly regrets the time when the first mei 
 consecrated altars decorated with leaves to a primitive God, whon 
 he appears singularly to confound with the god of gardens. It i 
 impossible to draw a clear idea from this sentimental bombast, i 
 it is not the formal condemnation of all positive religion, and es 
 pecially of Christianity. It is, above all, against the Pope tha 
 rran9ois de Nantes abandons himself to his insulting humour. H( 
 represents him as a comically-threatening prince who seeks to as 
 sume the attitude of the thundering Jupiter, but his powerless darti 
 are blunted against the shield of liberty placed on the summit o 
 the Alps. He compares him to a theatrical phantom, which th( 
 decorators cause to appear at their pleasure; and he announces ir 
 these terms the approaching end of his power : " Soon the slaves 
 of a priest will remember that they were formerly citizens of Rome 
 They will say, ' It was here that Brutus lived, and Italy shall bf 
 free.'" Passing from these considerations, entirely out of place 
 at the National Tribune, to the circumstances of the moment 
 Frangois de Nantes acknowledges that their gravity had beer 
 much exaggerated, that if effervescence remains in the depart 
 ments, the great majority of the citizens are nevertheless tranquil 
 and he attributes to fear and exaggeration the frightful picture 
 which has been drawruof the state of^e country. And yet h( 
 
REPORT OF FRANCAIS DE NANTES. 257 
 
 concludes by demanding the severest measures against these very- 
 priests whose influence he has just contested, and whom, by a 
 strange contradiction, he compares to thirty or forty thousand 
 levers of counter-revolution. " We have arrived," said he, " at the 
 point at which it is necessary either that the State be crushed by 
 this faction, or that this faction be crushed by the State." He de- 
 mands the restriction of residence to the chief town of the non- 
 jurors ; the interdiction to them of the right of teaching, preaching, 
 and confessing ; and transportation in case of resistance. At the 
 same time he opposes every repressive measure against the clubs, 
 which he represents as the great school of liberty for the French 
 people. Fran9ais de Nantes laid down these same propositions in 
 a new report, presented on the 4th of May, still more violent and 
 ridiculous ; we read there rural descriptions of desolated provinces 
 and prosopopoeias, such as this : " O Rome ! art thou satisfied ? 
 Are greater ills still necessary to thee ? Art thou, then, like 
 Saturn, to whom every evening new holocausts are necessary ? Re- 
 sume thy fatal militia. Go forth, workers of discord ; the soil of 
 liberty is weary of bearing you. What a festive day for liberty the 
 day of your departure ! What a consolation will it be for the 
 country when it shall have vomited from its entrails the poison 
 which devours it ? " The orator finishes this speech, designed to 
 propose the proscription of a whole class of citizens, by asking 
 that the chafing-dish of Scevola should be brought, in order that he 
 might show his love of country and of liberty. He would have 
 given a better proof of it if, instead of offering to burn his hand, he 
 had never used it to write such a plan, which was about to end in 
 too real sufferings for thousands of priests. 
 
 In the debate which opened on the i6th of May, most of the 
 orators surpassed the draft of the decree. Lecointe-Puyraveaux 
 insisted that they should pronounce the transportation of all non- 
 jurors without distinclri)i^ze(M^gJMWii3ft#iought himself moderate 
 
 s 
 
258 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 in proposing that they should continue the pensions to the refrac- 
 tory priests who would consent to banish themselves without 
 delay. He thought good to enliven the discussion by this irony, 
 very little generous under such circumstances : " I do not doubt 
 that in Italy they may be received as holy personages who are 
 persecuted, and the Pope will be able to see in the present which 
 we shall have made to him of so many living saints, only a 
 testimony of our gratitude for the arms, heads, and relics of 
 dead saints, with which he has, for so many centuries, gratified 
 our credulous piety." The ex-Capuchin Chabot showed himself 
 disposed to abandon the clause of the oath, provided that they 
 could constrain every nonjuring priest, on the requisition of 
 twenty active citizens to take the engagement, not to disturb 
 the pubUc tranquillity. They laid aside the proposal to abandon 
 the oath, and retained as good that of making the restricting of 
 the residence of the refractories to the chief town to depend on 
 the requisition, or rather, the denunciation of twenty citizens. 
 The party of moderation and liberty had only two defenders : 
 Ramond, who once more claimed universal toleration and full 
 religious liberty; and Moy, parish priest of Saint Laurent, a priest 
 not much of a believer, imbued with philosophical ideas, but w;ho 
 had the honour, that day, of boldly branding the Civil Constitution 
 of the clergy, and of denouncing it as the cause of all the evils 
 from which they were suffering. " You will have done nothing," 
 said he, " for public tranquilhty, if you do not tear from your laws 
 this chapter of theocracy, which is found inserted therein, as the 
 bad principle by the side of the benevolent principle." He de- 
 manded the abrogation of every oath. " The best means," added 
 he, " of avoiding religious disturbances, is to maintain the most 
 entire liberty of religious opinions, and to render all worships 
 equal in the eyes of the law." He plainly indicated that the 
 
 abolition of the payment of worships was the natural consequence 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
VOTE OF THE DECREE OF THE 2STH OF MAY, 1792. 259 
 
 of his motion. It was still a seed for the future, but which could 
 not germinate in a soil torn by so formidable a strife. Ramond 
 and Moy were violently opposed, on the 24th of May, by an 
 obscure priest of the name of Ichon, who refused the character of 
 worship to the assemblies of nonjurors, and compared them to 
 reactionary clubs. The deputy Lariviere read from the tribune 
 the famous chapter of the contrat social, in which religious liberty 
 is entirely sacrificed to popular sovereignty, and in which the State- 
 creed is declared demandable from each citizen, under penalty of 
 death. A more artless deputy proposed that they should simply 
 convert this chapter into a motion. To what good ? They had been 
 doing nothing else for more than a year than commenting upon 
 it and applying it. Guadet carried the vote, by some energetic 
 words, in favour of a motion which decreed the transportation of 
 every ecclesiastic denounced to the department by twenty active 
 citizens, if the opinion of the district was conformable; in the 
 contrary case, an inquiry was immediately to be made. The 
 Assembly had well-nigh decided that no inquiry and no control 
 should be necessary. Such was the decree of the 25th of May, 
 1792, which singularly aggravated that of the 29th of November of 
 the preceding year, and which was again to place before the King 
 the question of the veto. 
 
 War had just broken out on the frontiers; its commencement 
 had not been happy, and they blamed the Court for it, whom they 
 suspected of being in secret conferences with the foreigner. The 
 Assembly, in the sitting of the 29th of May, took away from the 
 King his guard of honour ; then it ordered the formation of a 
 camp of twenty thousand men around Paris — a true Revolutionary 
 army which caused the executive power to pass into their hands. 
 The ministers coupled this decree with that on the transportation 
 of the priests, and presented them together to Louis XVI. ; he 
 rejected them both. ci^teidb>tHee-ol8»(i) to him, in full council, 
 
 s 2 
 
26o THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 a haughty and imperative letter. He gave to him severe lessons, 
 in the most surly tone, and sharply insisted on the necessity of 
 sanctioning the decree against the priests. " If this law is not 
 put in force," said the minister, " the departments will be com- 
 pelled to substitute for it, as they are doing in all parts, violent 
 measures, and the irritated people will make up for it by excesses." 
 It was lawful for Roland to come to the Tuileries in shoes without 
 buckles, but not to school the King to his face. The ministry 
 was dissolved, and Dumouriez could not re-constitute another, in 
 face of the persistent refusal of the prince to sanction the two 
 decrees. Without doubt, his scruples had been strengthened 
 by the "Observations critiques sur la loi du 26 Mai, 1792" 
 (" Critical Observations on the Law of the 26th of May, 1792"), 
 published by the Archbishop of Aix. It contained these noble 
 words: "What is the crime of these fifty thousand French whom 
 they are preparing to banish? That of their rehgion. Their 
 crime is the being unwilling to commit a perjury. The question 
 here is of conscience, which is not to be commanded." * As soon 
 as Roland was deposed from his functions, he caused his letter 
 to be read to the Assembly, when congratulations and regrets 
 were voted to him as well as to Servan and Claviere. 
 
 The new ministry was composed of obscure Constitutionalists, 
 like Chambonas and Duranton; they were incapable of leading 
 back opinion to the cause of justice. Accordingly, they only 
 exasperated the revolutionary passions by covering the royal veto 
 with their responsibility. Never was a great public duty fulfilled 
 with so much powerlessness. 
 
 Lafayette, dismayed and indignant with all that was being pre- 
 pared, wrote from his camp an eloquent letter to the Assembly, in 
 which he denounced the conspiracy of the clubs, and adjured them 
 
 DigitlWfi^UcrbPof^^- 
 
TERRIBLE SPEECH OF VERGNIAUD AGAINST THE KING. 261 
 
 to respect royalty and religious liberty. Applauded at first, his 
 letter was, notwithstanding, referred to the Committee of Twelve 
 under the pretext that it was not authentic, instead of being 
 despatched to the departments as had at first been demanded. 
 It obtained for answer the violation of the palace of the King on 
 the 20th of June. The riot had been prepared by the Munici- 
 pality; it met with no resistance in the Assembly, and the royal 
 majesty was odiously profaned, without having been for one 
 instant seriously defended. The people, who invaded the Tuileries, 
 boldly avowed their design; it was the veto which their rage 
 pursued. The unfortunate prince was dressed with the red cap 
 and loaded with gross insults for having protected religious liberty. 
 Lafayette, indignant, hastened to Paris. Between the suspicions 
 of the Court, and the anger of the Jacobins, he could harmonise 
 nothing, and he set out again for his army, sick at heart. The 
 great movement of 1789 was, for the moment, ruined; liberty 
 was drowned in a feverish demagogism, which was to be great 
 only at the frontiers, whilst its foam, soon to be stained with 
 blood, was cast over Paris and in the departments. Already had 
 its furious waves submerged the most precious rights, and they 
 beat every day, as an irresistible tide, against the tottering and dis- 
 honoured throne of Louis XVI. 
 
 It was at this moment that Vergniaud pronounced against the 
 King the most eloquent speech that France had heard since 
 Mirabeau. ■ Unfortunately thiS' thunder was going to strike 
 an adversary overwhelmed with ignominy and almost crushed. 
 The only excuse of the great orator was in the supreme peril of 
 the nation, for foreign invasion was commencing on a very 
 extended line of frontier, and the Girondists were not deceived 
 in believing in the moral complicity of the Tuileries ; but what 
 also had they not done to push to extreme an honest, but irre- 
 solute prince, whom "^"^^^M ^^IS^M ^^' ""^^°' °^ legitimate 
 
262 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 defence, by treading under foot his Constitutional rights, and 
 openly violating his Christian conscience ? Vergniaud replied on 
 the occasion of the report of Pastoret, on the situation of France, 
 which had been read to the Assembly on the 30th of June ; the 
 orator there sustained, in moderate language, the decrees issued 
 on the religious disturbances. The illustrious Girondist did not 
 follow this example ; he characterised, in terms equally severe, 
 the indulgence of the King for the refractory clergy, and his pre- 
 sumed connivances with the foreigner. " I know not," said he, 
 " if the sombre genius of Medicis and of the Cardinal of Lorraine 
 still wanders under the vaults of the palace of the Tuileries, if the 
 heart of the King is troubled by the religious terrors by which he 
 is environed. But I cannot believe, without doing injury to him, 
 that he wishes to encourage by impunity, the criminal attempts of 
 pontifical ambition ; that he refuses to adopt repressive measures 
 against fanaticism, in order to incite the citizens to excesses, 
 inspired by despair, and condemned by the laws. The veto set 
 on your decree has spread, not that dull stupor under which the 
 oppressed slave swallows his tears in silence, but this sentiment of , 
 generous grief which, amongst a free people, arouses passions and 
 increases their energy. . . . Teach France that henceforth 
 ministers shall answer with their heads for all the disorders of 
 which religion shall be the pretext* Matthieu Dumas justly 
 replied that these disorders were produced only where religious 
 liberty was trammelled ; and that the surest means of preventing 
 them was to follow the policy of the royal veto so violently 
 attacked. But in July, 1792, it was of very little use to be right, 
 especially when a measured speech was opposed to an harangue 
 heated with the fire of the passions of the moment, and animated 
 
 * Sitting of the 3rd of July, 1792. See the second volume of the 
 *' Souvenirs de Matthieu Dumas." 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
PERSECUTION INCREASES IN THE PROVINCE. 263 
 
 with a poetic and sublime eloquence. The speech of Vergniaud, 
 read with enthusiasm by all France, inflicted the last blow on the 
 monarchy, and everywhere revived the persecution of the refrac- 
 tory priests. 
 
 The most unjust measures were taken against the refractory, 
 and executed in several departments, with a brutality without 
 parallel. The nonjuring priests endured everywhere the counter- 
 blow of the 20th of June. They were crammed into the prisons 
 of Lyons, Chalons-sur-Saone, and Angers. In this last town, 
 those amongst them who had been until then lodged with the 
 inhabitants, were shut up in close places, where they suffered 
 horribly from the heat Similar scenes took place at Dijon and 
 in Morbihan. The Directory of Finistere pronounced the exile 
 of the refractories, as if the veto had been removed. The pro- 
 vince becoming untenable by the members of the nonjuring 
 clergy, on account of the difficulty of finding there sure retreats, 
 they flocked to Paris. They there assumed all kinds of disguises, 
 and gained their living by giving themselves to some trade, as 
 baking or gardening. Others engaged themselves in timber-yards, 
 and under coarse garments went to draw out the wood floated by 
 the Seine.* Even before September, several priests were mas- 
 sacred. At Vans, in Ardeche, Bravard, priest of the congre- 
 gation of Saint-Sulpice, was put to death for having refused the 
 oath. The Abbe Noir, a young priest of twenty-eight years, 
 resisted the tears of his father, saying to him : " It will be sweeter 
 for you to see a martyr son than an apostate child," and perished 
 under the axe. At Bordeaux, an ancient vicar-general of the 
 diocese, thrown into an obscure and unhealthy prison, repeated 
 with hapjjiness, this passage from the Acts of the Apostles : " They 
 went out from the council rejoicing that they were counted 
 
 * Jasger, III., p. 244-261. Barruel, I., p. 180. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
264 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 worthy to suffer shame for the name of Jesus Christ.'' He was 
 massacred in the court of the Bishop's palace, which had become 
 the capital of the department. A good number of persecuted 
 priests were heard crying : " Behold the beautiful days of the 
 Church ! Behold the time of trial, of courage for her true 
 children !"* 
 
 The 20th of June was necessarily to lead to the loth of 
 August. The Lamourette kiss did not procure a day of truce, 
 after having appeared to seal the reconciliation of parties. The 
 suspension of Petion by the King, for his complicity or negligence 
 at the time of the outbreak of June, the discussions provoked by 
 this incident, his triumphal re-instatement, the approach of the 
 foreign armies, the proclamation of the danger of the country, 
 the arrival of the Marseillaise conspirators, all contributed to 
 increase, every day and almost at every hour, the Revolutionary fury 
 of the people of Paris. We know now, thanks to certain docu- 
 ments, that the Municipality of Paris, with its Mayor at its 
 head, took the initiative of the loth of August t That terrible 
 day carried away, with the same stroke, the Monarchy and the 
 Gironde ; for from that day the latter ceased to hold the head of 
 the movement. From September, the Mountain used its victory 
 before even taking the trouble to form to itself a majority, Those 
 who had opened .the sluice were the first submergeQ, and sub- 
 merged in the blood of their enemies, whom they wished indeed 
 to banish, but not to massacre. 
 
 We must, nevertheless, still lay to their charge the decree of 
 proscription against the priests which the Legislative Assembly 
 hastened to vote as soon as they had freed themselves from the 
 King and his right of veto, and which aggravated even those 
 
 * Barruel, p. 295. 
 
 \ See the recital of M. Mortimer-Ternaux,in the second volume of 
 the " Histoire de la Terreur." 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
THE SOCIAL STATE COMMITTED TO THE MUNICIPALITIES. 265 
 
 that it had proposed to him, and which the Assembly hastened to 
 sanction on the very evening of the loth of August Some days 
 before (the 4th of August) the convents of women still preserved 
 had been suppressed, and a great number of nuns had been cast 
 into the street without asylum and without relatives. On Sunday, 
 the T7th of August, a letter from the department of Var, announ- 
 cing that they had rid themselves, by transportation, of the non- 
 juring priests, was read to the Assembly. Lequinio demanded 
 that the measure should be applied to the whole of France, and 
 his motion was referred to the Extraordinary Committee. Wearied 
 with the delay with which it gave in its report, Benoiston pro- 
 posed, on the 23rd of August, the draft of a decree, according to 
 which all ecclesiastics who had not taken the civic oath were 
 bound to quit the kingdom within a fortnight ; this was to demand 
 the proscription of a whole class of citizens, or rather the pro- 
 scription of an opinion. Cambon found that the measure was 
 insufficient, and asked that they should decide to transport all the 
 refractories to Guyana. Lasource and Vergniaud protested in 
 the name of justice. Their claim in its favour was tardy; they 
 had too many times sacrificed it to the public safety for their 
 voice to have any authority. It was easy to foresee that just as 
 1792 had conquered 1789, 1793 was going to carry all before it 
 The Convention had in some measure risen at the bidding of 
 Cambon, with its firm decision to push to the last extremity the 
 policy of the Gironde : which was to be its greatest chastisement. 
 The Assembly had not time to vote the motion of Benoiston ; 
 the people of Paris amended it in a terrible manner some days 
 later. 
 
 The Legislative, before entirely losing the reins of the political 
 movement, had realised a great reform, destined to survive all its 
 violent decrees, because it answered to the true needs of New 
 France. On the isth of . February,. Murdre presented a report, 
 
266 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 which concluded by demanding that the registers of the Civil 
 State should be transferred to the Municipalities. "When the 
 Catholic religion," said the reporter, " was the only one acknow- 
 ledged in the kingdom, it was necessary to apply to the ministers 
 of worship in order to authenticate the principal periods in the life 
 of the citizen ; but since toleration has taken the place which is 
 secured to it by reason, why should it be necessary that he who does 
 not acknowledge the ministers, with respect to worship, should be 
 obliged to acknowledge them in order to prove his social standing ? " 
 Despite the opposition of some members who, like Francois de 
 Neuchateau, dreaded to increase the religious disturbances by an 
 innovation so radical, the measure was voted, in principle, on the 
 22nd of June, in these terms; "The Municipalities shall, for the 
 future, receive and preserve the records designed to authenticate 
 in the empire, births, marriages, and deaths." The country was 
 decidedly ripe for this reform, for it was destined to survive all its 
 revolutions. It is greatly to be regretted that the legislators who 
 voted it should have denied the spirit of it with so much persever- 
 ance by unceasingly confounding the temporal and the spiritual, 
 and by pursuing not only factious intrigues, which was their right, 
 but opinions, which was their unpardonable fault. 
 
 They dearly expiated it when they learnt that the blood of the 
 priests had flowed in streams on the frightful day, which may with 
 good reason be called the Saint Bartholomew of demagogism. It 
 does not enter into our plan to recount, after so many eloquent 
 historians, those terrible scenes which show us a polished age, 
 benevolent on the surface, slipping in blood and mire, as if to 
 recall to us what formidable powers slumber in human nature in a 
 state of repose, ready to go forth unbridled at the first call. It was, 
 doubtless, thought that manners of all classes were softened since 
 the violent sixteenth century, and that civilisation had sufficiently 
 
 pared the claws of the tiger. What a, surprise when the populace 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
MASSACRES OF SEPT-EMBER. 267 
 
 of Paris was seen rushing forth from its faubourgs as cruel, as 
 
 thirsting for blood, as the people of the League raised by mad 
 
 I monks. It is because a multitude without God is tantamount to 
 
 J an idolatrous multitude. The Jacobin of the atheistic philosophy 
 
 P is the worthy heir of the Jacobin of the sixteenth century, the 
 
 i accomplice of Jacques Clement. Very far from excusing the first 
 
 by the second, and from justifying one crime by another under 
 
 pretext of a merited revenge, it is necessary to react with all one's 
 
 strength against that weakening of the historic and moral sense 
 
 which explains and extenuates facts, where we ought to condemn 
 
 the guilty without mercy. 
 
 We leave to others the task of painting this city plunged in 
 stupor, close as a vast dungeon, covered, by the law of the sus- 
 pected, with a veil of unutterable terror, traversed without ceasing 
 by those drunken patriots who search the houses at every hour of 
 the day and night, and so prepare the colossal assassination upon 
 which the Commune has decided. All the contrasts of human 
 nature then appeared, as is always seen in those tragic events 
 which move it to its depth; women carrying heroism to its last 
 limits; executioners, seized with a sudden sensibility, as eager to 
 save as they were to massacre, in order to return with an equal 
 ardour ^o their work; sublime acts, and such Saturnalia as the 
 past had not known-; the purest devotedness, and what is vilest 
 and most atrocious, massacre for robbery; nothing is wanting to 
 these days, the horror of which no recital will ever exhaust. That 
 which it concerns us to bring out, is that the massacres of 
 September were at first directed against the refractories. One of 
 the sections of Paris, that of the Faubourg Poissonniere, openly 
 voted the massacre of the priests in the following resolution: 
 "Considering the imminent dangers of the country, and the 
 infernal manoeuvres of the priests, resolves that all priests and sus- 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
268 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 pected persons shut up in the prisons of Paris, Orleans, and 
 elsewhere, shall be put to death." * 
 
 We have only to read the narrative so sincere and so touching 
 of the Abbe Sicard to be convinced that the nonjurors were the 
 first victims marked out. That artless word of a workman to a 
 prisoner, " If thou art a priest, thou art done for,'' \ is the best ex- 
 planation of those abominable day?. At the Mayoralty of Paris, 
 at the Abbaye, at La Force, at Saint- Firmin, at the Carmes, they 
 were slain en masse, and the provinces did as Paris. At Rheims, 
 amongst numerous massacred priests, the Abbe Paquot thus replied 
 to those who pressed him to take the oath : " My choice is made. 
 I prefer death to perjury; if I had two lives I would give one of 
 them for you, but since I have only one, I keep it for God." J 
 The refractories displayed in these circumstances the most noble 
 courage, and refused^ before the sword of the assassins, to pro- 
 nounce against their conscience an oath which, would have saved 
 their life. There is nothing finer in the history of martyrdom than 
 the scene of the Carmes; there was there an emulation of holy 
 heroism, accompanied by a pious • tenderness.. The venerable 
 Archbishop of Aries, thanking God for having to offer to Him his 
 blood ; these priests who- confess each other, and who- give each 
 other the kiss of peace before dying ; these sweet and firm 
 responses, worthy of the time of Irenaeus ; all these imposing mani- 
 festations of a religion yesterday still so discredited, light up the 
 close of an incredulous age with a truly heavenly light, and reveal 
 God with an extraordinary potency at the moment that an impious 
 decree is soon to try to banish His worship. From all this shed 
 blood there rises an energetic voice to say to the possessors of the 
 
 • Buchez and Roux, "Histoire Parlementaire," XVII., p. 411; 
 
 Mortimer-Ternaux, " Histoire de la Terreur," III., p. 217. 
 
 + Buchez and Roux, " Histoire Parlementaire," XVIII., p. n8. 
 
 \ Mortimer-Ternaux, " Histoire dela Terreur," III., p. 307. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
MASSACRES OF SEPTEMBER. 269 
 
 civil power : Never touch conscience ! It is thus that it goes forth 
 pure and glorious from your blows, whilst dishonouring you.* A 
 great number of priests who had escaped the massacre set out for 
 exile, where they mostly met with a generous hospitality, especially 
 in England. Maury, nevertheless, remained in France to celebrate 
 in secret the proscribed worship, in the midst of the greatest perils. 
 The Legislative, whom the voice of Vergniaud had not been able 
 to awaken from its torpor since the commencement of the mas- 
 sacres, was about to be replaced by the Convention, and that 
 tells all. 
 
 • See the whole eighteenth volume of Buchez and Roux; see 
 especially the remarkable third volume of the " Histoire de la Terreur," 
 by Mortimer-Ternaux. There is nothing to be added to this inquiry, 
 which proves the abominable calculation of the organisers of the 
 massacre who sat at the council of ministers with Danton, and at the 
 commune of Paris, the shameful inactivity of the Assembly, and the 
 ignominy of the executioners, altogether robbers and murderers. M. 
 Mortimer-Ternaux permits us to take them in the fact, their feet in 
 blood and their hand in the pocket. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
C&aptec a. 
 
 The Church under the Convention to the Abolition of the Payment of 
 
 Worships. 
 
 During the first period of the Convention, the nonjuring priests 
 are included in the proscription which touches all those who 
 appear attached, by interest or principle, to the ancient regime. 
 It is not necessary to take new measures against them; the decrees 
 of the Legislative have only to be ratified, or, rather, it is enough 
 to apply to them the laws voted by the new Assembly, against 
 the real or supposed enemies of the Revolution. Thus, although 
 their sufferings increase every day, they occupy much less place 
 in the deliberations. From the first days we perceive that, certain 
 of crushing the nonjuring clergy, the Convention begins to be 
 occupied with the clergy who had taken the oath, that it regards 
 them as a last rampart of privilege and superstition, and that it 
 aims already to overthrow them with all that they recall and 
 represent. We shall see that when the moment of striking a great 
 blow shall have come, religious questions will be again spiritedly 
 raised in the press and at the tribune. 
 
 If we have been severe on the Legislative, we shall not be 
 tempted to be indulgent towards the Convention. With it de- 
 cidedly ends, and for long years, the reign of law. It is there 
 only to sanction the reign of the clubs and faubourgs, the reign of 
 tumultuous and cruel sedition which governs it from the height of 
 
 the galleries, whence proceed those imperative clamours which 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE CONVENTION. 27 1 
 
 the Assembly has always ended by obeying. I find nothing in 
 me to admire these Saturnalia of demagogism ; I hate them as I 
 hate the tyranny of the Caesars, which was also the reign of the 
 populace. When historians, grave rather than serious, tell me that 
 through these massacres the great French Revolution advanced 
 and strengthened itself, I ask what kind of chimera is that Revolu- 
 tion, which marches with Robespierre and Marat in 1793, as it 
 will march with Napoleon? In any case, it is not that of Mira- 
 beau and Lafayette, that which proclaims right and liberty; it is 
 no more than a blind and terrible force which replaces the ancient 
 iniquity by a new iniquity, and brings back despotism instead of 
 destroying it. They reply by showing us the soil, which is par- 
 celled out and passes into the hands of a multitude of peasants 
 and citizens, thus giving a basis and proper position to the great 
 body of the people. But with what right do they give honour to 
 the Convention for the consequences of a measure which was 
 taken by the Constituent, and which dates from the famous night 
 of the 4th of August ? Is it that all this blood which has been 
 shed has truly enriched the newly-acquired furrows? They remind 
 us of the philanthropic decrees of the Convention. It multiplied 
 hospitals, — a very good thing, — but that was not a reason for 
 enlarging cemeteries, and daily casting into them the horrible 
 leavings of the scaffold's repast. It laid the bases of our great 
 establishments of public instruction ; but if it had continued, it 
 would have rendered science, as an elementary study, impossible, 
 by keeping the country in revolutionary fever. To all these 
 objections they oppose the heroic defence of the country. That 
 is sublime; but, as Manuel said at the tribune of the chamber of 
 the deputies, those who were fighting at the frontiers escaped the 
 crimes of the interior; they purified themselves in the fire of the 
 enemy. Let us acknowledge, moreover, that one thing was great 
 
 in this period of the Revolution, that was energy; but it was an 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
272 THK CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 energy which no moral principle either directed or restrained; i 
 it was the intoxication of a powerful race who had much to 
 avenge, much to conquer, and whom a supreme peril exasperated. 
 Salutary and imposing in face of the enemy outside, it was terrible J 
 and without curb in presence of the enemies within, or of those 
 who passed for such. This energy gave birth to miracles of 
 courage on the Rhine or Schelde, and drove to unheard-of.crimes 
 at Paris and Lyons. If we unreservedly admire it in the armies, 
 we as unreservedly execrate it in the clubs and streets, and, above 
 all, on the Place de le Revolution, where 'its incessantly-reviving 
 fury satiated itself Let us not forget that mere energy is still 
 only brute force, and that those who praise the Convention 
 because it was energetic, will equally praise Napoleon because he 
 was strong, as unfaithful to liberty in the first judgment as in the 
 second. It is not enough to say of the Convention that it was 
 energetic; it was violently fanatical. It had all the intolerance 
 and pretensions of fanaticism; and first and foremost, that of 
 reaching and proscribing even thoughts and feelings. The law of 
 the suspected with the formidable extension which it took, was no 
 other thing than an attempt to strike not only acts but ideas, i 
 Nothing more resembles the Spanish Inquisition than the Revolu- 
 tionary Tribunal in the decisions of the Convention. The penalty 
 of death is constantly invoked or pronounced against those who 
 shall think or speak in such or such a manner. Let there be no 
 mistake; the revolutionary war is a war of rehgion, a war of 
 opinion, for demagogism becomes a sort of fierce and cruel 
 worship, which no more admits schism or heresy than did the 
 Dominican of the thirteenth and fourteenth century. Hence 
 the immense proportions of the struggle. The Convention also 
 practised the large and convenient morality of all fanaticisms; 
 the end which it pursues justifies, in its eyes, all the means which 
 it employs, even the most atrocious. The doctrine of the public 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE CONVENTION. 273 
 
 safety covers all its crimes, and it no more hesitates to strike its 
 
 own members and to sacrifice its most illustrious orators to the 
 
 fury of the clubs, than it hesitates to send the King to the scaffold 
 
 after a mocking trial. It does not judge, it kills, and before 
 
 killing it insults. That is its whole policy; and as it unites all 
 
 powers, it can follow, even to the end, the impulse of its wrath or 
 
 the furies of the frantic demagogism of which it is the emanation 
 
 and often the instrument. 
 
 From such a regime, despotism alone must ensue through the 
 
 excess of fatigue and disgust. For a long time the remembrance 
 
 of the Convention was to stand up as a phantom between the 
 
 modem world and liberty. It is necessary to make an end of 
 
 this revolutionary legend, which deceives the people, annuls the 
 
 severe and salutary lesson so dearly paid for, and favours all the 
 
 reactions, which live only by this misapprehension. Render 
 
 liberty hideous, and you have deserved well of all despotisms. 
 
 Now, this is what all those do who excuse revolutionary crimes, 
 
 and compose a kind of democratic martyrology with names which, 
 
 for being terrible, are not the less branded with infamy. I agree 
 
 that the Girondists retrieve themselves at the Convention, but we 
 
 forgive them only from the moment when they abandon their own 
 
 maxims, and defend the right, after having too long trodden it 
 
 under foot The part that most of them take at the trial of the 
 
 King is without courage ; they do not venture boldly to save him; 
 
 they stop at a half measure, and in the end, sacrifice him to their 
 
 parliamentary influence. If the whole party had spoken like 
 
 Lanjuinais, the Assembly, resolutely directed, would not have 
 
 passed over to the most violent, because these last would not have 
 
 been the strongest. The tnie way to triumph over Robespierre, 
 
 was not to hurl against him the burning philippics of Louvet and 
 
 Barbaroux, it was to stop him by an inflexible vote on the day 
 
 when he declared, in a speech which was pronounced admirable. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
2 74 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 that it was not necessary to judge the King, but to put him to 
 death. We go heartily with the Gironde, when it vaHantly strove, 
 with all the splendid eloquence of Vergniaud, with all the energy 
 of Guadet, with all the generous indignation of Ducos, against the 
 pressure of the clubs and sections, and against that abominable 
 Commune of Paris, in which, since September, we can see only a 
 haunt of assassins; but we recollect too well that these same 
 men, under the Legislative, relied on that dangerous force of riot, 
 and that the austere Petion favoured the loth of August. It is 
 only from the 31st of May that our entire heart goes with the 
 proscribed, fugitive, or sacrificed Gironde. This sudden disap- 
 pearance of so much youth, talent, sincere although often mistaken 
 enthusiasm, always seems to France a new mourning. But apart 
 from some particular men, such as the honest Carnot, whose 
 silence in the presence of so many crimes should not be excused, 
 what name is there to propose to our admiration in the left, 
 henceforth mistress of the ground ? Danton appears the very 
 image of that audacity which he preaches, but he has never been 
 able to wash his hands of the blood of September. Camille 
 Desmoulins is always that formidable wag whose pleasantry 
 kills ; witness his biting pamphlet on the Brissotins. A gleam of 
 courageous pity absolves neither him nor his chief in the face of 
 the bull. Robespierre, closely studied, appears ever more and 
 more- as one of the worst enemies which liberty has had, and one 
 of the most convicted. This tribune-declaimer never loses an 
 opportunity of praising the false popular sovereignty, and of 
 squandering for it all the rights which make men free. I know 
 nothing so hideous as the levelling fraternity which he proclaims, 
 in speeches which smell of oil as well as of blood. He raises 
 himself only on the dead bodies of his enemies, and he too well 
 remembers that they are his rivals. This mingling of the pro- 
 consul and the soured academician is odious. His ideas are 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE CONVENTION. 275 
 
 foolish : they are the reduction to absurdity of the contrat social. 
 Decidedly it does not suffice to me to pardon Robespierre, to see 
 him in the little room of the joiner Dupleix, writing at his walnut- 
 table an elegant speech, whose language is not only polished but 
 sharpened, since it is to cause some heads to fall. As to Marat, 
 "all dripping with gall, calumny, and blood," according to the 
 energetic expression of Vergniaud, that he found a French As- 
 sembly to listen to him, and a people to carry him in triumph, 
 that is a blot on our history. Neither the fine figure of Saint- Just, 
 the calm executioner, nor the pastoral poems of Barrere, with his 
 two speeches in his pocket, in order not to miss the wind which is 
 about to blow, nor the elegance of Garat, nor the infirmities of 
 Couthon move me. I ask what is the liberty which the Conven- 
 tion has not resolutely, cruelly, and in the issue, uselessly trodden 
 under foot? What is the principle of 1789, that it has not 
 violated or suppressed, from the liberty of assembling, and of the 
 press, even to religious liberty? Is it not it which has pushed to 
 the extreme the system of centralisation, so well that the empire 
 found under its hand the most perfect mechanism of despotism all 
 prepared? Vergniaud, too slowly enlightened, has admirably 
 defined the liberalism of the Convention in these noble words : 
 " There has been seen developed this strange system of liberty, 
 according, to which they say to you : You are free, but think as 
 we do on' such or such a question of political economy, or we 
 denounce you to the vengeance of the people. You are free, but 
 bow your head before the idol which we worship, or we denounce 
 you to the vengeance of the people. You are free, but associate 
 yourselves with us to persecute men whose uprightness and intelli- 
 gence we dread, or we will denounce you to the vengeance of the 
 people. Then, citizens, we may well fear that the Revolution, 
 like Saturn, will devour all her children, and give birth at length 
 to despotism, with the calSHi^f^-|?«iMfi''9S^iipany it." 
 
 T 2 
 
276 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 Before resuming the history of the Church of France during 
 these stormy years, let us rapidly recall the general measures which 
 were decreed by the New Assembly for crushing all resistance. 
 After the death of the King, in the midst of the formidable con- 
 flicts which were foreseen, and which the continual struggle in the 
 midst of the Assembly between the Gironde and the Mountain 
 foretold, the establishment of the Revolutionary Tribunal was 
 decreed on the 9th of March, 1793, in these terms : — "The Con- 
 vention decrees the establishment of an extraordinary tribunal, 
 without appeal, and without recourse to the tribunal of Cassation,* 
 for the trial of all traitors, conspirators, and counter-revolu- 
 tionists." Lanjuinais thus characterised this measure: — "A 
 decree frightful in the circumstances which surround us, frightful 
 in its violation of all the principles of the rights of man, frightful 
 in the abominable irregularity of the suppression of appeal in a 
 criminal matter." The courageous deputy demanded that at least 
 this calamity should be extended only to the department of the 
 Seine. He was not listened to, and the whole of France was 
 covered with these terrible engines of proscription, whose mur- 
 derous work was pursued without hindrance, for nothing was a 
 greater mockery than that picked and sordid jury which they had 
 yet granted with difficulty, and which had not even the protection 
 of closed doors for its deliberations. The Committee of Public 
 
 * Tribunal de Cassation — The Supreme Court of Appeal to which 
 is delegated the right of annulling {passer) a decree or judgment. It 
 was created by a law of the 27th of November, 1790. Since May i8th, 
 1804, it has borne the name of " Cour de Cassation." It is established 
 to maintain in the whole French territory, the unity of legislation and 
 principles, and to see that the different jurisdictions remain within the 
 limits of competency marked out to them by the law. The Court of 
 Cassation takes cognisance only of the violation of the forms, and does 
 not at all concern itself with the matter. — Bescherelle, " Dictionnaire 
 National." Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
THE MAJORITY HOSTILE TO RELIGION. 277 
 
 Safety was instituted on the 22nd of May, 1793, on the demand of 
 Isnard, who did not suspect the approaching fall of his party. The 
 Girondists had been expelled and proscribed on the 2nd of June, 
 in consequence of the successive riots which had agitated Paris. 
 The Mountain was henceforth mistress of this Committee, which 
 secured in its own hands the dictatorship, and by its very appella- 
 tion excused, beforehand, all the infractions of the laws. With 
 these two formidable instruments, the Committee of PubHc Safety 
 and the Revolutionary Tribunal, the Convention could crush, 
 without delay, all opposition of whatever nature it might be. The 
 refractory clergy were marked out beforehand to the proscribers, 
 and were to be the first struck. 
 
 The dispositions of the New Assembly, with respect to religion, 
 were in every point similar to those of the Legislative. It con- 
 tained a good number of declared atheists, who wished to destroy 
 everything which recalled the ancient faiths. Some Constitutional 
 bishops, of whom several were to show the most signal cowardice 
 and strikingly to apostatise in the day of peril, some Jansenists, 
 priests or laymen, alone represented the Christain faith. The dis- 
 ciples of Rousseau held to his sentimental Deism, which associated 
 itself perfectly with intolerance. Robespierre did not wish a 
 shameless impiety, and lost no opportunity of rendering homage to 
 the Supreme Being. The Girondists, with one or two eKceptions, 
 were fervent disciples of the philosophy of the eighteenth century, 
 and some amongst them professed a kind of irreverent enthusiasm 
 against all positive religion. We are reminded of the declaration 
 of Isnard, that he acknowledged no other God than the law. 
 These sentiments are expressed with a certain energy in one of the 
 first debates of the Convention. A Bill of Lanthenas, on Public 
 Instruction, was being discussed, which proposed the creation of 
 free primary schools throughout the Repuplic. Durand Maillane, 
 a very pronounced pgrtigan^ ^of ^he ^C^stitutional religion, had 
 
278 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 combated the article which declared that since instruction ou^ht to 
 be common to all citizens without distinction of religion, all that 
 concerns religious worships should be taught only in the temples. 
 Jacob Dupont, a deputy of the party of the Gironde, replied to 
 him with great vivacity, and professed a burning hatred against 
 Christianity .: — " What," said he, " thrones are overturned, sceptres 
 broken, kings expire, and the altars of the gods remain still stand- 
 ing ! Nevertheless the overturned thrones leave these altars bare, 
 without support and tottering. Do you believe, citizen-legislators, 
 to found and consolidate the French Republic on other altars than 
 those of the country ? Nature and Reason, these are the gods of 
 man. Behold our gods !" Jacob Dupont had no need to add 
 after this declaration, that he was an atheist He concluded by 
 demanding that they should abolish religious as well as political 
 tyranny, and that they should establish true liberty on the negation 
 of all prejudices. The French, according to him, would be truly 
 free only when they should have completely rid themselves of the 
 yoke of the priests, and should know how to die without them, 
 like D 'Alembert, who needed no one beyond Condorcet to close 
 his eyes. This speech provoked, indeed, some murmurs, but it 
 was favourably received by the majority of the Assembly.* Ducos 
 developed the same opinions in more moderate language. " The 
 return of prejudices," said he, "behold the true counterrevolution. 
 Hasten to prevent their influence by giving to the people primary 
 schools." He meant that religious instruction should be totally 
 banished from them. One of the reasons which he gave for 
 this exclusion was excellent, and could be very well reconciled 
 with respect for religion. He remarked that instruction being due 
 equally to all citizens equals in right, the. forced interference 
 of a priest would not be compatible with this perfect religious 
 
 * Sitting of the 14th December, 1792. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
THE PEOPLE OF PARIS STILL ATTACHED TO RELIGION. 279 
 
 equality. Where was the use of adding an insult to religion by 
 saying — " The first condition of public instruction is to teach 
 only truths : behold the decree of exclusion of the priests. For my 
 part, I confess, I would rather abandon to them the finances of the 
 Republic than the education of the young citizens ; I would rather 
 ruin the public treasury than pervert and corrupt the pubHcmind." 
 Such were the dispositions of the Gironde in regard to religion. We 
 thence understand how little they esteemed religious liberty, and 
 that its rights were the last with which they occupied themselves. 
 The Constitutional Clergy might already foresee that they- would 
 not be long under the shelter of a protection so disdainful. It was 
 decidedly against religion itself that hostile designs were cherished. 
 The Assembly, however, outstripped the opinion of the country 
 by such manifestations, not only in the provinces of the West and 
 South, but even in Paris. Fickle and ardent, the working class of 
 this great city passed from hatred against the clergy to a strange 
 attachment for the ancient customs of the religious life. Several 
 sections exclaimed with energy, in December, 1792, against a 
 resolution of the Commune which had prohibited the celebration 
 of the midnight mass. We see, through the outrageous narration 
 of the " Revolutions de Paris," that the movement was truly popu- 
 lar, for it broke out especially in the poorest quarters, and it was 
 sufficiently pronounced for the adversaries of religion to believe 
 themselves obliged to propose a premium for the citizens who 
 should not have celebrated the midnight mass. The Commune 
 tried to abolish the Festival of the Kings, but it only provoked a 
 great scandal Some women wished to hang a man whom they 
 took for Manuel. The Festival of Saint Genevieve was celebrated 
 with enthusiasm by a considerable crowd of peasants and ignorant 
 people. "The crowd was so great in this age of light," we read 
 in the " Revolutions de Paris," " that more than a thousand 
 persons were not abi^^^lg^g^t^^toj;^ church." The following 
 
28o THE .CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 year was to witness, in the same places, the SaturnaUa of the Wor- 
 ship of Reason ; but popular opinion, to be able to endure them, 
 required to be excessively excited by the most furious provocations, 
 or to be restrained by terror. Impiety descended rather than 
 ascended. We shall accordingly see the Catholic worship re-esta- 
 blished with an astonishing facility so' soon as a little calm shall be 
 restored to the country. 
 
 Religious persecution was not arrested a single day during this 
 period of the Revolution ; it tended more and more to involve 
 all priests without distinction. The nonjuring clergy had, how- 
 ever, for a long time the honour of the greatest sufferings. The 
 formula of the oath had been modified since the abolition of 
 royalty. The Legislative Assembly, the same day on which it 
 had suspended Louis XVI., had decreed for all functionaries the 
 oath to liberty and equality* This new formula at first seemed 
 more acceptable than that which demanded a formal adhesion 
 to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Nevertheless it carried 
 with it the acceptation of the new order of things ; it was neces- 
 sary to subscribe to liberty and equality such as the Convention 
 wished it, after having based it on the sacrifice of the King and 
 on its terrible laws of proscription. Conscience was alarmed by 
 an approval which became every day more difl5cult.-|- The 
 number of the nonjuring priests did not diminish, and their 
 sufferings only increased. The alarms caused by the rising of 
 La Vendee and the revolt of Lyons, intensified the rigours 
 against them. They were considered as the prime movers of the 
 counter-revolution at home and abroad. A severe decree was 
 passed against those of the emigrant refractories who should be 
 seized on French territory, and domiciliary visits were authorised 
 
 • Sitting of Wednesday, 15th of August, 1792. 
 f The exhibition of these scruples may be seen in Barruel, II., p. 285, 
 Digitized by Microsoft® ■ 
 
DEBATE ON TRANSPORTATION. 281 
 
 in all the houses where it could be supposed that they were con- 
 cealed. It was decreed, in the sitting of the i8th of March, 
 1793, on the proposition of Charlier, that whoever recognised an 
 emigrant or a banished priest who should have returned to France, 
 was authorised to arrest him, and have him conducted into the 
 prisons of the department,' to be executed within twenty-four 
 hours. The priests who had fled for refuge to the foreigner, fell 
 under the blow of the terrible law against the emigrants which 
 declared them perpetually exiled, civilly dead, and pronounced 
 against them the confiscation of their property. * The more the 
 country was threatened by hostile armies outside, by sedition and 
 civil war within, the more the refractory priests were pursued 
 with fury and treated with barbarity. 
 
 The Legislative had decreed the extradition of the nonjurors ; 
 this was the occasion of a multitude of murders. The populations, 
 rendered fanatical by the clubs, threw themselves in their path, de- 
 manded of them to take the civic oath, and too often massacred 
 them on their persistent and heroic refusal. Sometimes they robbed 
 them before putting them on board, and even fired cannon on the 
 barks which carried them. This happened at Havre, Dieppe, 
 Rouen, and Quilleboeuf.f When the Convention substituted 
 transportation for extradition (27th of April, 1793), the journey 
 of the priests towards the place of their imprisonment, whilst 
 awaiting a departure always deferred, was a long punishment. 
 We may be convinced of it by the narrative of one of them who 
 made part of the convoy of the refractories, sent in March, 1793, 
 from the department of La Nievre to Nantes. Arrived in this 
 city, these unfortunate priests were flung pell-mell on a boat, 
 exposed to the worst treatment, and they would have died from 
 hunger but for the charity of the Nantese. Gangrene broke out 
 
 * Sitting of the istof March, 1793. f Barruel, II., p. 318-325. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
282 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 in their midst, and their only consolation was to commune 
 together twice a day. They were at length conducted to Saint- 
 Nazaire and Brest, but not without their ranks having been 
 greatly thinned by death.* The Convention had decreed that 
 the refractory priests should be transported to Guiana. Danton 
 demanded, on the 23rd of July, that this decree should not be 
 put into execution. " We must not," said he, " avenge ourselves 
 for the poison which we have received from the New World, by 
 sending to it a poison not less deadly, It is in the empire of the 
 Holy Father that we must concentrate this priestly mephitisni." 
 Lacroix proposed that they should throw them into prison, and 
 that they should be made to gain their living by hard labours. 
 Robespierre insisted on the execution "of the wise decree,'' 
 which withdrew from the French soil the contagious pestilence of 
 the fanatical priests. " We forget," said he, " that if they remain 
 in France, a counter-revolutionary sedition might at any instant 
 deliver them, and let loose these ferocious beasts in the midst of 
 us." The remission to the Committee of Legislation was decided, 
 but the putting into execution of the decree of transportation , 
 was rendered impossible by the want of money and by war. 
 
 The refractory priests were crammed on hulks or sent en 
 masse to the scaffold. At Lyons, Collot d'Herbois, in a single 
 day, condemned to death a hundred and twenty. Lebon, at 
 Arras, shed their blood in torrents, and they figured in a large 
 number in the drownings of Nantes. The Revolution was not 
 less cruel towards the nuns. Those of Compiegne had been shut 
 up in the house of Port Royal ; they gave this noble answer to 
 their persecutors, who charged them with fanaticism : — " Fanatics 
 slaughter and kill. Wepray for them." "You will be transported." 
 
 * Narrative of Francois Moreau in the " Histoire du Clerge de 
 France sous la Revolution," II., p. 292, &c. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
FIRST PLANS OF CONSTITUTION AT THE CONVENTION. 283 
 
 " To whatever place that may be, we shall pray." " Where do you 
 wish to be transported to ?" " Where there are the most unhappy 
 to be consoled, and that is nowhere so much as in France." " If 
 you remain here, it is to die." " We shall die." These pious girls 
 struck up the Salve regina at the foot of the scaffold.* This was 
 a courage equal to that of the young volunteers who marched to 
 death singing the Marseillaise. Calamities so terrible excite 
 human nature, and render it either atrocious or sublime. This 
 period gave birth to as much heroism as crime, and heroism 
 belonged to all parties. The simple faithful, besides, often 
 rivalled in courage the priests or nuns. An assembly for worship 
 was held in a grotto. They had warned the persons taking part 
 in it that the songs were heard by the cannoneers of the RepubUc. 
 The people simply said to the priest : " That does not matter, my 
 father ;" and the song continued, f To sing a Jiymn in such cir- 
 cumstances required as much intrepidity as to serve a gun under 
 the fire of the enemy. 
 
 The Convention in the time of the Terror had rarely to 
 occupy itself with the right of conscience from the theoretic point 
 of view. It was, indeed, obliged to devote to it a short delibera- 
 tion on the occasion of the Declaration of Rights which was to 
 precede the New Constitution elaborated for Republican France. 
 Condorcet had presented the first draft of it, which already gave 
 ample satisfaction to the Democratic ideas. Rejecting with 
 disdain the idea of a second Chamber, as well as all that 
 could introduce any balancing and check into the Government, 
 he caused the Legislative Assembly, as all the authorities 
 of the country, to spring from the election of the Primary 
 Assemblies; these last were constituted into deliberative 
 
 * " Histoire du Clerge de France sous la Revolution," II., p. 364. 
 t •' Annales Catholique3j^4ra,^^^^.^b^^t^ Abbe Sicard, I., p. ,32. 
 
284 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 bodies, almost permanent, since they had to ratify not only the 
 Constitution, but also each law. The executive power, under the 
 naipe of ministry, had the same origin as the Assembly, and 
 thus established in the Government a duality which might become 
 dangerous. Condorcet, in order to avoid sanctioning the right 
 of insurrection, acknowledged to each citizen the right of insti- 
 gating the Convocation of the Primary Assembly, provided that 
 his proposal obtained the assent of fifty citizens. These assem- 
 blages, charged with controlling the national representation, thus 
 became a Tribunal de Cassation, from which rose again the 
 Legislative Assembly. We find in the Constitution of Condorcet 
 all the inconveniences of that of 1791. The few guarantees 
 which the citizen found there against the arbitrary power of a 
 popular Sover-eignty without counterpoise, and which were like a 
 weak translation of the Habeas Corpus, were not to find favour 
 with the Revolution, impatient of all that should arrest its arm 
 and prevent it from crushing its enemies. The Declaration of 
 Rights sanctioned all desirable liberties so much the more gene- 
 rously that these abstractions pledged to nothing. The discussion 
 gave rise to some eccentric speeches which were possible only in a 
 period of excitement. Anacharsis Clootz developed at the 
 tribune his fantastical ideas on the di-vinity of the human race in 
 general and of the French people in particular. " The denomi- 
 tions of French and universal," said he, " are become synonymous 
 with a juster title than the names of Christian and Catholic." 
 Despite this enthusiasm for the name of Frencli, the orator asks 
 that they should substitute for it that of German, as much more 
 comprehensive, since it designates an entire family of nations. 
 " I defy you to understand the nature of the Sans-Culotterie " (the 
 unclad), added he, " if you admit a Divine or plastic nature. 
 Whoever has the weakness to believe in God, would not have 
 the wisdom to believ^^^^|^|^l^^n^ce, the only Sovereign." 
 
PLANS OF CONDORCET AND ROBESPIERRE. 285 
 
 Anacharsis Clootz seriously proposed that the Convention should 
 vote this great principle, and declare that every individual and 
 Commune which should adrnit it should be of right received into 
 the Republic of men, of Germans, of universals. This speech 
 was listened to without laughter. Let us not be too much 
 astonished : we have seen in our day this religion of France, and 
 this apotheosis of the purely terrestrial life reproduced with 
 an affected mysticism which has surpassed the orator of the 
 human race. 
 
 Condorcet's plan of Constitution did not survive the Gironde. 
 Robespierre, in the month of May, had sketched a new one, which 
 silently passed over the legal guarantees inscribed in the first plan, 
 and deified not the entire human race, but the multitude. His 
 speech breathed forth from one end to the other the basest flattery 
 towards the people — proclaimed to be without fault and infallible. 
 " Lay it down at the outset as a principle," said he, "that the 
 people are good, and that their deputies are corruptible; that it is 
 in the virtue and sovereignty of the people that we must seek a 
 preservative against the vices and despotism of the Government" 
 The natural consequence of these maxims was the suppression of 
 the representative regime, or which, amounted to the same, its 
 entire subordination to the Primary Assemblies.* Robespierre 
 would have wished that the national representation should 
 deliberate in the presence of the entire people. It seemed, how- 
 ever, that the clamours of the galleries might have sufficed him. 
 His plan inflicted a blow on all liberties, and, first and foremost, 
 on proprietorship, which was no more than the power of possess- 
 
 * AssembUes Primaires — Meetings of citizens in their respective 
 cantons for the exercise of their political rights. The Primary 
 Assemblies in France date from the Republican Government. This 
 name disappears at the period of the Consulate ; they then take the 
 name of Cantonal Assei5)?|ffi|gzr;§P)#^fe " Dictionnaire N ational," 
 
286 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 ing what the law guaranteed to the citizen. This fine plan, 
 remitted on the 30th May to the Conamittee of Public Safety, which 
 had added to itself some supplementary members, was re-cast and 
 drawn up by it in a few days, presented on the loth of June, and 
 decreed on the 23rd. If ever Constitution was tinkered, it was 
 that of 1793; it was, moreover, never applied. The fraternal, 
 social, humanitarian character of the Mountain Constitution has 
 been much extolled, because there has been found in it that 
 pretentious sensibility which never flourished better than at the 
 foot of the scaffold. This conclusion appeared admirable : " The 
 French Republic honours loyalty, courage, old age, filial piety, 
 misfortune. It commits the trust of its Constitution to the keep- 
 ing of all the virtues." Among these virtues shines, in the first 
 rank, for the legislators of 1793, the practice of the sacred duty of 
 insurrection. It is, in reality, the sole chance left to liberty; for 
 if its name is everywhere in this Constitution, no serious guarantee 
 is given to it. The citizen is eflfectually and explicitly protected 
 in none of his rights. He is delivered to the despotism of a 
 sovereign Assembly, which has no other control than the clubs of 
 Paris. The Mountain took care to efface or annul all the clauses 
 of the first plan which could give any political action to the 
 departments ; the decrees of the Legislative Assembly were with- 
 drawn from the examination of the Primary Assemblies ; and the 
 executive power was nominated, by the national representation, 
 from a list formed by a special electoral body. All powers were 
 in its hands. The instrument of tyranny was perfect. 
 
 If, in these two plans of Constitution, we consider the article 
 which concerns religious liberty, it is as explicit in the draft of 
 Herault de Sechelles as in that of Condorcet But the discussions 
 which it provolied show how little they cared for this first of 
 liberties, as well in the Girondist camp as in that of the Mountain. 
 
 In the sitting of the iqth of April 1793, an unknown member 
 Digitized by Microsofm 
 
DISCUSSION ON LIBERTY OF WORSHIPS. 287 
 
 demanded the suppression of the article by which Condorcet had 
 stated the right of conscience on the ground that the interior 
 hberty of religion could never be suppressed, whilst the 
 observance of worship would be infallibly in opposition to the 
 general spirit of a time which will soon have no other worship 
 than that of liberty and public morals. Vergniaud supported the 
 motion ; to believe him, the times of intolerance were for ever 
 passed away. He thought then that it was useless to preserve the 
 debris of fetters broken in the great national movement The 
 argument was strange at the moment when persecution was raging 
 with fury over the whole surface of the country. Danton repro- 
 duced the same argument, but he did not dissimulate its bearing, 
 for he thundered against superstition, and openly urged to new 
 persecutions. He gave, at least, a strange proof of the progress 
 of intelligence in the matter of religious liberty. "Everywhere," 
 said he, "the people, freed from the impulses of malevolence, 
 acknowledge that whoever wishes to interpose between them and 
 the Divinity is an impostor. Everywhere they have demanded the 
 transportation of tJie fanatical and rebellious priests." Priests are 
 persecuted, then religious liberty is gained. This incredible 
 sophism is in the style of France ; for we have seen it unceasingly 
 reappear. Despite some demands, the article was withdrawn or 
 rather postponed, to be introduced no more into the Declaration 
 of Rights, but into the Constitution. 
 
 The same discussion was raised on the i8th of June, at the 
 time of the discussion of the plan presented by the Committee of 
 Public Safety. Fonfrfede and Barrere demanded that liberty of 
 worship should be formally acknowledged on the frontispiece of the 
 Constitution, for the reason that it differs from simple liberty of 
 opinions, and that it is not sufficient to acknowledge the latter. 
 Barrere appealed to the example of the thirteen States of North 
 
 America." Robespierre energetically combated the motion. 
 ^ Digitizea by Microsoft® 
 
288 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 "I fear,'' said he, "that the conspirators may draw from the 
 Constitutional article which sanctions liberty of worships, the means 
 of annihilating public liberty; I fear lest men, who wish to form 
 counter-revolutionary assemblies, maydisguise them under religious 
 forms. Behold, under what a hypocritical mask conspirators 
 might strike liberty ! " In any case, these conspirators will not be 
 able, whatever they do, to strike it in a more deadly and more 
 treacherous manner than the austere tribune who, himself, also 
 wears a hypocritical mask. He succeeded in causing simple 
 liberty of opinions to be voted. I^iberty of worships passed into 
 the definitive plan without a new discussion. We comprehend 
 what this insertion was worth at the moment when the man who 
 had fought against it was all-powerful in France. 
 
 Some months before, a much bolder proposal, which would 
 have cut short the principal difficulties of the moment, if it had 
 been executed with all its consequences, had been repulsed by 
 Robespierre. Cambon, on the i6th of November, 1792, pre- 
 sented to the Committee of Finances a decree, according to 
 which, the care of paying their own ministers should be left to 
 each religious sect. It only reproduced an idea which had been 
 often expressed to the Legislative Assembly. The simple news 
 of this motion spread great alarm in the departments ; the Com- 
 missioners of the Convention, sent to Chartres to arrest an insur- 
 rectionary movement there, observed that the proposition of 
 Cambon had contributed to rouse the people ; the effervescence 
 of the crowd was such that their life was in danger.* One of the 
 Commissioners thus expressed himself: " If the simple motion of 
 suppressing the pay of the priests causes so much effervescence, 
 we may judge of the disturbances which such a decree would 
 occasion !" Danton supported the demand. " It has been said 
 
 * Buchez and Roux. " Histoire Parlementaire,'' XV., p. 434. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
FIRST PROPOSITION TO ABOLISH THE PAYMENT OF WORSHIPS. 289 
 
 that it was not necessary that the priests should be paid by the 
 public treasury. It has been supported by philosophical ideas 
 which are dear to me, for I know no other God than that 
 of the universe, no other worship than that of justice and 
 liberty; but man, ill-used by fortune, seeks eventual enjoy 
 ments: he believes that, in another life, his enjoyments will 
 be multiplied in proportion to his privations in this. When 
 you shall have had, for some time, glimpses of morality which 
 shall have made the light penetrate into cottages, then it 
 will be well to preach morality and philosophy to the people. 
 But, until then, it is barbarous — it is a crime of treason against 
 the nation to wish to deprive the people of men in whom they 
 can still find some consolations. I should think, then, that it 
 would be useful for the Convention to draw up an address to 
 persuade the people that it wishes to destroy nothing, but to 
 perfect everything ; that, if it pursues fanaticism, it is because it 
 wishes liberty of religious opinions." Danton gravely deceived 
 himself in imagining that the measure proposed by Cambon 
 would end in a premature destruction of Christianity. If it had 
 been accompanied with sincere respect for liberty of opinions, it 
 would have saved all. At the Jacobins, the proposition of Cambon 
 met with no more assent than at the Convention. Bazire pointed 
 out the peril of it at the moment when the trial of the King was 
 about to commence. Cambon was treated as a shop-economist ; 
 and Bazire cried out : " Learn that amongst a superstitious people 
 a law on superstition is a State crime.'' 
 
 Robespierre developed his opinion with the greatest care in 
 No. g of his " Letters to his Constituents.'' This piece is, certainly, 
 one of the best that has issued from his pen, because none has 
 been written with more conviction. The separation of the Church 
 and State will always be an offence for the consistent disciples of 
 the school of Rousseaffi/g/f/ik/lJ^spafeCTfio/BSmmences by raising the 
 
290 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 question. It will not do to speak of economy where great 
 principles are concerned, and the first interests of the Revolution 
 are at stake. The defender of the payment of worships does not 
 wish that there should be any mistake about his motives, and he 
 expresses, without evasion, his own disdain for these vain super- 
 stitions, the maintenance of which he, nevertheless, wishes to con- 
 fide to the State. " I like, no more than another," said he, " the 
 power of the priests ; it is one chain more given to humanity — but 
 it is an invisible chain attached to minds, and reason alone can 
 break it. The legislator may aid reason, but neither supply nor 
 anticipate it." Casting a rapid glance over the moral condition of 
 the country, Robespierre rejoices at the progress of sound philo- 
 sophy. " Those even who, outside the counter-revolution, are 
 attached to .Christianity, abide by the imposing dogmas which lend 
 a support to moral ideas and to the doctrine of virtue and equality 
 which the Son of Mary formerly taught to his fellow-citizens.'' 
 Thus, France is not far from that religion without mystery, from 
 that rational worship of the Supreme Being, which was the ideal of 
 ■ Rousseau. Superstition is still mingled with these great ideas; 
 but it has its good side, for it gives them more popularity. " Do 
 not disdain to recall to yourselves with what wisdom the greatest 
 legislators of antiquity, those who founded the empire of laws on 
 the empire of manners, who have handled these conces-led springs 
 of the human heart, with what sublime skill, sparing the weak- 
 ness or the prejudices of their fellow-citizens, they consented to 
 have the sanction of Heaven to the work of their tutelary genius." 
 Robespierre forgets that, since the augurs have laughed in meeting 
 each other, not in secret, as in the time of Cicero, but quite aloud 
 in the public place, these pious ruses of philosophy to delude the 
 people have become more difficult. Religion knows what regard 
 to pay to the hypocritical respects of those who support it for 
 reasons of State, and v^timW^Jhrikm ^ sort of appendage of 
 
ROBESPIERRE DEFENDS STATE PAYMENT OF WORSHIPS. 2gt 
 
 police. Robespierre has here laid the foundations of the system 
 of concordats. The First Consul has been only his faithful 
 disciple, and has weakened that which had been so well said at 
 tlie first stroke. Robespierre is equally the master of Napoleon 
 in the portion of his writing in which he vividly paints the perils 
 of the enfranchisement of worships for a State strongly centralised. 
 " What is there more fatal to the public tranquilHty," says he, with 
 the sincere emotion of a partisan of despotic sovereignty, "than 
 to realise this theory of the individual worship ? You seem to fear 
 the influence of the priests, but you render it much more powerful 
 and active, since, from the moment when, ceasing to be priests of 
 the public, they become those of private persons, they have with 
 these last much more frequent intercourse." He then shows to 
 the terrified Jacobins, individual liberty asserting itself in favour of 
 the separation of Church and State, new associations which would 
 be only private leagues against the public spirit, forming them- 
 selves on all sides ; liberty, in short — abominable thing ! — gradu- 
 ally extending itself and opposing a limit to the invasions of the 
 State. He was not mistaken ; the system of the non-payment of 
 worships is fatal to tyranny. Robespierre did not fail, as always, 
 to oppose the poor to the rich. He pretended that the weight of 
 the support of worship would fall almost entirely on the working 
 class, much more religious than the classes in easy circumstances. 
 We shall not insist on the other reasons which he gives, and which 
 are borrowed from the circumstances of the time, as the trial of 
 the King and the agitation of the country. The only one of his 
 arguments which is valid is drawn from fidelity to engagements 
 towards the paid clergy. But it was easy not to be wanting to the 
 public faith by indemnifying individuals, provided they did not 
 rend the scarcely-concluded contract, as they had scandalously 
 done, for the refractory clergy. It was of moment to us to point 
 out this hostility of Rdbgffpkaft^ agatasisdie system of the separa- 
 
 u 2 
 
293 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 tion of Church and State. It is a great honour for this principle 
 to have had him for chief adversary, and for such reasons. The 
 idea broached by Cambon could not long be set aside, for everj 
 day the inconveniences of a religion enfeoffed by the State came 
 to light. In the sitting of the ist of March, 1793, Thuriot 
 demanded the annulling of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, in 
 order to withdraw all temporal jurisdiction from the ecclesiastics. 
 Richard proposed that measures should be taken for extinguishing, 
 for ever, ecclesiastical quarrels, and that the Committee of Legis- 
 ation should be charged with presenting a law which should 
 restrain ecclesiastical functions withiq, their true limits. This pro- 
 posal was voted and forgotten, like so many others, during the 
 Reign of Terror. 
 
 Awaiting the abolition of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, 
 which could not be long delayed, the Convention took advantage 
 of it for making its authority to weigh heavily on the paid clergy. 
 We have seen that the Legislative Assembly had decided to main- 
 tain the payment of the priests who married. That was to 
 proclaim the legality of their marriage. Most of the Constitutional 
 bishops were much opposed to this innovation, and amongst others 
 Fauchet, despite the irregularities of his conduct. A first infonna- 
 tion was lodged against him at the sitting of the 22nd of February, 
 by a parish priest of Calvados. The accused charge was sent back 
 to the Committee of Legislation. The affair returned to the Conven- 
 tion in the sitting of the 19th of July, 1793. A deputy demanded 
 the deprivation of the bishops who should infringe the law by hinder- 
 ing the marriage of priests. This measure met with some opposi- 
 tion. Lacroix answered that the bishops, being paid by the 
 nation, were bound to obey all the laws of the Republic. Danton 
 improved upon this doctrine. "We have,'' said he, "preserved 
 the payments of the bishops; let them imitate their founders. 
 They rendered to C^^ecffe^WMS^^^^ Caesar's. Well! th 
 
ATTACKS AGAINST THE CONSTITUTIONAL CHURCH, 293 
 
 nation is more than all the Ccesars." They substituted for deposi- 
 tion, pure and simple, the penalty of transportation, on the 
 observation of Lequino, that in directly pronouncing a canonical 
 deposition, the Assembly might be accused of meddling with 
 affairs of religion. Durand Maillane, one of the authors, and the 
 fervent apologist of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, had 
 vainly endeavoured, in a letter inserted in the journal of Fauchet, 
 to bring back the civil power to its own domain. He rightly 
 showed that if marriage, as a contract, belonged entirely to the 
 control of the State, as a sacrament, it depended only on the 
 spiritual power, and that the bishop had the right to grant or refuse 
 the nuptial benediction according to the canons of his Church, 
 without the Assembly intervening by its decrees .* Durand Maillane 
 declared " that French citizens, who had seen with satisfaction the 
 reforms of the Constituent Assembly, attack ecclesiastical abuses 
 as all others, would cease to attach the same interest to a liberty 
 which would deprive them of that of their worship." The honour- 
 able deputy set about it too late to invoke the rights of the Church. 
 It was not necessary, in 1790, to make an administrative depart- 
 ment of them and to transform her ministers into ■ officers of 
 morality, for an officer cannot avoid the watchword of his chief. 
 Durand Maillane was better inspired when he foresaw the time in 
 which the Civil Constitution of the Clergy should be abrogated. 
 " This happy time," said he, " is not arrived, and we must await it. 
 Until then, let us strike our sails to the tempest." He was soon 
 to see his entire work upset under the blasts of that tempest which 
 was angered by all obstacles and all resistances, and which was 
 soon to sweep away, by a waterspout, the altar after the throne. 
 The war on religion already openly declared was, before the end 
 of this same year, no longer to recognise any consideration. 
 
 * Buchez and RouXp^^|Ij|^^reJarier5ptaire," XXIV., p. 312. 
 
294 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 In order to comprehend the bearing of these Saturnalia of 
 impiety, which were to be so fatal to the Revolution, it is neces- 
 sary to explain the situation of parties. Once the Gironde were 
 overpowered, on the 2nd of June, at Paris, the Mountain remained 
 victorious and sovereign, in face of increasing perils, which drove 
 it to make the most terrible use of its power. The proscribed 
 deputies who had been able to gain the departments, there raised 
 an insurrection, the short continuance of which could not be fore- 
 seen. Lyons was in full revolt, and an army was necessary to 
 besiege it. Toulon flung itself into the hands of the English; the 
 whole of la Vendee, in insurrection, gave its hand to the coalition 
 which was pressing all the frontiers, — at the Pyrenees, at the Alps, 
 and at the North, in those immense plains where, more than once, 
 the fate of France had been staked. At Paris, even, the murder of 
 Marat by a pure and noble young girl, had revealed what enthu- 
 siasm the cause of the Gironde inspired. It is known by what 
 miracles of energy the Revolution met these dangers. It retakes 
 Lyons, then Toulon, by rapid sieges; drives back the armies of 
 the coaHtion by a new, startling, and democratic system of tactics, 
 which consisted in hurling armed masses on a single point; in fine, 
 it disputes la Vendee in a series of combats which, in the issue, left 
 to it the advantage at the end of 1793. The victo'ry of Wattignies, 
 obtained the i6th of October in Flanders, and that of Cholet in 
 Vendee, gloriously terminated the campaign. At the same time, 
 great civil creations revealed the indomitable faith of the Revolu- 
 tion in the future. The Normal and Polytechnic schools are 
 decreed, and a vast plan of instruction in three gradations is elabo- 
 rated. The great book, in which are entered all the State- 
 creditors, is instituted ; the first bases of the Civil Code are laid 
 down; even the fine arts engage attention, and vast museums are 
 opened for them. The uniformity of weights and measures 
 
 realises one of 'the most useful reforms, and which, like all rational 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
RECRUDESCENCE OF THE TERROR. 295 
 
 progress, was destined to endure. This unheard-of energy of the 
 Revolution, terrible at the frontiers, fertile in the interior, is its 
 best glory; but how can we forget that bloody intoxication which 
 accompanies it, and for which it demands an abominable stimu- 
 lant, which we shall never cease to believe useless ? No, we do 
 not admit that France can only excite her courage by throwing 
 herself into a cruel delirium. We do not see that victory deserted 
 her flag on the day on which a single colour no longer effaced the 
 two others — the day on which it has not been reddened at the foot 
 of the scaffolds. Those dishonour the country who pretend that 
 she cannot be saved except at this price. Let them not forget 
 that the crimes to which they pay this honour have created for her 
 many more perils than they have surmounted. 
 
 It was especially since the month of September, T793, that terror 
 was let loose. It went forth, all armed, from the sitting of the Sth, 
 on the imperious summons of one of those deputations of the 
 people of Paris which dictated its will to the legislators. " Let us 
 place terror in the order of the day," cried the base Barrere, that 
 docile scribe of all those whom they dreaded. The decree which 
 he proposed, organised a revolutionary army of six thousand men, 
 charged everywhere to crush the counter-revolution ; the penalty of 
 death was pronounced against any one who should buy or sell 
 assignats. The Revolutionary Tribunal was divided into four 
 sections, in order to hasten the trials. Domiciliary visits by night 
 were authorised. Terror thus became the summary of all revolu- 
 tionary politics. Suspended over the head of generals, if they did 
 not obtain victory, or even if they profited ill by it, it sent them, on a 
 suspicion, from their tent to the scaffold, as we may convince our- 
 selves by the condemnation of Custine and Houchard. It tore 
 the deputy from his bench, if he had softened for a single day or 
 if he had refused to it a pledge. At night, it hovered over the 
 
 entire city, and fell like a thunderbolt on all the houses, as well on 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
296 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 those of the liberal" citizens as on the palaces of the aristocracy, 
 and thus encumbered the prisons with a mixed crowd, in which the 
 guillotine daily made a frightful gap, without preventing the uncon- 
 querable French gaiety from diverting itself with its executioners 
 behind the fatal gratings. On the 3rd of October, the Convention 
 decreed the penalty of death, within twenty-four hours, against 
 every priest subject to transportation, returned to France, who 
 should be the bearer of any counter-revolutionary sign, or be 
 suspected of maintaining any intercourse with the emigrants. 
 The deposition of two witnesses was declared sufficient In the 
 sitting of the 27th of February, 1794, it was decreed that all 
 recourse to the Tribunal de Cassation was interdicted to the 
 arrested priests. In October, Marie Antoinette, after having 
 endured all the disgraces of a frightful captivity, was dragged to 
 the tribunal, and conducted herself under the outrage with a proud 
 dignity, which moved to the heart the bitter viragos assembled to 
 insult her. Some days later, the patriotic hymn of the Girondists 
 marching to death made their conquerors turn pale. Never had 
 they appeared greater than on the waggon. Bailly followed 
 them closely as well as Barnave. The first two generations of 
 the Revolution were thus mowed down, and opened the way to 
 the third. It is not enough to strike the noblest of the living ; 
 they dig up the tombs, and the ashes of the kings, deposited at 
 Saint-Denis, were thrown iiito the common ditch. It is not 
 astonishing, that it was precisely at this moment, that the Revo- 
 lution, in its rage to make an end of the past, should have 
 endeavoured to treat God as it had treated royalty. 
 
 The Commune of Paris, in the month of November, 1793, took 
 the initiative of the atheistic movement. It acted much less from 
 fanaticism than from calculation. The fair-spoken Chaumette 
 and the vile Hebert, thought much more of surpassing Robespierre 
 
 than of serving an idea. Anacharsis Clootz was alone sincere, and 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
COMMUNE OF PARIS AT HEAD OF ATHEISTIC MOVEMENT. 297 
 
 attacked religion from personal hatred. Hebert aspired to the 
 part of Marat He hoped to arrive at the first rank, carried on 
 the shoulders of the rabble. This filthy swearer was a mean 
 courtier, who spoke the language of the kennels in order to please 
 the sovereign of the moment, as the Marquises of Versailles were 
 bred up not long ago to the polite language of courts. Chaumette 
 and he imagined that the surest means of carrying it over the 
 Committee of Public Safety was to attack the Supreme Being 
 whom Robespierre protected with all his pedantry. That was to 
 throw him into the shade, or to place him among the defenders 
 of the past. The anti-religious fury had only increased, thanks to 
 the prolonged resistance of the refi-actory priests. There was in 
 that a first point of support for inflicting a great blow on religion 
 itself^ it was easy to envelop the Constitutional priest in the 
 unpopularity of his caste, and to present God himself as the great 
 enemy of the unclad ( sans-culottes ). Had not the Convention 
 heard and applauded the boldest attacks against the ancient 
 beliefs? It seemed easy to gain it over, and when the Assembly 
 and the Faubourgs were gained, the Jacobins would be obliged to 
 follow the movement that would, to a certainty, crush Robes- 
 pierre, unless he was gained over, which would be equivalent to 
 his abdication. The intrigue was well enough conceived, as was 
 proved by its splendid success during some days ; but neither 
 Hebert nor Chaumette were of a stature to struggle with Robes- 
 pierre. They are about to be shattered in this collision, but 
 not without having succeeded in provoking the most hideous 
 scandal.* 
 
 * See on what is about to follow, besides the " Moniteur," the 29th 
 and 30th volumes of the " Histoire Parlementaire de la Revolution," 
 and the " Memoires'' of the Time; among others the "Tableau du 
 Nouveau, Paris," by Mercier, and the curious little work, entitled 
 '' Memoire en Faveur de Dieu," by J. de I'lsle de Sales," 1802. See 
 also " I'Histoire des Secf^|/^|y^i((;?j?^^fe}^regoire. 
 
298 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 The Hebertists did not surpass in impiety the philosophy of the 
 eighteenth century in its extreme tendency ; already had this latter 
 introduced itself more than once at the National Tribune. Only 
 they brought it down from the sphere of ideas into the street, and 
 almost into the mire, and translated it into indecent masquerades. 
 It is certain that they could not much offend an Assembly which 
 had decreed to abolish the Christian era, and to make the order 
 of the new times commence from the foundation of the Republic, 
 whilst effacing the name of Jesus Christ Nothing proves better 
 than this attempt that the Revolution decidedly took its stand as 
 a new religion, and claimed, in a manner, to enter upon a war 
 with the 'gods. The new Calendar, presented by Romme, and 
 voted on the 5th of August, 1793, fixed the commencement of the 
 year on the 22nd of September, the day which marked the 
 autumnal equinox. The division by decades was substituted for 
 the ordinary week. Philosophical designations were given to the 
 months, by naming them Justice, Equality, &c. ; except the month 
 of June, which was named The Oath of the Tennis Court, and 
 July, which was dedicated to the remembrance of the taking of 
 the Bastille. These designations of the months were changed in 
 the sitting of the 3rd of November, on a report of Fabre d'Eglan- 
 tine, who induced the Assembly to adopt a less abstract nomen- 
 clature) designed to recall the succession of the seasons. Thence 
 sprang the poetical names of Vendemiaire (vintage month), Nivose 
 (snowy month), Germinal (budding month), Thermidor (hot 
 month).* 
 
 The following is a ludicrous translation of this French Calendar: — 
 Autumn : — Wheezy, sneezy, freezy. 
 WlNtER: — Slippy, drippy, nippy. 
 Spring : — Showery, flowery, bowery. 
 Summer : — Hoppy, croppy, poppy. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
SPEECH OF FABRE D'eGLANTINE. 299 
 
 The thought which had inspired this bold innovation is evolved 
 with great precision, from the words of Fabre d'Eglantine. "Long 
 custom," said he, in commencing, " has filled the memory of the 
 people with a considerable number of images which they have long 
 venerated, and which are still to-day the source of their religious 
 errors ; it is then necessary to substitute for these visions of igno- 
 rance, the realities of reason ; and for sacerdotal prestige, the 
 truth of nature." The orator openly avowed that he wished to 
 ruin the influence of the priests, who had found a sure means of 
 acting on the imagination of the people, by attaching their prin- 
 cipal festivals to the succession of the seasons. Was it a question 
 of the festival of the dead, " it was not on a theatre smiling with 
 . freshness and gaiety that they played their farce, but when, on the 
 departure of the beautiful days, a sad and grayish sky filled our 
 souls with melancholy. It is at this time that, profiting by the 
 adieus of Nature, they laid hold of us to parade us through their 
 multiplied feasts, over all that their impudence had imagined of 
 mystical, for the predestined — that is to say, the imbecile — and of 
 terrible for the sinner — that is to say, the intelligent person. On 
 the contrary, they celebrated the Corpus Christi festival in the most 
 beautiful and effervescent days of the year, and the Rogations, in- 
 tended for the benediction of the fields, in the month of May, at a 
 time when the rising sun has not yet absorbed the dew and fresh- 
 ness of the dawn." Fabre d'Eglantine opposed to this religious 
 Calendar his agricultural Calendar, equally designed to strike the 
 imagination of the people, but in a contrary direction, by great 
 images. The year was to terminate by five great festivals, ap- 
 pointed under the expressive name oi Sans-Ctdotides, which should 
 occupy the supplementary days remaining from the decimal divi- 
 sion. They were the feasts of Intelligence, Genius, Labour, 
 Actions, Recompense, and, lastly, the festival of Opinion, a kind 
 
 of Saturnalia, in which raillery against the magistrates should be 
 ' -Digitized oy Microsoft® 
 
300 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 freely permitted. This was to be, for the powerful, the last judg- 
 ment of the year, executed by ridicule. The propositions of Fabre 
 d'Eglantine, with their impious preambles, were voted with en- 
 thusiasm. The Convention very decidedly set itself up for the 
 council of philosophy, authoritatively decreeing beliefs, and pausing 
 as little before conscience as the Councils of the Ancient Church. 
 Thus to change the religious customs of a people was to inaugu- 
 rate the most insupportable of despotisms, absolutely to confound 
 the spiritual and the temporal, and to institute what may be called 
 the Islamism of impiety. The Convention revived, in its manner, 
 the theocracy in its most intolerant character, and it thought itself 
 liberal because it had borrowed from it everything except God, of 
 whom it will have no more. 
 
 The Commune had some reasons for believing that it would 
 not be disowned in pushing the irreligious movement to an ex- 
 treme. It entered upon the business by promoting tumultuous 
 and imperative petitions. On the 28th of August a deputation of 
 schoolmasters presented themselves at the Convention to demand 
 gratuitous and obligatory instruction. One of the children who 
 accompanied them, demanded that instead of preaching to them 
 in the name oi Xht pretended God ( soi-disant Dieu ), they should in- 
 struct them in the principles of equality, of the rights of man, and 
 of the Constitution..* This profanation of childhood ought to 
 have excited warm indignation ; but the deputation was not less 
 applauded for it like all the others, despite what might be thought 
 of it by more than one unfortunate deputy of the Plain, still at- 
 tached to the religion of his fathers. It was, indeed, on that day 
 that he must have felt himself in the Marsh,t whilst preserving a 
 
 * Buchezand Roux, " Histoire Parlementaire," XXVIII., p. 502. 
 t Marsh or Plain, a name given in 1793 to the less elevated part of 
 the Hall of the Convection, where sat the members of the moderate 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
FIRST MANIFESTATION OF IMPIETY. 30I 
 
 cowardly silence. Some days after this scandal, a deputation from 
 Nevers presented itself at the bar, bringing the spoils of the 
 Churches and demanding the suppression of the Catholic worship. 
 
 At the club of Vitry-le-Fran9ais, the bishop M , a deputy on 
 
 mission, cried : " The priests are scoundrels. I know them better 
 than any one else, since I have been their compeer."* Some time 
 before, the Constitutional Bishop de Perigueux presented " his 
 wife " to the Convention, boasting that he had taken her from the 
 class of the Sans- Culottes. He was highly applauded; and they were 
 very near voting him a supplement to his stipend of two thousand 
 francs ; nothing was more just, he had deserved well of his country 
 by dishonouring his caste.f Thus the movement was plainly pro- 
 nounced against all the clergy, as well against the priests who had 
 taken the oath, as against the nonjurors. The atheistical party 
 already sought, by all means, to obtain retractations, in order to 
 defame religion by its own ministers. An ex-priest formally asked 
 of the Commune the right to change his name of Erasmus to that 
 of Apostate. 
 
 Chaumette and Hebert were preparing the great blow which 
 they wished to strike, in secret conventicles at which were present 
 Clootz, Momoro, and Bourbon de I'Oise. The question was of 
 inaugurating, in full Convention, the worship of Reason, by 
 drawing to it some priests who should come to throw at the foot 
 of the National Tribune the cast-off clothes of superstition. The 
 farce was played on the 7th of November. The Convention was 
 presided over by Laloi, who was in perfect agreement with the 
 ringleaders of the Commune. Good replies might then be ex- 
 pected. The scene opened by the reading of a letter from a 
 
 party. The demagogic faction occupied the most elevated part, 
 designated under the name of the Mountain " Bescherelle Diet. Nation." 
 
 * Buchez and Roux, p. 181. 
 
 + "Memoire en Fave^0eJ^Uj^.g,J^^ 
 
302 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, 
 
 country parish priest, of the name of Parens, who declared him- 
 self ready to abjure, provided that his subsistence was guaranteed 
 to him by a pension. "I am a vicar," said he j " I am a parish 
 priest ; that is to say, a charlatan. Hitherto an honest charlatan, 
 I have deceived only because I was myself deceived. Now that 
 I am disabused, I confess to you that I should not wish to be a 
 dishonest charlatan. Nevertheless, poverty might constrain me to 
 it It seems to me that it would be well to assure the necessary 
 subsistence to those who wish to render justice to truth." This 
 courageous confessor did not wish to be impious for nothing 
 (gratis), and showed himself decided not to change his trade 
 except -with assurance of pay. This baseness was applauded by a 
 French assembly. After the little farce was to come the great 
 comedy. The President announces to the Convention that the 
 constituted authorities of the department and of the Commune 
 present themselves at the bar with Bishop Gobel, his vicars, and 
 several priests. Momoro pompously proclaims that these citizens 
 demand to be regenerated and become men. Led by reason, 
 they are come to strip themselves of the character which super- 
 stition had conferred upon them. "Thus the French Republic 
 will soon have no other worship than that of liberty, equality, and 
 eternal truth." Gobel then arose in the midst of applauses, so 
 much the more base that he obeyed no impulse, for he was no 
 more atheist than Christian, and he had no other desire than to 
 save his life in the revolutionary hubbub. " The will of the 
 people," said he, "was my first law, submission to its will my 
 first duty." It is then to the idol of the moment that, constrained 
 
 by fear, he sacrifices his God in whom he did not cease to believe 
 
 so he had given Gregoire to understand a few days previously. 
 This cowardly apostate did not cease to ftoat between the fear of 
 the Revolutionary Tribunal and the fear of hell, which naturally 
 carried him to th^ fool of the scaffold. Frantic applauses wel- 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
INAUGURATION OF WORSHIP OF REASON AT CONVENTION. 303 
 
 come the words of Gobel ; he has deserved well of the country by 
 dishonouring its first episcopal see. Chaumette demands that 
 they should introduce into the Republican Calendar the feast of 
 Reason. " Citizens," said the President of the Convention to 
 Gobel and the priests who surrounded him, " citizens who have 
 just sacrificed on the altar of the country these Gothic children's 
 toys, you are worthy of the Republic." Then the fraternal 
 embracing is given to the ex-bishop who has just dressed himself 
 in the red cap. Base sentiments have their burst of enthusiasm 
 like heroism. The tribune is immediately beseiged by several 
 priests who burn to signalise their audaciousness by laying down 
 their letters of priesthood. Bishop Lindet does more ; he pre- 
 tends that he accepted the episcopate only to save his country, 
 and that he had never been a charlatan. It is then very easy for 
 him to abandon what he never truly had. He is followed by 
 Julien de Toulouse, a Protestant pastor, who holds a similar 
 language, and declares that he had never been anything but an 
 officer of morality, professing the most absolute toleration. " I 
 have exercised," added he, "the functions of a Protestant 
 minister ; I declare that I will no longer profess them, that I will 
 have, henceforth, no other temple than the sanctuary of the laws ; 
 no other divinity than liberty ; no other worship than that of the 
 police; no other gospel than the Republican Constitution." It 
 was thus that Julien represented at the Convention, a martyr 
 church which had bowed neither before caresses nor punishments. 
 Behold, however, the lesson which this base soul, who had had 
 the honour but lately of celebrating a proscribed worship brought 
 back from the desert. What a contrast between this day of 
 ignominy and the noble times of his youth, in which he suffered 
 for his faith ! But, doubtless, he had for a long time abjured the 
 folly of the holy mysteries of the Gospel, and he was ill prepared 
 for the folly of a petHm^tbeeai^microsoft® 
 
304 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 ** It was not possible that in the midst of all this baseness, the 
 Christian conscience should remain without a witness. Its in- 
 flexible language was heard at this profaned tribune, and despite 
 the cries of rage with which they endeavoured to stifle its voice, 
 its appearance was sufficient to chastise, by a violent contrast, all 
 the cowardice which had just been witnessed. It was Gregoire, 
 Bishop of Blois, who gave this grand spectacle to his country. 
 Of an ardent, generous disposition, he had more than once carried 
 enthusiasm even to imprudence, and although he had not voted 
 the death of the King, he was guilty of the wrong of insulting him 
 in his fall, in a moment of excitement for ever to be regretted ; he 
 was, nevertheless, a sincere Christian, and an intrepid soul. Never 
 had he abjured a single one of his convictions, still less his God. 
 He still wore the ecclesiastical costume, which was an act of cou- 
 rage at that period. Called to sit at this hour in the Committee 
 of Public Instruction, he was ignorant of what was passing in the 
 Hall of Assembly. Scarcely has he entered, than he is surrounded 
 by a troup of Mountain deputies, who urge him, by furious ges- 
 tures, to follow the good example of GolDel. It was said to him 
 on all sides: "Thou must mount the tribune." "For what?" 
 " To renounce thy episcopate, thy religious charlatanism." " Mi- 
 serable blasphemers," replies he, " I never was a charlatan ; 
 attached to my religion, I have preached the truth ; I shall be faith- 
 ful to it" Hoping to constrain him to follow the current, the 
 President gave him permission to speak, which he had not asked. 
 He rushes to the tribune ; a general silence succeeds to the tumult 
 " I enter here," said he, " having only very vague notions of 
 what has passed before my arrival. They talk to me of sacrificing 
 to the country ; I am accustomed to it. Is the question of attach- | 
 ment to the cause of liberty ? I have given my proofs. Is the ''■ 
 question of the revenue attached to the title of bishop? I 
 abandon it to you wit^p^^^g^.^^^^ a question of religion? 
 
NOBLE CONDUCT OF GREGOIRE. 305 
 
 TMs subject is beyond your domain, and you have not the right to 
 attack it. I hear talk about fanaticism and superstition. I have 
 always combated them, but let these words be defined, and it will 
 be seen that fanaticism and superstition are directly opposed to 
 religion. As for me, Catholic through conviction and sentiment, 
 priest through choice, I have been appointed by the people to be 
 bishop, but it is neither from them nor from you that I hold my 
 mission. I have consented to carry the burden of the episcopate 
 in a time in which it was surrounded with penalties ; they have 
 tormented me to accept it, they torment me, to-day, to make an 
 abdication which they shall not tear from me. I have endeavoured 
 to do good in my diocese, acting according to the sacred principles 
 which are dear to me, and of which I defy you to rob me ; I 
 remain bishop in order still to act in the same manner ; I appeal 
 to religious liberty."* 
 
 This speech was violently interrupted almost at each word ; it 
 excited even very roarings. " I doubt," says Gregoire, in his Me- 
 moires, " whether the pencil of Milton, accustomed to paint the 
 spectacle of demons, could render this scene. Having descended 
 from the tribune, I returned to my place. They withdraw from me,* 
 as from one infected with the plague ; if I turn my head, I see furious 
 looks directed on me ; on me rain threatenings, insults. Over- 
 whelmed by the sight of the outrages done to religion, I thanked God 
 for having sustained my weakness, and given m.e strength to confess 
 Jesus Christ I declare that in pronouncing this speech, I thought 
 I was pronouncing my decree of death. During eighteen months, 
 I have expected to find myself at the scafifold." The same 
 evening, and for days following, the dwelling of Gregoire was be- 
 sieged by emissaries, who came to summon him to yield to the 
 
 * This speech has been mutilated in the " Moniteur ;" it is found 
 entire in the " Memoire|,de^£r^goig^; H.^. 34-38. 
 
 \ 
 
306 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 general wish. A placard against him was posted on the walls of 
 Paris. It was to mark him out for the Revolutionary Tribunal. 
 Fourcroy, his colleague in the Committee of Public Instruction, 
 openly blamed him for having opposed the current of opinion, 
 and said to him : "We must quash this infamous religion." They 
 were vexed with Gregoire because he sought to Christianise the 
 Revolution. He did not remain the less immovable. The epis- 
 copal costume of this Christian deputy was, in reality, more 
 respected than the red cap of the apostate Gobel. He received 
 even more than one confession of some of the chiefs of the 
 atheistic movement who, in secret, turned pale at the thought of 
 the God whom they were insulting. 
 
 In the sittings which followed that of the 7th of November, 
 shameful abjurations succeeded one another without interruption. 
 That of the Bishop of Haute- Vienne was distinguished by its dul- 
 ness ; he claimed to pass for a vile hypocrite, in order to estabhsh, 
 in the eyes of all, that he had always been impious. " And I 
 also," said he, "I was a philosopher, although a bishop. If I here- 
 tofore did not tell my secret, it was because the people were 
 superstitious, and the Government inquisitorial. Thanks to thee, 
 august Mountain, it is permitted to speak all truth quite aloud." 
 Another bishop, Lalande, who had directed the diocese of la 
 Meurthe, declared that, henceforth, he wished to spread only the 
 eternal doctrines traced in the great book of nature and reason. 
 Chabot, the married Capuchin,'came in his name, and in the name 
 of his wife, to make a quite needless retractation, for no one 
 doubted his perfect impiety. Sieyes believed himself obliged to 
 break the prudent silence which he had so long kept, in order to 
 say that he had been a victim of superstition ; which had not hin- 
 dered him from monopolising several benefices, and still touching 
 a pension of ten thousand livres, which he now abandoned. " Not 
 
 man on the earth," adds he, "can say that he has been deceived 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
OBJECTS OF WORSHIP CARRIED TO THE COMMUNE. 307 
 
 by me." That signified that he had for a long time served a mass 
 in which he did not believe. After the retractations, came the 
 patriotic offerings drawn from the treasures of the Churches. 
 There were seen flowing to the Convention and to the Commune 
 of Paris, copes, precious vases, priestly ornaments, all the objects 
 of value which had served for worship. It was decided that a 
 depot should be organised at the Commune house. A Committee 
 was charged with receiving and classifying the spoils of supersti- 
 tion. The bearers of these riches generally availed themselves of 
 the occasion, to make a speech. " Denys of Syracuse," said the 
 orator of the Commune of Sens, " took away from Jupiter his 
 mantle of gold, under pretext that it was too cold in winter, and 
 too warm in summer ; we have also taken away from our saints 
 and their ministers splendid vestments which, without doubt, were 
 troublesome to them." The orator of the Commune of Saint- 
 Denis-sur-Seine brought, under the guise of patriotic gifts, the 
 pretended head of the saint ; and he believed himself obliged to 
 declare that he had been in no wise tempted to kiss this stinking 
 relic. He continued in these not less elegant terms : " This skull 
 and these sacred rags which accompany it, at length cease to be 
 the ridiculous object of the veneration of the people. The gold 
 and silver which envelope them will contribute to strengthen the 
 empire of reason and liberty." The success was great for the 
 Pire Duchine.* Its cant words were spoken in full Convention. 
 
 The Protestants of Paris thought themselves obliged to follow 
 the movement ; two of them, in the name of their co-religionists, 
 deposited at the Commune of Paris, the silver cups which were 
 used in the administration of baptism and the holy supper. " AIL 
 ranks confounded," said the orator, " drank in these cups equality 
 
 * " Fere Duchesne of Hebert, brutallest Newspaper yet published ore 
 Earth." Carlyle,Frenc^^g^.^^^.^j).j,22^ 
 
 X 2 
 
308 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, 
 
 and fraternity ; my ministry has always had for its object to propa- 
 gate these principles. Shame to all the scaffoldings of falsehood 
 and puerilities which' ignorance and bad faith have decorated 
 with the ostentatious name of theology." The President replied 
 that if a religion could be preserved, it would be that which best 
 consecrates the principles of equality; but reason rules, and men 
 ought to know no other worship that that of liberty and equality. 
 Thus, no equivocation Avas possible; the act of the Protestants 
 was really accepted as a disavowal. The Jews did not wish to 
 remain behind; they also brought their offering. There was an 
 emulation of baseness. 
 
 Apostasies were the first act of the comedy invented by the 
 Commune of Paris. It was necessary to pass to the second. It 
 was not enough to have struck down the ancient idols ; it was 
 necessary to inaugurate, with eclat, a new worship— that of reason 
 and nature, and to find means of amusing the people, if they did 
 not wish them to return to what they had abandoned. The 
 ex-Bishop Lindet had demanded, the very day of the abjurations, 
 that they should occupy themselves with replacing the religious 
 festivals by civic festivals. They had entrusted to the poet 
 Chenier the task of filling the void which the fall of the ancient 
 worship was about to leave ; but they were soon to perceive that 
 it was not with the flowers of rhetoric or academic strophes that 
 they would succeed. The section of Bonne-Nouvelle had decided 
 that on the tenth days, there should be a patriotic sermon 
 on morality and the Constitution, biit it was a relaxation de- 
 cidedly insufficient for a people fond of spectacles. The Com- 
 mune decided to prepare a great theatrical show, which should 
 speak to the eyes and seduce the imagination. The opera was 
 put into requisition, and furnished a virgin to represent the 
 Goddess " Reason," and to animate, some little, this religion of 
 nothingness. It was ^t. '^^^^^ Wcrolofe'' '^^ Commune caused 
 
ORGANISATION OF THE WORSHIP OF REASON. 309 
 
 the scaflfolding to be erected, on which this ridiculous profanation 
 was to be achieved. The temple of philosophy was raised in the 
 choir of the cathedral. It was adorned with effigies of wise men; 
 an image of a mountain bore this paltry sanctuary. The torch 
 of truth was burning upon a rock. Young girls in white, and 
 crowned with oak-leaves, surrounded a seat of verdure destined 
 for the Goddess " Reason," and chanted in her honour the icy 
 hymn composed by Chenier. It commenced thus : — 
 
 w 
 " Descend, O Liberty ! thou child of nature ; 
 
 The people have recovered their power immortal! 
 
 • On the majestic ruins of th' old imposture 
 
 Their hands erect thine altar.'' 
 
 Poor lyricism, to inaugurate a new religion!, " It is now,'" said 
 Momoro in the "Journal de Paris," " that we may say that the day 
 of rest has slain the Sabbath. It has just received its death-blow 
 in the late metropolitan cathedral, now the temple of Reason." 
 The Convention, not haviqg been able to be present at Notre 
 Dame, was honoured, in the, eve ning, by the visit of the Goddess. 
 The ceremonies of the morning were repeated. The President 
 embraced the Goddess " Reason. " They were moved with emotion ; 
 they sang, they became odious and ridiculous. There remained 
 of that day nothing but the remembrance of a stupid parody, 
 which avenged on itself alone, the holy religion which they had 
 wished to trample under foot It was in vain that to revive the 
 fervour, they replaced, at Paris, and in the departments, actresses 
 by prostitutes. Weariness and disgust smote the new worship 
 from its first appearances. They tried to enliven it by debauchery. 
 The church of Saint-Eustache was transformed into a vast tavern. 
 Ancient priests danced the Carmagnole* with courtesans around 
 
 Digitized ^^Mrosl'ft® 
 
3IO THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 .great fires, where missals and holy books, copes and relics, were 
 burning. This delirium spread like a sort of infernal death-dance 
 over all parts of the country. At Lyons, an ass was promenaded 
 in procession, clad in priestly garments. On the 22nd of No- 
 vember, the same masquerades which had dishonoured the Con- 
 vention some days earlier, were repeated. Sappers and gunners 
 preceded the procession in pontifical costumes. They were fol- 
 lowed by an immense crowd of common people, ranged in two 
 ranks, coverd with capes and chasubles of gilded velvet They 
 bore, on hand-barrows, sacred vases and shrines surrounded with 
 precious stones. Warlike instruments executed the national airs. 
 A flag, waving to the melodious sounds of the well-known air of 
 Marlborough is dead and buried, indicated the disappearance of 
 fanaticism; whilst the Carmagnole, danced with vivacity, announced 
 the triumph of the new worship. At this fine spectacle, the Presi- 
 dent cried that the deputation had, in one instant, annihilated 
 eighteen centuries of error. A young child presented its homage 
 to the Assembly, and was overwhelmed with congratulations for 
 having recited the Declaration of Rights. They voted to him the 
 first republican catechism which should be composed. This fit of 
 sensibility for the poor little parrot of atheism completes the 
 painting of this ridiculous scene. The Commune endeavoured to 
 take advantage of the popular enthusiasm for Marat. " Several 
 sections of Paris," said Hebert at the tribune of the Jacobins, 
 "are eager to render homage to the ashes of the friend of the 
 people. They prostrate themselves before his statue. Well ! 
 since processions and religious ceremonies are necessary to the 
 multitude, why do we delay to decree them to the mart}T of 
 democracy!" On the motion of David, who expressed himself in a 
 tone of the most lively enthusiasm, the Convention decided that the 
 remains of Marat should be transported to the Pantheon. The 
 
 enthusiasm for this monster knew no bounds ; songs were ■ com- 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
PERSECUTING MEASURES. 3 11 
 
 posed in his honour. He was put in prints by the side of Jesus 
 Christ, and they invoked the sacred heart of Marat. The new 
 worship was complete; it had prostitutes for goddesses and a 
 man of filth and blood for a martyr and saint. There was nothing 
 wanting to it but to persecute. It did not come short in this 
 noble task. 
 
 For a long time past there had been nothing to add to the 
 cruel measures which had struck the clergy who had taken the 
 oath, and which had suppressed religious liberty in France. It is 
 now religion itself which, after having been insulted, is about to 
 be proscribed, under whatever form it presents itself, constitu- 
 tional or refractory. The Commune was encouraged in its perse- 
 cuting attempts by the Convention, which had applauded the 
 outrages of Fouche in Nievre. " The taste for republican virtues 
 and austere forms," wrote the future minister of the restoration to 
 his colleagues, " has penetrated all souls, since they are no longer 
 corrupted by the priests; some of these impostors resolve still 
 to play their religious comedies, but the sans-culottes watch them, 
 overturn all their theatres, and plant on their ruins the tree of 
 Liberty. Long live the Republic ! " * Fouche had caused the 
 cross in the cemeteries to be struck down, and had replaced it by 
 the Statue of " Sleep" — a consoling image for men such as he, who 
 had need of thinking that there was, after death, neither awaking 
 nor chastisement for crime. The Commune thought that what was 
 not disapproved in the Departments, would be found good at 
 Paris. It decreed measures similar to those which had been 
 taken in Nievre for Republican interments. A commissioner in 
 red cap was charged to conduct the funeral. A pole was to be 
 carried before the hearse with this inscription : " The just man 
 never dies. He lives in the memory of his fellow-citizens." The 
 
 * " Moniteur,'' sitting of the 7th of November. 
 Digitized By Microsoft® 
 
312 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 section of the Commune house complain that devotees and 
 Fanatics gather around the holy water-fonts. It requests of the 
 General Council to put a stop to such a scandal, and to take away 
 From these imbeciles the hope of the resurrection of fanaticism. 
 The Commune decided that armed force should be employed to 
 prevent these gatherings. This was not yet enough; a general 
 measure was necessary, which should entirely abolish religious 
 liberty and raise the worship of Reason to the rank of an oppres- 
 sive State religion. In order to hurl the most outrageous defiance 
 It the religious sentiment, the Commune had caused to be brought 
 to the Mint, the cope of Sainte-Genevieve, the cherished patron- 
 saint of Paris, and decreed the destruction of all the statues of 
 saints which surrounded the churches. The two portals of Notre 
 Dame were saved from mutilation, only because Dupuis wished 
 to recognise therein the planetary system by which he explained 
 the origin of worships. It was decided that tlie bells should be 
 pulled down, for the reason that their elevation above other 
 buildings was contrary to the principles of equality. The motion of 
 a. virtuous citizen, who demanded the incarceration of all priests as 
 suspected persons, was received with favour in the same sitting, and 
 sent to the administration of police. The section of the Quinze- 
 Vingts had demanded the consecration to liberty of the church of 
 Saint-Antoine, and the raising there of an altar on which should 
 burn a perpetual fire. The council of the Commune took occasion 
 from this demand to decree that no material symbol should be 
 raised in any temple. In the sitting of the 26th of November, 
 the same Council dared to strike with interdiction all other worship 
 save that of Reason. Chaumette denounced in his address the 
 coalition of priests and unfortunate females who had shown them- 
 selves equally exasperated against the Revolution. He painted 
 in lively colours the perils which the priests were bringing upon 
 the Republic. "They are capable of all crimes," said he, "and 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
ABSOLUTE PROSCRIPTION OF RELIGION. 313 
 
 make use of poison ; they will work miracles, if you are not on 
 your guard. I request, in consequence, that the Council declare 
 that, to its knowledge, the people of Paris are ripe for Reason, 
 and that if there is in Paris any movement in favour of fanaticism, 
 all the priests should be imprisoned, seeing that the people of 
 Paris have declared that they acknowledged no other worship 
 than that of Reason." 
 
 This fine speech had for its conclusion the following resolution : 
 " I St. All the churches or temples of all religions and worships 
 which have existed at Paris shall be immediately closed ; 2ndly. 
 All ministers or priests, of whatever worship, shall be held per- 
 sonally responsible for all the disturbances which have their rise 
 in religious opinions; srdly, Whoever shall ask for the opening of 
 a temple or church shall be taken up as a suspicious person ; 
 4thly, Revolutionary committees shall be invited to watch very 
 closely over all the priests; Sthly, A petition shall be presented 
 to the Convention to invite it to pass a decree to exclude the 
 priests from every kind of public function, as well as from all 
 emplo)'ment in the manufacture of arms." A member of the 
 Council, who discovered that the resolution was not yet severe 
 enough, had added to the last article these words, as well as of any 
 trade •whatsoever ; that was literally to condemn the priests to die of 
 hunger. Chaumette caused the original text, which was quite 
 sufficient, to be restored. Nevertheless, such is the man whom 
 M. Michelet dares to present to us as one of the initiators of the 
 religion of the future, and of true religions liberty.* It is not 
 enough to have sprung from " the holy mud of Paris" in order to 
 be a great servant of liberty. The resolution demanded by this 
 great demagogue, who was some days later to read his recantation, 
 remains for him an indelible stain. It is true that he was most 
 
 * Michelet, " Histoire de la Revolution," VII., p. 258. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
314 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 impious, but this indisputable glory does not suffice for his rein- 
 statement. This mischievous writer, with smooth hair, was only 
 a miserable copyist of the Louvois and Basvilles in the service 
 of Diderot. 
 
 The Commune of Paris, thanks to this famous resolution of 
 the 26th of November, had arrived at the summit of its Capitol, to 
 employ a favourite image of the time. The Tarpeian rock was 
 not far off. Robespierre had sworn its ruin, and he felt himself 
 supported not only by the Jacobins, his trusty fanatical assassins, 
 but also by the Convention, who began to be jealous of that 
 popular power which was setting up for Dictator. We have 
 already said for what reasons he was the sworn enemy of 
 Chaumette and Hebert. Everything in them repelled him; 
 their increasing popularity irritated his envious character, their 
 atheism offended his favourite ideas, their folly annoyed his 
 political intelligence, and with his correct and pedantic dress, he 
 could feel only contempt for their shameless masquerades. 
 
 The struggle broke out at the Jacobins in the sitting of the ist 
 of Frimaire (November 21st); Hebert and Momoro, uneasy at the 
 secret opposition of Robespierre, endeavoured to make the blow, 
 which was threatening them, fall on the .priests and the Princess 
 Elizabeth. Robespierre began by declaring that the danger of 
 the Republic did not arise, at that hour, from the priests, 'or 
 impure remnants of the race of the tyrant. He expressed great dis- 
 dain for the pious Princess, whom he ventured to call the contemp- 
 tible sister 0/ Capet. This expression remains an indelible stigma 
 on the cowardly tribune, and forces a cry of indignation from his 
 warmest apologists. Passing to the priests, he satisfactorily 
 proves the eagerness of a great number of them to abdicate 
 their titles, in order to exchange them for those of administrators 
 and even of presidents of popular societies. " Fear not," said he; 
 "their fanaticism, but their ambition; not the dress which they' 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
ROBESPIERRE ATTACKS THE COMMUNE. 315 
 
 wear, but the new skin with which they are clothed." Fanaticism 
 offers fewer perils to the vRepubUc than the violence which 
 awakens it " Fanaticism is a ferocious and capricious animal, it 
 was flying before reason ; pursue it with great cries, it will return 
 on its steps ! " Robespierre did not dare to blame the popular 
 movement which had impelled to the abandonment of the ancient 
 worship and the spoliation of the Churches, but he challenged 
 those who took advantage of it, and whose great error in his eyes 
 was seeking to counterbalance his popularity. " With what 
 right,'' said he, " should aristocracy and hypocricy come to mingle 
 their influence with that of patriotic zeal and virtue ! With what 
 right should men, hitherto unknown in the career of the Revolution, 
 come to seek in the midst of all these events, means of usurping 
 a false popularity, of dragging even patriots to false measures 
 and of throwing among us confusion and discord ! With what right 
 should they cause the solemn homages rendered to pure virtue to 
 degenerate into ridiculous farces ? Why should it be permitted 
 them thus to sport with the dignity of the people, and to fasten 
 the bells of folly on the very sceptre of philosophy?" Hebert 
 must needs grow pale at this sally, which so plainly marked him 
 out ; and he could see the edge of the guillotine suspended over 
 his head, when the terrible orator accused his party of dishonour- 
 ing the Revolution before the foreigner, which, in the language of 
 the time, implied a secret plot. The political import of the 
 
 \speech especially appeared when Robespierre insisted on the 
 maintenance of religious liberty. He afiirraed that the intention 
 of the Convention was to defend it against its adversaries, and also 
 against its own abuses. Besides, the priests will continue so 
 much the longer to say mass, the more that it is sought to prevent 
 them. " He who. wishes to hinder them is more fanatical than he 
 
 who says the mass." If the Revolution has had to defend itself 
 
 against fanaticism, it ought not the less to repel atheism, which 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
3l6 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 deprives virtue of its hope, vice of its chastisement, and liberty of 
 its glorious sanction. If God did not exist, it would be necessary 
 to invent him. What is above all to be dreaded is counter- 
 fanaticism, which calumniates France in the eyes of her enemies, " 
 and which is, in reality, their surest agent 
 
 The Commune could not ask for a more expUcit declaration of 
 war. Robespierre had taken his position. He concluded his 
 speech by calling for a purging of the Jacobins. Each member 
 was to be in his turn examined, in order to be maintained or 
 rejected by a vote. No one was deceived by it, it was a case of 
 life and death in this tumultuous examination directed by Robes- 
 pierre, who there represented the whole Revolutionary Tribunal. ' 
 The Commune endeavoured to repay with boldness, and it passed 
 on the 3rd of Frimaire (November 23rd) the resolution which 
 proscribed all worships, but it drew upon itself, two days later, a 
 thundering speech from Robespierre at the Jacobins. He returned 
 to his accusation of secret intrigues with the foreigner. He 
 spoke as a master: — "We shall neither suffer," said he, "the 
 standard of persecution to be raised against any worship, nor 
 aristocracy to be confoimded with worship, nor fanaticism with 
 the opinion which proscribes it. The National Convention will 
 maintain religious liberty." The orator hastens to add, lest this 
 liberty should be taken in too serious a sense, that the Convention 
 will impose silence on all religious disputes. A singular con- 
 tradiction, the flagrant absurdity of which is less strange than its 
 obstinate continuance in our country. Robespierre tore without 
 mercy, according to his own expressions, the mask of patriotism 
 from the hideous face of the agents of the coalition, who, by their 
 infamous farces, wished to make a free people to be taken for a 
 nation of atheists, and to transform a poHtical Revolution into a 
 miserable religious quarrel. Would they have acted otherwise, if 
 they had wished to destroy the Convention and France, by saying 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
RECANTATTON OF HeBERT AND CHaUHETTE, 3 17 
 
 to the foreigner ; — " Do you see, the French had sworn universal 
 toleration and religious liberty,- they persecute all religions." 
 This time the success was complete and immediate ; Hebert, that 
 very evening, shamelessly repudiated the movement of impiety 
 which he had done all to create. He dared to make the following 
 declaration in the face of Paris, flooded with his Pire Duchine: — 
 " Already it has been said that the Parisians were without faith, 
 without religion ; that they had substituted Marat for Jesus. Let 
 us counteract these calumnies." 
 
 The same day at the Commune, Chaumette had delivered a 
 speech in favour of religious liberty, and had shown himself as 
 unctuous in demanding it, as he hadbeen bitter in suppressing it, 
 in that same hall where the echo of his atheistic harangues was 
 still vibrating. He was consistent only in reviling Christianity, 
 for the great reason which he put forth for the maintenance of the 
 liberty of opinions, was that it was necessary to abandon the sect 
 of the Nazarenes to the contempt in which it would be annihilated 
 in place of re-animating it by persecution. Chaumette concluded 
 by demanding that the Council should reject all discussion relative 
 to different worships. " Let us not inquire if such a one goes to 
 mass, to the synagogue, or to the sermon (Protestant) ; let us in- 
 quire only if he is a republican ; let us not meddle with his whims, 
 let us concern ourselves with governing, with assuring to him 
 the free exercise of his rights, even that of dreaming. I require 
 then, first, that the Council resolve that it will hear no proposition, 
 petition, or motion, on any worship, nor on any of the meta- 
 physical or religious ideas ; secondly, that it declare that the exer- 
 cise of worships being free, it has never heard and never will hear, 
 of preventing the citizens from renting houses, from paying 
 their ministers, for any worship whatsoever, provided that the 
 exercise of that worship- shall not injure society by its manifesta- 
 tion; that nevertheleg/^f;^i^l,>^H^s^be respected the will of 
 
3l8 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. i 
 
 the sections who have renounced the Catholic worship, in order to 
 acknowledge only that of reason, liberty, and Republican virtues." 
 Never in low theatres had Hebert sold tickets for a more pitiable 
 comedy than was that day played on the bloody stage of the 
 Commune. The speech of Chaumette raised a lively opposition 
 among his amazed auditors ; the turn was too sharp and the 
 leap too abrupt. Nevertheless, it was very necessary that his 
 motion should pass ; it was adopted, without reserve, to show 
 Robespeirre that nothing henceforth hindered him from crushing 
 adversaries beaten down and disgraced to this degree. 
 
 The recantation of the Commune prepared that of the Con- 
 vention. Already, in the sitting of the 26th of November, 
 Danton had forcibly protested against the scenes of abjuration 
 in public sitting, and' had formally demanded that there should 
 be no more anti-religious masquerades in the midst of the Con- 
 vention. He pronounced this remarkable sentence : " If we 
 have not honoured the priest of error and fanaticism, neither 
 will we honour the priest of infidelity." On this occasion he 
 caused the first appeal to clemency to be heard. In vain did 
 he swell more than usually his thundering voice, and invoke an 
 increase of terror against the true enemies of the Republic ; he 
 had ascended the first step of the scaifold. Robespierre could 
 not pardon this initiative, which revealed a commencement of 
 opposition on the right, at the very moment when he wished to 
 crush the extreme Hebertist left. Waiting until he should turn 
 upon Danton, he profited by his support to finish with the atheism 
 of the Commune. Some days later, in the manifesto to Europe, 
 which he read at the tribune, and which was voted with en- 
 thusiasm, he inserted these significant words: "Your masters 
 tell you that the French nation has proscribed all religions ; that 
 it has substituted the worship of a few men for that of the 
 Divinity. They lie ! The French people and its representatives 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
RECANTATION OF THE CONVENTION. 319 
 
 respect the liberty of all worships, and proscribe none of them ; 
 they abbor intolerance and persecution, with whatever pretexts 
 they cover themselves."* Barrere pronounced the same day, in 
 the name of the Committee of Public Safety, a speech imbued 
 with the same ideas. He demanded of the Convention a decree 
 prohibiting the constituted authorities and all armed force from 
 intermeddling in religious affairs, without, however, derogating 
 from the general measures in regard to the refractory priests and 
 the fanatics who, under pretext of religion, should disturb the 
 Republic. The Assembly was not yet ripe for all at once 
 adopting such a proposition. They sent it back to the Committee 
 of Public Safety for a new examination. Robespierre insisted on 
 its adoption, by adducing his eternal argument of the agreement 
 of the atheists of Paris with the foreigner. " It is the work of 
 foreign courts," said he, " to revive fanaticism in places where it 
 had sought its last asylum ; to arm the man who, without being a 
 bad citizen, is attached to his religious opinion, against him who 
 professes a different opinion." The orator would have done well 
 to have remembered these beautiful principles before the war of 
 la Vendue, when the unjust insisting on the ecclesiastical oath, 
 wasted the country with fire and sword. He treacherously profited 
 by the recent arrest of Rabaud Saint-Etienne, to point out a 
 factious intrigue in the opposition to Catholicism ; the Protestant 
 minister had urged to the overturning of an abhorred worship, 
 and the Girondist deputy had thereby sought to ruin the RepubUc 
 by dividing it, thus serving at' the same time his passions as a 
 sectary and a conspirator. Robespierre ended by strongly urging 
 the Convention to adopt the conclusions of Barrere. Cambon 
 supported him. Three days later, the decree proposed by Barrere 
 was passed in these terms : " The National Convention, con- 
 
 * Sitting of the Sth of December, 1793. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
320 THE CHURCH AND THE. FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 sidering what the principles which it has prockimed in the 
 name of the French people and the maintenance of public tran- 
 quility demand of it, ist, Forbids all violences or threatenings 
 contrary to the liberty of worships ; 2ndly, The surveillance of the 
 constituted authorities, and the action of the public force, shall 
 confine themselves in this respect, each for that which concerns 
 it) to measures of police and public security." The restriction 
 already mentioned in regard to the refractory priests, followed. 
 The decree ended by this recommendation : " The Convention 
 invites all good citizens, in the name of the police, to abstain 
 from all disputes on theology, or such as are foreign to the great 
 interests of the French people." Barrere caused an addition to be 
 voted which was not without its importance ; it was that the Con- 
 vention did not intend to abrogate the resolutions taken by the 
 representatives of the people. He alluded to the measures by 
 which several of them had aided the citizens to destroy super- 
 stition. To say truly, the religious liberty voted by the Conven- 
 tion was reduced to maintaining the order of things which existed 
 before the carnival inaugurated by Chaumette and Hebert ; it | 
 suffered, even within this narrow limit, numerous exceptions. 11 
 Nevertheless, this step backward was of importance. The pro- *J 
 scription of religion could no longer be indefinitely extended, but | 
 it was for that not the less liberty as in 1793. 
 
 This liberty was like the Mexican gods ; it thirsted for blood. 
 After the Gironde, it claimed the foul clique of Hebert, then the 
 group of the Dantonists. The 'feeblest desire for indulgence, 
 which was, perhaps, only a sigh of weariness, was sufficient to 
 destroy Danton. Robespierre cannot forgive him for being the 
 most imposing revolutionist, the terrible and striking image of a 
 roused and roaring people. Still less does he forgive Camille 
 Desmoulins for being the most sparkling writer in Paris, and for 
 
 placing his brilliant style at the service of clemency, too slowly 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
DERISIVE DECREE ON LIBERTY OF WORSHIPS. 32 1 
 
 invoked it is true, but with a power of irony and eloquence that 
 France had not met with since Pascal. The five numbers of the 
 "Vieux Cordelier" are the Provinciales of the Revolution. We 
 imagine the rapture into which they would throw the oppressed. 
 Ah ! if he had been a less great writer, Camille would not have 
 been so guilty in the, eyes of the cruel and laborious pedant of 
 the Jacobins. If, above all, he had not, by a sarcasm, declined 
 his insolent protection, he might have been saved. But to speak 
 of pardon, and to speak so well of it, in a manner so inopportune, 
 at the moment when Robespierre was about to develop at the 
 Convention his famous theory of a Republic which has virtue and 
 terror for its force, was to'commit an unpardonable crime. The 
 future pontiff of the Supreme Being was thus climbing up, by 
 bloody steps, the altar of his God; in order to arrive there, he 
 was marching over the dead bodies of his friends ; of those at 
 whose table he had sat, and whose marriage contract he had 
 signed. Master at the Jacobins and at the committees, the very 
 pure, the incorruptible, the saint of demagogism, was always 
 finding out a clandestine plan of conspiracy with the foreigner^ 
 and he enveloped in this elastic net all his adversaries, or, rather, 
 all his rivals. The procedure was infallible with an instructed and 
 trembling Assembly. Saint-Just mounted the tribune, and read, 
 with his monotonous voice, a report, each period of which fell 
 harsh and sharp like the edge of a cleaver. The report was, in 
 the oratorical order, a convenient invention which perfectly cor- 
 responded to the guillotine in the judiciary order. In both cases 
 it was instant extermination. The instrument of death was as 
 marvellously worked under the hand of Saint-Just and Barrere, as 
 under that of Samson. The Hebertists were thrown into prison 
 after the failure of the insurrection of the Cordeliers on the 13th 
 of March. Danton and his friends were imprisoned on the 30th 
 of the same month. c^i^^-Jg^ycmsoM reporter in both cases. 
 
32 2 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 As for the trial, we must not speak of it ; it was the most infa.mous 
 mockery of justice. Robespierre was delivered at the end of 
 April ; he breathed freely with expanded chest, for the Terror, 
 after having ground Danton, no longer ran the risk of being 
 stopped in its course. Before whom would the Revolutionary 
 Tribunal be arrested, when it had condemned the very person 
 who had demanded it? Without doubt, the blow which struck 
 the Dantonists was merited from the point of view of eternal 
 justice ; but that Robespierre should be the minister of it, only 
 because he wished to push crime farther, this is what exas- 
 perates conscience. The blood of Danton will for ever choke 
 the apologists of his rival. It is vain to concede that he 
 coloured this act by political reasons, and that he imagined he 
 was serving the cause of the Revolution ; it is not the less certain 
 that he that day obeyed the vilest passions. It is not his 
 fanaticism, but his envy which is specially detestable. 
 
 He awaited this fine triumph, in order to endow France with 
 the worship dear to his heart The armies of the Republic had 
 driven the enemy across the Rhine, and saved Alsace. The 
 Vendean insurrection had been subdued by Kleber and Marceau 
 at the battle of Mans. Toulon was retaken, thanks to the 
 skilful manoeuvre of a young chief of batallion, then a very ardent 
 Jacobin. On the side of the frontiers France breathed; in the 
 interior she was bowed under terror ; but this prostration of the 
 country was for Robespierre a mark of the goodness of Provi- 
 dence. He had no longer to fear a club-blow on the part of 
 Danton, or one of those sharp and brilliant darts thrown by 
 Camille. He could strut at the Tribune of the Convention as at 
 the Jacobins, and play the high priest without exciting laughter. 
 Fouquier Tainville secured him against ridicule. On the 6th of 
 April, Couthon, who was as the John Baptist of the New Messiah 
 
 of the Mountain, announced that the Committee of Public Safety 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
SPEECH OF ROBESPIERRE ON THE SUPREME BEING. 323 
 
 had decreed a festival in honour of The Eternal. Robespierre 
 read his memorable report on this subject in the sitting of the 
 7th of May, 1794. It is his master-piece; he is there his entire 
 self, with his babble about morality and virtue, and his hateful 
 passions which are arrested before no enemy on earth, for he 
 lavishes insult on the memory of the Girondists and of Danton ; 
 we find here also his enthusiasm for Rousseau, his antipathy to 
 the aristocratic atheists of the "Encyclopedic," his oratorical 
 genius, fertile in prosopopoeias, ordinarily restrained and embar- 
 rassed, but rising for an instant to true eloquence ; *we recognise 
 here, especially in each line, that sentimental democracy which 
 marches always accompanied by suspicion and proscription. 
 What concerns us in this speech is the claim of the dictator to get 
 again decreed a State religion, an abstract religion, little burdened 
 with doctrine, but very clearly defined, and which was to be 
 officially professed by the country. The orator establishes, in 
 terms which we cannot but admire, the agreement which has ever 
 existed between atheism and the abandonment of liberty. " What 
 advantage dost thou find in persuading man that a blind force 
 presides over his destinies, and strikes at hazard both crime and 
 virtue ? Does the idea of his nothingness inspire him with 
 sentiments purer and more elevated than that of his immortality, 
 with more devotedness to the country, more boldness in braving 
 tyranny ? The idea of the Supreme Being, and of the immortality 
 of the soul, is a continual appeal to justice ; it is then social and 
 republican. What is it that the conspirators have put in place of 
 what they destroyed ? Nothing, unless chaos, void, and violence. 
 They despised the people too much to take the pains to persuade 
 them ; instead of enlightening them, they wished only to check 
 them, to terrify or deprave them." From all these considerations, 
 Robespierre concluded that the National Convention ought to 
 decree the worship of afetf/fiMpgemferdBefl!^, and inaugurate it by a 
 
 Y 2 
 
324 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 great public festival. Thus, he only underpropped the Civil 
 Constitutution of the Clergy, cutting off from it all that surpassed 
 his pale Deism, but sanctioning its essential principle, which was 
 to closely bind religion to the State and to interlace it with the 
 new institutions. He consecrated with eclat the theory of the 
 Contrat Social, which was no other than the Gallican theory, and 
 showed himself the docile continuator of the ancient French 
 tradition to the very day on which the revolutionary fury had 
 attained its greatest height There was found also in the speech 
 of Robespierre the famous preamble on the utility of religion to 
 the Government : " In the eyes of the legislator," said he, with a 
 singular frankness, " all that is useful and good in practice is truth. 
 The chief work of society should be to create in man a quick 
 instinct for moral things, which, without the slow help of reason- 
 ing, should lead him to do good and to avoid evil. Now, that which 
 produces or replaces this precious instinct, which supplements 
 the insufficiency of human authority, is the religious sentiment 
 which imprints in souls the idea of a sanction given to the 
 precepts of morality by a power superior to man." Robespierre : 
 \vishes, then, that the State should profess faith in the Supreme 
 Being, not because it is true, but because it is useful, and doubles 
 its police in an efficient manner. "The State," said he, "is 
 neither a metaphysician nor a theologian ; the question of the 
 true and of the false does not concern it, it holds to the order of 
 the useful." Here again the ardent demagogue, the extreme 
 radical, glides into the broad way of tradition. He acknowledges 
 to-day the Supreme Being, just as Napoleon will afterwards 
 acknowledge the Papacy for the good of the State and the 
 greater convenience of its ministers. This speech ends by a 
 homage to religious liberty, ill placed after the proclamation of 
 a national religion, and especially after the sarcasms lavished on 
 fanaticism, that is to ^^^'^tifM^W^^ ■ Certain it is that, 
 
THE FESTIVAL OF THE SUPREME BEING IS VOTED. 
 
 325 
 
 if the new worship had been enthroned, it would have passed 
 from sarcasms to open persecution, and would have put into 
 .practice the whole system of the Contrat Social. Already, some 
 imprudent persons had spoken of a kind of law of sacrilege to be 
 passed against those who should speak ill of the Supreme Bein%, 
 or should permit themselves to profane his name. One of the parti- 
 sans of Robespierre, Julien de Bordeaux, had dared to demand 
 that they should banish from the Republic every one who did not 
 believe in God. Rbbespierre was obliged to contradict him ; but 
 would he have contradicted him long if he had triumphed ? 
 
 The Convention voted the sending to Europe of the speech of 
 Robespierre, which was to be translated into all languages, and 
 decreed the festival of the Supreme Being. The Commune of 
 Paris expressed its enthusiasm with a prudent zeal, for it had 
 much to do to gain pardon, and it gave a striking pledge of its 
 conversion, by causing the name of the acknowledged God to be 
 graven on all the edifices on which it had inscribed that of Reason. 
 The festival took place on the 20th of Prairial * (9th of May). 
 
 * The following table for changing New-style into Old-style, 
 found useful : — " September 22nd, of 1792, is Vendemiaire, ist 
 One, and the new months are all of 30 days each ; therefore :- 
 
 -a 
 
 S 
 3 
 a 
 
 Vendemiaire 
 Brumaire ... 
 Frimaire ... 
 
 Nivose 
 Pluviose ... 
 Ventose ... 
 
 Germinal ... 
 Floreal 
 Prairial 
 
 Messidor ... 
 
 Thermidor 
 
 Fructidor... 
 
 ADD 
 
 21 
 21 
 20 
 
 20 
 
 19 
 18 
 
 20 
 19 
 19 
 18 
 18 
 
 T3- 
 
 
 September 
 October ... 
 
 November 
 
 December 
 January ... 
 February ... 
 
 March 
 
 April 
 
 May 
 
 June 
 
 July 
 
 •Digitizes ly M/c^so^"^* 
 
 will be 
 of Year 
 
 DAYS 
 
 • 30 
 
 • 31 
 
 • 30 
 
 • 31 
 ■ 31 
 . 28 
 
 • 31 
 
 • 30 
 
 • 31 
 
 • 30 
 
 • 31 
 
 • 31 
 
326 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 Nothing had been spared to render it imposing, nevertheless it 
 did not avoid ridiculous puerilities. Robespierre, President of the 
 Convention, in a beautiful blue coat, with a bouquet of fruits and 
 ears of corn in his hand, took a place, with all his colleagues, 
 on the amphitheatre raised in the midst of the Tuileries. After a 
 pompous speech, he descended in order to set fire to the statue 
 of Atheism, promptly replaced by that of Wisdom, which made~~ 
 its appearance, unfortunately, very much smoked. From the 
 Tuileries, the Convention went to the Champ de Mars, encom- 
 passed and as it were interlaced by a tri-coloured ribbon, which 
 was carried by children adorned with violets, young men girt 
 with myrtle, men of mature age crowned with oak leaves; and old 
 men decked with leaves of the vine and olive. A rustic car, 
 laden- with agricultural implements, drawn by the indispensable 
 oxen with gilt horns, and followed by the not less indispensable 
 young girls in white, followed the Convention. At the Champ de 
 Mars, the Convention placed itself on an artificial mountain — a 
 flattering monument to the deputies of the majority. The Presi- 
 dent harangued, the young girls sang, the old men gave their 
 benediction, the cannons thundered, and all ended by the cry of 
 Vive la Republique. These pomps of the comic opera, these 
 ridiculous symbols and these chilling rites, taught France that it is 
 more easy to decree a change of religion than to effect it. Never 
 will Deism establish a worship, and all that it will attempt in this 
 way will become a public laughing stock. The festival was 
 found very tedious, especially by those who were irritated by the 
 preponderating part of Robespierre. It is related that a repre- 
 
 There are five Sansculottides, and in leap year a sixth, to be added 
 at the end of Fructidor. 
 
 The New Calendar ceased on the 1st of January, 1806. See "Choix 
 des Rapports," XML, 83—99; XIX., 199. " Carlyle's French Revo- 
 lution," Vol. II., p. 269. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
THE 9TH OF THERMIDOR. 327 
 
 sentative, less patient than his colleagues, said to him, in terms of 
 energetic trifling : " Thou beginnest to weary us with thy Supreme 
 Being.'' What wearied him, and many others, was the dictatorial 
 Pontificate which was striving to introduce itself into France. 
 That day Robespierre prepared his own fall. 
 
 It is not our business to relate it. The abominable decree of 
 the ^th of Prairial (June 12th), by which he obtained of the 
 Convention the suppression of the last securities left to the 
 accused before the Revolutionary Tribunal, since it replaced the 
 witnesses and the written proofs by a simple moral judgment, 
 this decree, which organised a new Terror in the Terror, caused 
 Robespierre to be charged with all the crimes of which he gave 
 the signal. His studied absence from the committees mattered 
 little ; it was none the less he who had perfected the instrument 
 of death. That he was overthrown by men who were not as good 
 as he, is no excuse for him, and the 9th of Thermidor was none 
 the less a deliverance. If reaction commenced from the next 
 day, on whom shall we lay the blame, if not on the detested 
 tribune "who had disgusted France with liberty, by turning it into 
 an Indian idol which fed only on massacres ? It is especially 
 during this period that religious persecution is confounded with 
 the general proscription of all the suspected. We may be con- 
 vinced by the memoirs of the time that the priests, refractory or 
 sworn, encumber the prisons and largely pay their tribute to the 
 scaffold.* The Revolutionary Tribunal sent there equally the 
 inventors of religions, endeavouring to turn to their own account' 
 this longing for belief, which is never more ardent among a people 
 than when they have, so to speak, cast it into the void. We know 
 the ridiculous affair of Catherine Theot, the old prophetess, who, 
 accompanied by her two acolytes, the dove and the female singer, 
 
 * Seethe " Memoires sur les prisons pendant la Revolution.'" 
 Digitized by Microsofi® 
 
328 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 was accustomed to celebrate I know not what stupidly-mysterious 
 worship, in which she gave a prominent part to Robespierre, 
 without his knowledge, whatever his adversaries said of it. In 
 addition to which, he had his devotees especially among the 
 females, who did him great injury. When his fall had been sworn, 
 they turned to great advantage the idolatrous attachment which 
 he had inspired after the example of Marat. M. Michelet is 
 astonished at this superabundance of ridiculous mummeries and 
 stupid mysticism, after Voltaire, and at the end of the century of 
 intelligence.* He forgets that everything appears in the issue 
 preferable to the cold lights which illumine only emptiness. From 
 total infidelity to gross superstition, there is only a step, and the 
 people from whom their God has been taken away, will soon 
 make to themselves fetiches. With Thermidor, closed the period 
 of civil religion, whether Catholic or Deistical. AVe are going 
 now to witness the experiment of a complete separation of Church 
 and State. 
 
 • " Histoire de la Revolution," VII., p. 366, 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
BOOK III. 
 
 THE REGIME OF THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE, 
 
 C&aptct i. 
 
 Measures taken by the Convention with respect to religion, from the 
 events of Thermidor to the expiration of its powers. 
 
 France, the day after the events of Thermidor, found herself in 
 the strangest situation. The party who had conquered, shared in 
 reahty the principles of Robespierre; it had laboured long for 
 their triumph, and it had even largely applied them ; it' numbered 
 in its ranks some of the most dreaded proconsuls of the Conven- 
 tion. Its most prominent chief, Tallien, was not pure from the 
 blood of September. Only this party had grown weary of the 
 Terror a little later than Danton, a httle earlier than Saint- Just 
 and Robespierre. There was no other difference between it and 
 the men whom it had overthrown. Its policy was still that of the 
 Committee of Public Safety, and it was quite as decided as its 
 predecessors in imposing liberty such as it comprehended it. 
 Doubtless, it desired to do as much without the guillotine as 
 possible, but it by no means thought of taking it down for political 
 crimes, and it was very decided to use the formidable means of 
 repression which it had under its hand. Nevertheless, it was 
 
 henceforth no longer possible to continue the Terror, even in miti- 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
33° THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 gated form. Public opinion, as constantly happens in France, 
 once delivered from the fright which repressed it, resumed all 
 its elasticity; it would not receive a partial satisfaction, and it 
 imperiously outran the votes of the Convention, so much the 
 more sure of obtaining what it wished, that the men of strong 
 conviction had disappeared, and that nothing is more easy to 
 manage than an intriguing democrat who has to obtain pardon 
 for a heavy past Such was Tallien and several of his friends. 
 Besides, in the Convention itself, a large portion had long echoed 
 the opinion from without. Moral victims of the Terror still more 
 than its instruments, these timid members had cursed the necessity 
 which constrained them to sanction so many crimes by their 
 cowardly silence and even by their votes. The pressure brought 
 to bear on the national representation had been such, that 
 Thibaudeau relates that many of the deputies, from fear of com- 
 promising themselves, durst sit neither on .the right nor on the 
 left, and took their place pell-mell at the foot of the tribune, in 
 order not to side ostensibly with any party at a time when the 
 violent of the evening before became the moderate and the 
 suspected of the next day. These courageous citizens were gained 
 beforehand to moderation, and were, by their inert weight, to 
 make the scale turn in its favour. But we must not deceive 
 ourselves respecting this. The moderation desired in Thermidor, 
 U I i795j was still very far from being a truly liberal regime. It meant 
 that the prisons, where so many suspected had remained buried, 
 should be opened, and that the scaffold should cease to receive 
 its daily batch ; but it remained attached to the Revolution and 
 implacable towards its declared adversaries. It accordingly 
 energetically sustained the Convention against the Royalist party 
 on the famous day of the 13th Vendemiaire, 1795 (October 4th), 
 which revealed to France its future master in the young General 
 to whom Barras owed the victory over the sections. It is true 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
IMMORALITY AND IMPIETY OF THE THERMIDORIANS. 33 1 
 
 that it equally lent its support to the Convention against the 
 Terrorist and Mountain party at the time of the closing the club 
 of the Jacobins, and in the days of the 12th Germinal (April ist) 
 and ist Prairial (May 20th), when a people still more riotous 
 than famished, violated the national representation under pretext 
 of dearth, and encountered in Boissy d'Anglas the sublime and 
 calm image of the inflexible law. Too often, also, the Therrai- 
 dorian reaction was only a terribler eflux of the revolutionary tide. 
 This is what happened in the South, where the revenges of the so- 
 called moderate party almost equalled the crimes of the Terror. 
 
 In what concerns the religious question, the events of Thermidor 
 did not bring any very sudden change. The persecution was no 
 longer so atrocious — it ceased at least to be bloody, but none of 
 the laws of proscription were withdrawn, and they remained, even 
 when liberty had been granted to worship, an incomplete and 
 precarious liberty, suspended on the least suspicion. This was 
 because public opinion was not brought back to religion. The 
 Thermidorian reaction was quite imbued with the materialistic 
 philosophy of the eighteenth century; frivolous, longing for 
 pleasure, it was much more eager to re-open the dancing saloons 
 and theatres than the temples. They believed they were accom- 
 plishing an eminent act of reparation by inaugurating the famous 
 ball of the victims, and devoting the memory of Robespierre to 
 execration. Whilst dancing in honour of the dead, they troubled 
 themselves very little about a few poor priests, imprisoned or 
 transported in the name of these same measures of public safety 
 which had caused so much blood to flow. Madame Tallien dis- 
 playing her facile beauty in an opera-box, in light and classic 
 costume, seemed the -symbol of the reconquered liberty; she 
 personified well enough that yain and elegant liberalism, without 
 prin.ciple and without seriousness, which sought its security in 
 
 extravagance of costume, and its satisfaction in an unbridled 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
332 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 license, a sure means of bringing back the enervated country to 
 despotism. It is still at the frontiers that we must look for 
 heroism and true grandeur. Had it not been for its incomparable 
 army and its young generals, the Revolution would have quickly 
 slidden from blood into the mire. It is, nevertheless, at this 
 period, so sad in the interior, in which everything seemed to 
 conspire against the awakening of religious thought, that the 
 Christian worship under its different forms, reconstituted itself 
 unaided, and profited by an incomplete liberty to take an extra- 
 ordinary development Let us explain the difficulties against 
 which it had to struggle and also the advantages which it found 
 in the absence of all governmental protection. We shall see 
 that for it, moral independence is so great a benefit, that it 
 compensates for the heaviest blows at the rights of conscience. 
 
 We have related, in their order, the decrees of the Convention 
 against religious liberty. They formed a Draconian code, 
 which equalled in rigour whatever was most excessive in the 
 ancient regime against religious minorities. At the end of the 
 hideous Hebertist movement, the proscription had reached as well 
 the sworn as the refractory clergy. The prisons were filled with 
 priests belonging to both Churches. The Civil Constitution of 
 
 e Clergy no longer existed, except in the letter of the Con- 
 stitution ; its framework had been broken by apostacy or persecu- 
 tion ; worship had been rendered as impossible to the Constitu- 
 tional as to the proscribed priests ; no payment was made, no 
 pension was maintained, and a considerable number of eccle- 
 siastics were a prey to poverty. Every political career had been 
 well-nigh closed to them, for twice had the Assembly decreed 
 that no ex-noble, no refractory or sworn priest, could fill the func- 
 tions of an officer or of any public functionary. This decree had 
 indeed been repealed, but it was again demanded by an influential 
 party. The Convention had not repealed the decree of the 3rd 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
MAINTENANCE OF THE LAWS AGAINST THE PRIESTS. 333 
 
 of October, 1793, which condemned to the penaltj' of death in 
 twenty-four hours, on the concurrent affidavit of two witnesses, 
 not only the priests who had taken part in an insurrectionary 
 movement, or who }iad had any connection with the emigrants, 
 but also all those who should be supplied with any counter- 
 revolutionary signs. To banishment with the nonjuring priests 
 was condemned every priest informed against on account of his 
 want of patriotism. Nothing was more dangerous than the 
 vagueness of such an expression. To declare one's self a 
 Christian in the time of Chaumette, was to be guilty of want of 
 patriotism. The priests who had not denied their faith, had been, 
 for this reason, cast into dungeons. The first part of this 
 abominable decree, which multiplied the applications of the 
 penalty of death, was abrogated in fact by the events of Thermi- 
 dor ; the second part, which was satisfied with transportation, sub- 
 sisted entirely, as well as the clause assuring a reward of a hundred 
 livres to every citizen who should inform against an ecclesiastic sub- 
 ject to transportation. Every citizen, on the contrary, who should 
 secrete a priest entering into this list, was liable to be put to death. 
 This law, aggravated some months later by a decree which obliter- 
 ated all exception in favour of infirm and aged priestSj remained the 
 public law in France, and it might any day again let loose the pro- 
 scription. It would have found ample material to exercise itself, 
 for after the fall of Robespierre the reifractory priests crossed the fron- 
 tier in great numbers, and spread themselves in the country places. 
 The deputy Barre proclaimed the fact at the sitting of the 
 Convention on the 21st of September, i7'94; according to him, 
 the department of Lozere was infested with these priests, returned 
 under every sort of disguise. He urgently demanded that the 
 Assembly should decree the transportation of all those among 
 them who were imprisoned and under surveillance, and that they 
 should revive the decrg^^yjiy;y)^bade^ublic functions to priests. 
 
334 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 Reference to the Committee of Legislation and of Public Safety 
 was decided. Rigorous measures were equally taken in Herault 
 and at Avignon against the priests for having "preached their 
 impostures," according to the accusation launched against them 
 by Perrin (des Vosges), Commissioner of the Convention in these 
 departments. They were cast into prison. 
 
 Whilst the rigime of the prisons was mitigated at Paris, the 
 unhappy priests condemned to transportation, and retained in the 
 roadstead of Aix, were subjected to the harshest treatment We 
 learn this from the very affecting recital of one of these unhappy' 
 captives ; * their truly intolerable sufferings were prolonged for 
 more than a year after Thermidor. The juror priests appear to 
 have been confounded without distinction with the refractories. 
 The convoy of which these unfortunates formed part, was directed 
 to Rochefort in February, 1794. Their journey was a long tor- 
 ture. It was pursued in the midst of the hootings and threats 
 of an excited people. They insulted their misfortune by infamous 
 parodies. At Limoges they caused to pass before them a pro- 
 cession of asses, dressed in Pontifical garments, at the head of 
 which marched a mitred pig. They slept sometimes in an inn, 
 sometimes in- a prison, always in confined places, on simple mat- 
 tresses. At Rochefort, the condemned priests were crammed 
 with the galley-slaves, sharing their infamy but not their food, for 
 they did not obtain even what was necessary. Before conducting 
 them to the hulks, they were despoiled of almost all that they 
 possessed, and especially of all that belonged to the religious life. 
 A flask containing holy' oil was with difficulty saved. They could 
 preserve only a Gospel, which they hid under a beam, and a 
 Breviary, which they passed to each other in turn in the greatest 
 
 * See the " Memoires sur las Prisons," the narrative respecting the 
 priests transported in 1794 into the isle of Aix. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
SUFFERINGS OF THE PRIESTS ON THE HULKS. 335 
 
 secrecy. The sailors having discovered an ivory Christ, struck 
 off its head. They seem to have been chosen from amongst 
 the most fiery Revolutionists. They sang the Marseillaise before 
 each meal in imitation of the Benedicite. The most painful trial 
 for these unhappy priests, was the severe prohibition of every 
 religious act. They were not allowed to kneel down, and if they 
 were seen to move their lips in prayer, they were cast into irons. 
 Their implacable persecutors had found the means of despoiling 
 them, even in their poverty. One day they_ had announced to 
 them a speedy deliverance, in order to possess theipselves of their 
 portmanteaus. The officers on board inflicted on them drudgery 
 so much the more severe that they had lost all strength, and 
 could not repair it, the food being as distasteful as it was 
 scanty. They passed the night in nooks without air, their heads 
 knocking against the beams of the vessel. Scurvy and violent 
 fever raged in their midst, and the sick were thrown into a 
 barque, which was an hospital only in name. The least resist- 
 ance was cruelly chastised by insolent subalterns. One priest was 
 even shot without trial, others were put in irons for having 
 addressed a petition to the authorities of the town. To these 
 physical sufferings, which were much increased by the terrible 
 winter of 1795, was added an intellectual and moral prostration 
 which reduced more than one captive to a sort of imbecility or 
 brutishness. Such was their situation whilst the glittering youth 
 were filling Paris with their noisy follies. If the violent party 
 had been Ustened to, they would have sent them fresh com- 
 panions of captivity in place of breaking their bonds. Happily 
 their cause found at the Convention more than one generous 
 advocate, but their defenders had to return several times to the 
 charge before obtaining a reparative decree. 
 
 Already, in the sitting of the 14th of Brumaire (Nov. 14th), an 
 unknown deputy had^e^^a^tj^ecyje^s^e in favour of 200 priests 
 
336 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 dragged to the bank of the Loire, and awaiting their transporta- 
 tion ; there were reckoned in their ranks several members of the 
 Constitutional Clergy. The orator protested, with energy, against 
 their condemnation, and asked what difference there was between 
 such a measure and the proscriptions of Robespierre, or even of 
 Louis XIV. In vain was another member exasperated with this 
 movement of pity for " the impure caste of the priests," whom he 
 stigmatised as men of blood and barbarians ; Rewbell, in embar- 
 rassed language, succeeded in having the proposition referred to 
 the committees. In the sitting of the 21st of Frimaire (Dec. nth), 
 of the same year, on the occasion of the petition of an incar- 
 cerated priest, eighty years of age, Gregoire branded with indig- 
 nation the persecution against the priests, and informed the Con- 
 vention that of a hundred and eighty-seven priests detained at 
 Rochefort, only seventy-six had survived the ill-treatment. " If, in 
 order to set a man at liberty," said he, " it should be asked if he 
 is an attorney, an advocate, or a physician, this question would 
 excite indignation. Why ask if he is a priest ? Whatever an in- 
 dividual be, if he is a bad citizen, strike him ; if he is a good 
 citizen, protect him. So long as we shall follow the contrary 
 principles we shall have only the regime of tyrants.'' Some days 
 later, on the 3rd of Nivose year III (21st of December, 1794), the 
 courageous deputy re-ascended the tribune, no longer to support 
 a private petition, but to claim the right of conscience in all its 
 extent Gregoire had not the superior gifts of eloquence; his 
 speech was without eclat, and wanting those bursts of passion 
 which carry away an assembly, but his undisputed patriotism, his 
 loyalty known of all, and his fearlessness in the accomplishment 
 of his duty, had conciliated towards him universal respect. The 
 speech which he that day delivered, is one of the noblest acts of 
 his political life : he redeemed the. defects of his talent by the 
 
 firmness of his principles, and he rose, even to eloquence, through 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
NOBLE SPEECH OF GREGOIRE. 337 
 
 the liberality of his convictions and the energy of his indignation. 
 The true spirit of 1789 breathes throughout this speech, which is 
 animated, also, by a truly Christian inspiration. Never was this 
 great cause of religious liberty defended with greater breadth, or 
 in circumstances more exciting. "You have founded the Re- 
 public," thus began the orator, " there remains to .you a great task 
 to fulfil, that of consolidating its existence." The orator showed 
 that the surest means of perpetuating internal divisions, was to 
 maintain, by proscription, distinctions of caste which had no 
 longer the right to be under the new regime. Is it not this that 
 was done every time that an individual was struck as ex-noble or 
 as priest? To jfroscribe a worship, is to make war on opinion, 
 that is to say, is to attack by force that which can be conquered 
 only by reason. " To wish to command thought is a chimerical 
 enterprise, for it exceeds human power. It is a tyrannical enter- 
 prise, for no one has the right to assign limits to my reason." 
 Worship, being only the complete manifestation of religious thought, 
 ought to enjoy the benefit of these principles. No particular wor- 
 ship ought to be privileged, but all religious forms, even the most 
 absurd, if they do not violate the law, have a right to an equal 
 protection. Gregoire forcibly pointed out what the apphcation of 
 the contrary principles had cost France under I^ouis XIV., whilst 
 Holland and free America had increased under the regime of full 
 liberty of conscience. Persecution has ever had the effect more 
 firmly to root in the heart the opinions which they wished to 
 banish. " Its inevitable effect is to corrupt the people. It is the 
 first step towards slavery. A people which has not religious 
 liberty will soon be without liberty. The inexorable pen of his- 
 tory hastens to leave an indelible stigma on the brow of the per- 
 secutors." The orator had been hstened to tranquilly enough, so 
 long as he had kept at the height of general ideas. He was no 
 longer so when he enj^^ff|^ ^f „T^g^heart of the matter, and 
 
 z 
 
338 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 pointed out the grievous effects of the revolutionary persecution. 
 "What is," said he, "the actual state of things in this respect? 
 Religious liberty exists in Turkey, it does not exist in France. If 
 this state of things is to continue, let us speak no more of the Inqui- 
 sition, we have lost the right to do so ; for religious liberty exists 
 only in the decrees and actual persecution throughout all France. 
 Ought that to be the result of this philosophy of toleration, whose 
 most illustrious representative has been carried in triumph to the 
 Pantheon ? Is this the liberty promised to all peoples, and which 
 9ur armies pretend to carry to them ? Let us beware ; revolu- 
 tionary persecution will have no better effects than the revocation 
 of the Edict of Nantes ; it will bring with it the expatriation of 
 citizens and the impoverishment of the country. Let them not 
 say that religious liberty exists in the interior of the houses." 
 What ! the Declaration of Rights, the Constitution, and the laws 
 published with such pomp, should have had for their sole end to 
 establish, that in my room I can do as I please ! " What if they 
 cry out superstition and fanaticism, it must not be forgotten that 
 one is always a fanatic to somebody. In the time of Chaumette 
 and Anacharsis Clootz, faith in God was fanaticism." Gregoire 
 was wrong in excusing, too much, the measures taken against 
 the unsworn clergy. A passionate partisan of the Rebublic, he 
 forgave, with difficulty, the royalist intrigues. He claimed none 
 the less liberty for all in the conclusion of his speech. He pro- 
 voked a real tempest on the seats of the Mountain, when he 
 defended the priests who had remained faithful to their beliefs, and 
 branded the apostates "What others call prejudice," said he, "is 
 worth as much as those declamations multiplied a year ago at our 
 bar, and of which the translation was nearly this : ' I declare to you 
 that, for many years, I have been an impostor and a knave : con- 
 sequently, I ask that you esteem me and accord to me a place.' " 
 
 The applauses of the galleries sustained the orator against the fury 
 ^'^ "Digitized by Microsoft® " 
 
NOBLE SPEECH OF GREGOIRE. 339 
 
 of the left. He sought to demonstrate that it was not true that 
 CathoHcism was incompatible with the love of the Republic, and 
 cited his own example. The Assembly became more and more 
 impatient ; they wished to silence the orator when he cried : " It 
 is necessary that we should know if Charles IX. and Louis XIV. 
 are going to live again, and if we must, like the Protestants after 
 the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, tear ourselves from our 
 country, to crawl on foreign shores, begging an asylum and 
 liberty." Drowning the clamours, Gregoire continued: "What 
 is to be done in the impossibility of extinguishing religious prin- 
 ciples, and of suddenly uniting the citizens in the same belief? it 
 is to guarantee entire and undefined religious liberty for all ! If 
 it is pretended that this liberal law exists, we have only to look 
 for its application ; it is necessary to guarantee its exercise. No 
 privilege for any worship, no manifestation outside the circle of 
 the temples, but entire liberty for all." Gregoire ended by ren- 
 dering homage to Christianity, and by setting forth its beneficial 
 influence as developing love of country, obedience to the laws, 
 and that generous devotedness to the public weal so necessary in 
 the great perils of a period of renovation. " Do you wish," said 
 he, " to communicate a new impulse towards liberty, and to con- 
 solidate the democracy which shall have then but few opposers ? 
 Assure religious liberty." The draft of decree proposed by him 
 was thus expressed : " The constituted authorities are charged 
 with securing to all citizens the free exercise of their worship, by 
 taking measures to ensure order and tranquillity." " During the 
 three-quarters-of-an-hour that I occupied the tribune," relates Gre- 
 goire, in his " Memoires,'' " the members of the Mountain were 
 like sufferers upon the wheel ; I made them experience all the 
 contortions of rage." * Legendre replied to Gregoire : " I 
 
 * " Me©^-fie&(^g/Af4gS!ie«!l)II-, P- 54- 
 Z 2 
 
34° THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 thought," said he, " that we were sufficiently advanced in Revolu- 
 tion to be no longer occupied with religion." This was precisely 
 what was asked ; for religious liberty is only the withdrawment of 
 the State from religious matters. The deputy of Paris added this 
 phrase, immortal in the Voltairian citizenship : " To be a good 
 husband, a good son, a good father, a good citizen, this is the sole 
 religion of a republican." He gained applauses by reminding 
 them that it was in behalf of the priests that Charles IX. had per- 
 secuted ; from which he imphcitly concluded that the best means 
 of ruining their influence was to imitate them. The Assembly 
 passed to the order of the day on the proposition of Legendre 
 and of two obscure deputies, who treated the speech of Gregoire 
 as dangerous. This speech, published as a pamphlet, made the 
 greatest noise ; it acted strongly on opinion, which, some months 
 later, imposed its conclusions on the Convention. 
 
 We have seen that under the Constituent the greatest obstacle 
 to the establishment of religious liberty had come from the Civil 
 Constitution of the Clergy. An official Church is necessarily 
 privileged, and its very existence hinders true equality. It needs 
 that there be very exceptional circumstances for the liberty of , 
 unacknowledged Churches to be respected. The regime of the 
 payment of worships by the State is incompatible with the full 
 independence of all religious forms. On the opening of the 
 Legislative — amidst inextricable difficulties, in which the Civil 
 Constitution of the Clergy and the laws concerning the oath had 
 cast France — tlie true solution was caught sight of by the Assembly 
 and by those outside; we have cited the admirable letter of Andre 
 Chenier, who demanded the entire separation of Church and 
 State. The country — a prey to the convulsions of civil war — was 
 not ripe to listen to the voice of wisdom. The imperious galleries, 
 who wished to possess themselves, at any price, of the power to 
 impose their politicaliaith on the nation, were very little disposed 
 
CAMBON PROPOSES TO ABOLISH THE PAYMENT OF WORSHIPS. 34I 
 
 to diminish the share of the State, at the moment when they were 
 going to have in their hands all the resources of the administration. 
 Nevertheless, this same idea re-appeared even in the Convention ; 
 it was even carried to the tribune by Cambon, but we have seen 
 Robespierre reject it with the sure instinct of revolutionary des- 
 potism, and support the contrary system in the name of State- 
 reason. Who knows what the Pontiff of the Supreme Being would 
 have obtained from the Convention if he had triumphed in Ther- 
 midor ? He might, perhaps, have realised the dream of Rousseau, 
 and given to his pale Deism the public treasure for support and 
 the scaffold for sanction. After Thermidor, it sufficed that he 
 should have defended the regime of the payment of worships, in 
 order that the Assembly might be well disposed to reject it 
 They did this a few weeks after his death, on the 20th of Sep- 
 tember, 1794, almost without discussion, on a simple motion of 
 Cambon. It might have seemed that a solemn deliberation 
 should have preceded such a measure, so grave in itself, so con- 
 siderable by the effects which it might produce, since it brought 
 back the Revolution into the way of the purest liberahsm, and 
 caused to triumph, for the first time in France, the true notion of 
 the State. Seriously appHed, it immediately gave religious peace, 
 and struck with death the fatal theories of the Contrat Social, which 
 had already caused so much evil to the Revolution. It is im- 
 possible to exaggerate the importance of such a decree. Never- 
 theless, it was voted as soon as proposed, after a speech from 
 Cambon, which turned only on the finances. This was because the 
 question had been resolved in fact before being so in principle. 
 The Constitutional Church had lost all her privileges in the revo- 
 lutionary tempest; she was no more a public service. Pensions 
 had been assured to priests who should deny their beliefs. Too 
 great a number had begged of the State these infamous alms which 
 
 their weakness paid for. Others died of hunger, whilst celebrating 
 ^ Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
342 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 their worship in secret, for most of the churches had been closed 
 or profaned. Nevertheless, the worship of the jurors still existed 
 constitutionally, and it was acknowledged by the law. This 
 abnormal situation was to cease. It was necessary either to re- 
 establish the ancient order of things, or formally to abrogate it; 
 they had also to regulate the pensions, voted under different titles, 
 to the priests who had resigned or who were in office. Nothing 
 was more confused than these accounts. It was in seeking to 
 carry light and order into them that the Committee of Finances 
 encountered the grave problem of the separation of Church and 
 State. Cambon commenced his speech by a very complete and 
 lucid recital of all the measures taken up to that day with respect 
 to the Constitutional priests ; these measures were not consistent 
 with each other; there was, therefore, great arbitrariness in the 
 resolutions of the departmental administrations with respect to 
 ecclesiastics; some refused all pension to the priests who had 
 refused to abjure; others paid • them on the ancient footing. 
 "Your Committee of Finances," said Cambon, "has thought that 
 you ought to cause all the difficulties to disappear which have 
 arisen on the different laws passed on ecclesiastical pensions. 
 The first measure which it has thought right to propose to you is a 
 solemn declaration that the French Republic no longer pays the 
 stipends nor the expenses of any worship." Cambon did not fail 
 to recall the contrary opinion of Robespierre. 
 
 "Your Committee of Finances," added he, "has already re- 
 ceived several petitions to the effect that the Convention should 
 determine the pay of the ministers officiating in the so-called 
 temples of Reason, of Philosophy, or in those they would dedicate 
 to the Supreme Being." The reporter proposed to apply to all 
 priests the aid granted to those who had resigned by the law of 
 the 2nd of Frimaire (November 22nd). This last clause was 
 voted as the principal proposition thus worded ; " The French 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
MOTION OF BOISSY D ANGLAS, 343 
 
 Republic no longer pays the expenses nor the stipend of any 
 worship." The most complete religious liberty was the natural 
 consequence of such a vote, for all religious questions were 
 referred to the individual conscience; the State was to interfere 
 no more, once that it had secured public order and respect for the 
 law. The Convention was still too irritated against the nonjuring 
 priests to put an end to the persecutions, and the non-payment of 
 worships was adopted without liberty being proclaimed to them. 
 
 The speech of Gregoire, despite its apparent defeat, prepared 
 the return to more healthy ideas. It did not prevent the Con- 
 vention from voting, on the i8th of Nivose year III. (6th of 
 January, 1795), ^ very severe decree against the nonjuring priests, 
 which ordered the prosecution with the utmost rigour of the laws 
 of those who had returned to France. The cause so nobly de- 
 fended by the Bishop of Blois, found a happier advocate some 
 months later, who had so much the more chance of being listened 
 to by a French assembly in the eighteenth century, that instead of 
 speaking as a Christian, he expressed himself as a disdainful phi- 
 losopher. Boissy d'Anglas was not the less firmly resolved to 
 claim the right of conscience by laying down anew the great prin- 
 ciple of the separation of Church and State. He thus caused to 
 disappear the glaring inconsistency which disfigured the decree on 
 the suppression of the payment of worships. The 3rd of Ventose 
 of the year III. (21st of February, 1795), Boissy d'Anglas carried 
 his famous motion to the tribune of the Convention in the name 
 of the Committees of Public Safety, of General Security, and of 
 Legislation combined, to which, at several times, propositions 
 relative to worships had been sent. The reports of the Com- 
 missioners of the Convention in the departments rendered urgent 
 a measure calculated to pacify men's minds. Boissy d'Anglas 
 received as many plaudits in the Assembly as Gregoire had reaped 
 
 noisy marks of disapprobation. And yet he maintained the same 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
344 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 principle of public right, but he took special care to obtain pardon 
 for it by lavishing insults on Christianity. To hear him, religion 
 had not been less fatal in the present than in the past; it had, 
 since the Revolution, provoked the civil war in Vendee, and 
 everywhere let loose the most lamentable discords; it is by the 
 blood that it had shed, that one followed its traces in history. 
 The orator showed clearly that he was very far from demanding 
 liberty of conscience in the interest of religion. He treated that 
 as a chimera destined to disappear before philosophy. The vast 
 organisation of public instruction sketched by the Convention, by 
 bringing intelligence into all -ranks, would soon overthrow these 
 vain remnants of a time of intellectual slavery. " Very soon the 
 religion of Socrates, of Marcus Aurelius, and of Cicero, will be 
 the religion of the world." The surest means of delaying this 
 triumph would be to employ other arms than those of reason for 
 dissipating these old errors. It is, then, well understood that 
 Boissy d'Anglas demands liberty of conscience not in favour of 
 religion but against it, and in the hope of more quickly putting an 
 end to it. This was, unhappily, the most insinuating of the 
 exordiums pronounced in the Convention. In vain had the orator 
 overwhelmed religious thought with his contempt; it was not the 
 less certain that he had just acknowledged its invincible power, 
 since what brought him to the tribune was precisely the necessity 
 of reckoning with it, after that they had thought violently to 
 suppress it. Place once given to the bad revolutionary passions 
 in which he himself only too much .participated at this period, 
 Boissy d'Anglas forcibly established, from ' the political point of 
 view, the principle of religious liberty, by giving to it for security 
 the entire separation of Church and State. He unsparingly re- 
 called the fatal error of the Constituent of 1789 on this point. 
 " The instant had arrived for it to free the body politic from the 
 influence of religion; it ought to have decreed that each citizen 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
HE DEMANDS LIBERTY OF WORSHIPS. 345 
 
 should be able to devote himself to the practices required by the 
 •worship which he professes, but that the State should not bear 
 their expenses, that no preference should be given to any worship. 
 In place of destroying, it wished to create; to organise, instead of 
 abolishing. It ordained for religion a pompous and expensive 
 establishment." Hence was. born the schism which so profoundly 
 divided France. " What had been raised by feebleness and 
 inability, was almost immediately overthrown by madness and fury. 
 This sacerdotal establishment was struck down with the scandal 
 of a frantic revel with the furies of fanaticism itself" Boissy 
 d'Anglas painted in lively colours the recent religious persecution, 
 so much the more culpable that it had broken out in regenerated 
 France. He accused it of having crammed into the prisons 
 women, children, and thousands of useful agriculturists. In such 
 a situation, it is necessary to hold fast to the principle already 
 admitted that worship ought to be banished from the Government 
 and no more to enter into it. "Your maxims ought to be with 
 respect to it those of an enlightened toleration, but of a perfect 
 independence." The sole rule to follow in respect to divers 
 worships is to submit them to the common law. Now, the 
 common law is first liberty, next order and respect for the 
 laws. Let religious associations be treated as all other associa- 
 tions; let no exception be made either in their favour or 
 to their detriment. Let them be prevented, as is done to 
 every association, from conspiring, or indeed from transforming 
 themselves into a corporation. Let public establishments be re- 
 fused to them ; but let us not go further, for religious practices, 
 however erroneous they may be, are not crimes against society. 
 " The heart of man is a sacred asylum into which the eye of Govern- 
 ment ought not to descend. Exercise vigilance over what you 
 cannot hinder; arrange what you cannot forbid. Worships, what- 
 ever they be, will have from you no preference; you will not adopt 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
346 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 this in order to persecute that; and, considering rehgion only as 
 a private opinion, you will ignore its doctrines .... and you 
 wll leave to each citizen the power to give himself at pleasure to 
 the practises of that which he shall have chosen." It could not 
 be better said; the sacred rights of the individual, which are those 
 even of conscience, were thus reserved with sound sense, without 
 encroaching in anything on the rights of the State. 
 
 Despite some demands for adjournment, the decree proposed 
 passed during that sitting. It stated that, conformably to Article 
 VII. of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and to Article 
 CXXII. of the Constitution, the exercise of no worship could 
 be disturbed,, that the Republic paid none, and furnished no place 
 either for the exercise of the worship, or for the lodgment of its 
 ministers. The ecclesiastical costume was not tolerated. The 
 ceremonies of worship were forbidden outside the precincts chosen 
 for its exercise. A grave restriction was placed on this exercise, 
 for it was forbidden to mark places of worship by the least external 
 sign, or to make any public convocation for the celebration of 
 religious service. The decree further declared that there could 
 not be formed any perpetual endowment or annuity for the ex- 
 penses of a Church. Any gathering of citizens for the exercise 
 of any worship whatsoever, was subjected to the surveillance of 
 the constituted authorities; but this surveillance was confined to 
 measures of police and public safety. Such was this celebrated 
 decree of the 3rd of Ventose of the year III. (February 21st), 
 which permitted religion to flourish again on the harassed soil of 
 France, despite the restrictions which disfigured it, and the diffi- 
 culties of execution which it encountered on the part of the 
 administrative authorities. A deputy took care to stipulate that 
 the new law should leave intact that relative to the ecclesiastics 
 who had not taken the oath of equality. This was to leave a very 
 great latitude to persecution, and to destroy with one hand what 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
RIGOROUS MEASURES AGAINST THE REFRACTORIES. 347 
 
 they were endeavouring to found with the other; for religious 
 liberty is acknowledged only when it is equal for all citizens. 
 Nevertheless, by favour of the decree of the 3rd of Ventose, 
 worship was re-establised in all parts of France, as well for the 
 refractory as for the Constitutional clergy. We shall depict later 
 on this noble religious movement. It suffices to state it in order 
 to comprehend the fluctuations of the Convention in regard to 
 religious liberty, and to explain to us its decrees sometimes 
 contradictory. 
 
 The law of the 3rd of Ventose, in fact, much surpassed the real 
 state of minds in the midst of the national representation. 
 Revolutionary passion, always ready to spring up again, too often 
 drowned the voice of reason. Hence, the incoherence of juris- 
 prudence in this matter. Accordingly, whilst in the sitting of the 
 6th of Ventose, Lecointre of ■ Versailles, obtained from the 
 Assembly the revision of the decree which condemned to trans- 
 portation the citizen who had received into his house a nonjuring 
 priest, in the sitting of the 25th Germinal (13th of April, 1795), 
 the refractory clergy were denounced with an unheard-of violence 
 on the occasion of the disturbances created by the dearth. Andre 
 Dumont complained that the nonjurors celebrated mass under the 
 open sky; he boasted of having caused a great number to be 
 collected in a single night at Versailles, and accused them of pre- 
 paring a new Vendee. He demanded that they should prevent 
 the ^discontents which the conduct " of these infamous mounte- 
 banks" might excite. Rewbell does not wish that they should 
 pursue them as priests, but' simply as Royalists. Delacroix, 
 ridiculously enough, appeals to religious liberty against these 
 unhappy priests, and, by a strange inversion of parts, entreated 
 the Convention to protect him, himself, his wife, and his children, 
 against their persecutions. Cadroy goes much further, and 
 
 challenges the decree on religious liberty, which seems to him too 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
348 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 liberal, since it prevents the destruction of the malevolent 
 Tallien mingles gross insults against the priests with some sensible 
 words on the danger of giving them importance by putting them 
 on trial. Chenier protests against those who do not wish that the 
 blame should be directly laid on fanaticism. It is necessary to 
 pursue it, to reach it, and to strike it down as the principal cause 
 of the disturbances which rend the country, and he concluded by 
 asking for a prompt report on the subject from competent com- 
 mittees. The Convention adopted his proposition. 
 
 This curious and melancholy sitting gives a just idea of the 
 dispositions of the Assembly in respect to religious liberty, for we 
 must not be deceived about it^ every measure of rigour taken 
 against the refractory immediately reacted on general liberty. 
 We see, from the ecclesiastical journals of the time, how ill- 
 disposed the departmental and communal administrations showed 
 themselves towards the execution of the decree of the 3rd of 
 Ventose, even when the question was of the priests who had taken 
 the oath. " Incredulous and intolerant little tyrants,'' we read in 
 the first number of the "Annales de la Religion," a collection 
 pubhshed under the influence of Gregoire, "inundate the con- 
 stituted authorities, the commissions, and the offices.. Persecu- 
 tion is only diminished. Every day the Catholics are insulted by 
 the public functionaries.'' They encounter invincible resistance 
 to the re-opening their worship in conformity with the laws. At 
 Sedan, Beauvais, Soissons, and Salins, the administration refuses 
 them a locality, whilst it is eager to grant one for the pubUc 
 diversions. At Dieuze, in La Meurthe, a clerk of the district 
 dares to overthrow an altar hardly set upi* Here is a graver 
 fact ; in the departments of the Basses and Hautes Pyrenees, a 
 representative of the people flings into prison priests innocent of 
 
 * "Annales de la Religion," I. p. 44. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
GOOD EFFECT OF TOLERATION IN VENDEE. 349 
 
 every political intrigue.* In the Correze, administrators of the 
 district call the Catholics — who wish anew to celebrate their 
 worship — malignant citizens, and tax it as an old and absurd 
 ceremony. " Religious opinion," say they, in a circular published 
 by them, "is, doubtless, a sacred property. But there is another 
 property more sacred still, it is that which belongs to the legislator 
 to determine, for the advantage of all, the suitable mode for the 
 manifestation of religious opinions." Making use of this pre- 
 tended right, they banish worship into private houses.! Else- 
 where, the municipalities endeavour to weary the patience of the 
 Catholics by infinite delays in the acknowledging their right. 
 Others refuse to render to the priests their letters of priesthood, or 
 expressly oppose the bringing the bodies of deceg,sed persons, 
 according to the rites of the Church, into the temple. 
 
 These details have their importance, for they show how little 
 the sentiment of liberty was yet developed in the country. Mean- 
 while, the events which were being accomplished in Brittany at 
 the same period, might have shown the partisans of the Revolu- 
 tion that the surest means of pacifying the country and gaining it 
 to the Republic, was to practise large toleration in regard to 
 religion. In the sitting of the 8th of Floreal (28th of April, 1795), 
 the Deputy Lesage announced to the Assembly, in the name of 
 the Committee of Public Safety, that the representatives of the 
 people, convinced that the destruction of worships and the perse- 
 cution of their ministers had been one of the principal causes of 
 the rising of the Chouans, had charged the constituted authorities 
 and the commanders of the armed force to secure the prompt 
 execution of the laws concerning religious liberty. The represen- 
 tatives with the armies of the West, between Brest and Cherbourg, 
 had taken the following resolution: "Considering that several 
 
 * " Annales de la Religion," I., p. 264. Idem, I., p. 267. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
35° THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 persons, attached by their opinions to different worships, or pre- 
 tended to be such, do not yet enjoy the entire Hberty of exercising 
 them, resolve that the administrators of the district are authorised 
 provisionally to grant to the citizens, who shall make individual 
 request for it, the occupation of a national edifice to be used for 
 any worship whatsoever, subject to the conditions of leases and 
 contract, in conformity with the laws."* These measures were in 
 perfect conformity with those taken by General Hoche in Vendee. 
 "It would have been desirable," said he, one day, to Carnot, 
 "that they should not have cried out unceasingly against the 
 priests ; to take them all away, is to wish to render the war eternal. 
 If religious toleration be not admitted, peace must be renounced 
 in these countries. Let the priests once be forgotten, and there 
 will no longer be either priests or war. Let them be collectively 
 pursued, and there will be war and priests for a thousand years. 
 When a priest commits a crime, if he is punished as a priest, the 
 inhabitant is shocked; if he is punished as a man, as a citizen, no 
 one says a word." f " The Vendeans," said Lamenais, with 
 sound reason, " have not risen against the idea of liberty. I love 
 to regard the Republic and La Vendee as two sisters, who tear 
 each other only for want of understanding each other. The one 
 represents to my eyes political liberty, the other religious liberty. 
 If the Revolution had left to the Vendeans their churches and 
 their priests, it would have found amongst them nothing but 
 partisans. The Vendean mind is a devout republicanism. J " 
 What was true of La Vendee was so of entire France. Unhappily, 
 its governors believed they were- serving the Revolution by 
 
 * " Annales de la Religion,'' I., p. 65. 
 f " Memoires sur Carnot," II., p. 75. 
 
 J Words of Lamennais to M. Carnot, Jun. " Memoires sur Carnot," 
 II,, p. 455. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
GOOD EFFECT OF TOLERATION IN VENDEE. 351 
 
 sacrificing to it, on every occasion, the holiest of hberties, and they 
 did not see that they were rendering it hateful and illegal. 
 
 The report demanded by Chenier, on the measures to be taken 
 against the refractory priests, was presented by him in the name 
 of the Committees of Public Safety, of General Security, and 
 Legislation combined, in the sitting of the ist of May, 1795. 
 He defended himself against wishing to put on trial religion itself. 
 "When a religious opinion," said he, "becomes a pretext for 
 violating the law, it is not religious opinion which the legislator 
 should punish, it is the violated law which he ought to avenge." 
 According to him, the refractory priests had been invading France 
 since the decree of the 3rd of Ventose, representing themselves as 
 martyrs, and everywhere sowing royalism and treason, urging to 
 revolt, and sometimes to assassination, as at Lyons. For these 
 reasons, the reporter proposed to bring to trial every emigrant 
 found on the territory of the Republic, according to the rigour of 
 the laws. As for the priests who had returned to France, after 
 having been condemned to transportation, they were bound to 
 quit the country within a month, under penalty of being put on a 
 level with the emigrants. On the proposition of La Reveilliere- 
 Lepaux, and despite the observation of Merlin of Douai, that 
 it was necessary to guard against making a new Vendee, 
 they extended this article to the priests condemned to 
 transportation who had not crossed the frontier. The true 
 import of this decree was clearly indicated by these words 
 of the Deputy Berlier : " The Convention will not suffer the 
 State to be rent by the schisms of the sectaries of any 
 religion whatsoever." The Revolution wished, then, in its own 
 way, to impose religious unity, and it was, truly, opinion which 
 it persecuted. 
 
 The penalty of perpetual exile was definitively pronounced 
 
 against the priests condemned to transportation, in the decree of 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
352 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 the 1 8th of Fructidor (September 4th). Three days after the 
 
 pubHcation of this judgment, every nonjuring priest, caught in the 
 
 performance of an act of worship, was to be imprisoned, and the 
 
 citizen, who should have lent him his house, condemned to a fine 
 
 of 100 francs, and, in case of a repetition of the offence, to six 
 
 months' imprisonment. Moreover, it was decided at the close of 
 
 the fifth day that all nonjuring priests should be excluded from 
 
 administrative functions. 
 
 The draft of decree presented by Chenier contained an article 
 
 which forbade the celebration of any worship whatsoever in a 
 
 public edifice. After a lively debate, this article was sent back to 
 
 the Commission. The report on this very important question 
 
 was presented by Lanjuinais in the sitting of the 4th of Prairial 
 
 (ist of June, 179s). Religious liberty went forth triumphant 
 
 from this debate, one of the most important, despite its brevity, 
 
 of those which were raised on the right of conscience, and the 
 
 law of the 3rd of Ventose thus received the happiesT; extension. 
 
 On this occasion, Lanjuinais was worthy of his glorious past 
 
 He first showed, in the suppression of worships, the principal 
 
 cause which kept up disaffection towards the Republic. " The 
 
 enemies of liberty," said he, " close the churches in order to 
 
 demoralise the people, and urge them to insurrection. Render to 
 
 worships not only a nominal but a real liberty, by restoring the 
 
 churches to the civil and religious uses of the inhabitants of the 
 
 communes." Very far from the return to religion threatening the 
 
 RepubHc, it was in localities where atheism was most in favour 
 
 that the revolt broke out The restorative measures taken for 
 
 La Vendee, which, commenced by the re-opening of the temples, 
 
 ought to be extended to the entire country. In consequence, 
 
 Lanjuinais propose'd that the free use of the temples should be 
 
 granted to the citizens of the communes who should ask for it, 
 
 under the reserve of pecuniary conditions which should be 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
PRIVATE WORSHIP CELEBRATED WITHOUT AUTHORISATION. 353 
 
 afterwards fixed. The citizens belonging to different worships 
 should be authorised to use successively and at hours determined 
 by the administrative bodies, the same religious edifices. The 
 Assembly voted without difficulty this part of the decree, received 
 nevertheless by two rounds of hissing coming from the galleries. 
 It was more diyided for the adoption of the sth Article, which 
 was thus couched—" No one shall be able to fulfil the ministry 
 of any worship in the said edifices, unless he has given a pledge 
 before the Municipality of the place where he shall wish to 
 exercise it, of his submission to the laws of the Republic." The 
 Deputy Genissieu demanded that they should erase these words, 
 in the said edifices ; his evident intention was to submit to the 
 same formality the celebration of worship in private houses. 
 Cambaceres caused the restrictive clause to be maintained, for the 
 reason that political authority has nothing to do with a man who 
 does not disturb the public order, and that it very Httle concerns 
 it whether he prays in one manner or another. " It is only at 
 the moment that he forms a seditious mob,'' said he " that the 
 surveillance of the ministers of the law ought to commence." 
 This decree, sincerely applied, would have given religious liberty 
 to France, for the temples would have belonged to all those 
 who did not scruple to take an oath to the law — a formula 
 of engagement much more liberal than the oaths which had 
 preceded it — and the priests of a more timorous conscience would 
 have peaceably celebrated their worship in private houses. We 
 may attribute to the same liberal current the vote of the 22nd 
 Fructidor of the same year (Sth September, 1795) ; the Assembly 
 repealed the decrees "which relatively to the confiscation of pro- 
 perty, had assimilated to the emigrants the ecclesiastics transported 
 or shut up fornot having taken the prescribed oath." Lanjuinais had 
 announced that a plan of police, of worships, destined definitively 
 
 to fix the jurisprudence on this very delicate matter, should be 
 
 Digitized by Microsofi® 
 A A 
 
354 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 next presented. It was presented in the sitting of the Sth of 
 Vendemiaire (27th of September, 1795). An obScure deputy, 
 Deferment, rightly demanded the previous question, on the ground 
 that, the priests not forming a separate class of citizens, special 
 laws for them were not necessary. The Assembly went further, 
 and voted a decree certainly very hberal compared with the too 
 numerous laws which it had passed against the right of conscience. 
 It developed and applied the principles of the decree of the 3rd 
 Ventose. It placed as fundamental bases religious liberty and 
 non-payment of worship by the Republic. It plainly declined 
 all pretension to legislate on all that belongs to the domain 
 of thought, and on the relations of man with the objects 
 of his worship. No more was required of the ministers of 
 different worships than a purely civic guarantee. The prin- 
 cipal clauses were reduced to the following : — Art. i declared 
 that every gathering of citizens for the exercise of any 
 worship whatsoever, is subject to the surveillance of the 
 constituted authorities. This surveillance was to be confined 
 to measures of police and public security. Articles 2 and 3 
 guaranteed the free exercise of all worships, and smote with severe 
 penalties every attempt to disturb them, or to restrain the liberty 
 of conscience of any one whomsoever. Art. 3 contained the 
 formula of the declaration required of ministers of religion. It 
 was thus worded:— / acinowMge that the totality of the French 
 people is sovereign, and /promise submission and obedience to the 
 laws of the Republic. Evidently the first part of the declaration 
 was too much, for it submitted the exercise of a right to the pro- 
 fession of a political theory and proscribed an opinion. Never- 
 theless, this decree would ha\'e sufficed to secure religious liberty 
 and peace if it had not been contradicted by other measures. 
 
 The gravest of these measures was the law on the tenth-day 
 festivals, which may b^/gteBf^SfiS^^oftfe^- timid attempt to uprool 
 
BILL FOR REPLACING WORSHIP BY CIVIC FESTIVALS. 355 
 
 Christianity from the soil of France. It was Hebertism such as it 
 could produce itself after Thermidor, but pursuing not less under 
 a more moderate form its design of extirpating the religion of the 
 country. Only they aimed at it by devious ways, and substituted 
 influence for violence. It is not that the authors of the plan in 
 anything dissembled their thought ; it is seen with perfect clear- 
 ness from the different reports presented on this subject. By 
 entrusting the organisation of the tenth-day festivals to the Com- 
 mittee of Public Instruction, the Convention sufficiently showed 
 the importance which they attached to it ; it was boldly to avow 
 its intention to give new energy to the public mind from fresh 
 sources. By choosing another day than Sunday for the national 
 festivals, destined to effect so great a work, they openly announced 
 the intention of supplanting Christianity. It is, nevertheless, 
 what Chenier, without evasion, declared in his report, presented 
 the ist of Nivose of the year III. (26th of December, 1794). 
 " All prejudices,'' said he, " tend to destroy liberty, and the most 
 ; formidable are those which are based on mystic ideas.'' The 
 reporter clearly designated by these words religious beliefs. He 
 - asks himself how it is possible to destroy them. It is not by 
 violence, for we may kill men, we cannot kill opinion. The best 
 i means of opposing an obstacle to reviving prejudices, is to 
 iv inaugurate great national festivals which shall be as the 
 f splendours of the Republican worship. Some days later (sitting 
 /; of the 9th of Nivose) (December 29th), the representative 
 ■; Clauzel urges the Committee of Public Instruction to hasten 
 -. its work " in order to ruin the influence of the reviving 
 \> fanaticism.'' Lequinio, writing to the Convention from 
 .[ Joinville, where he was on a mission, closes, by these words, a 
 .g letter full of declamatory accusations against the revival of the 
 ,.k religious spirit : — "A remedy is necessary which will effect a radical 
 ,„j,cure; it is only in publi©/|ft|g3ig|i)Mft;r(SB^ the tenth-day feasts 
 
 A A 2 
 
3S6 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 offer one branch of it, so much the more important, that in 
 them instruction will take the form of pleasure. Do not lose a 
 moment in organising them." * 
 
 On the 23rd of Nivose (January 12th), Eschasseriaux the elder, 
 laying on the table a Bill, elaborated by him, carries frankness 
 still further. The question is, indeed, of giving a new caste to 
 the minds, morals, and customs of the nation : " Beware," said he, 
 '' the more the superstition which you replace by civic festivals had, 
 by its prestige, possessed itself of the soul and senses, the more 
 you must give to your festivals those impressions and those true 
 emotions, which, whilst recalling all the energy of the dearest 
 sentiments, end by destroying the dangerous illusions of fanati- 
 cism." The orator does not wish to shackle existing worships ; 
 but he hopes that they will fall of themselves before the national 
 worship. The Committee, at length, made its report, in the 
 sitting of the 17th of Pluviose (5th February, 1795), by the 
 younger Eschasseriaux as their spokesman, who strongly supported 
 the considerations already presented to the Convention. " Tyranny 
 and superstition," said he, " have desolated the earth, you are to 
 enlighten its errors. On the ruins of all the errors, you are about 
 to re-establish the course of the truths of nature, by founding the 
 pure worship which is celebrated under the open sky, the only one 
 which is worthy of the Supreme Being and of free man.'' 
 
 Again, this attempt to supplant Christianity was to sink down 
 into impotency and ridicule. The sentiment of the Infinite is 
 alone capable of founding a worship. Apart from their interests 
 and pleasures, men assemble only around a Divine thought. We 
 shall never succeed in gathering and moving them by vain ab- 
 stractions. Neither patriotic hymns, nor instructions on the 
 Constitution and agriculture, would suffice to exorcise the in- 
 
 Sitting of the 14th of Pluviose of the year III. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
CONSTITUTION OF THE YEAR III. 357 
 
 curable weariness of these festivals ; people were even to be palled 
 with the touching spectacle of old age contrasting with that of 
 childhood. The solemn anniversary of the reproduction of ex- 
 istences had some chance of smoothing countenances; but the 
 inevitable lecture on the rights of the citizen, or on the culture of 
 the potato, would, with difficulty, replace the sacred texts, for 
 which the human soul is yearning, because they bring to it an 
 echo from its country on high. The Committee of Public 
 Instruction reckoned much on civic banquets, but it forgot 
 that every thing depended on the bill of fare, for people were 
 already tired to death of the republican tirades. Boissy d'Anglas 
 proposed, indeed, that they should throw a little variety into the 
 pleasures of the decade, by offering a rose to innocence, but the 
 resource was small in the extreme. Of these festivals, decidedly 
 instituted only under the Directory, there was to remain nothing 
 but the recollection of the most laughable parody. They had only 
 a single serious result, that of furnishing to incredulous fanaticism a 
 convenient opportunity for shackling the free celebration of worship. 
 One of the principal works of the Convention in its last period 
 was the elaboration of the New Constitution which France 
 passionately demanded after Thermidor. The Constitution of 
 1793 had become the flag of the Mountain party — a flag covered 
 with mire and blood — the triumph of which would have brought 
 back the Terror. It was in the name of this Constitution that 
 the national representation had been twice violated. The shape- 
 less work of an oppressed Assembly, it bore the still hot impres- 
 sion of the passions of demagogism. For all these reasons it was 
 odious to a nation eager for repose. The elaboration of the New 
 Constitution was entrusted to a Commission in which moderate 
 opinion was predominant. Daunou and Lanjuinais were members 
 of it, and Boissy d'Anglas was its reporter. We can at once 
 
 perceive that the hard experiences of the three preceding years 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
358"' THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 had oV-erthrown more than one revolutionary prejudice. Thus 
 the division gf the National Parliament into two charnbers, which 
 had been disdainfully repelled by the Constituents of 1789, raised 
 no opposition. No voice protested against the interdiction of 
 the great popular associations which had constituted, during the 
 first period of the Revolution, a permanent demagogic power in 
 front of the regular powers. They had no wish to resuscitate the 
 club of the Jacobins, any more than the too famous Commune of 
 Paris. The Communal Assemblies were replaced by municipal 
 and departmental administrations, composed of three or five 
 members. The election was maintained by two gradations. For 
 the Supreme Committees, which emanated from the Assembly, was 
 substituted a Directory, composed of five members- named by the 
 Two Councils, and charged with the executive power, but within 
 sufficiently narrow limits of responsibility. This Constitution, 
 only the general features of which we indicate, was, doubtless, 
 infinitely better than its predecessors, although it still had serious 
 imperfections. In reality, the Two Councils were composed of 
 elements too much alike to give a sufficient counterpoise,, and the 
 executive power was only a Commission of the Assemblies ; it 
 was unceasingly to aspire to increase its portion of influence and 
 authority. We shall see what a sad regime resulted from: a 
 political organisation which might have been easily ameliorated, 
 and have given liberty to the country if its moral tone had been 
 strengthened. In what concerns religious liberty, the Consti- 
 tution of the year III. laid down the great principles which had 
 triumphed at the Convention since the decree of the 3rd of 
 Ventose. At the express request of a representative, a separate 
 article was devoted to' the right of conscience. It was thus 
 worded : Every man is free in the exercise of his worship. * The 
 
 Sitting of the i5th of M'essidor, year III. (4th of July, 1795). 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
LAST MEASURE OF CONVENTION AGAINST THE REFRACTORY. 359 
 
 Article 132 of the plan of Constitution, declared "that no one 
 can be prevented from exercising, whilst conforming to the laws 
 of police, the worship which he has chosen. No one can be 
 forced to contribute to the expenses of any worship." Andre 
 Dumont demanded that they should reject these words, of police, 
 on the ground that such laws might be insufficient in presence of 
 riotous factions. Lanjuinais rightly insisted on the danger there 
 was in opening a door to intolerance, always inseparable from the 
 laws of exception. Unfortunately, he could not persuade the 
 Assembly. On the motion of one of their members, they added 
 to the proposed Article these words : The Republic pays no 
 worship. It was worth while to present with a full front this 
 great principle, which was one . of the most precious and most 
 dearly-bought conquests of the Revolution.* 
 
 The adoption of the Constitution changed nothing (17th 
 August, 1795) in the lot of the refractory priests. Chazal, deputy 
 on a mission in the Haute-Loire, having believed himself 
 authorised to sjispend the decree of the 20th of Fructidor, the 
 Assembly formally maintained itf It was on these unhappy 
 priests that it struck its last blow on the eve of its dissolution. 
 Under the impression of the riot of the 13th of Vendemiaire 
 (October 4th), provoked especially by its decision that two-thirds 
 of its members should enter into the New Councils, it voted on 
 the report of Tallien, who had become the chief of the violent 
 party, a decree which removed from pubKc functions every ex- 
 noble, and every individual having provoked and signed in the 
 primary or electoral Assemblies, decrees destructive to liberty ; 
 it also required the rigorous execution of the laws against the 
 
 * Sitting of the 30th of Thermidor. 
 
 t Sitting of the 20th of Vendemiaire. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
360 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 emigrants, and rendered executory, in twenty-four hours, the 
 laws against the refractory priests. * 
 
 Thus ended this great and terrible Assembly, which had saved 
 the territory, but which had for a long time ruined the Revolution, 
 by making it an object of terror for the world. It had conse- 
 crated glorious principles, accomplished admirable works, but it 
 did not the less leave the nation wearied, demoralised, and setting 
 nothing above repose, except it be military glory. Despotic to 
 the end, it had even dishonoured its last hour by one of those 
 measures of public safety which had so many times impelled it to 
 crime, and which had inflicted on liberty a more mortal blow than 
 all the combined forces of the coalition. The coups cT Stat were 
 to follow the decrees of public safety. The way was widely opened 
 to usurpation. Such is the fate of every revolution which, in pro- 
 scribing God and trampling under fpot the right of conscience, 
 takes away all eternal base from that which it has tried to 
 construct. 
 
 * Sitting of the 3rd of Brumaire (24th of October, 1795). 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Cfjapter it 
 
 Regime of worships under the Directory. '■■' 
 
 The Constitution of the year III., despite its imperfections, 
 might have given France peace and Hberty, if it had cor- 
 rected itself whilst it lasted, for in preserving free assemblies, 
 a country has always the means of raising itself without a 
 shock. Woe to it if, in its impatience, it breaks this supple 
 instrument of progress and reform ! But respect for an 
 assembly is inseparable from respect for the law, which depends 
 on the moral development of the nation. Now, never since 
 the commencement of the Revolution, was France so demoral- 
 ised as under the Directory. What was wanting in 1789, was 
 neither enthusiasm nor generosity, it was the inflexible principles 
 which are drawn from a sphere higher than that of our fickle im- 
 pulses. There is no absolutely fixed point in man, except in con- 
 science, at the depth at which moral sentiment is confounded 
 with the voice of God himself. We know to what a degree God 
 was absent from a revolution, the daughter of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury. Accordingly, when the hour of enthusiasm had passed, after 
 the horrible fatigue of the years that had just been traversed, no 
 
 * See, besides the " Moniteur," Volumes VIII, IX. and X. of the 
 
 " Histoire de la Revolution," by M. Thiers ; the " Histoire du Direc- 
 
 toire,'' by M. de Barante ; '' Recueil de Theiner ;" the " Histoire de 
 
 Pie VI.," by the Chevalier Artaud ; the " Memoires de Thibaudeau ; " 
 
 the second volume of the "' Memoires de Ponttcoulant ;" the second 
 
 volume of the " Memoires deCarnot ;" " Correspondance deNapoleon." 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
362' THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 solid principle remained standing, like the rock of the shore, to 
 break the wave of the popular or governmental passions; the 
 country was about to be tossed from insurrections to coups d'etat, 
 until one coup d'etat, better combined than the rest, should give 
 to these sha.meful crises the solution which they deser\-ed. Re- 
 publican hypocrisy, mingled with violence, characterises this sad 
 period. To find entire sincerity outside the proscribed priests, 
 who suffered for their faith, we must descend to the lowest regions, 
 where, with Babeyf and his accomplices, the demagogic fury 
 howls like a famished wild beast. The Jacobins, get excited without 
 enthusiasm in their assemblies, and repeat their old speeches 
 before Thermidor, with the sole desire of again seizing the, power 
 and turning it to their own advantage. The Directory reckons - 
 two honest men,,Carnot and Barthelemy, but it will very soon 
 cause this anomaly to disappear; Barras, who united in his 
 person the. vices of the aristocracy and the insatiable greed of de- 
 magogism,. will remain its influential m^n. Rewbell will be its 
 politician, and La Reveilliere-Lepaux will act the apostle in the 
 name of hi.s ridiculous and intolerant theophilanthropy. We may 
 imagine, what the Government will become in the hands of such 
 men, surrounded, like all the powerful, with the courtier-like train 
 of attendants. who find no be,tter means of flattering them than by 
 exaggerating their defects. Internally, they had only one poHcy, 
 arbitrariness. They stop only .before the guillotine, of which France 
 decidedly wishes no more; but they are as audacious in. their con- 
 tempt of all legal guarantees, ,as the Committee of Public Safety in 
 the worst days of the Terror, Externally, such a Government will 
 be without good faith, without moderation, and^supremely unskilful 
 in the art 0/ negociating, for it will show itself much disposed to 
 treat congresses as.- it treats legislative assemblies. Happily, it 
 will have the cliance of discovering the greatest captain of modern 
 
 times, but the Directory will be able to reckon on the sword of 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
SHAMEFUL REGIME OF TH.E DIRECTORY- 363 
 
 Bonaparte, only until the day in which he shsdl have amassed suf- 
 ficient glory to dispense with its control, and. amuse himself with 
 its contradictory orders. The French, under the command of the 
 incomparable general, manifest the marvellous aptitudes of their 
 race for the war of conquest, strongly and skilfully-conducted, but 
 all these triumphs do not raise. them from the abject condition into 
 which they are fallen in civil life.- With rare exceptions, there is 
 no great citizen formed in these armies before, which Europe 
 recoils. On the contrary, most of the. generals who there render 
 themselves illustrious, return from, them with contempt of right, 
 ready to betray the Republic, like Eichegru, or . to oppress it, like 
 Augereau, by making themselves the docile police officers of a vile 
 power. The young hero, on whom , all eyes are fixed, and who 
 has all prestiges,. ahe&dy manifests in his relations with parties, or 
 in his negociations with princes, that total absence of conviction, 
 that disdain of right, .that profound cleverness which has recourse 
 to moderation by calculation, as it will have recourse to violence 
 as soon as it shall have become useful, in fine, all those qualities 
 offeree and suppleness which make him at once so dear and so 
 fatal to Erance. Has he not exactly depicted himself in these 
 confidential woirds on the coup d'etat of Fructidor : " Firmness 
 wouldbave sufficed; force, when one cannot do otherwise; but when 
 one is- master, justice is better." No, , military glory, the natural 
 lot of a. brilliant and energetic race, and which ought also to 
 honour the defence of liberty, does not give, by itself alone, any 
 of the true grandeurs of a free people. W.e might hope, for a mo- 
 ment,, that the moderate and liberal opinion which had sent 
 numerous representatives to the Two Councils, and which pre- 
 vailed the following years, every time that the balloting .was re- 
 spected, would raise the country some little. Unhappily^ several 
 of its chiefs had too maivy mental reservations, and some were 
 
 conspiring against the Republic. . It was, besides, promptly crushed, 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
364 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 and it served rather to goad the evil tendencies of the executive 
 power than to arrest them. 
 
 It was precisely on the religious question that the most violent 
 collision occurred between the moderate party and the majority of 
 the Directory strongly supported in the Two Councils. All those 
 who did not wish to keep the country in a^ state of Revolution, 
 either through incurable fanaticism, or in order to throw their 
 nets into these troubled waters, aspired above all to peace for 
 consciences. Worship was re-established in all parts of the 
 country, and it was acknowledged how indestructible is the 
 religious sentiment. The most simple good sense was sufficient 
 to comprehend that the best policy consisted in abandoning 
 religion to itself, and in rising with anger against the laws which 
 had kindled civil war, and the suspension of which had so 
 promptly appeased La Vendee. The Convention, by abrogating 
 the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and proclaiming the separa- 
 tion of Church and State, had removed the most insurmountable 
 obstacle to measures truly restorative. It remained only largely 
 to apply them, and to complete them by revoking its last decree 
 against the nonjuring priests. If it was thought that the moment 
 had not arrived for abolishing every kind of oath, it was easy to 
 find a formula which should imply obedience to the laws with- 
 out encroaching on religious convictions. There were no surer 
 means of rallying around the new Government the popu ations 
 of the West and South, and of thwarting all the intrigues of the 
 emigrants, who had no better card to play than republican 
 intolerance. Such were the sentiments which animated the New 
 Third of the Councils, and which were shared by the moderate 
 portion of the re-elected members of the Convention ; they had 
 every reason for presenting this opinion as that of their con- 
 stituents, since numerous and energetic petitions unceasingly 
 
 conveyed the expression of it before the Council of the Five- 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
THE DIRECTORY A SWORN ENEMY TO LIBERTY OF WORSHIPS. 365 
 
 Hundred. Unhappily, nothing was more repugnant to the 
 
 majority of the Directory and its partisans than sincere respect 
 
 for liberty of worships. Pure Jacobins, such as Barras and 
 
 Rewbell, hated religion in itself. They no more wished for the 
 
 God adored by ancient France, than for the Supreme Being 
 
 invoked by Robespierre. They definitively ranked him amongst 
 
 the vanquished of the loth of August and 9th of Thermidor 
 
 (July 27th, 1794). He represented in their eyes all that they 
 
 detested in the past, and also that troublesome morality which 
 
 throws a dark shadow over the future of the wicked. We 
 
 have already said that La Reveilliere-Lepaux had his private 
 
 divinity to protect. He was a philosophical inventor of religion ; 
 
 that is to say, that he belonged to the most intolerant race ; in 
 
 order to make room for the ridiculous worship which he patronised, 
 
 he was disposed to throw down every rival altar. He relied little 
 
 on the charm of that sentimental pastoral which he wished to 
 
 substitute for the adoration of the God of the Gospel, and he 
 
 counted more on measures of proscription than on garlands 
 
 of flowers and bowls of milk, touching emblems of the theo- 
 
 philanthropy. Everything announced that the struggle would be 
 
 sharp between the moderate party, who seriously desired liberty of 
 
 worships, and the Directory, who passionately wished to sever 
 
 France from her ancient religion. 
 
 Scarcely had the Two Councils voted, in August, 1796, the law on 
 
 the security of the State — a law with a double edge, directed against 
 
 the extreme Jacobins and the Royalists — than an abominable and 
 
 senseless decree against the refractory priests was presented to 
 
 them. Surely, the law of the 3rd of Brumaire (October 24th), 
 
 which had required within twenty-four hours the execution of all 
 
 the laws passed against them, afforded ample opportunity for their 
 
 persecution. The Directory, in provoking by one of its own 
 
 number, a new and especially a similar decree, evidently only 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
366 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 wished to throw down the gauntlet to the moderate party, and to 
 make, in the face of the country, their profession of revohitionary 
 faith. True, the decree of the 3rd of Brumaire had been almost 
 nowhere applied. The question was of conjuring up this public 
 peril as early as possible. 
 
 The Bill submitted to the Assembly declared that every priest, 
 who should not have taken the oath to the Civil Constitution of 
 the Clergy, should be transported, and should not be able to urge 
 the political oath taken in 1792, nor tlie submission to the laws 
 of the Republic. Within twenty days, all priests affected by this 
 law, were to present themselves to their Municipality to receive a 
 passport. Every ecclesiastic who should not have obeyed this 
 injunction, was to be regarded as a returned emigrant, that is to 
 say, condemned to death. An exception was made in favour of 
 the priests above sixty years of age. There was granted to them 
 a delay of ten days, to allow of their betaking themselves to a 
 house of seclusion. The functionaries convicted of having neg- 
 lected the execution of the present law, were liable to two years 
 imprisonment. Such a decree was the putting of the unsworn 
 Church outside the pale of the law, and the formal proscription of 
 one of the worships which gathered the greatest number of 
 citizens. It was one of the most infamous outrages against con- 
 science which had yet been tried. The debate was very warm ; 
 the revolutionary fanatics, such as Drouet, would not admit objec- 
 tions against so admirable a measure. A deputy bitterly complained 
 of the strange pity of the Moderates for men who breathed only 
 to overturn the Republic. Pastoret replied with energy, and 
 declared that the proposed law was more barbarous than the 
 black code. With what right did they treat as factious the 
 defenders of justice, who, after his example, combated measures 
 worthy of the worst times of the Terror ! " The enemies of 
 
 liberty,'' said he, courageously, " do you wish that I should make 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
VIOLENCE OF THE DIRECTORY AGAINST THE COURT OF ROME. 367 
 
 them known to you ? They are men who, animated not by the 
 national spirit, but by the spirit of faction, look at the country 
 through their hatred, their distrust, their pusillanimity ; they 
 are those who tread under foot the Constitution, unceasingly 
 call for revolutionary measures, and drive us on to the gulf of 
 anarchy and despotism." Some violent persons found the law 
 too mild. There was even one voice raised against the mitiga- 
 tions proposed in favour of the sexagenarian priests. " Those 
 old priests," said the orator, "with, their white locks, inspire more 
 respect, exercise more influence ; their benedictions have greater 
 value. Women adore these great lamas, these old fetiches ; 
 the women then react on the men : thence comes all the mischief." 
 These odious words were as unbecoming as they were harsh. The 
 Council voted the decree thus aggravated. It was carried to the 
 Ancients, but the report was deferred. Th-ere was not found an 
 orator to press the conclusion of these sad debates, and the pro- 
 position was, in the issue, laid aside. 
 
 The attitude of the Directory, in the relations of the Republic 
 with the Holy See, belongs to the same violent and imprudent 
 policy, which rejected discretion where it was specially necessary. 
 General Bonaparte, after his first victories, decided to treat with 
 the governments of Southern Italy ; he did not wish to leave 
 behind him enemies whom he could not yet strike down. It was 
 this that induced the first conferences with a court that had been 
 the most active centre of opposition against the French Revolu- 
 tion. The young general was too consummate a politician to 
 propose conditions that could not be realised, in a negotiation 
 which it was his interest to bring to a conclusion. He was 
 accordingly very much displeased with the manner in which the 
 Directory had disposed of the affair, after the armistice concluded 
 by him at Bologna. But he had not yet won sufficient victories 
 to speak in the tone of a master. The Pope granted, without 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
368 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 delay, the sacrifices of money which were demanded, although 
 it was particularly difficult for him to empty his treasury at a time 
 when he was sustaining a considerable number of refugee priests. 
 He no longer raised any objection against the removal of the objects 
 of art, which were wrested from him for the museums of Paris. 
 But it was not possible for him to admit the new proposals 
 transmitted to him by Count Pierucchi, his delegate to the 
 Directory. The question concerned nothing less than the with- 
 drawal of the briefs by which he had condemned the Civil Con- 
 stitution of the Clergy. Nothing was more unreasonable than 
 such a demand. The temporal prince might despoil himself, but 
 the Head of the Church could not, without dishonour and abdi- 
 cation, submit one of his doctrinal decisions to the fluctuations of 
 politics. The whole Catholic Church was thus put on trial and 
 offended. The Directory endeavoured to accomplish with respect 
 to the conscience of its head the outrage of which the Revolution 
 had been guilty towards the nonjuring priests. What folly was 
 there not in raising and aggravating externally the most serious 
 difficulty that the Republic had encountered internally ? We 
 recognise there, indeed, the imbecile obstinacy of a sectary such 
 as La Reveilliere-Lepaux. Although ill, the Pope convoked a con- 
 sistory, who unanimously decided that they could not grant such 
 a demand without entirely subverting religion.* The unhappy 
 Pontiff exclaimed : " We find the martyr's crown more brilliant 
 than that which we wear on our head." It was very well under- 
 stood at Rome that the Directory, in reality, wished for war, 
 since it demanded what it could not obtain. They accordingly 
 prepared themselves for defence, but without hope, for no 
 external succour was to be expected. Bonaparte wrote in a very 
 harsh tone to this court of old men, whom it was easy to frighten. 
 
 * " Histoire de Pie VI.," by the Chevalier Artaud, p. 365. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
TREATY OF TOLENTINO. 369 
 
 He enumerated his victories, and threatened to crown them by 
 the overthrow of the Papal power. Nevertheless, underhandedly 
 he sought conciliation through the medium of Cardinal Mattel. 
 The latter replied with dignity to one of his imperious summonses : 
 " Sir General, the successes of your army of Italy have blinded 
 you through an intolerable abuse of prosperity ; not content with 
 having shorn the sheep even to the skin, you wish also to devour 
 them, and you require the Pope to sacrifice his soul, and that of 
 the peoples whose fate is confided to him. You demand the total 
 destruction of the bases which constitute the Christian religion. 
 The Holy Father, dismayed by this insupportable pretension, has 
 thrown himself into the bosom of God, to pray Him to enlighten 
 his servant on what he ought to do in such circumstances. The 
 Holy Spirit, doubtless, has enlightened His servant, and has re- 
 called to him the example of the martyrs." 
 
 This language was stamped with dignity. The victories ob- 
 ained over the miserable Pontifical troops were without glory. 
 Bonaparte was accordingly in haste to conclude peace, despite the 
 passionate suggestions of the Directory, who would have held 
 above everything to the overthrow of the Papacy. " You are 
 too accustomed to politics," we read in a despatch addressed from 
 Paris in February, 1797, to the General of the army of Italy, "not 
 to have felt as well as we, that the Roman religion will always be 
 the irreconcilable enemy of the Republic ; first by its essence, 
 and then because its servants and ministers will never forgive the 
 blows which it has inflicted on the fortune and credit of some, 
 and on the prejudices and habits of others. The Directory in- 
 vites you to do all that shall appear possible to you, without 
 re-kindling the flame of fanaticism, to destroy the Papal govern- 
 ment, either by placing Rome under another power, or better 
 still, by establishing a form of internal government, which would 
 
 render the yoke of the priests odious and contemptible." It 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
37° THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 could not be more frankly avowed, that the French Revolution 
 intended to turn to its advantage a war of opinion and religion. 
 Bonaparte comprehended all the grave and dangerous results 
 involved in the premature downfall of the Pontifical throne. He 
 was, accordingly, prepared to treat. He no longer spoke of the 
 senseless clause of making the Pope revoke his briefs on the Civil 
 Constitution of the Clergy, and he signed at Tolentino (17th of 
 February, 1797), a treaty by which he obtained from the Holy 
 Father the abandonment of the Legations, the renunciation of his 
 pretended rights over Avignon, a large war contribution, and the 
 surrender of precious objects of art. The treaty of Tolentino 
 may always be appealed to against those who pretend that the 
 temporal dominion of the Holy See is absolutely inalienable. " 
 It proves that, like all terrestrial powers, it is subject to the 
 hazards of politics. 
 
 The elections of 1797 had strengthened, in the Council, the 
 influence of the moderate party, and it assumed a more decided 
 manner. Several of the new deputies, such as Camille Jordan 
 and Royer-Collard, had been strangers to the violent measures of 
 the Revolution. They were new men, embarrassed by no anterior 
 engagement. They were, above all, strangers to the anti-religious 
 passions, and they represented populations much attached to 
 Christianity, and more and more dissatisfied with the intolerance 
 of the Directory. The session opened in a significant manner by 
 the nomination of Barthelemy as a Director, and by the revision 
 of the revolutionary laws. The religious question could not fail 
 to be promptly entered upon. Already in the sitting of the 13th 
 of June, Gilbert Desmoliere, in a report on the finances, com- 
 plained of the low state into which public education -had fallen. 
 An increasing number of parents refused to entrust their children 
 to schools from which religious instruction had been carefully 
 banished. This very marked awakening of the religious senti- 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
REPORT OF CAMILLE JORDAN ON LIBERTY OF WORSHIPS. 37 1 
 
 ment, to be hereafter described, rendered particularly odious the 
 laws of persecution which figured in the first rank in this revolu- 
 tionary code which they had begun to revise. Camille Jordan 
 made himself the organ of the demands which surged up from 
 every part against the hindrances to liberty of worships. He pro- 
 nounced, in the sitting of the i6th, a memorable speech, in which 
 he defended the right of conscience for all citizens indiscrimi- 
 nately, without feeling himself obliged to seek forgiveness for his 
 boldness by invectives against Christianity. He did not fear to 
 borrow from religion some elevated considerations. " Do not be 
 astonished," said he in commencing, " at the interest that these 
 men, accustomed to nourish themselves with religious ideas, 
 attach to them. These ideas assure to them enjoyments inde- 
 pendent of the power of men and of the strokes of, fortune. The 
 need of them is, above all, felt amongst nations in revolution; then 
 is hope specially necessary to the unhappy; these ideas cause a 
 ray of light to gleam upon them in the asylum of grief; they 
 illumine even the night of the tomb. Legislators, what are your 
 benefits by the side of this immense benefit?" The orator then 
 invoked respect for the popular will, which was showing itself more 
 and more firmly attached to religious institutions. " Yes, legis- 
 lators," added he, "it is useful and precious for you that religions 
 exist, that they exercise at ferge their powerful influence; they 
 alone speak effectually of morality to the people; they prepare 
 your work, —they could finish it without you. Laws are only the 
 supplement of the morality of peoples. If it is wished to raise a 
 barrier against the disquieting progress of disorder and crime, it is 
 necessary to render liberty to all worships." Camilla Jordan ex- 
 plained, without evasion, what he understood by this liberty. He 
 established, with powerful logic, that the priest, pot being a 
 functionary acknowledged and paid by the State, ought not to be 
 
 subjected to any oath or political declaration. The citizens 
 
 DigitU^ by Microsoft® 
 
372 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 ought to be allowed to elect priests of their own choosing. Th( 
 
 civil power had to occupy itself only with the maintenance o 
 
 public order; all that had relation to religion was outside its juris 
 
 diction. It followed that the citizens should have the right a 
 
 buying or renting temples, of assembling there, of erecting therf 
 
 the signs of their belief, of practising its ceremonies and publishing 
 
 its doctrines. It should even be permitted them to have a domestic 
 
 temple in their house; the determination of the holy-days be 
 
 longed to the different Churches. It was only too easy for th( 
 
 reporter to show how much, on all these points, liberty of worshipi 
 
 was trammelled in France under the influence of revolutionary 
 
 prejudices. Camille Jordan then insisted, with energy, on thi 
 
 absurdity of the decrees which prohibited the priests from con 
 
 voking the faithful by the sound of bell, according to the ancien 
 
 custom: "Why," said he, sensibly, "should we, then, oppose : 
 
 philosophical superstition to the superstition which attaches thi 
 
 women of our villages to the bell of their parish ? " Funera 
 
 ceremonies had been, since Chaumette, the object of impious o 
 
 ridiculous regulations. " Ah ! I conceive," exclaimed the oratoi 
 
 with a sublime eloquence, " why these tyrants, who have covere( 
 
 France with tombs, stripped them of their pomps ! why they casi 
 
 with so much indecency, the last remains of man into the re 
 
 ceptacle of the cemetery. They had need of despising humanit) 
 
 and it was necessary to stifle the generous. sentiments whose rf 
 
 action would be terrible to them." Camille Jordan thus coi 
 
 eluded: "You will realise the ancient wish of philosophy; yo 
 
 will give to the world the spectacle of a great empire in which a 
 
 modes of worship can be practised with an equal protection, an 
 
 inspire affection for men and respect for laws." 
 
 This speech was an event. It excited the fury of the ban an 
 
 arriere-ban of the Jacobins. They tried, by foolish railleries o 
 
 the ringing of bells, to cause the great maxims of public right, ar 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
FINE DEBATE ON LIBERTY OF WORSHIPS. 373 
 
 the noble words which had that day honoured the National 
 Tribune, to be forgotten. The discussion on this report took place 
 in the Council of the Five-Hundred, two months afterwards (8th 
 of July, 1797), at the end of a smart debate on the emigrants. 
 The Commission, in the name of which Camille Jordan had 
 spoken, had presented to the Assembly the following proposition: 
 " The laws which have pronounced the penalty of transportation 
 or seclusion against the priests, for the sole cause of refusal of the 
 oath and of declaration of submission to the laws of the Republic, 
 are repealed. The laws passed against the citizens, who should 
 have given asylum to the said priests, are equally repealed. The 
 said priests shall recover all their rights as citizens." This 
 measure would have admirably completed those proposed by 
 Camille Jordan. General J.ourdan, who belonged to the extreme 
 portion of the revolutionary party, opened the discussion by one 
 of the most violent speeches against all modification of the 
 existing laws. The influence of religion seemed as deadly to him 
 as it had appeared beneficent to Camille Jordan. " The priests," 
 said he, " can create or destroy governments, transform Louis 
 XVI. into a martyr, and devote to ignominy the heroes of the 
 Revolution." .... The orator wished that they should be sub- 
 jected to a declaration of submission to the laws of the Repubhc, 
 and that all the churches should be sold. He energetically 
 opposed the recall of the refractories, for the reason that good 
 policy places itself above legality "in a time of revolution, in which 
 one of the parties must crush the other." It was on this ground 
 that the debate was carried on with the greatest spirit; the left 
 appealed to the exceptional situation of the country, and pas- 
 sionately defended the measures of public safety; whilst the right 
 demanded that they should put an end to a crisis so prolonged, 
 and inaugurate the reign of law. Lemerer and Boissy d'Anglas 
 
 eloquently sustained this last party; Boulay de la Meurthe 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
374 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 awkardly defended the Civil Constitution of the Clergy; and 
 Lamarque shook anew before the Assembly the poniard of the 
 Saint Bartholomew, so often appealed to in these debates as a 
 decisive reason for persecuting the priests. " We do not wish," 
 cried he, " for the God of their fathers, for their fathers were 
 barbarians. The true God is that of toleration and humanity." 
 Whence the orator concluded that it was necessary to maintain 
 the most intolerant measures. There is heard in this discussion the 
 grave voice of a young deputy destined to exercise a great influence 
 on the liberal party for many years. Royer-Collard made his first 
 appearance at the tribune by defending the noblest of causes. 
 We find in this first speech the stern vigour of his language,, and 
 also that masterly ability to enlarge the debate at the risk of 
 rather losing it in abstraction. He showed, with sound sense, 
 that the Catholic religion was profoundly rooted in the country, 
 that it was indestructible there, that it had survived the monarchy, 
 the birth of which it had preceded, and triumphed over all the 
 attacks which had been made upon it by revolutionary tyranny. 
 "A rising Government which should persist in proscribing it, 
 would see the blows recoil upon itself which it would inflict on 
 religion." The young orator was wrong in boasting beforehand 
 the regime of the Concordats. "Whenever," said he, "there exists 
 in a State a religion genesrally and for a long tiirte- adopted, it is 
 necessary for the Government to form an alliance with it based 
 on the^ interest of a reciprocal support." This was precisely what 
 the Constituent Assembly had tried in the Civil Constitution of 
 the Clergy, and it would have been wiser to renounce every 
 enterprise of the same kind. Royer-Collard displayed a manly 
 eloquence in depicting the sufferings of the Church under tlie 
 revolutionary regime. " Do not fear," said he, " that the Catholic 
 religion may abuse hberty by aspiring to tyranny. No, she will 
 neither oppress other sects, nor^. the negative liberty of the in- 
 
SPEECH OF ROYER-COLLARD. 375 
 
 different; attacked herself each day, despoiled of her external 
 ceremonies, bereft of her pontiffs, she has enough to do to defend 
 herself; it is not the time for her to meditate conquests." To 
 those who appealed to, as a peril, the power of the high clergy 
 under Ancient France, the orator thus answered : " It would be 
 the strangest inconsistency, and the most atrocious mockery, to 
 accuse them to-day of what they have been, and to raise against 
 them the remembrance of a power so completely vanished. 
 Doubtless, after long and bloody sufferings, there are implacable 
 remembrances, there are immortal hatreds ; but experience teaches 
 us, but our own hearts attest, that these remembrances, that these 
 hatreds are especially felt by the oppressors, who spurn the public 
 pardon, because they cannot obtain that of conscience, condemned 
 to crime by crime, true enemies, sole enemies of the public peace. 
 The oppressed, on the contrary, when he has settled into a senti- 
 ment of resignation, considers the mere cessation of his evils a 
 benefit; he repays this benefit with all his gratitude. What do I 
 say? he attaches almost the idea of justice to moderation in in- 
 justice. They hate, it is said, the Republican Government ; but 
 which ? Is it the Revolutionary Government ? Ah ! I believe it 
 without difficulty; it has crammed them into prisons and made 
 them perish by massacres, hunger and cold ; it has drowned them, 
 shot them, and presented them as a spectacle of carnage. But 
 the government which shall repair what is capable of being re- 
 paired, why should they hate it ? " The peroration pf the speech 
 is admirable : " Justice, confidence, generosity so much decried 
 by tyranny, you aire not only the most noble sentiment of the 
 human soul, you are also the greatest thought of governments, 
 the most learned poKtical combination, the most profound of 
 crafts. To the ferocious cry of the demagogue invoking : ' Bold- 
 ness, then boldness, and still boldness ! ' let us reply by this con- 
 solatory and conquering cry, which shall resound throughout all 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
376 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 France: 'Justice, then justice, and still justice !'" The Assembly 
 voted, almost unanimously, the Bill which put an end to the 
 transportation of the nonjuring priests. The left obtained the 
 article relative to the declaration of submission to the laws only 
 on the second debate. Notwithstanding this restriction, liberty of 
 worships had obtained a great victory, and its triumph would have 
 been soon complete if this beneficent movement had not been 
 suddenly arrested by the coup d'etat of Fructidor. It is certain 
 that one of the principal causes of this outrage was precisely the 
 re-establishment of the liberty of worships. The report presented 
 at this period by Thibaudeau on the political situation of the 
 country, leaves no doubt in this respect. "They denounce to us," 
 said he, "the insolence of the emigrants and refractory priests, 
 recalled and openly favoured. The Council of the Five-Hundred, 
 despite of party spirit and the rising pretentions of a worship 
 formerly dominant, has conformed to the principles proposed by 
 philosophy and sanctioned by the Constitution : liberty of con- 
 science, equal protection for all worships, submission of their 
 ministers secured by a declaration." 
 
 We have not to recount the circumstances of the hideous 
 ambuscade of the i8th of Fructidor (September 4th). That 
 violation of the national representation, skilfully calculated by the 
 depositaries of authority, is infinitely more culpable than the 
 popular irruptions. The mixture of cunning and violence renders 
 the crime more odious. We must throw a veil over those fatal 
 days in which a drunken soldiery brutally insults the right that it 
 suppresses — those days in which it can laughingly repeat this word 
 of an obscure officer to the proscribed whom he was charged to 
 arrest : "Law! It is the sabre.'' Such days are a great dishonour 
 for the armies which lend themselves to them, and for the 
 countries which support them; their victories alone go forth 
 from them pure and glorious. Most of the generals praised the 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
COUP d'etat of i8th fructidor and its consequences. 377 
 
 coup d'etat of the i8th of Fructidor; the reserve of Bonapartb 
 was only owing to his ambitious calculations. It was the 
 criticism of a consummate gamester on a hazardous and ill- 
 contrived move, and not the indignation of a friend of liberty. 
 The coup ' d'etat of Fructidor had no plausible pretext. It is not 
 true that the Republic was threatened, because the Council of the 
 Five-Hundred was returning to moderation. What was really on 
 trial was not the form of the Government, but its policy; it was 
 revolutionary violence which the majority of the Directory did 
 not wish to renounce. The question was to know if the Republic 
 should become liberal, or if it should continue to rule as the 
 ancient monarchy by State reason, which tramples under foot all 
 notions of right. The outrage of the i8th of Fructidor was 
 accomplished to the profit of the revolutionary dictatorship against 
 the rising liberty. If it did not make blood flow, it was not the 
 less a murderer, for the transportation which it practised was 
 nothing else than a condemnation to death, a slow punishment. 
 From that fatal day the Republic was lost; it showed itself 
 decidedly incompatible with liberty, and under pretext of .per- 
 petuating itself it lost all right of existence. The immoral and 
 iniquitous power which pretends to rept'Csent it, cannot even main- 
 tain public order, taken up, as it is, with continuing in order to 
 make the most out of the country. Accustomed to managing 
 nothing, it renders peace impossible, and it tears to pieces the 
 scarcely-concluded treaty of Campo-Formio. With the finest 
 armies and the best generals in tlie world, it loses the fruit of the 
 last campaigns, because it is guided in its capricious choices 
 solely by the desire of recompensing its creatures and removing 
 its rivals. The unexpected stroke of fortune at Zurich was 
 necessary to prevent a great disaster. The brilliant and barren 
 ^expedition to Egypt, after having served the interests of the 
 
 Directors, uneasy from the proximity of a dazzling glory, turns to 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
3.78 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 the profit of the absorbing personality which is about to possess 
 itself of all the forces of the country. In the interior, the power 
 can preserve the results of the coup d'6tat of Fructidor only by 
 new coups d'etat, base and hypocritical, which dishonour France. 
 The elections of 1798, which have sent to the Councils a moderate 
 and liberal fraction, are annulled by the law of the 22nd of Floreal, 
 which boldly declares that, when the majority of the electors has 
 not granted its approval to the Government, it belongs to the 
 minority, united in dissident section, to give the true representa- 
 tion of opinion. In vain does the Directory multiply revolutionary 
 measures, suspend the liberty of the press, practise domiciUary 
 visits, and incessantly retirrn to the most unbridled arbitrary rule. 
 The country-will have no more of it. The new elections made in 
 1799, and which they dare not annul-, cause it. to lose the majority 
 in the Councils. 
 
 La Reveilliere-Lepaax and Merlin have to withdraw before an 
 unreconcilable opposition. Sieyes becomes- master of the situa- 
 tion, but people very soon ask themselves what has been gained 
 by this new change, when they see the abominable law of hostages 
 issue from the first deliberations of the renovated Councils. The 
 Convention had imagined nothing more iniquitous than a measure 
 which implicated the- relatives of- the emigrants or suspected in 
 intrigues of which they were perfectly innocent. In reality, the 
 reaction against the Directory did not come so much from the 
 moderate party, decimated by the coup d'dtat- of Fructidor, as 
 from the Jacobin party, which it had sometimes caressed, some- 
 times repelled, but never satisfied. Itwas not ideas which clashed, 
 but ambitions. The country was weary of all these continual 
 perplexities of which it was the victim ; it was accordingly ready 
 to yield itself to any one who would give it repose. Sieyes thought 
 to do this, but he was obliged to withdraw to the back-ground as 
 
 soon as General Bonaparte had set foot on the soil of France. 
 Digitized by Microsofm 
 
RETURN TO THE PROSCRIPTIONS AGAINST THE PRIESTS. 379 
 
 1 he conqueror of the Pyramids was admirably prepared to occupy 
 the position and govern it He had glory, the genius for adminis- 
 tration, as well as that for war, the gift of fascinating minds, 
 and no principles to cramp his excessive but profoundly skitful 
 ambition. 
 
 The 1 8th of Brumaire (November 8 th) is the merited solution 
 of the crisis- of Fructidor; it is not a deliverance, it is a chastise- 
 ment, with glorious compensations — ^but compensations which will 
 be destroyed one after another ; for the moderation which would 
 preserve them' is not compatible with the ardent geniiis which has 
 shown, on the very day of its triumph,- that it accepted no moral' 
 curb. I know nothing more sad in contemporary history than the- 
 scenes which, precede the fatal date ; the conspirators making a 
 sport of humbling the National Parliament and banishing it to 
 Saint-Cloud, in order that its dying voice may awaken .no echo in 
 Paris ; the Cbancils themselves not knowing how to honour their 
 •defeat, and finding only the passions of the clubs when they ought 
 to have spoken the manly language .of right ; General Bonaparte 
 stammering at the tribune, and turning pale before the greatly- 
 marred image of. liberty, until he has given to his grenadiers the 
 concerted signal— all that in the name of the principles of 1789 — 
 what a pitiable - comedy to introduce an epopee ! Happy the 
 people who have, not seen, and seen again, such scenes. Let .them 
 boast to>us of order re-established in the finances and on the .high- 
 ways j let them celebrate the miracle of Marengo^-but let them 
 not go further, and let them not ask us to applaud the i8th of 
 Brumaire as the. triumphant conclusion . of the . drama, of the 
 Revolution. 
 
 " Nos perfis etaient moi>ts, dans une a-utre esperance." 
 Our fathers died in another hope. 
 
 We can easily imagine the attitude of the Directory since the 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
380 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 1 8th of Fructidor, in respect to liberty of worships. They found 
 nothing more urgent than to repeal the last decrees proclaiming it, 
 and again to put into operation the severest measures against the 
 nonjuring priests. La Reveilliere-Lepaux, in his message to the 
 mutilated Councils, thus qualified the restorative laws just voted : 
 "Superstition and fanaticism have been recalled by the very 
 persons who, under the monarchy, had helped to destroy them." * 
 There was added to the declaration of submission to the laws of 
 the Republic the oath of hatred to royalty. Nearly two hundred 
 priests were transported to Sinnamari with the moderate represen- 
 tatives.: almost all died in a few months. In France, persecution 
 was renewed with violence. Domiciliary visits were authorised to 
 search out again the refractories, who once more filled the prisons 
 and the hulks. The representative ChoUet vainly tried to get 
 liberty of worships sanctioned anew under the reserve of a simple 
 declaration of submission to the 'established Government This 
 Bill, submitted to the Council of th€ Five-Hundred in the. sitting , 
 of the 14th of Frimaire (December 4th), was set aside in that 
 of the 23rd of Nivose (January 4th) by the previous question. 
 
 It was no longer merely as factious persons that priests were 
 pursued, but as ministers of an abhorred religion. The institution 
 of the tenth-day festivals offered a conrvenient means of persecuting 
 the adherents of the ancient worship. The representative Duhot, 
 who, for his fiery and bitter zeal against the Sabbath, deserved to 
 be called the Chevalier Decadaire, got passed, on the 28th of 
 Brumaire year VI. (Nov. i8th, 1798), a decree, according to which, 
 the celebration of the tenth-day was enforced. Duhot, in the 
 sitting of the 3rd of Brumaire, had thus justified his proposal : 
 " In vain would they tell you that you hurt the private regulations 
 of each sect ; legislators are not bound to study the religions in 
 
 * Sitting of -the 1 8th of Fru&tidor, Year III. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
FORCED CELEBRATION OF THE TENTH-DAY. 381 
 
 order to create laws ; it is for the ministers of public worship to 
 study these laws in order to establish their religion. In vain would 
 they still tell you that you wound individual liberty, only the 
 enemies of general liberty will hold this language to you." The 
 Jacobins in the Council of the Five-Hundred, not content with 
 having got decreed the forced celebration of the tenth-day, wished, 
 also, that the celebration of the Sabbath should be formally pro- 
 hibited. Some deputies observed that such a measure would 
 place France below the States of the Pope in the matter of reli- 
 gious liberty. Their amendment was rejected on the ground that 
 it was not republican. " It is the external sign of a worship," said 
 the representative Duhot, — " that closing of all shops." He con- 
 cluded therefrom that the rest of the Sabbath inflicted a blow on 
 the legislation of the country. " What !" exclaimed he, some 
 weeks after that, "the great priest of Rome, so long attacked by 
 philosophy, and dethroned by your true defeliders, is obliged to 
 carry his vagabond piety from place to place ; his ministers dare 
 still exercise amongst us an insolent despotism ; they forbid to 
 work on the Sabbath, and prevent Catholic workmen from occu- 
 pying themselves that day in their workshops." Such speeches 
 reveal to what a degree of baseness the French tribune was re- 
 duced. The Assembly took into serious consideration the pro- 
 position to transfer to the tenth-day all the religious festivals, and 
 sent to the Commission, with its approbation, a motion, the pur- 
 port of which was, that it was forbidden to close the shops on the 
 days consecrated to rest by the ancient calendar. A decree was 
 also demanded to prohibit, under severe , penalties, every usage 
 and practise which should derogate from the republican calendar. 
 They required that the fairs should be referred to other days than 
 the tenth-day, with the manifest intention of giving the preference 
 to the Sabbath, in order the better to strike at religious habits. 
 
 There was even a deputy found to propose that they should grant 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
382 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLU.TION. 
 
 protection only to those tradesmen who should take the oath to 
 use none but the repubUcan weights and measures, and to keep 
 their shops open on the Sundays and festival days of the ancient 
 calendar. We should thus have had the sworn and the refractory 
 of the shop, after having had those of the temple. This was not 
 yet enough : an obscure deputy demanded that, in place of reck- ' 
 oning the preceding centuries from the birth of Jesus Christ, they 
 should reckon them backwards from the foundation of the Re- 
 public. These propositions, odiously absurd, were all sent to-the 
 Commission, which would have most certainly converted them 
 into law, if the storm of Brumaire had not swept away 'all these 
 impertinencies. 
 
 The violent party might, however, talce patiently the slowness of 
 the legislative machinery. The administration served it to its 
 heart's content, and practised a vile and bitter persecution over 
 the entire surface of the country. Already, in the sitting of the 
 25th, Frimaire year VI. (Dec. 15th, 1798), Gregoire had com- 
 plained of a circular of Gohier, the Minister of the Interior, who 
 demanded of the ministers of all religions to transfer their services 
 to the tenth-day. " How many unhappy priests," we read in the 
 "Memoires de Gregoire, "hunted, imprisoned, transported beyond 
 the seas, for having refused to submit to the decrees by which the 
 municipalities and administrators invited, under penalty of tran- 
 sportation, to transfer the Divine services to the tenth-day! The 
 members of the central administration of Yonne, indisputably 
 obtained the palm in this kind of tyranny."* Let us imagine to 
 what a degree such measures must wound the religious sentiment, 
 and even exasperate it, by being periodically repeated and by 
 causing a hateful tyranny to descend into the most minute circum- 
 
 * "Memoires de Gregoire," II., p. 77, &c. See also the curious 
 work : " Memoire en faveur de Dieu," pp. 236, 237. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
CARRYING OFF OF POPE PIUS VI.— HIS DEATH AT VALENCE. 383 
 
 Stances of life, in such a manner that it cannot be forgotten for a 
 single instant. 
 
 The events which had just taken place in Italy were quite of a 
 nature to put the climax to the discontent and indignation of all 
 the adherents of Catholicism. The treaty of Tolentino concluded 
 with the Holy Father, had been only a truce. It would, doubtless, 
 have been otherwise if General Bonaparte had remained in Italy. 
 The Directory, freed from all control after Fructidor, passionately 
 pursued its favourite plan of overthrowing the Papacy. It began 
 by openly favouring the revolutionary party at Rome. General 
 Duphot, the intended brother-in-law of Joseph Bonaparte, pleni- 
 potentiary of the Republic to the Holy See, was killed in riot,' 
 TOthout its being known whether he had sought to excite or to 
 calm it. It was the occasion desired for the rupture. The un- 
 happy Pius VI., although broken down by age and sickness, was 
 carried off from Rome, transferred to Tuscany, then into France, 
 where he died at Valence, miserably for himself, gloriously and 
 usefiilly for his cause, since his presence and sufferings excited 
 the most lively enthusiasm in the very place of his exile.* The 
 Directory might be convinced that nothing is more dangerous 
 than to make martyrs, since it was these outrages against the 
 liberty of religion which most contributed to dishonour and 
 destroy it It fell into infamy and impotency ; its policy had been 
 so hateful that the coup d'etat of the i8th of Brumaire seemed a 
 reparation to many honest but deceived people. Nothing con- 
 demns it so severely as the satisfaction with which the country 
 saw it replaced by the military dictatorship. It must, indeed, 
 have disgusted France for the latter to congratulate herself on 
 such an end of the great liberal movement of 1789 ! 
 
 * See the '' Histoire de Pie VI.," by the Chevalier Artaud. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
C&aptcr at 
 
 The Altars raised again by Liierty. 
 
 Liberty of worships has not really existed a single day in France 
 
 during the course of the Revolution. We have seen to what 
 
 degree it was restrained, even under the rdgime of the separation 
 
 of Church and State ; and yet we have mentioned only legislative 
 
 measures, or those which emanated from the superior power. 
 
 We shall have frequent occasion to prove how much more 
 
 rigorous these measures became in their application ; almost 
 
 everywhere the local administration singularly aggravated them 
 
 and openly placed itself at the service of the anti-religious 
 
 passions. Nevertheless, despite all these disadvantages, religion 
 
 profited by the incomplete liberty which was allowed to it ; and 
 
 from the day on which it ceased to enter into the administration 
 
 of the country, and was abandoned to itself, it rose again, with 
 
 astonishing rapidity, from the discredit into which it had fallen : the 
 
 France of the eighteenth century presented the unexpected sight of 
 
 a powerful awakening of the Christian faith. Nothing, then, is 
 
 more false than to attribute to a fortunate coup d'etjit the raising 
 
 again of the altars. No, they arose of themselves on a soil still 
 
 trembling and covered with ruins. The First Consul only arrested, 
 
 one of the finest religious movements which have honoured our 
 
 country, by seeking to regulate, or rather to regimentalise it 
 
 Truly, no task was more difficult than that of re-establishing 
 
 worship without any other support than free convictions, in a., 
 
 country where sensualism had seemed the last word of philosophy,'! 
 
 where a railing impiety had reigned undisputed in the drawing- 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
MORAL CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY UNDER THE DIRECTORY. 385 
 
 rooms, in order to descend like an overflowing torrent from these 
 social heights into the streets and crossways. The question was 
 not only of combating subversive ideas, but also of conquering 
 all the bad passions which profit by them. On the morrow of 
 the Terror, the moral state of France was deplorable. She had 
 commenced by making to herself of liberty a religion ; the crimes 
 committed in its name had quickly disgusted her, and as she had 
 not preserved the beliefs which console for all deceptions, and 
 save the soul from a universal and morbid doubt, with her 
 illusions she had lost the faculty of believing, that is to say, the 
 great moral spring which is the curb par excellence. 
 
 This scepticism did not hinder her renewed force from boiling 
 up in her, and she had still much of it to employ, even after what 
 she had expended in war. Paris was possessed with a sort of 
 madness for pleasure as soon as the depressing tension of those 
 evil days had ceased. It threw away the red cap, but it carried 
 into the festivals the passion which had rendered it so cruel ; it 
 was once more seen how kindred pleasure is to sanguinary 
 violence. The writers of the time, who have been pleased to 
 trace the picture of Parisian society at this period, are unanimous 
 in depicting it as seized with a feverish impatience to enjoy life, 
 and shamelessly abandoning itself to this impulse. Never, 
 perhaps, had debauchery been seen to display itself in open day 
 with such boldness. Paris had, in the Palais Royal, a real bazaar 
 of the vices. Amusement and prostitution drew thither a luxurious 
 youth who had all the corruption of the ancient regime, without 
 the elegance which imposes a certain reserve.* What is most 
 serious, the family was tottering to its base, thanks to the im- 
 heard-of facility of divorce, and the almost "complete identification 
 
 *See the " Nouveau Paris," by Mercier; the " Memoires" of the 
 time and the work of M. M. de Goncourt, on the Revolution. 
 ' D/g/feac/ by Microsoft® 
 
386 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 of natural with legitimate children. They reckoned one divorce 
 for eleven marriages, and bonds so easily broken were very little- 
 respected whilst tliey subsisted. A journal of the time gave the 
 true explanation of this deplorable condition. " We are," we read 
 in the "Eclair," "the only nation on the globe which has believed 
 it possible to do without religion. How, therefore, do we find 
 ourselves already ? Each tenth-day they frighten us with the 
 recital of more crimes and assassinations than were formerly 
 committed in a year. At the risk of speaking a dead language, 
 and receiving insults for answer, we declare that we must cease 
 to destroy the traces of religion if we wish to prevent the dis- 
 solution of social order.'' The religious restoration found a great 
 obstacle in the widely-spread prejudice that there was an in- 
 compatibility between Christianity and the new institutions. 
 Unhappily, the intrigues of the emigrant clergy had contributed 
 to strengthen this prejudice which, blind and unjust, like all 
 passionate prepossessions, united in the same condemnation the 
 liberal clergy and the royalist priests. That which the Revo- 
 lution had most difficulty in pardoning to religion, was its own 
 violence and iniquities with respect to it. It seemed to it that 
 the sole means of justifying itself, was to push them to the last 
 extremity by destroying the remembrance of the offence with the 
 very existence of the offended. Despite all these difficulties, 
 religion was to obtain great triumphs, as soon as the least liberty 
 of action should be restored to it under the influence of an 
 energetic reaction, which was very far, however, from being the 
 return to justice and right 
 
 It is known that the Church of France was divided into two 
 sections still much opposed to each other. Even after the abro- 
 gation, in fact, of this too famous Civil Constitution of the Clergy, 
 which had given birth to the schism, the struggle between the 
 
 jurors and nonjurors had not been interrupted for a single day ; 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
HOSTILITY OF THE TWO CLERGIES. 387 
 
 the former had preserved the semi-presbyterian organism which 
 had been for a moment the official rehgion of France ; the latter 
 had redoubled their attachment to the Holy See. This animosity, 
 of which we find traces even in the ecclesiastical historians 
 of to-day, will not prevent us from fairly acknowledging the 
 glorious part of the two clergies in the revival of faith in France. 
 In the heat of their differences, they were not capable of appre- 
 ciating and esteeming each other ; but the privilege of history 
 is precisely to escape from these sad misunderstandings which 
 divided noble hearts made to comprehend each other. The 
 Constitutional priests were wrong in seeing in the refractory 
 priests only royalist conspirators, and in closing the eyes to their 
 pious courage ; as, on the other hand, the nonjuring priests were 
 unjust and implacable in disowning the pure and sincere zeal 
 with which the clergy, who had taken the oath, laboured in the 
 midst of many difficulties and perils, for the re-establishment of 
 worship in France. The persecution common to both during the 
 Terror, ought to have reconciled them. It was not so ; their 
 dissensions broke out even on the hulks on which they were 
 enduring the same sufferings. It belongs to us to-day to re-unite 
 them in our regard for their heroic devotedness to the service of 
 religion. Let others dig up the tombs to search there for posthu- 
 mous calumnies, and to resuscitate quarrels, the motives for which 
 no longer exist. For us, at the distance that we are, we can only 
 applaud those efforts, equally generous, although diverse, to restore 
 to France the God whom she had appeared to renounce, and 
 whom, nevertheless, she could not do without, for never will a 
 great country finally resign itself to abjure religious ideas; the 
 ' delirium which has driven it to reject them is only the paroxysm 
 of a violent fever, which would be death if it was not transitory. 
 Besides, the very effort attempted to destroy religion tends to 
 
 increase its power, for it purifies itself in the fire of persecution, 
 ^ Digrtized by Microsoft® 
 
 C C 2 
 
388 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 and finds again its ascendency over souls in that which appeared 
 destined completely to overthrow it. 
 
 The philosophy hostile to Christianity endeavoured to turn to its 
 profit the awakening of the religious sentiment, but it shamefully 
 miscarried in this attempt. It tried to found a rival worship, and 
 it succeeded only in presenting a pitiable comedy, which quickly 
 came to an end before empty benches. The complete check of 
 the theophilanthropy proved with eclat the impotency of a belief 
 without mysteries and without dogmas to become a religion. The 
 worst mythologies of Asia Minor have succeeded in gathering 
 ground them entire peoples, because, despite their impure or 
 bloody legends, they pretended to speak in the name of the 
 Divinity, and had, in the times of ignorance, the prestige of a 
 revelation from heaven ; they satisfied, doubtless in a deplorable 
 manner and by perverting it, that need of a direct and super- 
 natural communication with the Divinity which torments the human 
 heart • ■ Thence their success. But a religion which is only a cold 
 system, a pure being of reason, is destined to remain in this icy 
 region. Every attempt to warm it again miserably miscarries.' 
 Whilst the fervid apologists of the tenth-day (decadi) secretly re- 
 sumed the work of Hebert and Chaumette, the theophilanthropists 
 timidly endeavoured to resuscitate the worship of the Supreme 
 Being, interrupted by the events of Thermidor ; the former pro- 
 ceeded from Diderot and Helvetius ; the second from Rousseau, 
 and, above all, from Robespierre. It is known how many partisans 
 Deism reckoned at this period in England, Germany, and France. 
 But it is only in a country in revolution, where all traditions 
 seem to have foundered in the tempest, that it could be attempted 
 to replace Christianity by the religion of the Conirat Social.^ 
 
 ■^ See on the theophilanthropy, the curious chapter which Gr%oire 
 
 devotes to it in his " Histoire des Sectes Religieuses," I., d. 8;. 
 Digitized by Iviicrosows) ' r j 
 
THE WORSHIP OF THE THEOPHILANTHROPISTS. 389 
 
 The new religious establishment was preluded by some pub- 
 lications intended to prepare men's minds ; they cried up in them 
 a worship freed from all superstition, consisting only in the adora- 
 tion of God and the practice of virtue. It was at the end of the 
 year 1796 that they passed from theory to practice. Amongst 
 the five fathers of families who constituted themselves the 
 founders of the new religion, was Hauy, the brother of the famous 
 chemist. Director of the Blind Asylum. An ancient chapel, 
 annexed to the establishment, was used for the first public ser- 
 vices. They soon obtained from the Government, very well 
 disposed towards the sect, permission to use the churches in 
 common with the Catholic priests, on the ground that the Con- 
 stitution did not permit the favouring one religion more than 
 another, and that the temples, being public edifices, ought to 
 belong equally to all opinions. The theophilanthropists thus 
 obtained the use in common of twelve churches, among which j 
 was the cathedral. The difficult task for ihemi_JKa^jiot to obtain /.»-;5jt' 
 them, but to fill them. They accordingly strove to give to their 
 religious service all the attractions of which it was susceptible. 
 They graved on the walls maxims of natural morality, borrowed 
 from all the philosophical or religious schools. An altar was 
 raised in the centre of the edifice, on which they deposited at 
 one time flowers, at another fruits, according to the season. 
 These rural rites were intermingled with more imposing solemni- 
 ties. They presented children to the Supreme Being. At a 
 marriage, the couples were interlaced with garlands of flowers, the 
 extremities of which were held by relatives and friends. At Bourges, 
 they contrived to send forth from the altar, during the nuptial 
 ceremony, two doves — a touching symbol of conjugal affection. 
 At the obsequies of a member of society or of a member of his- 
 family, they suspended a flower over the funeral urn. But the 
 essential part of the worship was the reading and discourse. The 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
39° THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 reader, or the orator, was to be a married person or a widower; 
 despite this guarantee of their maturity, their prose was not less 
 submitted to previous censorship. They spoke or read homilies 
 on toleration, filial piety, and probity in commerce. They were 
 bound to be officially affected on the death of great citizens, and 
 to pronounce their funeral orations. To give them an agreeable 
 aspect, they were dressed in a white robe, tied by a rose-coloured 
 belt. This flattering spectacle did not suffice to redeem the 
 monotony of their dissertations ; they therefore intermingled with 
 their discourses, songs on the harvests and on virtue. They had 
 hired choristers, whose beautiful voices attracted the public. 
 When money was wanting to pay them, the members of society 
 devoted themselves and sang themselves, but their devotedness 
 was ill recompensed, for the audience had come for the beautiful 
 voices and not for the edification. The theophilanthropy lived 
 only by the protection of power. La Reveilliere-Lepaux was its 
 most useful adherent, and gained to it a certain number, for the 
 apostles who are in power are always certain of succeeding in 
 their proselytism. If the Directory insisted with so much stub- 
 bornness on the rest of the tenth-day, it was partly to shackle the 
 liberty of action of Catholicism to the advantage of the new 
 religion. This last, nevertheless, after having transferred its wor- 
 ship to the prescribed day, had to return to the Sabbath, so great 
 was the force of custom. The agents of the Government aided 
 the sect with all their influence. The Minister of the Interior 
 pushed zeal so far, that he caused to be gratuitously distributed in 
 the departments the Manual of the Tkeophilanthropists. Supplies 
 of money were also granted to them ; they had need of them, not 
 only to pay the orators, but also to indemnify the auditors for the 
 weariness of hearing them. They established themselves in the 
 environs of Paris, then at Bourges, at Poitiers, and in Yonne, 
 where they furnished to an intolerant administration the oppor- 
 
PROGRESS OF THE WORSHIP OF THE NONJURORS. 39I 
 
 tuiiity of persecuting the Catholics. But neither the favours of 
 power, nor the distinguished persons attached to the sect, as 
 Goupel de Prefeln, Julien de Toulouse, and Bernardin de Saint- 
 Pierre, prevented this ridiculous religion from sinking down into 
 emptiness and desertion. The decree of the Consuls, which on 
 the 1 2th of Vendemiaire, yearX. (October 3rd, 1802), closed the 
 temples to the theophilanthropists, rendered them service by pre- 
 venting their worship from dying of inanition. It was just, 
 however, that a worship which had lived only by the protection 
 of power, should fall by its disfavour. It answered neither to the 
 ancient convictions nor to the new passions. This foolish pas- 
 toral was incapable of re-animating the religious pre-occupations 
 in revolutionary France, even when one of its first magistrates 
 had accepted the crook of the priests, with white robes and a red 
 belt, a singular way of gaining the country of Voltaire and 
 Beaumarchais. It was the ancient religion which the fervid 
 demagogues imagined that they had killed, or for ever branded in 
 souls, which was about victoriously to dispute their influence. By 
 losing power and riches and enduring persecution, instead of 
 inflicting it, it had raised and purified itself, and no longer pre- 
 sented an exposed flank to the terrible accusations which had so 
 much shaken it in the days of its prosperity. 
 
 We have seen that the religious movement which declared 
 itself at the end of the century, was inaugurated as much by the 
 nonjuring clergy as by the clergy who had openly adopted the 
 Revolution. The barbarity and multiplicity of the measures of 
 proscription against the refractories sufficed to prove how great 
 their influence had remained, not only in' La Vendee, where they 
 were the sole cause of the civil war, or in the South, where the 
 majority of the populations belonged to them, but also in the 
 large towns, and especially at Paris. They did not cease to 
 celebrate mass in obscure nooks, often in a barn or granary. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
392 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 Nothing was more calculated to re-kindle fervour than these diffi- 
 culties and perils. A thousand ingenious means had been 
 Contrived to impart the last religious consolations to those 
 condemned by the Terror. How many times did a simple sign, 
 comprehended by the initiated alone, and furtively exchanged 
 with a disguised priest, appearing suddenly at a window or on the 
 passage of the fatal cart, bring to one. of the appointed victims the 
 benedictions of the Church ! We should be mistaken if we attri- 
 buted only to political passions this attachment for the refractory 
 clergy. It is certain that sincere adherents of the Revolution 
 shared it. The unedited letters of Charlotte Corday, recently 
 published by M. Casimir Perrier, reveal with the young republican 
 a lively repugnance for the priests who had taken the oath.* The 
 Civil Constitution of the Clergy, decreed by a political Assembly, 
 might, with good reason, excite scruples purely religious, especially 
 during the short period in which it had all the inconveniences of a 
 State religion. It is not, then, astonishing that, despite their 
 lamentable connivances with the counter-revolution, the refractory 
 clergy should have preserved an immense influence in the country. 
 It was perceived as soon as the decree of the 3rd of Ventose had 
 proclaimed liberty of worships. Doubdess, this decree did not 
 revoke the laws passed against the nonjurors ; but by sanctioning 
 the separation of Church and State, and by abrogating the Civil 
 Constitution of the Clergy, it gave a great latitude to liberty of 
 conscience. Restrictive interpretations came only too soon, as 
 we have already stated; the departmental administrations sur- 
 passed the legislative measures in the way of arbitrariness. 
 Nevertheless, a certain liberty was left to the ancient clergy, 
 especially in the important towns ; they openly re-established 
 worship wherever they were not too much restrained and watched. 
 
 * See the "Revue des Deux Mondes," of the 15th of April, 1861. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
PROGRESS OF THE WORSHIP OF THE NONJURORS. 393 
 
 They maintained their action strictly separated from that of the 
 Constitutional clergy, and displayed against them an often bitter 
 zeal. They instigated and received numerous retractations of juror 
 priests, and did not cease to pursue the Constitutional Church by 
 a polemical bitterness -which was beyond all bounds.* "Our 
 correspondence," we read in the religious journal, the organ of that 
 section of the clergy, "is full of the most touching recitals of the 
 zeal and eagerness of the faithful to re-open the temples, and to dis- 
 play there the most fervent piety." t The extraordinary eagerness 
 which the faithful of all departments have shown to take advan- 
 tage of the restored liberty, the holy joy which they have caused 
 to- break forth, esteeming that the external pomp which accom- 
 panies our sacrifices is much less to be regretted than the internal 
 glory which constituted their true ornament, all shows how much 
 religion was still living in the heart The re-opened churches are 
 very simple in their decoration. Their most beautiful lustre comes 
 from the piety of those who fill them. J At Paris, the re-establish- 
 ment of worship by the nonjurors did not then suffer any difficulty. 
 The crowding to their churches, at the Easter festivals, 1796, was 
 considerable. It appeared still to increase the- following year at 
 the same period. Two bishops, those of Saint-Papoul and Troyes, 
 pontifically officiated at perfect liberty. Nearly thirty churches, 
 and a considerable number of oratories, were given up to this lately- 
 proscribed worship. It recovered, on the 29th of May, 1797, the 
 church of Saint-Roch. " Men, women, children, poor and rich 
 — everybody turned workman, and the temple rose from its 
 ruins.§" The Bishop of Saint-Papoul ordained seventy priests to 
 
 * See, on what concerns the re-establishment of worship by the non- 
 jurors, the "Annales Rehgieiises et Litteraires ;'' laier, "Annales de, 
 la Religion," published by the Abbe Sicard. 
 
 I Vol. I., p. 3.78. 
 
 J Ibid., p. 186. § " Annaks Catholiques," p. 154, 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
394 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 the order of the White Mantles. The refractory Church thus 
 reconstituted itself in the midst of the Republic. In the depart- 
 ments, it obtained successes not less great, but it met alsp with a 
 decided opposition, and which often had the effect of shackling it, 
 At Versailles and Marseilles there were riots, and many priests 
 were thrown into prison. At Limoges, the imprisoned priests 
 were kept concealed, and subj.ected to every sort of ill-treatment, 
 under the influence of a pretended literary society, which was only 
 the assumed name of the ancient club of the Jacobins. Women 
 were thrown into prison for having been present at mass. Eighty 
 priests were imprisoned at Perigueux, and the bishop of the non- 
 juring church of Auxerre was released, only thanks to the energy 
 with which he invoked liberty of worships. The tribunal ol 
 Versailles acquitted the priests who appeared at its- bar, surrounded 
 with universal respect ; their prison had been transformed into a 
 temple by the concourse of the faithfui. In the Moselle, a priest 
 was taken away at the moment when he was celebrating the 
 holy mysteries at the aJtar ; but the people delivered him. 
 At Bolbec, military measures were taken to prevent the midnight 
 mass ; but, in a neighbouring Commune, the detachment sent to 
 interdict the worship, piously took part in it.. At Montmedy, near 
 Liege, the military commandant having forbidden the parish priest 
 to carry the viaticum to a dying person, more than seven hundred 
 people oppose^l themselves to this prohibition. Public opinion, 
 abandoned to itself,, declared more and more in favour of liberty 
 of conscience, and the speeches of CamUle Jordan, Royer-Collard, 
 and Portalis, gave it a new impulse. The Directory and the 
 Jacobin party bestirred themselves so much the more to shackle it. 
 We read the following instruction, on the conduct to be maintained 
 in regard to the nonjuring priests, in a circular from the Govern- 
 ment to the National Commissioners, dated 21st of June, 1796: 
 
 "Afflict their patience: surround them with your surveillance : let 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
THIS WORSHIP WAS SELF-SUSTAINING. 395 
 
 it render them uneasy by day and disturb them by night." 
 Nevertheless, without the coup d'etat of the i8th of Fructidor, 
 the adherents of the ancient Church of Firance would have quietly 
 celebrated their worship in face of the Constitutional Churches, 
 awaiting a pacification which liberty would have effected much 
 more purely than the hasty and arbitrary measures of despotism. 
 Already, in anticipation of this new situation, the Pope had pro- 
 duced his brief of the 15th of July, 1 796, which recommended sub- 
 mission to the established powers;* and he appeared implicitly 
 to approve of the declaration of submissioH to the laws which 
 could no longer inspire a religious scruple, since the Civil Con- 
 stitution of the Clergy was put out of question. The coup d'etat 
 of Fructidor came to overturn everything anew, and to let loose 
 persecution against the refractory priests; but, despite the bar- 
 barous laws launched anew against them, and the too numerous 
 transportations, they did not the less continue tc celebrate their 
 worship in secret. They reckoned their adherents by thousands, 
 and profited by the intervals of quiet or weakness which marked 
 the shameful regime to which France 'submitted only through 
 weariness. If^ instead of being re-organised by the coup d'etat of 
 Brumaire, she had seen a true liberty re-established in her midst, 
 a flourishing Church might, as it were, have gone forth from the 
 darkness, or, rather, from the semi-obscurity wb-ich protected it. 
 From this side, then, were the altars restored; it was liberty^ and 
 not forced re-organisation, that was required. The numerous 
 priests who had betaken themselves to the foreigner, and who 
 lived on the generous alms of the Papacy or these of England, f 
 would have, doubtless, brought with them more than one tenacious 
 
 * " CoUectioa of the Briefs of Pius YI.," Vol. II., p. 579. 
 
 \ See, on the organisation of these helps, the voluminous corres- 
 pondence contained in- the second volume of the " Recueil de Docu- • 
 ments Inedits,'' published by the P. Theiner. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
396 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 prejudice ; but nothing is more fatal to passionate exaggerations 
 tlian toleration, and they would very soon have lost all credit, 01 
 else they would have reconciled themselves to New France, aftei 
 some years of quiet. The resources for the maintenance of the 
 nonjuring worship were never wanting, and if peace had broughl 
 a little prosperity, they would have been affluent, if so that; 
 indeed, the Ancient Church would have flourished anew by the 
 breath of liberty. 
 
 This breath could not be fatal to the New Church, to that which, 
 whilst remaining faithful to Catholic orthodoxy, had openlj 
 associated itself with the Revolution, and was seeking to reconcile 
 liberty and religion. It had, indeed, some wounds to heal ; for il 
 had been saddened by numerous defections in the days of persecu 
 tion, It had had the misfortune to reckon in its ranks many bad 
 priests, because, for it, the favour of the civil power had lastec 
 longer, but it had to pass through the severest trials, and thf 
 salutary discipline of proscription had delivered it from hypocrites 
 Soon after the decree on liberty of worships, the Constitutional 
 Church made the most praiseworthy efforts to repair its breache; 
 and to re-establish order in its midst. One man was speciallj 
 active in this holy work ; it was Gregoire, the ancient representa- 
 tive of the Constituent and Convention, and Bishop of Blois 
 He has been much calumniated and taunted ; the most bitte; 
 hatreds have pursued him, even to his death-bed!* We acknow 
 ledge that he has often pushed the love of republican institution; 
 to a degree of enthusiasm which was suitable neither to a moderat( 
 liberal nor, above all, to a priest. But, to be just, it is necessarj 
 to take into consideration the time and circumstances. The clergi 
 of the opposite party were not less fervid and passionate in thai; 
 
 * To be convinced of it, we have only to read the article which thi 
 
 " Biographie Uaiverselle" devotes to him. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
PART OF GREGOIRE IN THIS RESTORATION. 397 
 
 language, and it was not with impunity that they breathed the 
 
 fiery atmosphere of a country in revokition. Gregoire never 
 
 lost an opportunity of demanding liberty of worships for his 
 
 greatest adversaries. Devoid of the gifts of great eloquence, he 
 
 often sought energy in a certain violence of expression, but 
 
 he was always, a champion of right and justice, whether he 
 
 ■sustained the cause of the blacks, or that of the Jews, or 
 
 demanded the release of the nonjuring priests. His noble 
 
 attitude on the day of the abjurations should suffice to win for 
 
 him universal respect. His indefatigable zeal to raise up and 
 
 to re- organise the Constitutional Church does not merit less 
 
 admiration. Aided by a few colleagues, among whom we must 
 
 specially mention Lecoz, Bishop of Rennes, a wise and moderate 
 
 spirit, gifted with a penetrating eloquence, Gregoire accomplished 
 
 in a few years a truly important work. He displayed as much 
 
 firmness as wisdom, and no one has done more in France to 
 
 reconcile religion and liberty. 
 
 ^ In his "Memoires" and in his "Account rendered to the 
 
 First Council of the Galilean Church," he has vividly depicted the 
 
 deplorable state into which religion had fallen under the Terror. 
 
 The sufferings endured were nothing compared with the shame 
 
 of the apostacies. Most of the churches had lost their bishop by 
 
 death or exile. Worship was as though fallen into disuse. 
 
 Scarcely had the decree of the 3rd of Ventose been passed, than 
 
 Gregoire convoked at Paris, on Sunday, the isth of May, 1795, a 
 
 few bishops, among whom was Desbois, Bishop of Amiens, who 
 
 was only just come out of prison. With them, he published two 
 
 encyclical letters, designed to obviate the gravest disorders, to set 
 
 aside apostate or married priests from the ministry, and to provide 
 
 for at least the provisionary re-organisation of the Church. The 
 
 first of these encyclicals opens by recalling the woful times just 
 
 passed through, the atrocious persecution which has decimated the 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
39^ THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 Church, and the too numerous apostacies which have desolated it. 
 " May those," say these pious bishops, " to whom God has given 
 the grace to remain faithful in the midst of the terrors of death, 
 rejoice that they have been worthy to suffer anything for Jesus 
 Christ. Pastors of souls, especially we bishops, we are account- 
 able to God, to the Church and to posterity, fo;- our efforts to 
 revive faith." Very far from regretting that religion has no longer 
 a political standing in France, the bishops congratulate them- 
 selves thereon, and confess their religious faith and firm attach- 
 ment to the institutions of the country. " The pastors," we read 
 in this document, worthy of the first times of the Church, "will 
 conduct themselves with zeal to make known Jesus Christ. They 
 will exhort the faithful to make an assiduous study of the New 
 Testament, and they will strive to render their ministry respectable 
 by their conduct" The five bishops caused to be translated the 
 beautiful treatise of " Sairit Cyprian De Lapsis" (concerning back- 
 sliders) ; it seemed to have been written for the circumstances 
 of the moment Answers to the encyclicals came in great num- 
 bers ; the bishops and priests who had remained faithful to their 
 duties acted in concert to restore worship; according to the 
 custom of the ancient Church, the presbyters, or councils of 
 priests of each diocese, were re-constituted to direct the churches 
 which had lost their pastor, and to prepare the election of new 
 bishops. A journal was established under the name of " Annales 
 Religieuses," to serve as a rallying-point, and to maintain frequent 
 communications between the different churches. Gregoire had 
 also the happy idea of establishing a society of Christian philo- 
 sophy, designed to spread good writings devoted to the defence 
 of Christianity.* Worship was re-established on all sides as of 
 
 * " Memoires de Gregoire," II., pp. 55—60 ; volume I., of the '' An- 
 nales Religieuses ;" Account rendered by Gregoire to the first Council 
 
 of Paris. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
GREAT CONCOURSE OF PEOPLE IN THE CHURCHES. 399 
 
 itself, despite the annoyances and ill-will of the departmental 
 authorities. The revival of faith was not less marked in the Con- 
 stitutional, than in the nonjuring Church.-' In most of the towns, 
 the people repaired to the religious services with extraordinary 
 ardour. The temples could not hold the persons present ; these 
 last would have wished indefinitely to prolong their acts of adora- 
 tion. Tears flowed from many eyes. At Sens, labours were sus- 
 pended, and the faithful were seen in the church of Saint Pierre 
 prostrating themselves on their face to the earth to atone for their 
 past wanderings. Scenes might have been witnessed as pathetic 
 as those which took place at Jerusalem when the Jews, returned 
 from exile, could again adore in their own country the God of 
 their fathers. The charges of the bishops favoured and directed 
 this fine movement. " Not having any longer political standing," 
 wrote Gregoire to his colleagues in the ministry, " you will no 
 longer be tempted to lean on an arm of flesh. God alone will be 
 your support. The splendour of the precious metals will no 
 longer shine in our temples. Credulous simplicity will no longer 
 identify true piety with that which was often its poison. Let reli- 
 gion rise again amongst us ; let it rise again pure as it went forth 
 ft-om the hands of Jesus Christ. We are again placed, so to speak, 
 at the origin of the Church." " We declare," wrote the Bishop of 
 Rennes, " that, subjects of the kingdom which is not of this world, 
 we do not contend for temporal interests. Christianity does not 
 meddle with government ; it obstructs none, and lives peacefully 
 under all." One of the features of the Constitutional Church was 
 precisely to keep itself outside of politics, whilst it was animated 
 with a truly patriotic spirit. It spontaneously celebrated, by public 
 prayers, the great victories of the armies of the Republic. At the 
 time of the re-establishment of peace after Marengo, more than 
 
 * See also on this point the first volume of '' Annales Religieuses.' 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
400 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 thirty thousand persons were present at the Te Deum which was 
 chanted at Notre Dame.* This church also distinguished itself 
 by a great moral strictness ; it yielded nothing to the prejudices 
 of the time. Whilst professing respect for civil marriage, it pro- 
 hibited its ministers from blessing any union contracted in oppo- 
 sition to the laws of the Church. Never did it acknowledge 
 divorce in the religious point of view. It showed itself equally 
 opposed to the marriage of the priests. Its firm attachment 
 to the great doctrines of Christianity could not be called in 
 question. 
 
 It was, doubtless, very free from all Ultramontane proclivities ; 
 it would have viewed, without displeasure, the final overthrow of 
 the temporal . power of the Papacy, as we may be convinced by 
 these reflections of the " Annales Religieuses," after the events of 
 1798 : " The destinies of Christianity have been long obscured by 
 all the passions which beset courts. Christianity is henceforth 
 going to shine in its own glory, and since the popes are, happily, 
 about to be no more than bishops, the ministers of religion are 
 more than ever assured of irrevocably attaching the people to it"t 
 Although pushing the Gallican principles to their last conse- 
 quences, except in what concerns servile submission to the civil 
 authority, the Constitutional Church has not broken, for a single 
 day, with the centre of Catholic unity ; it has not ceased to sup- 
 plicate the Holy Father to restore peace to religion, to France, 
 and not to repel the proposals for pacification. Not that this 
 Church was not under the influence of a breath of reform ; it 
 aspired to develop in its midst a true piety, which should hold less 
 to forms than to the essence of religion, less to symbols than 
 to reialities. Gregoire strove hard to combat the superstitious 
 pilgrimages, as is testified by the report which he presented to the 
 
 * "Annales de la Religion,'' XI., p. 168. \ Ibid. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
REFORMING TENDENCIES. 4OJ 
 
 ' bishops assembled at Paris on the visitation of his diocese. " What 
 is commendable," said he, " is not to have been at Jerusalem, but 
 to have lived well at Jerusalem.'' He equally sought to free the 
 veneration of relics from the exaggerations which were mingled 
 with it. " When I found individuals who, assiduous in the Divine 
 offices, were neglecting the duties of charity, purity, and humility, 
 I used to say to them, ' We , cannot bend the holy rules of the 
 Church to the caprices.of men, we do not wish to retain Christians 
 who are such only in name.' " It was natural that, under the do- 
 minion of such convictions, they should strive to render participa- 
 tion in the first communion less delusive. It was decided to sur- 
 round it with more serious securities, by causing it to be pre- 
 ceded by solid instructions. Gregoire wished that the fathers 
 of families should ever)e..day pronounce prayers in French in their 
 houses. He sought also to multiply .every means of instruction, and 
 particularly, libraries. Jn this way a beneficial reaction set in 
 against formalism, that great plague of modern Christianity. The 
 bishops did not spare themselves in this pious task ; they regu- 
 larly went through their dioceses, and preached in all the churches. 
 The Bishop of Blois had preached fifty times, and confirmed forty- 
 five thousand persons in. the visitation of his diocese. These 
 were labours truly apostolic. They were amply recompensed, for 
 an unexceptionable document, which was no other than a state- 
 ment to the Minister of Finances, informs us that, after three 
 years, worship, was re-established in forty thousand communes.* 
 It had not, it is true, its ancient splendour. The ministers often 
 lived very meanly. More than one endured severe privations, 
 such as the old priest who was one day found in his garret mend- 
 ing his black stockings with white thread. The Republic, accord- 
 ing to the just expression of Gregoire, had made bankrupt the 
 
 * " Annales de la Religion," V., p. 97. 
 Digidie&by Microsoft® 
 
402 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 ecclesiastics to whom it had promised pensions, and the voluntary 
 gifts for the service of the altars were far from being sufficient. 
 " The disasters and evils which overwhelm your pastors," wrote 
 Gregoire in a charge, "force us to say to you as the Apostle to 
 the Galatians : ' Let him that is taught in the word communicate 
 unto him that teacheth in all good things. ' Besides, whatever be the 
 effects of your gratitude in respect to these venerable pastors who 
 have lost all, suffered all for Jesus Christ, like us, they will continue 
 to hold to you the language which Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy ad- 
 dressed to the Thessalonians : " So being affectionately desirous 
 of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you not the Gospel 
 of God only, but also our own souls, because ye were dear unto 
 us." The Constitutional Church had forbidden itself the resource 
 of perquisites. It formally proscribed all fee and gratuity for 
 prayers or benedictions, and particularly for the celebration of 
 mass. It confided in the enlightened piety of the faithful. " Its 
 expectation was not deceived ; for, after extremely difficult begin- 
 nings, and without ever having obtained wealth, it ended by sup- 
 porting itself, thanks to voluntary gifts." This ministry, poor and 
 laborious, filled with 'joy those who were invested with it An 
 old priest, almost seventy years of age, declared that he had, as it 
 were, found a second youth in this mission of devotedness and 
 entire abnegation.* 
 
 To the difficulties of poverty came to be added the evil dis- 
 positions of the local authorities, too often excited by the superior 
 authority. Irrespective of the decrees which emanated from the 
 Government, the systematic malevolence of which we have set 
 forth, we can cite a great number of odious resolutions which 
 emanated from the subaltern administrations. At one time they 
 oppose the celebration of worship in the Church, under pretext of 
 
 * " Annales de la Religion," III., p. 189. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
ILL-WILL OF THE AUTHORITIES. 403 
 
 the approaching sale of the national edifice ; at another, they take 
 possession of the parsonage-house, and refuse to restore it to the 
 priest who has a right to it, or else they do not consent to deliver 
 to him his letters of priesthood. Their language is often insulting 
 towards religion ; the administrators of a little district of the 
 Correze, describe the priests as malevolent citizens who lead back 
 the people to old and absurd ceremonies.* These little tyrants 
 of the provinces are adepts in the art of refusing, in practice, a 
 liberty which, in theory, they acknowledge, " Religious opinion," 
 say they with compunction, " is a sacred property." But they do 
 not fail to add that there is another property more sacred still, 
 viz., that which belongs to the legislator to determine for the 
 advantage of all, the suitable mode for the manifestation of reli- 
 gious convictions.! It is in conformity with this fine principle, 
 that at Troyes, the Municipal authority forbid the Catholics to 
 open the window of the barn where they celebrate their worship, 
 in order not to disturb the public repose. 
 
 The department of the Mont-Terrible | had passed on the 2nd 
 of Frimaire year II. (November 22nd, 1794), the following reso- 
 lution : " Considering that nothing is more impolitic and anti- 
 social than the toleration of any worship whatsoever, resolves that 
 all internal and external signs of worship shall disappear. "§ Since 
 Thermidor, such a cynicism was no longer possible, but the in- 
 tolerance was not less great in a multitude of communes. The 
 meeting of the Catholics for the election of priests, appears to 
 
 * "Annales de la Religion," I., p. 267. 
 
 t Ibid. 
 
 I Mont-Terrible — a French department formed under the Republic, 
 
 of the principalities of Montbeliard and Porentruy. It has since 
 
 been divided betwfeen the canton of Berne and the department of 
 
 Doubs. — Bescherelle (Diction, Nation). 
 
 § Ibid,, III., p. 345- 
 
 Digitized by^icrqsoft® 
 
404 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 have greatly disturbed the enemies of religion. In the depart- 
 ment of Eure, the elections were prohibited by the following 
 preamble : " Awaiting until the administration shall repress all 
 enterprises tending to establish an exclusive and dominant wor- 
 ship, and prevent meetings the result of which would be to 
 resuscitate a pretended hierarchy and pretended powers not 
 acknowledged by the laws."* In Eure-et-Loire, funeral cere- 
 monies are opposed, under the pretext that the exposure of dead 
 bodies on the public road is an imequivocal sign of a religious 
 worship, t The law of the tenth-day raised the gravest difficulties 
 for the Catholics in the departments. They were obliged to 
 display great firmness to maintain their right. Let us cite the 
 noble answer of a priest of the department of Yonne to the 
 summons of the local authorities : "■! cannot, I ought not,'' said 
 he, " subscribe to the invitation which is made to me to transfer 
 the Sabbath to the tenth-day. As a minister of the Catholic 
 religion, I claim the free exercise of it guaranteed to us by the 
 Constitution of the year III. As a citizen, I demand from the 
 magistrates of the people to be maintained in the entire and 
 peaceable possession of my right" The obligation to share the 
 temples with the theophilanthropists was also a painful condition 
 imposed on the Catholics. The law of the 19th of Fructidor, 
 year V. (September 5th, i797X pronounced transportation against 
 every priest who should disturb the public tranquillity. It reached 
 as well the Constitutional clergy as the nonjurors, and the 
 departmental administrations, stimulated by a detestable circular 
 of the Minister of Police of the 17th of Brumaire, year VI. 
 (November 7th, 1798), applied it with rigour j several priests who 
 had taken, the oath, were transported. The obligation of the 
 
 * " Annales de la Religion," III., p. 345, 
 
 t Ibid., p. 426. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
RE-ORGANISATION OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL CHURCH. 405 
 
 political oath was sometimes extended even to the choristers, 
 under jH-etence of their being officiating priests. Popular 
 passions also were often let loose without measure ; assassinations 
 of priests were very frequent at this period. It is necessary to 
 take all these difficulties into account in order to appreciate at its 
 just value the progress made by religion in these troubled years, 
 in the midst of so many hindrances of every kind. What advan- 
 tage might it not have drawn from its separation from the State, if 
 it had possessed the common right in a country truly free ? Even 
 persecuted and impoverished, it every day extended its con- 
 quests, and brought back opinion to it I do not know a more 
 striking demonstration of moral force, than is furnished by its 
 independence even in conditions the most unfavourable. 
 
 It is often imagined that order in the Church is incompatible 
 with this independence, and that when it ceases to form part of 
 the administration, it has no longer a fixed organisation. The 
 two National Councils, convoked at Paris in 1797 and 1801, 
 furnish a sufficient answer to these fears. There has not been 
 held a more respectable Assembly in Christendom. Opulent 
 prelates are not seen seated there ; it was at the price of the most 
 painful sacrifices that those present at them had made the 
 journey : the Council had not even money sufficient to invite 
 some foreign bishops, but those who took part in them had borne 
 the burden of the day aiiMi passed through severe persecutions. 
 They had maintained the Christian faith in difficult times, a butt 
 to ill-treatment and -calumny, and several among them bore still 
 the marks of imprisonment. They were exposed to the contempt 
 of the adherents of the ancient regime, and to the outrages of the 
 fanatics of the new ; reviled by some for their liberal patriotism, 
 they were deserted by others for their invincible attachment to the 
 faith of their fathers. ■" Behold," wrote Gregoire, " these refrac- 
 tory ecclesiastics come forth from the prisons without bread, 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
406 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 without asylum, and, as the Divine founder of Christianity, not 
 having where to lay their head ; almost all bent down under the 
 weight of infirmities, struggling against threatenings and outrages ; 
 behold these virtuous ecclesiastics who have preserved religion 
 and worship !" * "What a subUme spectacle," says he elsewhere, 
 "did those fifty Christian bishops present to the universe, the 
 greater part of them afflicted with the infirmities of old age, out- 
 raged by the Court of Rome, and still faithful to the Holy See, 
 persecuted, and preaching submission to the laws. Amongst 
 them all, they have not perhaps the revenue of^a single bishop of 
 the ancient regime'' f 
 
 We have not to relate the history of these two Councils, J let it 
 suffice us to recall their results. The first was convoked in 1797, 
 by the bishops assembled at Paris, and preceded by regular 
 elections made in the provincial synods. It was opened at Notre 
 Dame, on the 15th of August, 1797, by a sermon from Lecoz; 
 the pious bishop eloquently expressed his joy at seeing religion,' 
 lately proscribed, go forth from its tomb like Christ. " Which of 
 us," said he, " would have ventured, I do not say to assume, but 
 to express as probable, that in a little time we should see assem- 
 bled in this holy place, these venerable pontiffs, these virtuous 
 pastors, all these intrepid priests, who but lately, the sad sport of a 
 violent tempest, a butt to the most horrible proscription, were 
 wandering from cavern to cavern, or groaning in those dark and 
 infectious prisons, weeping not over their captivity, nor over the 
 weight of their chains, but over the heart-breaking cessation of 
 
 * "Memoiresde Gregoire,"!!., p. 70. 
 
 \ Report of Gregoire on the visitation in his diocese (" Annales de 
 la Religion," IV., p. 169). 
 
 I See the very curious collection, entitled ; " Collection des pieces 
 imprimees par Ordre du Concile National." Paris, 1797. See also 
 the " Annales de la Religion." 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
ACTS OF THE FIRST GALLICAN COUNCIL. 407 
 
 worship." The orator then depicted the establishment of re- 
 ligion in France. " Such are the facts, not less authentic than 
 prodigious, which, for two years, are multiplied over the whole 
 surface of the Republic. More than forty thousand parishes 
 have in that time renewed, with a holy avidity, the exercise of the 
 worship of their fathers. How can we here recount to you 
 the afiecting scenes of which we have been witnesses in our 
 respective dioceses ! You would see simple men who cultivate 
 the fields, leap for gladness at the sole name of Jesus Christ. 
 You would see the apparition only of a crucifix cause their so 
 long-saddened countenances to radiate with joy. How many 
 pious tears have watered the pavements of these half-ruined 
 temples ! What cries of delight ! What songs of gratitude 
 have all at once shaken these vaults ,! " The discourse ended 
 by a touching .appeal to concord addressed to the refractory 
 clergy. 
 
 The first act of the Council was to make a solemn profession of • 
 the Catholic faith, then to write to the Pope to entreat him to 
 hasten the work of pacification in the Church of France. A 
 letter was, at the same time, sent to the nonjurors to beg of them, 
 with not less solicitation, to lend themselves to a union so 
 desirable for religion. The Council gave proof of the large- 
 vheartedness which animated it, in the decree of pacification which 
 it passed. Without renouncing the essential principles of the 
 Church which it represented, it declared that all the pastors and 
 priests who had remained faithful to their vocation, were called, 
 without distinction, to the exercise of the ministry, whatever 
 might have been their opinion on the questions which had divided 
 the Church of France. The decree contained the following clause, 
 which pushed concessions as far as it was possible : '' If there is 
 only a single bishop for one and the same diocese, or a single 
 
 priest for one and tlie same parish, he shall be acknowledged by 
 Digitizeaby Microsoft® 
 
408 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 all. If a church has two bishops, the on€ appointed and 
 ordained before 1791, the other chosen and ordained since that 
 period, the more ancient shall be acknowledged ; the other 
 shall succeed him with full right ; this arrangement appHes also 
 to the parish priests." Thus the Constitutional clergy showed 
 their readiness to sacrifice themselves to pacification, for this 
 clause rejected from the sees and cures the majority of its 
 members. The Council was occupied with regulating the nomi- 
 nation to the vacant sees and the order of the religious services, 
 in which it wished to introduce the vtflgar tongue for the prayers 
 of the sermon. It passed a decree, imbued with the strictest 
 morality, on the reform of the manners of the faithful and ecclesi- 
 astics ; the love of country and obedience to the laws were 
 strongly recommended. It passed also a special decree on the 
 instruction and education of children, and urged the founding of 
 numerous Christian schools. In fine, an express request was 
 made to the Holy Father to convoke an Ecumenical Council 
 which shonld decide the grave questions that were pending. 
 
 The second Council, which was opened on the 29th of June, 
 1 80 1, before an immense crowd, was intended to finish the re- 
 organisation of the Church of France, and to pursue the work of 
 pacification ; but it was hardly formed when it was obliged to 
 dissolve itself on the injunction of the First Consul, who had just 
 signed the Concordat The Minister of Police, charged with 
 transmitting the orders of the Dictator, wrote to the Council that 
 its first sittings had made a profound impression on the Govern- 
 ment ; but that, nevertheless, the latter asked it to separate in a 
 friendly manner. This was to gild the pill of arbitrary power. The 
 time had come in which every free word was to be stifled in the 
 Church and in the State. The Council had decided, before its 
 separation, that public conferences should be proposed to the 
 
 refractory clergy peacefully to debate the points of difference. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® '^ 
 
THE SECOND COUNCIL DISSOLVED BY ORDER. 409 
 
 These Conferences were inaugurated with great pomp at Notre 
 
 Dame j there weie wanting only the opponents, and the combat 
 
 could not commence for want of combatants. We shall see, in a 
 
 succeeding chapter, by what transaction the pacification, vainly 
 
 sought until then, was not realised, but imposed. Let us state 
 
 only that, on the eve of the Concordat, the Constitutional Church 
 
 was in full prosperity, and that it owed,, its increasing influence 
 
 to its independence. The venerable President of the First 
 
 Council boldly acknowledged it in the encyclical letter by which 
 
 he convoked the Second. " Some amongst you," we there read, 
 
 " are specially alarmed that our churches are despoiled of their 
 
 property. In this also adore the Divine, Providence* You 
 
 know that, for a long time, impious men have dared to say that 
 
 the religion of Jesus Christ was sustained and preserved only by the 
 
 great wealth which its ministers enjoyed. For a long time also, the 
 
 Church herself has groaned to see enter into hersanctuary men who 
 
 appeared to be led thither only by the sight of her riches. The Lord 
 
 has wished, by the same stroke, both to confound the calumnious 
 
 blasphemies of the unbelieving, and to put an end to the 
 
 scandalous cupidity of her ministers. The religion which He 
 
 founded without the help of riches, He. wishes also to maintain 
 
 without this help, unworthy of Him. When Jesus Christ called 
 
 his twelve Apostles, to what did he call them ? Was it to the 
 
 enjoyment of property, of honours? No, but to labour, pain, 
 
 suffering. And for a recompense of their* labour, what does he 
 
 promise them ? Crosses. If, then, we ministers .of Jesus Christ, 
 
 if we find ourselves brought near to this. Apostolic state, ought 
 
 we to murmur at it ? Ah ! rather let us rejoice at this precious 
 
 despoiling, and let us bless the Lord who, by an admirable stroke 
 
 of his benevolent wisdom, has resuscitated that ancient state of 
 
 things which the most pious of his children did not cease to 
 
 regret. He has re-estabHshed the evangelical poverty of his 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
4iO THE CHURCH ANB THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 ministers. Let us not doubt fthat, by the side of it, he will cause 
 the generosity of the faithful to rise again. If they neglected 
 their duties, we should not be less zealous to preach the Gospel ; 
 we should not be less ardent to cry to ourselves : ' This Christ, whom 
 impiety thinks to-day to insult with impunity, is the same against 
 whom the kings of the earth, the Gentiles and the synagogue 
 were leagued,'but in vain. It will be so in all ages.' " Who could 
 not recognise in this noble language an echo of those primitive 
 'times when mSral power was measured by the political impotence 
 and poverty of the Apostles of Jesus Christ? 
 
 The Protestant Churches:, participated in the different fluctu- 
 ations of the liberty of worship. After having obtained from the 
 Constituent Assembly all .possible reparations -for the great 
 outrage of which they' had been the victims, they celebrated their 
 worship under the open sky, -so long as the right of conscience 
 was respected. They very naturally escaped the violent struggles 
 raised "by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Protestantism 
 ■was niSrt supposed to be favouralble to the rdgime which had pro- 
 scribed it ; and the Revolution had no prejudices against its 
 ministers. Nevertheless, if we ..except some great towns of the 
 •^South, such as Nimes and Montauban, where a portion of the 
 ^working population, of Protestamt origin, was incessantly excited 
 by the violence^of the Catholic fanatics, the Reformed belonged 
 in. '-moderate measure to the liberal body of citizens, to that 
 energetic pa!rty of the Third which had wished to found in France, 
 not the reign of demagogism, but liberty, without always com- 
 prehending its true conditions. Barnavfi had represented and 
 served this, party with gloryin tjie Constituent. Rabaut Saint- 
 Etienne had there played a part equally honourable though less 
 brilliant. At the Convention, the young minister Lasouree had 
 figured in the first ranks of the Girondist party, and had perished 
 •on the scaffold with -Rabaut. . Prot^antism paid -largely its 
 
POSITION OF PROTESTANTISM AT THIS PERIOD. 41I 
 
 tribute to the Terror, as well in Alsace as in Gard. It was 
 saddened by some shameful defections. There is. no aggregation 
 of men at all important, which does not contain in its midst a 
 violent or cowardly portion who dissimulate in peaceful days, but 
 reveal themselves in the great crises of history. It is not, then, 
 astonishing that Protestantism has had also to deplore, like Catho- 
 licism, culpable abjurations. It also had felt the breath of the phi- 
 losophy of the eighteenth century pass over it ; it had not preserved 
 tha fervour which so persevering a heroism had inspired. The pale 
 and cold Deism, which had invaded Germany and England, was 
 beginning to seize it. Finding, moreover, sympathy and support 
 only in the camp of the philosophers, it had been disposed to 
 yield to their influence. Doubtless the ancient beliefs still sub- 
 sisted, but they were shaken. 'Revolutionary passions had 
 replaced, in more than one heart, the pure and ardent faith which 
 no .proscription had been able to -conquer. Matthieu Dumas 
 relates, in his "" Memoires," that, in the mission of pacification 
 with which he was charged in 1790, at the time of the disturb- 
 ances of Toulouse and Montauban, he encountered more than 
 one excited Protestant who augmented the difficulties of his task. 
 He cites particularly a minister of Toulouse, the too-famous 
 Jean-Bon Saint Andre,* afterwards a Conventional fanatic, who 
 answered to his. prudent counsels : Behold!, for more than a hun- 
 dred years -we -have awaited vengeance. Such a man had already, 
 in fact, denied the religion which commands the pardon of enemies. 
 It was one of his colleagues, Julien de Toutouse, who took upon 
 himself to sustain Gobel in the infamous sitting of the apostacies. 
 This example was not without imitators. The Protestant Church 
 of Paris had boldly associated itself with the political renovati^on 
 of the country. 'The Legislative Assembly were present at a 
 
 " Memoires de Mktthieu Dumas,"' I., p -476. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
412 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, 
 
 solemn service of thanksgivings, celebrated in his temple, by the 
 pastor Marron. Unhappily, this Church sank at the time of the 
 Saturnalia of Hebert and Chaumette ; the cups of the Holy 
 Supper, as well as the baptismal vases, were carried to the Mint 
 in the name of the Consistory. Thank heaven ! these defections 
 were neither lasting nor numerous. The majority of the Protes- 
 tant clergy remained faithful to the Gospel, and simple peasants 
 showed a courageous attachment to their faith. Rabaut Junior 
 gives a touching proof of it. An old husbandman had been put 
 an prison in the department of Card, for having suspended his 
 labour on the Sabbath. A week after^ he presents himself to the 
 Committee, in holiday attire, and asks to be again conducted to 
 prison, because, he says, he cannot work on that day, and that 
 he should rob him who employed him.* During the confused 
 and agitated period which elapsed from the commencement of 
 ■the Directory to the i8th of Brumaire, the Protestant Churches 
 tend to reconstitute themselves.. They, doubtless, participate in 
 the misfortune of the times, they, are for the most part in poverty, 
 but an energetic revival of faith would have promptly raised 
 them. liberty was in their tradition j if they had preserved it, 
 they would soon have resumed their general synods. It was 
 certainly not the Concordat which recalled them to life, for it 
 only caused them, to be •enclosed in a narrow framework 
 Protestan,tisra was , standing and living, as well as Catholicism, 
 when Napoleon deigned to occupy himself with religion in order 
 to enchain it ■ 
 
 It seems to us that the facts exliibited in this chapter sufficiently 
 refute tlje oft-repeated assertion that the First Consul restored 
 the altars. The bishops of the Gallican Church assembled at 
 Paris ifi 1799, seem to have foreseen this historical falsehood, 
 
 * De FeKce, " Histoire'des Protestants," p. 566. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
THE ALTARS RESTORED. 413 
 
 invented by courtiers and maintained by tenacious prejudices, 
 when they wrote these energetic words in their encychcal letter : 
 " There is no longer religion ! Efface this blasphemy ! " It is, 
 in fact, a blasphemy to make religion depend on politics, and 
 to attribute its revival to a happy calculation of the rising 
 despotism. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
BOOK IV. 
 
 THE CONCORDAT. 
 
 Cfjapter t 
 
 Preparation for the Concordat. 
 
 All that which by its grandeur transcends the average measure of 
 men and things, grows greater still, and is transfigured in the imagin- 
 ation of the people ; in the face of such events, legend is almost 
 contemporaneous with history. Thus was it with this marvellous 
 period, which sees suddenly arise out of the revolutionary tempest, 
 a regime of power and order, illuminated at its dawn by the most 
 brilliant rays of the military glory so dear to our race. Nothing 
 is wanting up to the final catastrophe, so imposing in an artistic 
 point of view, which could lend an ideal character to this incom- 
 parable reign, uniting all successes and all reverses, and which 
 resembles a classical tragedy in the style of Corneille. In 
 admiring what was great in it, one is apt to pardon what was 
 •baleful, under the pretext that the chastisement has closely fol- 
 lowed the faults, and that what has been so ephemeral does not 
 deserve a severe judgment. This is to forget that the spirit of a 
 reign may survive it, that nothing is more fatal to a people than a 
 false ideal, and that it is blind admirations which corrupt the 
 
 moral sense and demoralise history. The memory of Napoleon 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
PREPARATION FOR THE CONCORDAT: 41 5 
 
 has too long fluctuated between adoration and hatred ; this was 
 the proof of its being still worshipped, for it is idolaters who make 
 fanatics in a contrary direction. The moment has, arrived for 
 a just appreciation; it is not necessary to wait for misfortunes to 
 denounce faults, but to point out from the first appearance, in the 
 very eclat of the triumphs of an, incomparable genius, the shadow 
 which will end by obscuring all, I mean that insolent contempt of 
 every superior^ principle, of every right, of every liberty. The 
 partial manifestations of despotism, however odious they may 
 sometimes be, have infinitely less importance than that which con- 
 stitutes its essence and soul, that which is its inspiring genius. 
 Now, nowhere has this genius appeared more complete, more 
 resolute, than in the person of the young general who made the 
 coup d^etat of Brumaire. This will clearly come out in the out- 
 line which we shall trace of his policy in religious affairs. . 
 
 The period of the Consulate is ordinarily set apart as marked 
 by a high character of wisdom, patriotism, and restorative power; 
 the benefit of these eulogies is given to all those acts which go 
 back to that date, and, in the first place, to the Concordat. We 
 dispute as well the general appreciation as the particular approval. 
 It is not correct that the Consulate has been truly a restorer; it 
 prepared for all that followed ; and if arbitrary power is not 
 yet fully constituted, it is because the despot waits until the fruit 
 be ripe for gathering, but he waits for it, as a skilful husbandman, 
 who neglects no care to arrive at this desired end. If by a 
 restorative government, be understood a government which, re- 
 placing anarchy, causes the curb of the laws to be felt anew, 
 represses by a prompt and well-organised police the most flagrant 
 disorders, renders security to private persons, re-establishes equili- 
 brium in the finances, either by putting an end to extravagances, 
 or by regulating the services, and, in fine, gives to the country, 
 
 with internal tranquillity, peace founded on the most legitimate 
 , Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
4l6 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 satisfactions, and adorned with the glory of Marengo, we are 
 ready to accord this eulogy to the Consulate. We very well com- 
 prehend that France, wearied and humiliated under the regime of 
 the Directory, felt these benefits with an ardour of gratitude which 
 made her forget their price, and that the oft-disappointed longing 
 for order, and for those social guarantees which we cannot do 
 without, rendered her very eager to accept a despotism which was 
 complete from the first day. In fact, the word republic was no 
 more than a meaningless etiquette, almost an epitaph, and one of 
 those deceitful disguises of which Augustus had made so skilfijl a 
 use. To escape from revolutionary agitation, such was the passion 
 of the moment The new power exactly answered to it, although 
 in a very superficial and precarious manner. It is at this point 
 that it was not truly restorative, for military despotism substituted 
 for anarchy, is still revolution in its bad and dangerous tendency, 
 with its impulses and its passions, the more fatal the more easily 
 they can be satisfied without meeting with any legal resistance. 
 It is anarchy from above substituted for anarchy from below, it is 
 the principle of disorder in the chief mover, whilst the order which 
 reigns in the inferior movers of the administrative machine, permits 
 the errors or faults committed by the chief of the State to be 
 accomphshed with a fearful rapidity and a perfection of execution 
 which render them at the first stroke irreparable. Arbitrariness in 
 the directing power, and regularity in the instruments placed under 
 its hands, I know no combination more perilous. Now this combi- 
 nation is the whole of the Constitution of the year VIII., and it 
 is the entire policy of the Consulate before becoming that of the 
 Empire. The results of the reign of Napoleon are sufficient to 
 convince us that there is no restorer except liberty, that is to say, 
 the regime of law seriously accepted under the control of the 
 country honestly consulted. I call restorative the Government 
 
 of a William III. or the presidency of a Washington, because 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® ° 
 
POLITICAL CIRCUMSTANCES PREPARED FOR THE CONCORDAT. 4J 7 
 
 these great, good men have established society on respect for 
 right, and have given to it for safeguard a well-regulated liberty, 
 that is to say, a liberty which regulates itself; but I call, on the 
 contrary, anarchical and destructive, every arbitrary regime, whether 
 it be democratic or aristocratic, republican or monarchical, and 
 I find it so much the more dangerous, the more skilfully it has 
 organised the country of which it disposes at its pleasure. The 
 facts have been in keeping with the principles, and have supplied 
 their unexceptionable and overwhelming testimony to this so- 
 slighted ideology, which has been only too well justified in the 
 midst of France, diminished, exhausted, and demoralised, even 
 to the point of treating with the foreigner on her profaned soil ; 
 a cruel and bloody lesson for all those who separate order and 
 peace from liberty, and who imagine that great feats of arms 
 suffice to raise nations ! Without doubt, the Napoleonic regime 
 accepted and sanctioned some of the conquests of the Revolution ; 
 it steadfastly required the law for all, the eligibility of all citizens 
 for employments, the abolition of religious privileges, equality, in 
 fine, to the point where it is inseparable from liberty, for that it 
 never would have under any title. It is, therefore, a mockery to 
 set up this regime at any cost, as the representative of the prin- 
 ciples of 1789. Besides, it has explained itself on this subject 
 v/ith a clearness which leaves nothing to be desired. At the time 
 of the voting of the Consulate for life, La Fayette and La Tour- 
 Maubourg connected with their adhesion the condition that the 
 liberty of the press should be re-established. "Judge now," 
 said General Bonaparte to one of his familiars, "what maybe 
 hoped from these men who are always riding their metaphysics 
 of 89 Liberty of the press! !!"* We see here the 
 
 * " Memoires sur le ConsuIa.t," published in 1829 by Thibaudeau, 
 
 p. 269. 
 
 Digitized by ^i^osoft® 
 
41 8 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 ironical smile. Let them talk to us, then, no more of the con- 
 secration of these great principles in the Constitution of the 
 year VIII. 
 
 This Constitution, we have said, is the master-piece of the 
 political school which puts arbitrary power at the head, and 
 learned organisation in the social body, substituting for the Parlia- 
 ment that controls, the administration that executes, and gives to 
 the will of the sovereign, in place of a counterpoise which balances 
 it, the most marvellous mechanism for realising its decisions withr 
 out delay. A head and robust and obedient arms, a unique will 
 and supple instruments, behold the entire system ! I think it is 
 called the representative system in opposition to the parliamentary 
 system. Cambaceres, the imperial jurist formed in the Con- 
 vention, very well defined it when he said : " The present Govern- 
 ment is the representative of the people."* For this school, the 
 true national representation, is not in the assemblies, but rather in 
 the executive power, which is the permanent delegate of the 
 people for doing its own will in their name. What is a handful 
 of lawyers and metaphysicians, compared with that illustrious 
 deputy who, with one hand holds the sword, and with the other 
 draws from the public treasury in order to dispense favours ? The 
 Constitution of the year VIII. had taken care to prevent every 
 injurious parallel between the two delegations. With the ex- 
 ception of a detail which was not without importance, it was the 
 work of Sieyes. He had had. ample leisure for maturing his plan 
 on the bench where, under the Terror, he had sat silent in the J 
 presence of all violences and all crimes; which was to estimate! 
 very highly the services which the revolutionary metaphysics] 
 might render in the future. It proved, in the issue, that he hadj 
 laboured for the military dictatorship, for the part of the grea|j 
 
 * " Menfi»^itfes6liii>iMj6aBSfiat," p. 223. 
 
POLITICAL CIRCUMSTANCES PREPARED FOR THE CONCORDAT. 419 
 
 elector, who had no power except representation and wealth, and 
 whom the Senate could always absorb into its bosom, alone suited 
 a man like him. A tritely witty word of General Bonaparte 
 sufficed to set aside this fine invention; but he welcomed with 
 eagerness the idea of substituting for direct elections, lists of 
 notables, communal, departmental and national, reducing them- 
 selves firom grade to grade, and being subject only to a triennial 
 revision. The frame-work of the choice was sufficiently large for 
 the executive power to be able to create chambers in its own 
 image and likeness, without ever being cramped by the popular 
 will artfully confiscated. It was to place an untruth of election 
 at the base of the entire governmental edifice. Nothing was 
 more convenient than the redistribution of the Legislative power 
 between a conservative and endowed senate, a mute legislative 
 body, and a powerless tribunate ; for if this last body had the right 
 to speak, it did not really vote, since it was limited to nominating 
 two of its members who were to discuss on opposite sides the 
 Bills before the Legislative body. 
 
 In one of his whims, always original, the First Consul said to 
 
 an intimate friend, that all the evil in France came from the 
 
 tribune. He had found the surest means of discrediting it ; for 
 
 nothing is more fatal to parliamentary eloquence than to be 
 
 reduced to empty talking without political conclusion. Those 
 
 . who complain the most of babblers are they who have multiplied 
 
 them; for babbling exists only where speech does not result in 
 
 . action. There remained only one real orator ; it was he who with 
 
 ., the word had the power — and more than once did he regret 
 
 > having had to speak alone, without the control and reply of a free 
 
 ! tribune. The Council of State, despite its intelligence, and the 
 
 - services which it has often rendered, was not a substitute for it ; 
 
 for we know all the uselessness of councils when they are engaged 
 
 "in a struggle with an impe^i^^^^i^d ^J;J>pj|^ul will. It is not 
 
 E E 2 
 
420 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 good advice, but effective restraints that power has need of in its 
 own interests. 
 
 We see that the Constitution of the year VIII. had delivered 
 France to one man, without opposing to him any barrier ; every- 
 thing emanated from him and returned to him ; and it would have 
 been much better not to have placed between the country and 
 him this vain phantom of national representation, which served 
 only to give an appearance of legality to his caprices. The 
 Revolution gave to him a levelled country, where he no longer 
 encountered those great corporations which, despite their incon- 
 veniences, always moderate despotism to some degree. The most 
 admired part of the Constitution of the year VIIL, that which 
 organises the French administration, was also the most effectual 
 for the enslavement of the nation. The executive power, by its 
 prefects, its sub-prefects, and its mayors, was present over the 
 entire surface of the country; the skilful regulation which made all 
 the resources converge from the circumference to the centre, and 
 which, in return, carried from the centre to the circumference the 
 sovereign decisions of the power, established the most perfect 
 order in servitude. The motion was given in an instant, by a 
 single hand, to this vast organism, become so supple whilst 
 remaining so strong. The skilful organisation of the finances, 
 which would have been beneficial if it had been placed under the 
 control of a free people, measuring its expenses with its resources 
 and true interests, became an evil, by permitting an irresponsible 
 master to dare everything. The magistracy formed a wisely- 
 ordered hierarchy — a hierarchy which rose from justices of the 
 peace to tribunals of inferior jurisdiction and courts of appeal, in 
 order to crown itself by the fine institution of the Court of 
 Cassation. It possessed a certain independence, thanks to its 
 being unremovable, but it had no means of contending against 
 absolutism, even on its. own CTound ; for resistance to arbitrary 
 
POLITICAL CIRCUMSTANCES PREPARED FOR THE CONCORDAT. 42 1 
 
 power it was not equal to the ancient parkments. In the issue, 
 France possessed the most perfect mechanism of despotism which 
 had yet existed in this centralisation without counterpoise, which 
 has continued the most formidable obstacle to the return of liberty. 
 A counsellor of State of the First Consul justly said to him at the 
 dawn of the new regime: — " The centralisation of power leads you 
 much more to the ancient regime than a wisely- ordered representa- 
 tive system."* The Civil Code is one of the purest glories of 
 this period ; but this skilful code-making, which carried light into 
 a legislation confused enough, would have lost nothing by offering 
 more solid guarantees to individual liberty. Doubtless, the Civil 
 Code is very superior to the Constitution of the year VIIL, 
 because it bears on that order of relations for which the conquests 
 of the Revolution have been respected, but it does not the less 
 participate in a large degree in the original vice of the regime. 
 Nor shall we allow ourselves to say that it is the full extent of 
 justice, especially if we do not separate it from the code of 
 criminal instruction, which is its natural complement, and which 
 has furnished so many useful resources to despotism. 
 
 From the time of the Consulate, apart from some truly restora- 
 tive measures, such as the abolition of the law concerning hostages, 
 and the release of the incarcerated priests, it might be foreseen 
 what would be the issue of the intoxication of absolute power on 
 the part of an ambitious genius who sacrificed everything to his 
 encroaching personality. After the illegal attempt of the 3rd of 
 Nivose, he declared, in full Council of State, that he would put 
 himself above the law in order to inflict a great blow on the 
 Jacobin party, who were, he knew, foreign to the conspiracy, 
 under pretext that Chouanism and Emigration were only skin 
 diseases, whilst Terrorism was an internal malady, to which it was 
 
 • " Memoires sur le Consulat," p. 394. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
422 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 necessary to apply strong remedies. To those who opposed to 
 these iniquitous measures the most elementarj' rules of justice, he 
 rudely answered : " Metaphysicians are a kind of men to whom 
 we owe all our evils. It is necessary to consider this business as a 
 statesman." This is what he dared to say in that very hall where 
 they were preparing the legislation of the country. Thus was 
 transmitted, like a precious trust, all through the Revolution, that 
 specious State reason, which is only the reason of the strongest 
 wishing to act according to his fancy. This internal malady, 
 which the First Consul desired to extirpate, had had no graver' 
 symptom than the violation of eternal right to the gratification of 
 the passion of the moment, and it had not had many manifesta- 
 tions more criminal than the abduction, by force of arms, and the 
 murder of the Prince of Conde, coolly accomplished, afterwards 
 still more coolly discussed and justified, as an excellent calculation 
 for frightening the enemies of the new power. >;■ It was very 
 fortunate that Bonaparte was not cruel by nature, for the country 
 had no security except his temperament. That is the reason why 
 every peace signed by him was precarious. He resigned himself 
 momentarily to it, as he said one day, when declaring that it was 
 prejudicial to a new power, but it was not possible that he should 
 long abide by it. He was the genius of war, and he had at his 
 service the gold and blood of France. How could such a tempta- 
 tion be resisted by a Napoleon, who has before him only flattering 
 counsellors and political bodies, docile so long as they are fed. 
 One of them, certainly one of the best and most distinguished, 
 ingeniously demonstrated that the Government is the most 
 important power in the State, because if it ceased, everything 
 would perish, whilst no one would perish for want of law. He 
 concluded therefrom that the Government ought to have in itself 
 
 * " Memoires sur le Consulat," pp. 46 and 393. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
POLITICAL CIRCUMSTANCES PREPARED FOR THE CONCORDAT. 423 
 
 a means of preserving itself from inaction, and that it is not 
 necessary to be so much disquieted about arbitrary power, which is 
 only a transitory evil. The courageous counsellor echoed this 
 speech of the master: "There must be no opposition."* 
 
 It is certain that from his entering the Tuileries, the First 
 Consul had only one thought, to consolidate and perpetuate his 
 absolute authority. We can follow in the " Memoires " of the time, 
 the incidents of this great political comedy, with which they jested 
 playfully in those free conversations which have so often appeared 
 to France a sufficient compensation for liberty : " The theatre is 
 ready," said they, " few people will have witnessed the side-scenes, 
 and paying spectators will not be wanting. We may commence." 
 The paid spectators were still less wanting. Nothing was more 
 bizarre than the first attempt at a princely court at Malmaison and 
 Saint-Cloud. People laughed much on seeing inexperienced 
 courtiers destroying, by a black neck-tie or boots, the harmony of 
 a marquisate toilet. But what was this medley of colours compared 
 with that motley work of the minds who united revolutionary pas- 
 sions with their recent monarchical devotion ? On more than one 
 piece of embroidery, there might have been discerned ill-dried 
 blood. A former proconsul reigned by means of the agency of 
 police, and mingled the coarse language of the clubs with his 
 eager flatteries. The First Consul, on his return from a triumphant 
 journey in Normandy and Belgium, said to his brother : " I have 
 got to know all the baseness of the French, and assure myself that 
 I could obtain from their servility all that I wished to require of 
 it" \ His first requirements, however, exceeded the measure, for, 
 jealous of his personal power, he did not wish even to found a 
 dynasty, in order to be free to transmit his crown to whomsoever 
 
 * " Memoires sur le Conseil d'Etat," p. 228. 
 
 •j- Mio de Melitto, " Memoires," II., p. 329. 
 Digitized by Microsofi® 
 
424 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 he pleased, and in order that it should not be said that there was 
 a single rule in the future before which he might be obliged to 
 bend. This determination raised the most violent storms in his 
 family, and caused gentle and peaceful men, like Joseph, wrath- 
 fully to curse him. These sad scenes are re-produced in the 
 curious " Memoires " of Miot de Melitto. They enable us to 
 understand this mournful exclamation of the author who expressed 
 the strong impression of a great number of his contemporaries : 
 " Behold, then, the issue of that Revolution commenced by an 
 almost universal impulse of patriotism and love of liberty ! What ! 
 so much blood shed on the fields of battle, so much blood poured 
 out on the scaffold, so many fortunes destroyed, so many sacri- 
 fices of all that man holds most dear, shall have ended only in 
 making us change masters, only in substituting a family unknown 
 ten years ago, and which, at the commencement of the Revolution, 
 was scarcely French, for the family which reigned in France for 
 eight centuries ! Is our condition then so miserable that we have 
 no other asylum than despotism ; that we are obliged, in order 
 to ward off the evils which to-day threaten us, to grant everything 
 to the Bonapartes, without demanding anything from them ? To 
 raise them to the finest throne in Europe, to give them, as a heri- 
 tage, the glory of dommanding one of the first nations in the- 
 world, without ever imposing on them the slightest condition, 
 without any contract binding them, without any new institution at 
 least replacing those which sometimes served as an obstacle to 
 the caprices of our ancient masters ? It is not in a debased Senate, 
 in a Council of State without consistence, in a mute legislative 
 body, in a trembling tribunate begging a few places, in a magis- 
 tracy without consideration, that we must seek a counterpoise to 
 this immense power entrusted to a single man." * What cora- 
 
 * Miot de Melitto, " Memoires," II., pp. 171, 172. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
TRUE MOTIVE OF THE CONCORDAT. 425 
 
 pletes the picture of the period is, that he who wrote these lines 
 was counsellor of state in ordinary service. 
 
 It was of importance to determine the political situation in 
 which the Concordat took its rise. It was bom, like all the insti- 
 tutions of that time, of a thought of personal ambition, and it 
 made part of that plan of re-action and monarchical restoration so 
 profoundly conceived, and executed with so much energy by 
 General Bonaparte. Lafayette determined its true character the 
 day on which he addressed this witty word to the First Consul 
 on the occasion of the negociations with Rome : " You wish to 
 have the little phial broken over your head." "We shall see, we 
 shall see," said Bonaparte.* Bourrienne, in relating this conversa- 
 tion, adds : " Behold the true origin of the Concordat.'' We 
 cannot doubt it for an instant when we take into account the 
 religious opinions of the First Consul, whether by glancing over 
 his correspondence, or, by seizing in their flight, those brusque 
 and picturesque words which escaped him in intimacy or even in 
 his council of State. Religion is always considered by him, from 
 the political point of view, as an instrument of government, as an 
 efficacious means of ruling minds and attaching them to himself. 
 He made for himself even the first place in that domain where 
 there is no other acceptable sovereignty than that of God. Doubt- 
 less he cannot be accused of atheism; his lofty intellect rejected 
 the absurdity of a world, so wonderful as ours, being born of 
 chance. " It is to intellect," M. Thiers has very well said, " that 
 it belongs to acknowledge intellect in the universe, and a great 
 mind is more capable than a small one of seeing God in his 
 works." Then, Atheism is an enemy to order, subordination, and 
 obedience in civil, as well as in religious society ; for this reason 
 it was necessarily displeasing to the greatest genius for govem- 
 
 * " Memoires de Bourrienne," V., p. 62. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
426 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 ment that has ever existed. Open rebellion against the sovereigr 
 of heaven was a bad example. The general, then, was sincerf 
 every time that he spoke of the Divine grandeur, such as ii 
 appears from the spectacle of creation, or from that starry skj 
 which he one day pointed out to Monge with unfeigned emo: 
 tion. But more must not be asked from a man of war, 01 
 from a profound politician. This religious sentiment, sufRcientlj 
 vague, whose influence over himself he acknowledged, he was 
 very decided to make use of, and he sought, not so much tc 
 satisfy it, as to draw advantage from it. Now, there are few 
 more serious ways of misunderstanding and offending it Every 
 time that religion is considered not as an end, as the supreme 
 end, but as a means of realising earthly and personal designs, its 
 very essence is misunderstood. We love to believe that on the 
 rock of Saint Helena, a Divine ray crossed the tormented heart oi 
 the great captive ; but it is certain that, up to his fall, he considered 
 religion only in its relation to his policy, and that he dispensed to 
 it protection and disfavour by turns, according as he found it 
 useful to his interests. In religion, as in all things, he saw only 
 himself, and himself alone. Before and after the Concordat, the 
 same point of view prevails in his speeches. The young man who 
 is still only a general of fortune — of a marvellous fortune it is true- 
 expresses himself as the chief of a great empire. We have from 
 him in this respect the most various acts and designs according to 
 the occasion. 
 
 In the first campaign in Italy, when he has business with the 
 dignitaries of the Church, he speaks with respect of the beauty 
 and spirit of the Gospel ; but that does not hinder him, on his 
 return to Paris, in presence of a power a sworn enemy oi 
 Christianity, and before a scoffing people imbued with the same 
 ideas, from placing in the first rank among the benefits of the 
 Revolution, the des^u^tK)p^^o|,. rclij^n itself Here was the 
 
OPINION OF NAPOLEON ON RELIGION. 427 
 
 opening of his speech in answer to the Minister of Foreign 
 Affairs who had presented him to the Directors : "The French 
 people, in order to obtain a Constitution based on reason, had 
 eighteen centuries of prejudices to conquer. The Constitution of the 
 year III. and you, have triumphed over all these obstacles. 
 Religion, feudality, and royalism, have successively for twenty 
 centuries, governed Europe, but from the peace that you have 
 just concluded, will date the era of representative governments."* 
 Religion is here seen placed in the same rank as feudality and 
 royalism, and presented as one of the scourges of humanity. The 
 young general passes into Egypt. On his way, .he addresses pious 
 words to the Bishop of Malta, to cover with honied speech his 
 recommendations of a prompt submission to the new power. But 
 scarcely has he set his foot on the land of the pyramids, than he 
 addresses to his soldiers the famous proclamation in which he 
 recommends them to act with the people subject to the Koran 
 as they have acted with Jews and Christians, and to have the 
 same regard for their muftis and imans, as they have shown to 
 the bishops and rabbi's in Europe. He does more ; he wishes 
 that the festivals of the Ramazan should be celebrated at Cairo 
 with greater pomp than ever. It is thus that he realises, with 
 some variations, the famous verse of Voltaire upon Zaire, and 
 that he is a Christian in Italy, a free thinker in Paris, and a- 
 Mussulman on the banks of the Nile. He has, however, developed 
 his theory in full council of State, with all the clearness desirable, 
 and that after the Concordat : " For my part," said he, one day, 
 " I do not see in religion the mystery of incarnation, but the 
 mystery of social order ; it attaches to heaven an idea of equahty, 
 which prevents the rich being massacred by the poor. Religion is 
 also a sort of inoculation or vaccine which, by satisfying our 
 
 " Moniteur," XXIX., p. 90. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
428 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 love of the marvellous, secures us against charlatans and sor- 
 cerers ; the priests are better than the Cagliostros, the Kants, and 
 all the dreamers of. Germany."* The mystery of social order 
 was, before all, in the eyes of Napoleon, submission to the civil 
 power. This was for him the essential dogma, the chief precept, 
 the very basis of religion ; now the priests appeared to him 
 eminently useful to tighten the curb of obedience in his States. 
 The Emperor of Austria exclaimed, on learning the conclusion of 
 the second Concordat, that he highly approved of Napoleon, that 
 he knew by experience that priests could not be dispensed with 
 in a well-ordered State, and that, as for him, he had need to make 
 his authority respected by two armies, the one white, the other 
 black.t On that day the two Emperors understood each other. 
 Napoleon constantly returned to this utilitarian point of view, in 
 his correspondence with the ecclesiastics as well as in his 
 addresses. When he is yet a repubUcan general, he praises the 
 priests, " who have acknowledged that the political code of the 
 Gospel is summed up in the liberty and sovereignty of the people, 
 and who strive to calm instead of to agitate them." In fact, by 
 holding this democratical language, they serve his policy of the 
 moment, which consists in founding republics in Italy ; he is not 
 wanting in praises on their account, he compares them to 
 F^nelon, and declares that " such priests are the finest present 
 that heaven can make to a government"! To say truly, he loved 
 republicanism amongst the priests, only as a mark of their 
 docility to receive his orders. He did not long enjoin upon 
 them this kind of opinion, and the cardinal virtue which he 
 
 * " Opinions de Napoleon sur divers sujets de politique et d'admi- 
 nistration, recueillies par un membre de son Conseil d'Etat." Paris, 
 1833, p. 223. i- Ibid., p. 141. 
 
 I " Correspondance de Napoleon," Vol. II., letter of the loth of 
 
 September, 1797. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
HIS SPEECH TO THE PRIESTS OF MILAN. 429 
 
 esteemed the most among them, was eagerness to submit them- 
 selves to the temporal power. "I do not conceive a more 
 respectable character or one more worthy of the veneration of 
 men," wrote he to the Bishop of Malta after the conquest of the 
 island, " than a priest who, full of the true spirit of the Gospel, is 
 persuaded that his duties require him to render obedience to the 
 temporal power, and to maintain peace in his diocese."* 
 
 The true thought of Napoleon, that which presided at the 
 Concordat, comes out with the greatest clearness in the speech 
 which he addressed to the parish priests of Milan in the month of 
 June, 1800, on the eve of Marengo. It must not be forgotten 
 that he spoke especially for Paris and Rome. This speech 
 deserves to be reproduced as the preface to the Concordat : — • 
 
 "I have desired to see you all assembled here/' said the 
 General, " in order to have the satisfaction myself to communicate 
 to you the sentiments which animate me on the subject of the 
 Catholic, Appstolic, and Roman religion. Persuaded that this 
 religion is the only one which can procure a true happiness to a 
 well-ordered society, and strengthen the base of good govern- 
 ments, I assure you that I shall apply myself to protect and 
 defend it at all times and by all means. You, the ministers of 
 this religion, which truly is also mine, I regard you as my dearest 
 friends ; I declare to you that I shall consider as a disturber of 
 the public peace, and an enemy of the common good, and whom 
 I shall know how to punish as such in the most rigorous and 
 striking manner, and even if necessary, with the penalty of death, 
 any one whosoever who shall offer the least insult to our common 
 religion, and who shall have committed the slightest outrage 
 against your sacred persons. My formal intention is, that the 
 
 * " Correspondance de Napoleon," Vol. III., letter of the 12th of 
 
 January, 1798. 
 
 Digitized by Microsofi® 
 
43° THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 Christian, Catholic, and Roman religion be preserved in its 
 entirety, that it be publicly practised, and that it enjoy this public 
 practice with a liberty as full, extended, and inviolable, as at the 
 period when I entered, for the first time, into these happy 
 countries. Now that I am furnished with full powers, I am 
 resolved to make use of all the means that I shall beUeve to be 
 the most convenient to secure and guarantee this religion. 
 Modern philosophers have made a desperate effort to persuade 
 France that the Catholic religion was the implacable enemy of 
 every republican government. Hence that cruel persecution 
 which the Republic practised against religion and its ministers ; 
 hence all the horrors to which that unfortunate people was de- 
 livered. The diversity of opinions which reigned in France on 
 the subject of religion at the epoch of the Revolution, has not 
 been the least of the sources of these disorders. 
 
 "Experience has undeceived the French I also, I 
 
 am a philosopher, and I know that in any society whatever, no 
 man could pass for just and virtuous if he knew not whence he 
 comes nor whither he goes. Mere reason could not satisfy us on 
 these points ; without religion, we grope continually in the dark, 
 and the Catholic religion is the only one which gives to man 
 certain light on his origin and final destination. No society can 
 exist without morality — there is no good morality without religion; 
 it is, then, only religion which gives to the State a firm and durable 
 support. A society without religion, is like a vessel without a ' 
 compass. France, taught by her misfortunes, has recalled the 
 Catholic religion to her bosom. I cannot deny that I have 
 contributed to this noble work. I assure you that the churches in 
 France have been re-opened, where the Catholic religion resumes 
 its ancient splendour, and that the people see with respect these 
 holy pastors who return full of zeal to the midst of their abandoned 
 
 flocks. When I shall be able to confer with the new Pope, I hope 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
HIS CONFIDENCES AT MALMAISON. 43 1 
 
 I shall have the happiness of removing all obstacles which may 
 still be opposed to the entire reconcihation of France with the 
 Head of the Church. This is what I wished to communicate to 
 you on the subject of the Christian, Catholic, and Roman religion. 
 I desire that ,the expression of these sentiments may remain 
 engraven on your minds — that you should put in order that which 
 I have just said, and I should approve that part of it be made 
 public by means of printing, — in order that my dispositions may be 
 known, not only in Italy and France, but also in all Europe." =:- 
 
 The First Consul speaks like a true confessor of the faith ; only 
 he speaks especially for the Europ'ean echo, and in vain does he 
 swell his voice — he does not go beyond the political order. He 
 makes an advance to Catholic opinion, and he reckons that it will 
 respond to it. It is a business, a negotiation which is entered 
 upon; it is an act of the head of the State with which the 
 Christian has nothing to do. If he, the armed representative of 
 France, has not feared to threaten with the penalty of death the 
 least religious offences, it is because the orator, according to his 
 custom, becomes all things to all men ; he makes himself an 
 Italian for the Italian priests ; he thinks only of his calculation of 
 the moment. If we doubted it, we have only to hear him some 
 months later, no longer in great official pomp under the vaults of 
 the Cathedral of Milan, but at Malmaison, in an intimate con- 
 versation with one of his familiars. It was at the time when the 
 negociations with the Court of Rome were in full activity. The 
 First Consul had turned the conversation on religious ideas ; he 
 fiad characterised as ideology — which was, for him, the last term 
 of contempt — purely philosophical opinions such as Deism. He 
 had spoken of the emotion which he had felt but lately in hearing 
 the church-bell of Rueil — " so strong is the power of habit and 
 
 * " Correspondance de Napoleon," VoL VI., p. 338. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
432 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 education." A man so occupied did not speak of his ideas and 
 emotions for the simple pleasure of expressing them. We may be 
 assured that he had a concealed intention and a precise aim. In 
 fact, these effusions were designed to introduce a grave communi- 
 cation. "I said to myself," added he, immediately, "what 
 impression must not all that make on the simple and credulous 
 man — let your philosophers and your ideologists answer to that ! 
 The people must have a religion ; this religion must be in the 
 hands of the Government. Fifty emigrant bishops, paid by 
 England, to-day lead the French clergy. We must destroy their 
 influence ; the authority of the Pope is necessary for that. He 
 dismisses them, or makes them give in their resignation. It is 
 declared that the Catholic religion being that of the majority of 
 the French, the exercise of it ought to be organised. The First 
 Consul nominates a hundred bishops, the Pope institutes them ; 
 they nominate the parish priests — the State pays them. They 
 take the oath. The priests who do not submit are transported. 
 It will be said that I am a Papist. I am nothing. I was a 
 Mahomedan in Egypt ; I shall be a Catholic here, for the good of 
 the people. I do not believe in religions, but in the idea of a 
 God." .... And raising his hand to heaven, — "Who is it that 
 has made this?" * 
 
 The First Consul then developed the advantages of his plan. 
 " Enlightened people will not rise against Catholicism. They 
 are indifferent. I spare myself great annoyances in the interior ; 
 
 and I can, by means of the Pope outside " He stopped. 
 
 The reticence was significant. The conversation terminated 
 abruptly by these words: "There is no longer good faith, nor 
 belief. It is a purely political affair." '\ The new Cyrus took 
 
 * "Memoires sur le Consulat," attributed to Thibaudeau, Book XII., 
 1827. 
 t Ibid., p. 159. Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
CHURCH LIBERTY INSEPARABLE FROM A FREE REGIME. 433 
 
 care, by this veiy frank confession, to establish well in what sense 
 he restored the altars. He unceasingly repeated to his secretary, 
 Bourrienne : " You will see what advantage I shall draw from the 
 priests."* He was, nevertheless, fully resolved to crush, so soon 
 as they should make the slightest resistance to him, " these sacred 
 persons," to whom he had testified such great friendship at Milan, 
 and whom he was vsdlling to protect with his sword. At the very 
 time that he was preparing the Concordat, he said, one day, to 
 Carnot, on the occasion of a feeble manifestation of clerical 
 opposition : " The priests and nobles are playing a great game. 
 If I were to let loose the people upon them, they would all be 
 devoured in the twinkling of an eye." t 
 
 We have indicated the great political reason which drove the 
 First Consul to treat with the Court of Rome : he wished to 
 enlist to his advantage the religious power, the indestructible 
 influence of which he acknowledged. He could not otherwise 
 have allowed liberty to religion, without limiting his own arbi- 
 trary power. Let us say, rather, liberty of religion was possible 
 only with the maintenance of liberty itself in the most extended 
 sense. What, after all, is a free Church ? It is an association 
 which assembles at regular intervals, and which uses the liberty of 
 writing and speaking. It cannot dispense with the most essential 
 rights of a freed people ; the right of association and assembly, 
 the liberty of the press, all these great guarantees of modem 
 society are indispensible to it It is the honour of religion not to 
 be able to use liberty as a monopoly; behold why its first interest 
 is to require it for alL The Dictator of the i8th of Brumaire 
 (Nov. 8th), was then logically constrained to bind this great power 
 with the same chains with which he encompassed France. He 
 
 * " Memoires de Bourrienne," V., p. 232, 
 
 f "Memoires sur Carnot," by his son, II., p. 224. 
 
 Digitized b^^Mfcrosoft® 
 
434 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 could not tolerate this abominable disorder, that a word which he 
 had not inspired should resound over a part of the country, and 
 that in face of his prefects there should be independent bishops. 
 The maintenance of a single free association was a stain on the 
 map. It was necessary quickly to remove it, in order to celebrate 
 the jubilee of centralisation realised from one frontier to the other, 
 without an3rthing intervening to break this magnificent uniformity. 
 The same hand which raised the throne was not to raise the 
 altar— for it was standing, and never had purer incense burnt 
 upon it — but to lean it against the throne. In his furious desire 
 for absolute domination and omnipotence, the great despot could 
 not consent not to reign in all domains. He was soon to leam 
 that it is more easy to attempt such a usurpation than to succeed 
 in it. Let us judge of it by these bitter words, which explain all 
 the insurmountable difficulties that he met with in this divi- 
 sion of power in which he vainly reckoned on having the hon's 
 share : "See," said he to the Council of State, " see the insolence 
 of the priests, who, in the sharing of authority with what they call 
 the temporal power, reserve to themselves action over intellect, 
 over the noble part of man, and mean to reduce me to have action. ; 
 only over bodies. They keep the soul and throw me the carcase."* 
 After these preliminaries, indispensible for comprehending the 
 import of the Concordat, we have only to recount the different 
 phases of the negotiation. It was necessary, at once, to negotiate 
 with public opinion at Paris, and to treat with Rome. The First 
 Consul used his personal influence for the first negotiation, which 
 was not the least difficult, and employed, for the second, skilful 
 agents, armed with promises and efficacious threatenings. 
 
 * " Opinions de Napoleon sur divers sujets de Politique et d ' Ad- 
 ministration, recueillies par un Membra de son Conseil d ' Etat.'' Paris. 
 1833, p. 201. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
FIRST MEASURES OF THE CONSULS IN REGARD TO RELIGION. 435 
 
 We have seen in what a prosperous situation, from the reli- 
 gious point of view, the Church, whether Gallican or Constitu- 
 tional, found itself at the close of the preceding regime. Every- 
 day, worship was re-established in new parishes, and the work of 
 reorganisation was pursued without intermission. The nonjuring 
 priests, moreover, despite the proscription still in force against 
 them, had spread themselves in the towns and country places, and 
 were rallying around them an important portion of the popu- 
 lations, especially in the South and West. The two clergies were 
 still very far from understanding each other, but nothing prevents 
 us from thinking that if liberty of worships had been really 
 acknowledged, they would have arrived at a reconciliation. In 
 any case, the Papacy would not have been obliged to make, for 
 the sake of that, concessions as considerable as those to which, in 
 the end, it consented in order to conclude the Concordat. The 
 first measures of the new rigime, in what concerns religion, can 
 only be approved. By the decision of the 3rd of Nivose (Dec. 
 23rd), which authorised the consultative commissions, formed of 
 the remnants of the dissolved councils, to receive the complaints of 
 the transported priests, it clearly showed, at the very outset, that 
 the era of religious proscription was about to end. The ashes of 
 Pius VI. were restored to his former subjects, and solemnly tran- 
 sported to Rome. A few days after, a decree, judicious among all 
 parties, substituted for the Constitutional oath, which had pro- 
 voked so many storms, a simple engagement of fidelity to the 
 Constitution. The question of principles was thus set aside, and 
 conscience released. In fine, the resolution of the 3rd of Prairial, 
 which reopened the temples to the Christian worship, was re- 
 vived. The Minister of Police, Fouche, the ancient proconsul of 
 Nievre, tried, indeed, by his circulars, to diminish the import of 
 these measures, but facts were much more important than words. 
 
 Men beffan to hope that liberty of worships would no longer be a 
 ° ^ Drgitized by Microsoft® 
 
 F F 2 
 
436 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 sad irony on the frontispiece of the Constitution. There was sti! 
 more than one vexatious procedure on the part of the local autho 
 rities, provoked often by the imprudence of 'the religious parties 
 who made open war on each other, but quiet would have ensuec 
 frpm liberty seriously granted. We have stated the reasons whicl 
 prevented the cherishing of this hope. Already the liberty of th( 
 press had been suspended, and with it all the guarantees whicl 
 it alone can preserve. It became evident that the work of reac 
 tion would be pursued in the religious domain as elsewhere. 
 
 Scarcely had the First Consul returned from his memorabli 
 campaign in Italy, than he set himself to regulate the affairs of th( 
 Church in the spirit that we have indicated. He was quite nev 
 to this order of questions, but he had a very determined will am 
 the power to carry it into execution. He hastily formed for him 
 self a small theological or ecclesiastical library, but he appears tc 
 have profited by it still more hastily. He caused the Latin worki 
 of Bossuet to be translated for his own use, and the liberties o: 
 the Galilean Church to be thoroughly declared. He gave then 
 his high approval : this suffices to condemn them from a libera! 
 point of view. This approval did not prevent him from afterwards 
 completing them, in a very singular manner, by innovations suf 
 ficient to make the great shade of Bossuet shudder, for they sanc- 
 tioned the most exchisive Ultramontanism. This rapid theolo- 
 gical and ecclesiastical apprenticeship of General Bonaparte, is 
 thought to be admirable. It does not appear to me more ad 
 mirable, than the very correct orthodoxy of Constantine at the 
 Council of Nicaea, and his edifying harangues to the heretics tc 
 press them to adopt the good doctrine. These essays of con- 
 troversy in the mouth of the masters of the world, produce upon 
 me the most pitiable effect To present arguments of theology oi 
 ecclesiastical right, with the hand on the hilt of the sword, is oul 
 
 of character. „. ... , , ... ^^ 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
PLAN OF NEGOTIATING WITH ROME. 437 
 
 The plan of the First Consul appears to have been promptly enough 
 conceived. He had for a long time been thinking of the opportunity 
 of a treaty with the Pope. We should be much mistaken were we 
 to imagine that he was guided in any degree whatsoever by the 
 recollections of childhood which the bell of Rueil awakened in 
 him in his leisure hours. The letters written by him on the occa- 
 sion of the negotiations which preceded the treaty of Tolentino, 
 reveal an indifference, mingled with contempt, for that Pontifical 
 institution which he was to find so admirable on the day on which 
 it appeared to him useful to his policy. He wrote to Cacault on 
 the 26th of September, 1796, " to dodge the old fox." Whilst in 
 an official note of the 19th of February, 1797, he announced to 
 the Pope that he would have no more faithful ally than the Re- 
 publican Government, he wrote to the Directory the same day 
 that infallibly the old machine was going of itself to get out of 
 order. Certainly, his least care would have been to repair it, but 
 the profound statesman was beginning to appear in the victorious 
 warrior. 
 
 The plan of the Concordat has often been vaunted as a creation 
 of genius brought to light by his fertile cogitations. Nothing is 
 more false. Closely examined, we find there the ancient and in- 
 variable Latin and French tradition, i.e., to say, the obsolete 
 system of the entire subordination of religion to the civil power. 
 It is the old system of the jurists of royalty, which had been re- 
 stored anew by the Constituent Assembly. The Concordat is 
 only a grevised edition of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, with- 
 out the democratic element, which was no longer seasonable. It 
 was very easy to take away from this Constitution that which was 
 decidedly unacceptable to the Papacy, viz., the elements of Pres- 
 byterianism which it contained, and the right of election by the 
 people. What was displeasing to the Vatican was not any more 
 
 pleasing to the Tuileries : religious elections would have troubled 
 '^ Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
438 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 the peaceful formation of the lists of notables, and the councils of 
 the canons, if they had had a deliberative voice, would have had a 
 vague resemblance to the Communal Councils, which were no 
 longer desired. By lightening the Civil Constitution of the Clergy 
 of these grievous innovations, it was rendered almost acceptable 
 to Rome, except on one or two points to be debated, and it gave 
 to the new power a functionary clergy who did not disfigure the 
 beautiful harmony of the French administration, especially if care 
 was taken to make large borrowings from the old GalHcan right, 
 so distrustful in regard to the Papacy. A sufficient salary would 
 be assured by the State to the bishops and parish priests. Such 
 is the plan which the First Consul sketched, or rather borrowed 
 from his ecclesiastical library, and which was about to be precisely 
 stated and completed in the negotiation. 
 
 Besides, he was urged only by himself in this direction; no 
 current of opinion constrained him ; on the contrary, he directly 
 offended it by re-establishing an official worship. But he took 
 seriously the word of Cam_bacerfes ; he firmly believed that the 
 Government represented the nation, its religious as well as its 
 political interests, and he arrogated to himself the extravagant,! 
 right of sovereignly, and by himself alone, deciding a .question 
 of conscience, which is the gravest of usurpations. The opponents 
 to the reconstitution of an official worship, obtained recruits with- 
 out doubt, at first, from amongst the numerous adherents of the j 
 philosophy of the eighteenth century, who imagined, quite falsely, 
 that the governmental protection would raise the credit of religion; 
 this was to forget that nothing was more calculated to degrade it 
 than a rich servitude. The sound part of the Constitutional clergy 
 only asked that they might freely and peacefully pursue the resto- 
 ration of the Church of France. As for the refractory clergy, the 
 dispensing with the oath accomplished their wishes, and they had 
 
 to make more than one capitulation of conscience in order to 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
PUBLIC OPINION ADVERSE TO THESE NEGOTIATIONS. 439 
 
 accept the Concordat. The men of 1789, the true liberals who 
 had remained faithful to the belief of their youth, beheld the 
 attempt of the First Consul with marked displeasure. We learn 
 from the " Memoires " of Lafayette, that the illustrious general 
 made a journey to the First Consul, in order to dissuade him from 
 re-establishing an official religion, and to counsel him " to accept 
 in its integrity the American principle of perfect equahty amongst 
 all worships, each of them remaining separated from the Govern- 
 ment, and the religious societies forming themselves at their plea- 
 sure, under the direction of priests chosen and paid by them- 
 selves*"* Nothing can better measure the distance which sepa- 
 rates the spirit of 1801 from that of 1789, than to state the im- 
 pression which this intervention of Lafayette produced on the' 
 First Consul. " M. de Lafayette," said Bourrienne, " blamed the 
 Concordat. He would have wished that Bonaparte, leaving to all 
 worships equal liberty, should have placed them all as, in the 
 United States, quite apart from the Government, and that the fol- 
 lowers of any worship whatsoever should have agreed amongst 
 themselves to provide for the requirements of that worship and of 
 its ministers. I remember that on that occasion Bonaparte said 
 to me : ' Lafayette may be right in theory ; but what is a theory ? 
 A folly when it is wished to make an application of it to a mass of 
 men ; and then he imagines himself always in America, as if the 
 French were Americans. He will not perhaps teach me what is 
 necessary for this country. The Catholic religion prevails here, 
 and, besides, I have need of the Pope ; he will do what I wish.' " t 
 If the opinion of liberal minds was contrary to the schemes of 
 the First Consul, the mass of the nation troubled themselves but 
 little about them, and showed the most perfect indifference. " At 
 
 * " Memoires de Lafayette," II., p. 63. 
 
 t " Memoires de Bourrienne," V., pp. 61, 62, 
 Digitized by Microsoft^ 
 
44° THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 the time of the accession of Bonaparte," says Madame de Stael in 
 her " Considerations sur la Revolution," " the most sincere parti- 
 sans of Catholicism, after having been so long victims of the poli- 
 tical inquisition, aspired only to a perfect religious liberty. The 
 general wish of the nation was limited to this, that all persecution 
 against the priests should henceforth cease, and that there should 
 no longer be required of them any kind of oath ; in fine, that 
 authority should not mix itself up in any way with the religious 
 opinions of any person. Thus the Consular Government would 
 have satisfied opinion by maintaining in France toleration such as 
 it exists in America. But the First Consul knew that if the clergy 
 were to resume a political consistence, its influence would second 
 only the interests of despotism ; what he wished, was to prepare 
 the way for arriving at the throne. A clergy was necessary to him 
 as he had chamberlains." * But until the new chamberlains should 
 enter upon their functions, it was necessary to explain to the old 
 ones the motives of a plan which looked pleasing only to its 
 author. This is what the First Consul did in his frequent conver- 
 sations with his famiUars, always terminated by the triumphant 
 reply of him who could do everything. 
 
 To those who counselled him not to mix himself up with 
 religious quarrels, and to content himself with equally protecting 
 all worships, he answered that power could not be indifferent to 
 religion in a rehgious country. As if the intervention of the 
 State was not especially dangerous, and likely to raise the gravest 
 conflicts there where there is a fermentation of ardent convictions, 
 naturally unduly susceptible. What can we think of the argu- 
 ment that the Government could not be disinterested in the 
 quarrels of different Churches, and that it should place itself as a 
 judge in the combat ? History proclaimed, in a manner suffi- 
 
 * ''Consideration^^^^k^^ev^lutk»^ran5aise,» II. p. 273. 
 
EXPLANATIONS OF THE FIRST CONSUL. 441 
 
 ciently clear, that the surest means of envenoming and perpetu- 
 ating theological disputes was for the State to attempt to bring 
 about forced reconciUations, which are, in reality, only a hypo- 
 critical peace obtained by the humiliation of one of the parties. 
 In truth, it was not worth while to be a great genius in order to 
 recommence the Byzantine tragi-comedy. In realit)', the paci- 
 fying of these quarrels was of very little concern to him ; his 
 motive was more simple, he expressed it without circumlocution 
 in these words : " In the regime of liberty, the Government could 
 not seize upon the religious administration by a wise agreement 
 with the Holy See. We have never seen a State without religion, 
 without worship, without priests. Is it not better to organise the 
 worship and to discipline the priests, than to leave things as they 
 are ? In place of exiling the priests who preach against the 
 Government, is it not better to attach them to one's self ? I tell 
 you that the priests who will accept offices will make a schism 
 with the ancient incumbents, and will be interested in preventing 
 their return."* When he was urged to place himself at the head 
 of the clergy, and it was represented to him, quite erroneously, 
 that, by a word, he could make France Protestant : " Would it 
 not be necessary," replied he, " that I should do quite the con- 
 trary of Henry IV. ? You understand nothing about it ; the half 
 of France will remain Catholic. We shall have interminable 
 quarrels. "t It was at least wished that he would not treat with 
 Rome, and an attempt was made to frighten him concerning the 
 power of the Papacy. But this power, at a distance, strictly 
 maintained in narrow limits, reassured in place of disquieting 
 him ; he saw in it a convenient means of realising his favourite 
 plans. He then found the temporal power of the Papacy an 
 admirable combination, only because it lent itself to his views. 
 
 * " Memoires sur le Conseil d'Etat," c. XI. f Ibid. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
442 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 "Centuries have done, that, and they have done it well; "such 
 was his language when he imagined that they had done it for him 
 and for his interests. One might be well assured that he would 
 undo in a day this secular work, as soon as he should believe it 
 useful to his policy. " A Pope is necessary to me,'' repeated he 
 to those around him, " but a Pope who brings together in place 
 of dividing, who conciliates minds, reunites and gives them to the 
 Government that has issued from the Revolution. And for that, 
 there is necessary to me the true Pope — Catholic, Apostolic, and 
 Roman." A Pope is necessary to me ! The question is not 
 whether this Pope has not rights over the Catholic Church, 
 whether it is not to religion itself that he is necessary. A childish 
 question and without importance ! It is to the First Consul that 
 a Pope is necessary ; it is his policy that has need of him. He 
 troubles himself much with dogma, discipline, truth in itself, with 
 the good of religion. A Pope on the earth was necessary to him 
 just as a God in heaven, a religion which should crown his power, 
 which should impress on men's minds wise notions of authority, 
 and which should permit him to maintain a police with less 
 expense, and levy his imposts with less difficulty. In his eyes, 
 God was too far off to inconvenience him ; but it was not so with 
 the Pope, who had not lost the habit of meddling with the affairs 
 of this world. The First Consul thus reassured his counsellors 
 on this delicate point : " With the French armies and popular 
 power, I shall always be sufficiently the master. When I shall 
 again raise the altars, protect the priests, maintain them, and treat 
 them as the ministers of religion deserve to be treated in every 
 country, he will do what I shall ask him in the interest of the 
 general repose. He will calm men's minds, reunite them under 
 his hand, and will place them under mine" To maintain the 
 priests, in order that in return their chief at Rome may place 
 them under the good^ggas^^e ^f ±e^ivil power, behold what 
 
INTERDICTION OF RELIGIOUS DISCUSSIONS. 443 
 
 the First Consul calls reviving religion ! The clergy are to kiss the 
 hand which nourishes them ! that is the central point of his thought. 
 He dared not hold language of such soldier-like frankness to 
 men like Gregoire. He condescended so far as to ask from him 
 a memorial on religious affairs, whilst perfectly decided to take 
 no account of it.* We may judge of his sincerity by this word 
 addressed to a counsellor of State, at the very time that the 
 negotiations with Rome were pending : " What we are doing is 
 inflicting a mortal blow on Popery." f Thus, this restorer of 
 rehgion was playing the artful politician with the Holy Father. 
 He was acting in conformity with the counsel which he had given 
 some years previously to the plenipotentiary of the Republic at 
 Rome ; he "dodged with the old fox." Edifying preliminaries of 
 the religious peace, the not less edifying catastrophes of which 
 it remains for us to follow. 
 
 Everybody in France could not have the advantage of being 
 directly persuaded by the lively and original eloquence of the 
 First Consul. It was accordingly to be feared that public opinion 
 might pronounce against his views if it was not watched over 
 and carefully restrained. The liberty of the press was suspended, 
 nothing was more easy than to forbid all inconvenient discussion 
 on religious affairs. The word of order was given to the prefects. 
 A circular of the prefect of the Seine-Inferieure to the journalists 
 of his jurisdiction, is worthy of being preserved in the annals of 
 administrative literature, which already possesses so many curious 
 treasures : " The interests of earth," wrote this functionary, " are 
 sufficient to supply your journal. Prove your respect for those of 
 heaven by abstaining from speaking of them." | The conclusion 
 
 * " Memoires de Gregoire," I., p. 93. 
 
 t "Memoires sur le Conseil d'Etat.' c. XL 
 
 X " Annales de la Religion," XIII., p. 185. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
444 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 was a threat of immediate suspension of every journal ill-advised 
 enough to show to religion that insolent contempt which consists 
 in not letting it pass entirely under silence. The moment for the 
 official communications to the great bodies of the State had not 
 yet arrived. It is, then, in the shade and silence that that was 
 about to be prepared which it is agreed to call the religious 
 peace. Silentium faciunt et pacem appellant. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Cfjaptet a. 
 
 Conclusion of the Concordat. 
 
 We know the first basis of the negotiation : the point of departure 
 was the Civil Constitution, somewhat revised. They preserved 
 the diocesan division, which appropriated a bishopric to each chief 
 town in the department, and placed the bishop opposite the pre- 
 fect, or rather subject to him. It was necessary, then, to obtain 
 from the Court of Rome, a reduction of the ancient dioceses, and 
 that was a concession which it had energetically refused to the 
 unhappy Louis XVI. It is true that in exchange they made 
 cheap with all that resembled Presbyterianism ; they put in force 
 the articles of the ancient Concordats which, by abandoning the 
 right of nomination to the Prince, acknowledged to the Pope the 
 right of investiture by a bull. The contracting parties understood 
 each other very well on these points ; it was not even very difficult 
 to bring the Papacy authoritatively to reduce the dioceses by im- 
 posing its will on the recalcitrant bishops; for that was for it a 
 a true coup d'etat which raised its power higher than it had ever 
 been; it was, by its own confession, to do what it had not dared 
 to do in the whole course of time, it was to place the entire 
 episcopacy in dependence upon it; it was, in short, to sanction 
 that of which the most exaggerated Ultramontanjsm had not even 
 dreamed. The Powers are always disposed to allow themselves to 
 be forced to increase their prerogatives. Resistance on this article 
 was not to last long. It was not so with two other concessions, 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
446 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 imperatively demanded by the First Consul. Let us acknowledge, 
 to his honour, that he strongly wished to maintain the equality of 
 worships before the law, and that he would have refused all return 
 to an exclusive and persecuting religion. A reaction of this kind 
 was, besides, impossible, even in enslaved France. Now the Papacy 
 had remained invariably faithful to the principle of State religions, 
 it was for it an incontestible truth that Catholicism alone ought 
 to be protected and tolerated; it thought, as it still thinks, as it 
 will ever think, so long as it shall be connected with a theocratic 
 regime, that liberty of conscience is the first of heresies. So it 
 was on this point to raise and prolong the most vigorous re- 
 sistance. A concession, not less bitter for it, was to confirm the 
 nomination of bishops who had belonged to that Constitutional 
 clergy against which it had exhausted its thunders. This was a ■ 
 humiliating recantation. It never sincerely consented to it, and 
 never ceased to demand retractations, which were to be true acts 
 of penitence, from the ecclesiastics who had taken the oath to the 
 Civil Constitution of the Clergy. The First Consul was resolved 
 not to give way, for the exclusion of the Constitutional priests 
 would have revived the sharpest polemics, and he desired the 
 silence of dociUty. Negotiation was not then easy, especially 
 between two powers, one of which was accustomed to a thunder- 
 ing speed, and assuined to make peace as it made war, and the 
 other had all the delays, and followed all the windings familiar to 
 a government of old men and priests. 
 
 The See of Rome was then filled by a respectable Pontiff, with- 
 out arrogance, but endowed with that gentle firmness which, on 
 occasion, knows how to show itself invincible. His reputation 
 was without a stain; he was formed in the retirement of the 
 cloister, afterwards he had attained by a merited favour, the 
 highest ranks in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. He had the good 
 
 fortune to bear on his fine and regular features the impress of a 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
THE NEGOTIATION IS ENTERED UPON. 447 
 
 pure and melancholy soul. He could admirably personify a per- 
 secuted Church, and easily become one of those living protesta- 
 tions against despotism which are its gravest peril; it was very 
 dangerous to make a martyr of such a man. A mild glory was, 
 as it were, placed beforehand on his forehead, which did not 
 prevent him from possessing in a high degree the Italian subtilty. 
 General Bonaparte had inspired him with a strong sympathy, which 
 the worst treatment never succeeded in entirely stifling. As Bishop 
 of Imola, he had pubHshed, at the time of the French domination, a 
 homily very favourable to Repubhcan ideas, and which singularly 
 made short work with the anathemas of which Rome had been 
 so lavish for the Revolution. It was a rare happiness for the 
 First Consul that the choice of the Conclave at Venice was 
 directed to the Cardinal Chiaramonti. The most active agent of 
 this election had been the prelate Gonzalvij who had succeeded 
 by a conciliatory eloquence, and more skilful than they could 
 wish on such an occasion, in bringing over the votes to his client, 
 soon to become his all-powerful protector. The purple had been 
 his merited recompense, and he saw himself raised to the rank of 
 Secretary of State, at the moment when the First Consul made the 
 first overtures to the Court of Rome. The Cardinal Gonzalvi 
 had not the graceful dignity of Pius VII., but he had a mind 
 supple, and even brilliant, at once affectionate and cunning, as is 
 often the case in Italy, and he was sincerely attached to the Pope. 
 Pius VII. had accredited to the First Consul, officiously at first, 
 then soon officially, Spina, Bishop of Genoa, a crafty and timid 
 priest who was particularly occupied with the temporal interests 
 of the Holy See. He was to confer at Paris with Talleyrand, the 
 married ex-prelate, and the Abbe Bemier, but lately the soul of 
 the Vendean revolt, who had openly rallied to the First Consul, 
 very apt in dealing, with ecclesiastical affairs, and concealing a real 
 distinction under the exterior of a country parish priest. To 
 
 Digitized by Mitrosoft® 
 
448 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 complete the medley of these strange times, the First Consul 
 appointed as his representative at Rome, M. Cacault, a reformed 
 Revolutionist, according to his own expression, who had the merit 
 of thoroughly knowing the Papal Court, and who was almost an 
 Italian by the skill and graphic vivacity of his language. He was 
 perfectly suited to the part he was to play, which was one of rare 
 difficulty, for the question was of tacking between the ardent 
 impatience of General Bonaparte and the wearisome slowness of 
 the Holy See. The First Consul had given him on his departure 
 an instruction full of wisdom, which he would have done well to 
 have himself observed. ".Treat the Holy Father," he said to 
 him "as if he had an army of two hundred thousand men." 
 Unhappily, he remembered too well that he himself had one of 
 five hundred thousand. He would have done better to remember 
 that the Pope, in the spiritual order, was the head of a Church 
 diffused through the entire world.* 
 
 The Abbe Bernier began by communicating to Monseigneur 
 Spina the scheme of the First Consul, which, besides the clauses 
 already mentioned, demanded from the Papacy a formal renuncia- 
 
 * On the negotiations of the Concordat, we shall quote of unedited 
 
 documents, the portfolio of documents which relate to the Archives of the 
 
 Empire. The correspondence of the Abbe Bernier, of Monseigneur 
 
 Spina, alid of the Cardinal Caprera, belongs to the Ministry of Worr 
 
 ships, but it is inaccessible, for what reason is not known. See th^ 
 
 " Moniteur ;" the " Annales de la Religion," from the XII Ith volume^ 
 
 to the XVII Ith. ; the " Histoire de Pie VII.," by the Chevalier Artaud, 
 
 volume I. ; the second volume of the " Quatre Concordats," of the Abb^ 
 
 de Pradt ; the general correspondence of Napoleon, his correspondence 
 
 with the Cardinal Fesch, inserted in the first volume of the "Histoirf 
 
 des Np.gociations Diplomatiques relatives aux traites de Morfontainef 
 
 de Luneville et dAmiens ;" the " Recueil des rapports et Discours de^ 
 
 Portalis,'' published by his son ; finally, we recall the marvellously luci4 
 
 exposition of M. Thiers in the third volume of the '' Histoire du CoiIt 
 
 sulat et de I'Empire." ^. .^. ,^ .„. ^^ 
 Di^tized by Microsoft® 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE NEGOTIATION. 449 
 
 ation of its claim to the national properties. That raised a first 
 difficulty. The other points which gave umbrage to the Holy 
 See were disputed with equal sharpness. Monseigneur Spina 
 refused, in the name of the Papacy, to sanction the deprivation of 
 the ancient bishops who would not give in their resignation, and 
 proposed that they should not be replaced until their death, 
 whilst entrusting to the chapters the administration of their 
 dioceses. Wearied with these delays, the First Consul sent directly 
 to Rome his plan of Concordat all drawn out. He received 
 for answer a counter-project, which refused him precisely the 
 satisfactions which he asked, for the Holy See insisted on the 
 proclamation of a State religion, and consented neither to the 
 deprivations of bishops in case of refusal of resignation, nor to 
 the nomination of the Constitutional bishops who should not have 
 obtained their pardon, nor even to the formal renunciation of the 
 property of the Church. Apart from motives founded on its 
 religious scruples, the Court of Rome had a reason of a less 
 elevated order, for persevering in this policy of half-resistance. 
 The powerful Dictator of France had let fall mysterious words 
 from his lips : he had given it to be understood that he would be 
 a new Charlemagne for the Holy See. It was hoped at Rome that 
 that meant that he would restore the Legations. Now, to recover 
 the totality of the States of the Church was the ardent dream of 
 this senile power which could not with its trembling hands again 
 seize its territory, but must obtain it from others. It wished that 
 at least concessions should be of service to it in something, and 
 it delayed them as much as posible, at least those which did not • 
 appear to it absolutely incompatible with the Catholic faith. 
 Monseigneur Spina had multiplied allusions to these hopes, which 
 ivere very near being claims, but they did not wish to understand 
 [lim. The arrival of the counter-project of the Pope at the 
 luileries excited the strongest irritation in the First Consul. He 
 
 Digitff^ by Microsoft® 
 
45 O THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 exaggerated its expression in order to rule by terror those whom 
 he had by vague promises attracted to himself. The unhappy 
 representative of the Holy See was terrified by one of those 
 impetuous sallies which made the most intrepid generals turn pale. 
 Bonaparte attributed the hesitations of the Pope to the perfidious 
 counsels of the ancient and eternal enemies of France, and he 
 announced his intention of doing without a co-operation for which 
 he was made tS-pay so dearly ; this was equivalent to an open 
 rupture. At the same time he gave orders to his minister 
 Cacault to demand from the Court of Rome the signing, within 
 three days, of his plan of Concordat, with orders to set out for 
 Florence if this ultimatum was refused. , Cacault had an acute 
 and well-regulated mind ; he sincerely desired an accommodation. 
 Besides, he was very much displeased with this brusque despatch ; 
 he communicated his thoughts without reserve to Artaud, his 
 secretary. " If we are at Rome," said he to him, " as they are at 
 Paris, that will be a double chaos. It is well established that the 
 chief of the State wishes for a Concordat ; it is for that he has 
 sent me. He thinks that I also wish for a Concordat ; but his 
 ministers do not perhaps wish it ; his ministers are near him, and 
 the character most easy to irritate and deceive, is that of a man 
 of war who does not yet know politics, and who always returns 
 from them to command and the sword, I like Bonaparte. The 
 destinies of the terrible man, I see them almost absolutely in my 
 hands, more than in his own. He becomes a sort of Henry VIII. ; 
 he strengthens and wounds the Holy See by turns ; but how 
 many sources of glory may be dried up for him if he plays 
 Henry VIII. at Paris ! With the Concordats, there are prodigies, 
 particularly for him." The subtle diplomatist had perfectly com- " 
 prehended what and whom the re-establishment of the good 
 relations with Rome was to serve, and, like his master, he put 
 
 religion in the back-ground of his calculations. " The General," 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
GONZALVI REPAIRS TO PARIS. 451 
 
 said he again, " compromises everything with this pistol-shot, fired 
 during peace, in order to please his generals whom he likes, and 
 whose camp-jokes he dreads, because he has for a long time made 
 those jokes himself. He breaks off the operation which he 
 desires, and he sows spoiled grain. What is a rehgious Concordat 
 — the most solemn undertaking with which a man can occupy 
 himself — what is a religious Concordat signed in Jhree days ? I 
 see the twelve hours which the Commander-in-Gbief granted to 
 one besieged without hope of succour." * The conclusion of 
 this conversation was that the minister set out, but leaving his 
 secretary at Rome, in order not to break the thread of the nego- 
 tiation. At the same time he induced the Pope to send the 
 Cardinal Gonzalvi to Paris. " Most Holy Father," said he, " it is 
 necessary that Gonzalvi set out instantly, to bear your answer ! 
 He will manoeuvre at Paris with the power that you shall give 
 him. Something stronger doubtless than cold reason, an instinct, 
 one of those brute instincts, if you like, which never deceives, 
 counsels me, pursues me ; I see my worthy Consul, cool, satisfied 
 in the midst of his counsellors who misdirect him. They were 
 accusing you ; you in a manner yourself appear. What is it that is 
 said ? They wish for a religious Concordat, we anticipate them, 
 we bring it; behold us.'' The counsel was good, as the result 
 showed, although the Cardinal Secretary of State had almost 
 compromised his journey by writing, before setting out, to the 
 Chevalier Acton, then at Naples, an unlucky letter, in which he 
 represented himself as a martyr on his way to punishment. This 
 letter did not fail to be sent to and read at Paris. The timid 
 Italian had in fact a great fear of passing the Alps. It seemed to 
 him that he was about to descend into the midst of a savage 
 horde. When he saw himself well received, courteously treated, 
 
 G G 2 
 
452 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 in a brilliant capital which was resuming the habits of religion, he 
 became reassured ; his first interview with the First Consul com- 
 menced by the impatient General knitting his brows, but ended 
 by that delicate and charming smile which was the sign of his 
 satisfaction, and one of his greatest seductions. 
 
 The threats of rupture, followed by a commencement of execu- 
 tion, had contributed at Rome to incline opinion towards the 
 concessions. Without doubt, the agents of the foreigner made 
 a desperate effort still to raise and work upon the religious 
 susceptibilities which were, moreover, quite natural in these cir- 
 cumstances. There was, also, repeated in society and amongst 
 the people, this short and biting satire : — 
 
 " Pio VI. per conservar la fede 
 Perde la sede ; 
 Pio VII. per conservar la sede 
 Perde la fede." 
 
 Pius VI. to preserve his belief 
 
 Loses his fief ; 
 Pius VII. to preserve his fief 
 
 Sells his belief. > 
 
 They endeavoured, also, to disturb the vacillating mind of the 
 Pope, by causing false " Moniteurs '' to pass under his eyes, 
 printed for the occasion, and which contained pretended pro- 
 clamations of General Bonaparte in the war of Egypt, in which he 
 boasted of having destroyed the Holy See. His authentic 
 proclamations would have sufficed legitimately to disturb the 
 Court of Rome. But different counsels tended more and more to 
 prevail with the Holy Father, and drove him to the conclusion of 
 the religious peace. It must be agreed that they were not 
 borrowed from an order of considerations much more elevated 
 than that which was guiding the French poUcy. Counsellors 
 favourable to the (SM&^k^ IM^^W on the necessity of doing 
 
CONCLUSION OF THE CONCORDAT. 453 
 
 everything to re-establish the temporal power in its ancient limits ; 
 they said that the capital of the Holy See was no longer in 
 proportion to the provinces, which it still possessed, and that, by 
 showing himself agreeable to the First Consul, he might hope to 
 obtain from his benevolence, either the principality of Sienna, or 
 the restitution of the Legations, or an increase towards the 
 Marches of Ancona, "for it is the First Consul," said they, " who 
 to-day portions out Italy."* " Let us conclude the Concordat 
 which he desires," added other counsellors of the same party; 
 " they will know when it shall be ratified, all the immensity of its 
 religious importance, and the power which it gives to Rome over 
 the episcopacy in all the world." Thus, complete restoration of the 
 temporal power, still greater extension of the spiritual power of 
 the Pope, now become for the first time, since eighteen centuries, 
 absolute master of the episcopacy, these were the motives which 
 determined the conclusion of this treaty; let us say rather, of 
 that ambitious bargaining which was in the issue to cost the two 
 contracting parties so dearly. It was on the isth of July, 1801, 
 that the Concordat was signed between the Cardinal Gonzalvi 
 and Joseph Bonaparte, simply charged by his brother to sanction 
 the negotiation. The last instructions of the First Consul to his 
 brother, enjoined on him to insist on the eligibility of the Con- 
 stitutional bishops without retractation, " a thing which cannot be 
 required of them without dishonouring them, and compromising 
 the temporal authority which has always supported them, es- 
 pecially from the time of the Constituent Assembly."! Cardinal 
 Gonzalvi had vainly endeavoured to obtain that the Catholic 
 religion should be declared the dominant religion of France. 
 They contented themselves with putting into the preamble that 
 
 * " Histoire de Pie VII. ," I., p. 168. 
 
 \ " Correspondance de Napoleon Bonaparte," VIII., p. 177. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
454 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 it was the religion of the majority of the French ; and, in the 
 conclusion, that in case a successor of the First Consul should be 
 a Protestant, new arrangements should be made. It is evident 
 that there was in these two clauses, a timid and embarrassed 
 return to an official worship. Gonzalvi likewise found the French 
 Government inflexible on the immediate replacing of the bishops 
 who should refuse their resignation. Cacault had written to the 
 First Consul at the time of the departure of the Cardinal : " The 
 question is of phrases, of words which one can turn in so many 
 ways that in the end one will seize the right." The right turn was 
 found only on the" day on which the plenipotentiary of the Holy 
 See, under the pressure of threats and promises, made all the 
 concessions demanded. Thus was concluded this famous Con- 
 cordat, the principal clauses of which we reproduce : — 
 
 " The Government of the Republic acknowledges that the 
 Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion, is the religion of the 
 great majority of the French. His Holiness equally acknowledges 
 that this same religion has drawn, and still expects at this mo- 
 ment the greatest good and eclat from the establishment of 
 the Catholic worship in France, and the particular profession 
 which the First Consul of the Republic makes of it Conse- 
 quently, after this mutual acknowledgment, as well for the 
 good of religion as for the maintenance of internal tranquillity, 
 they have agreed to this which follows : Article ist, ' The 
 Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion, shall be freely exercised 
 in France. Its worship shall be public, conformed to the police 
 regulations which the Government shall judge necessary for the 
 public tranquillity.' Then follows the article which announces 
 the new circumscription of the dioceses, and demands of the 
 French incumbents a friendly resignation, if they do not wish that 
 the government of the bishoprics should be authoritatively pro- ■, 
 
 vided for by new incumbents. Article 4. was thus worded : — 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
CONCLUSION OF THE CONCORDAT. 455 
 
 " The First Consul of the Republic shall nominate, within the 
 three months which shall follow the publication of the bull of His 
 Holiness, to the archbishoprics and bishoprics of the new circurn- 
 scription. His Holiness will confer the canonical institution, 
 according to the forms established with regard to France, before 
 the change of Government." Article 6 reduces the political 
 engagements of the new bishops to a simple oath of fidelity to 
 the Government. It was understood that, if in their diocese or 
 elsewhere, there was formed any plot to the prejudice of the 
 State, they should give notice of it to the Government. Article 10 
 declared that the bishops shall nominate to the cures, but that their 
 choice shall fall only on persons approved by the Government. 
 
 The last articles stipulate that, for the sake of peace and the 
 happy re-establishment of the Catholic religion. His Holiness 
 shall not in any way disturb the acquirers of alienated ecclesi- 
 astical property; that the Government shall secure to the bishops 
 and parish priests a suitable maintenance; and, in fine, that it shall 
 possess the same rights and prerogatives enjoyed by the ancient 
 Government. A last clause declared that a new Convention 
 should be necessary, in case that one of the successors of the 
 First Consul should be Protestant. 
 
 Thus the Papacy obtained, despite itself, it is true, the exorbi- 
 tant right of deposing the bishops, but in return, the civil power 
 nominates the new incumbents under the reserve of the confir- 
 mation of the Papal bulls. 
 
 The essential articles of the Ancient Concordats are then re- 
 established, but the contracting parties will find the means of. 
 making on each other an implacable war in the very treaty which 
 they have just concluded for the pacification of the Church. 
 The latter will be completely subjected to two powers destined to 
 inevitable and approaching conflicts. The civil power is master 
 of a functionary and paid clergy, and it has, in order to defend 
 
45 6 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 itself against the Holy Father, those police regulations mentioned 
 in the first article, by which it is to assure the public tranquillity — 
 an elastic and dangerous expression with which they are ac- 
 customed to stifle all liberty. As for the Pope, he has in hand, 
 as under the ancient monarchy, the formidable power of the re- 
 fusal of the bulls. Thus, on both sides, this great ecclesiastical 
 charter has its fourteenth article, from which each of the con- 
 tracting parties can draw its effective abrogation. There might 
 have been given it for motto this famous device : Si vis pcuem 
 para bellum (If you wish peace, prepare for war). It was soon 
 to show what religious peace was worth apart from liberty. 
 
 However powerful might be the two contracting parties, the 
 one in the civil, the other in the religious order, tliey had more 
 than one difficulty to conquer before arriving at the final result, 
 so much the more that the Pope advanced to it only with regret, 
 and caused incidents to arise, at each step, which suddenly 
 arrested the business. In the first place, the First Consul was 
 to get the Concordat accepted by the Legislative body as a treaty 
 made with a foreign power. Public opinion was so adverse to 
 the new measure, that it could animate this phantom of a pariia- 
 ment and give some reality to its opposition. This was what 
 actually happened. At the Council of State, where the Concordat 
 was presented, on the 6th of August, i8oi, the reception was cold 
 and silent. Now, the coldness and silence of the Council of 
 State of i8oi were very significant, and corresponded in the 
 thermometer of pubhc opinion to riot in the street, and to the 
 most active opposition in a deliberative assembly freely chosen. 
 All is relative here below. When those who are accustomed to 
 applaud are silent, the spirit of opposition must powerfully possess 
 them. This icy silence was so much the more strange that the 
 First Consul had taken the trouble himself to explain his work, 
 and that they had adrmred inMm, acceding to the expression of 
 
OPPOSITION IN THE POLITICAL BODIES. 457 
 
 his historian, that simple and nervous eloquence which Cicero 
 called in Ceesar, Vim Casaris (the force of Caesar).* Neverthe- 
 less, that day, his eloquence failed against the discontent of the 
 men on whom he could the most surely reckon. A second em- 
 barrassment came from the Assembly of the Constitutional clergy, 
 who, just at this moment, were holding their sittings in Paris with 
 great dignity, and who had been very useful to the First Consul; 
 he had made a scarecrow of them for the Court of Rome. \ It 
 was necessary to impose silence on it, and to dissolve it, in order 
 to be able then to affirm, that before the Concordat the Christian 
 religion was in full decline in the country, and impatiently awaited 
 the new Cyrus. To dissolve a meeting, were it a Council, was 
 not an affair to incommode the man of the eighteenth of Bru- 
 maire; but he had not even need of acting, for the Assembly, 
 on counsels which caused them to foresee orders, separated on 
 the 1 6th of August The Concordat was not yet known, and the 
 Constitutional clergy had a vague hope that a serious pacification 
 for the Church of France was being prepared. 
 
 The Constitutional clergy showed themselves, in general, well 
 disposed to resign their functions in the interest of the public 
 good, on condition that the resignation should not be imposed 
 by the Papacy. " If the Pontiff of Rome declared our sees 
 vacant," wrote Moise, Bishop of Jura, in a memorial addressed to 
 the First Consul, " we should tell him that he has not the right, 
 and that they are more canonically filled than that of St. Peter." 
 
 Graver difficulties awaited Nappleon on the part of the political 
 bodies. We have stated the attitude of the Council of State and 
 its disapproving silence. The Legislative body never spoke, but 
 
 * " Memoires sur le Consulat," p. 138. 
 
 \ " Memoires sur les Affaires Ecclesiastiques de France, au com- 
 mencement du dix-neuvieme Siecle." I., p. 24. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
4S8 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 it voted; by calling to its presidency Dupuis, the author of the \ 
 impious book entitled, "I'Origine de tous les CulteSj" and by 
 designating Gr^goire as a candidate for the Senate, it signalised 
 in the most energetic manner its opposition to the Concordat. 
 The Senate itself — the conservative Senate— forgot itself so far as 
 to sanction a choice evidently disgreeable to the master. As for 
 the Tribunate, which alone spoke, but which spoke without voting, 
 and which was for that reason driven to put into its speeches an 
 energy which should compensate for their inefficaciousness, it 
 showed, on the occasion of the presentation of the Civil Code, so 
 active an opposition, that it might be foreseen in what terms it 
 would express itself on the Concordat, otherwise very unpopular, 
 if it should be submitted to its passionate estimate. The generals 
 themselves did not wish it, and openly mocked it. It is known 
 what was the result of this opposition : a second coup d'etai, sur- 
 passing the first, was necessary in order to prepare the adoption 
 of the treaty with the Court of Rome, — a coup (Petat without 
 sincerity, which took advantage of an ambiguity in the Constitu- 
 tion to renew the Legislative body and the Tribunate at the 
 pleasure of the executive power. This ingenious means of sweep- 
 ing away all resistance was the invention of the Consul Cam- 
 baceres. " By having the appearance of making use of our 
 Constitution," said he, "one caij do good with it." I do not see, 
 in fact, what obstacle could ever be encountered in any constitu- 
 tion in the world, when we have the art of interpreting it like 
 Cambaceres. That of the year VIII. declared that the first re- 
 newing of the Legislative body and Tribunate should take place 
 in the course of the year X. The executive power had only to 
 choose its moment. Cambaceres thought that in place of trusting 
 to the lot to point out the retiring members, it was necessary to 
 proceed to this elimination by a balloting which should allow a 
 
 useful selection. One would thus get rid of opponents, and the 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
WINNOWING OF THE LEGISLATIVE BODY AND TRIBUNATE. 459 
 
 change would be effected. Only we ask ourselves, what use 
 henceforth could the Legislative machine serve, and why did 
 they bind themselves to play this pitiable comedy? The First 
 Consul eagerly adopted the plan oif Cambaceres, which 
 gave all the advantages of a coup d'etat, without the resent- 
 ment and scandal, and which deceived those for whom crafty 
 violence is not the most shameful of spectacles. Was not a 
 measure which, in order to pass, was obliged to have recourse 
 to such acts, by that very circumstance condemned ? 
 
 As for the Pope, besides his scruples, he encountered more 
 than one obstacle on his route. It was not certain that all the 
 bishops would consent to give in their resignation. The Con- 
 stitutionalists made no resistance, any more than the majority of 
 the prelates of the ancient clergy; but the refugee bishops in 
 England openly declared that they would not yield, because they 
 had tradition in their favour. " The right of our ministry,'' said 
 they in the memorial which they sent to the Pope, " seems to 
 demand from us that we should never lightly break the tie which 
 has united us to the Churches immediately entrusted to our care 
 by the providence of the Most High God." We may see by the 
 " Memoires " of Gregoire how strong was the agitation in London 
 amongst the high clergy of the ancient Church of France. There 
 was a war of the bitterest pens, quite a skirmish of pamphlets. 
 It appears that female devotion interposed in this quarrel with 
 extraordinary passion. Lally-ToUendal, who advocated the resig- 
 nations, bitterly complained that the government of the Church 
 was falling under the rule of the distaff. Nevertheless, the 
 refugee bishops in England had indeed some right to plead 
 serious claims. Numerous bishops in Germany and elsewhere 
 subscribed to their conclusions, but the Pope went on his way, 
 and thus made his coup d'etat, at once hesitating and satisfied, for 
 the Court of Rome could not but congratulate itself on the 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
460 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 power which the new treaty assured to it throughout the entire 
 world* 
 
 Parliamentary resistance being vanquished by the expurgation 
 of the Tribunate and Legislative body, the opposition of the 
 bishops reduced to nothing by the Pontifical bulls, it only re- 
 mained to get the treaty confirmed at Paris, and execute it by the 
 nomination of new incumbents. It was then that a very grave 
 measure, which emanated from the First Consul, came to show 
 how precarious was this peace between the State and the Church. 
 
 In fact, the treaty was scarcely concluded, when it was set aside 
 by one of the contracting parties, who, having force at his service, 
 did not believe himself long bound to show respect towards a 
 great moral power disarmed. * 
 
 The organic articles presented to the Legislative body at the 
 same time with the Concordat could not pass for a simple com- 
 mentary on the convention concluded with Rome. They tended 
 to the complete subjection of the Church with respect to the 
 civil power ; this latter having no longer to manage its rival, had 
 taken to itself the lion's share, and had submitted the worships to 
 the administrative regime. The Pope has never ceased to protest 
 against these famous organic laws of Germinal year X., which are 
 the most perfect model of despotic centralisation applied to the 
 Church, or rather to the Churches, for the Bill organised all the 
 religions to which new France granted the right of citizenship. It 
 is well to analyse it in a few words, for no legislative monument 
 gives a better idea of what was understood by religious liberty, 
 in 1802, in the official world. 
 
 At first view, it seems that there was in the organic articles 
 only a pure and simple reproduction of the laws which, under the 
 ancient regime, regulated the relations of Church and State. The 
 
 • Artaud, " Histoire de Pie VII.,'' chap. xii. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
THE ORGANIC LAWS OF GERMINAL YEAR X. 46 1 
 
 pretensions of Louis XIV. have not exceeded it. But the con- 
 siderable change introduced into the regime of France must not 
 be forgotten. Before the Revolution, the Church could never be 
 totally enslaved; it formed a vast and important corporation, 
 which was proprietor of a great part of the soil, and gave to the 
 State in the matter of subsidies, only what it pleased it to grant. 
 A multitude of benefices rose from other donors than the Prince ; 
 the tendency to bring back everything to the royal authority, doubt- 
 less gained ground every day, but it incessantly clashed against 
 numberless private rights, which proceeded from pious founda- 
 tions, and the Church preserved its own life, despite its subordina- 
 tion to the civil power. 
 
 Let us first note what was reasonable and beneficial in the 
 organic articles. Toleration found there a noble acknowledgment. 
 The First Consul, who had not wished to inscribe at the head of 
 the Concordat the proclamation of a State religion, acknowledged 
 equaUty of religions in the most explicit manner' in the laws of 
 Germinal year X. ; Protestantism was relieved of all the unjust 
 interdicts which had struck it for more than a century, to the 
 disgrace and the greatest misfortune of ancient France. Its 
 worship could henceforth be publicly celebrated by the same 
 right as the Catholic worship, and respect for the religious 
 minority went so far, that the pompous ceremonies of Catholicism 
 were obliged to be confined within the enclosure of the churches, 
 in every town where there was a Protestant temple. The First 
 Consul had truly shown himself the inheritor and faithful inter- 
 preter of the French Revolution, in what concerns religious 
 equality. 
 
 The organic laws were irreproachable in the articles which 
 
 tended to prevent the mingling of a foreign power in the affairs of 
 
 the country, as also in those which separated the temporal from 
 
 the spiritual, by abolishing all that resembled episcopal juris-' 
 •^ Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
i 
 
 462 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 dictions, and by imposing, under the severest penalties, the cele- 
 bration of the civil marriage before the religious. For this order 
 of questions, men were more advanced in 1802 than they are 
 to-day ; the prohibition of the marriage of a priest who has 
 re-entered the laic life, maintains in our laws a strange confusion 
 between religion and civil right, which would not have been 
 admitted at the time of the promulgation of the organic laws. 
 As to all the rest, we could not admire them except as a master- 
 piece of administrative despotism. Not a mesh is wanting in the 
 net which entwines the Church. The ancient prohibition to 
 correspond directly with the centre of Catholic unity is main- 
 tained in all its rigour. The Holy Father cannot address a single 1 
 word to those who acknowledge his authority, without its being 
 countersigned at Paris. His legates also are obliged to get them- 
 selves equally authorised by the Government. No resolution of 
 council could go forth before having been sanctioned. They do 
 not fear merely the effect which it might have on the legislation 
 of the country, but they wish to avoid all that by its publication, 
 mig/ii impair or concern the public tranquillity ; a vague and per- 
 fidious expression, which gives the right to stop at the frontiers 
 even doctrinal decisions, for they do not fail to agitate opinion, 
 since they have been certainly provoked by a theological con- 
 troversy. Thus the Government keeps good guard at the frontier, 
 and allows nothing to pass except what has received its visa. In 
 the interior, not content with nominating the bishops and keeping 
 a high hand over the secondary clergy, who are to be approved 
 by it, it admits the meeting of these religious functionaries only 
 on the days and in the forms which are convenient to it. No 
 national or metropolitan council, no diocesan synod, no deli- 
 berative assembly shall be held without its express permission 
 (tit I., art. 45). Dreading an excess of zeal which would con- 
 strain it to increase the expenses of. worship, and which especially 
 
LEGISLATION OF GERMINAL YEAR X. 463 
 
 would keep up a certain independence in the Church, the Govern- 
 ment forbade the Church to open even a Uttle private chapel 
 without its previous authorisation. 
 
 Thus the State arrogates to itself the right to say to reUgious 
 ardour : " Thus far, no farther." Not thus has the world been 
 subdued to the truth, and there is no danger of its being re- 
 conquered under such conditions. Persecution thus becomes less 
 fettering than protection. It is understood that no religious asso- 
 ciation, formed to further the ends of devotion or charity, can be 
 constituted without an authorisation always revocable. The right 
 of going and coming, so precious to the French that they have 
 inscribed it at the head of all their constitutions, is refused to the 
 bishops, who cannot go out from their diocese without the per- 
 mission of the First Consul. We maybe assured that the journey 
 to Paris wiU suifer less difficulty than that to Rome, the air of 
 which is judged decidedly unhealthy for them. Full of solicitude 
 for the youth who are being trained for the service of the altars, 
 the Government wishes to know the name of the masters of the 
 seminaries, in order to follow with paternal interest the progress of 
 the spirit of submission amongst them. It causes them to be 
 taught first of all the declaration of the clergy of France of 1682 ; 
 for, in the matter of Gallicanism, it pushes orthodoxy to its 
 extreme limits. Ultramontane tares must not shoot up in these 
 chosen gardens, nurseries of a peaceful Church, which has for its 
 mission to teach that the law and the prophets are reduced to 
 these two commandments — Love God, and serve thy Government. 
 The State would willingly add : These two commandments make 
 only one. It is in order to engrave this summary of dogma and 
 morality in the very heart of the country that the Government 
 specially insists on choosing the catechism taught to youth. We 
 shall see afterwards that the Power has not abated in its august 
 
 mission, and that it has said in its way : Suffer the little children 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
i 
 
 464 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 to come unto me. Extending still further his interest for the ministers 
 of the Church, the Legislator, who had fortified them against all 
 the dangers of liberty, busied himself with their costume, and 
 commanded them to dress in Mack and in French fashion. All 
 these ordinances had for sanction the appeal against abuses 
 (Vafpd comme d'abus) to the Council of State, which was charged 
 by the Government with the difficult mission of judging, in its 
 name, between it and the clergy. 
 
 Behold what the regime of the payment of worships represents 
 in the matter of liberty! A clergy separted from its spiritual 
 chief; prevented from freely deliberating on its own interests, and 
 extending its influence and activity ; moulded and trained under 
 the jealous eye of the Government; nominated, watched over, 
 incessantly restrained by it ; teaching and preaching only what 
 suits it ; absolutely dependent on the hand which nourishes it, 
 and holds it in leash ; this is very much the summary of the 
 organic articles for Catholicism. All these flagrant restrictions of 
 religious liberty are so many precautions taken against a foreign 
 sovereignty. In fact, so long as the Catholic Church has for head 
 a Pontiff King, its situation is never simple, and the governments 
 on which it depends are led to measures of prudence little com- 
 patible with its entire liberty. It will always be thus so long as the 
 temporal power of the Pope shall subsist. The head of Catholic 
 unity will often have political interests opposed to those of some 
 particular State ; the relations which he will maintain with the 
 clergies of the different countries will not always be simply religious. 
 There will result, on the part of the governments, the necessity of 
 more or less controlling the Pontifical bulls, because they may have 
 for aim a twofold object. The entire liberty of Catholicism, there- 
 fore, always under the surveillance of the laws, will be possible only 
 on the day on which the Pontificate shall have freed itself from the 
 
 bonds of the temporal power, which are the first to entangle it. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® ° 
 
LEGISLATION OF GERMINAL YEAR X. 465 
 
 But there was in the organic articles quite another thing than 
 these precautions against the invasions and encroachments of a 
 foreign poHtical power : there was the total inthralment of the 
 clergy. The best proof that such was the intention of the author 
 of these articles is, that the Protestant Churches, which certainly 
 did not acknowledge any foreign dependence, were subjected to a 
 regime quite as little liberal. To them, no more than to Catho- 
 licism, was it permitted freely to extend or organise themselves. 
 They could no more adopt doctrinal decisions, or modify their 
 discipline, without the good pleasure of the Government. Never- 
 theless, there were no other motives for their inthralment than the 
 formal intention of everywhere restraining the liberty of religion, 
 and substituting the most minutely-regulated administrative me- 
 chanism for the spontaneous impulses of faith. 
 
 It was difficult entirely to suppress the right of election in the 
 Protestant Churches. Accordingly, whilst reserving to itself the 
 decisive nomination, the Government admitted a prehminary 
 election on the part of the consistories, an election which was in 
 reality only a presentation ; but these consistories themselves 
 were not to make a blemish in the country by preserving on some 
 points the illusion of real elections. The consistory, composed 
 of the pastor and of the principal persons chosen amongst the 
 most assessed in the list of direct contributions, was renewed one- 
 half every two years. This idea, of attaching the internal govern- 
 ment of the Churches to the list of direct contributions, was 
 destined to arise and flourish in that time of universal officialism. 
 
 We have not to mention here all the other precautions taken 
 against the possible awakening of liberty in the Churches of free en- 
 quiry. Let it suffice to say that all outlets were ingeniously closed. 
 This caused it to be said to one of the most distinguished represen- 
 tatives of Protestantism in the first half of the century. Pastor Satiiuel 
 Vincent, of Nimes : "By thf5^^;^g9f|,jj^.^^^^erminal, religions 
 
 H H 
 
466 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 cease to exist by themselves and for themselves ; they make a corps 
 with the Government ; they become a subject of administration." 
 The Legislation of the year X. has not a word devoted to the 
 Churches which might, from choice, remain outside the adminis- 
 trative frameworks, and prefer independence to payment. It does 
 not foresee such an anomaly, which would have supposed the 
 maintenance of religious liberty. It accordingly does not contain 
 a single guarantee for worships not connected with the State. It 
 seems that, wearied by the violent storms of the preceding years, 
 France was, for the moment, satisfied with what was given to her, 
 — the repose of servitude redeemed by glory. There was then no 
 important experiment of an independent Church. For Catholicism, 
 it would have been a schism : Protestantism was all joy to have a 
 large place in the sunshine of the country. We shall see that one 
 of the first consequences of the Concordat was the formal sup- 
 pression of the liberty of every dissident worship. 
 
 In order to prepare a favourable reception for the new Bill by i 
 the Tribunate and the Legislative body — a quite useless care in a ' 
 diminished parliament, from which the opposition had been • 
 violently driven out — the Government ordered an enquiry into the :| 
 state of opinion in France. Naturally, it obtained from its prefects 
 the answer which it desired. They hastened to send word that, 
 ccording to information, they could assert that the French held 
 to the Catholic worship almost as much as to life, and that it was 
 necessary to beware of judging the departments by Paris. There 
 were no surer means of paying court at this period than by paint- 
 ing the awakening of faith in lively colours. This at least is what 
 we learn from the " Memoires Ecclesiastiques," from which we 
 
 borrow this information.* One might, however, have reproached 
 j'^ 
 
 * " Memoires sur les Affaires Ecclesiastiques de la France au com- 
 mencement du dix.-ne^Y^mSd^'fk^rJsBmS^- 
 
 I 
 
THE CONCORDAT PRESENTED TO THE TRIBUNATE.. 467 
 
 the prefects with an awkward zeal, for if the attachment to Chris- 
 tianity had remained so strong in the country, it was no longer 
 possible to attribute the re-establishment of religion to the First 
 Consul. The same " Memoires " remark that the warmest parti- 
 sans of the Concordat were found among the great proprietors, 
 not that they were in reality truly religious, but because they re- 
 garded religion as the surest guarantee of their property. " Their 
 desire was to see ecclesiastical affairs terminated, no matter in 
 what manner ; and if it had entered into the interests of the First 
 Consul to change the religion, many would not have been much 
 behind in seconding him."* 
 
 The Concordat and the organic laws were presented to the ex- 
 purgated tribune on the 17th of Germinal year X. Sinieon was the 
 reporter of the Bill. He commenced by showing that the Catholic 
 religion was not hostile to the institutions of France, since it had 
 always taught submission to the existing Governments. " It has 
 been, necessary to return to religion," said the orator, "as to the 
 protective forms of political authority. To govern men, we must 
 make use of their sentiments. Now, the religious sentiment is at 
 the bottom of their heart. The Constituent Assembly had rightly 
 acknowledged that religion was one of the most ancient and 
 powerfiil means of governing ; it was necessary to put it, more 
 than it was, under the hand of the Government. Its sole mistake 
 was not being reconciled with the Pope. The ministers of all 
 religions shall be subject to the influence of the Government 
 which chooses or approves them, to which they bind themselves by 
 the most solemn promises, and which holds them in dependence 
 by their stipends.t The tribune Carion-Nizas sustained these fine 
 
 * " Memoires sur les Affaires Ecclesiastiques de la France au com- 
 mencemenc du dix-neuvieme Siecle," I., p. 32. 
 
 t See the " Moniteur" of %^/;^th^^3,%J?cJs"o^^^"^ ^■ 
 
 H H 2 
 
468 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 theories in an emphatic speech, which cost him the next day a 
 storm of hisses on the first representation of a piece which he 
 caused to be played at the Theatre Fran^ais.* We have there a 
 new proof of the (un ?) popularity of the plan of the Concordat,! 
 although it had passed by the majority of 78 voices against 9. 
 Some days later, Portalis, recently nominated to a kind of ministry 
 of worships, undertook in a treatise, admirable for manner, to stereo- 
 type the maxims of this mitigated despotism which was about to 
 weigh so heavily on the conscience. In these nervous and precise 
 pages, the faithful expression of the energetic will which was un- 
 derstood to personify France, we may learn to what a degree the 
 cause of religion is bound up with that of liberty; all that wounds'' 
 the latter, in these haughty words, "equally offends the former ; all 
 that is abstracted from liberty is taken away from the dignity of 
 religion. In reality, the treatise of Portalis reproduces, but in a 
 grave and magisterial manner, the thought uttered by the abrupt 
 and sometimes impetuous words of th"e First Consul. It is the 
 learned theory and eloquent justification of the original sallies of 
 General Bonaparte. But these sallies, these words so sharp in the 
 mouth of the First Consul, these quick, brief strokes, shock less in 
 their imperious bluntness, than when they are artfully drawn out 
 in rounded periods. Better the force which speaks the rude lan- 
 guage of camps, than that which assumes the captious forms of 
 right. Portalis had already presented two reports to the Council 
 of State on the new legislation : the one viewed it as a whole, and 
 the other was devoted to the Protestant worship. f The first of 
 these reports begins thus : " All our National Assemblies have 
 decreed the liberty of worships ; the duty of the Government is to 
 
 * " Annales de la Religion," XV., p. 339. 
 
 f See the " Discours et Travaux inedits sur le Concordat, de 1801," 
 by Portalis, arranged a3i^g^igM,J;kjfsJ)^eric Portalis, 1845. 
 
SPEECH OF PORTALIS. 469 
 
 direct the execution of this important law, for the greatest pubHc 
 utility." Thus, liberty in the limits which suit the State, and under 
 its good pleasure, liberty regulated, restrained and suspended by 
 the Government, this is what Portalis admires and defends in the 
 organic laws. There is, indeed, there the liberalism of the regime 
 of which he was one of the great ser\-ants. His report is only the 
 reproduction of the famous theory of the rights of the head of the 
 State over the Church by the double title of political magistrate 
 and protector. Portalis passes in review the divers necessary 
 manifestations of rehgion, in order to show how the Government 
 has all power over them, how it respects liberty of worship in the 
 metaphysical state, in order to regulate it as soon as it is tran- 
 slated into facts. Respect for the dogmatical decisions of the 
 Church, on condition that the State may prevent their pubHcation 
 and discussion. Respect for prayer, on condition that the appoint- 
 ment of the hour and place belong to the civil power. 
 
 This is the kind of Uberty of worships acknowledged in the 
 organic articles that Portahs sought to establish before the Legis^ 
 lative body in his famous speech, which all the advocates of 
 religious oppression believed themselves obhged servilely to eopy, 
 for they found nothing better. The ministers of religions belong- 
 ing to this school have only to cut it into paragraphs in order to 
 find there their best circular letters. 
 
 In the first part of his speech, Portalis shows the necessity 
 of a religion. " Upright minds," said he, " are forced to admit 
 that no society could subsist without morality, and that we cannot 
 yet do without magistrates and laws. Now, is not the utility or 
 the necessity of religion derived from the necessity of having a 
 morality?" That is just it; judges and gendarmes do not suffice 
 to maintain the pubhc peace; religion is a useful auxiliary, 
 which a wise government would not do without. " How should 
 not religion, which makes such great promises and threatenings. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
47° THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 not be useful to society?" Morality would lend to the gendarmery 
 an ineffectual succour, because, like all that springs from man's 
 reason, it is subject to discussion. "The multitude is more struck 
 with what is ordered them than with what is proved to them." 
 Besides, religion employs rites and ceremonies, which, by speaking 
 to the eye, render it adapted to that profane mob which it is 
 sought to subject to the authority of the laws. Atheism is a 
 public peril, because, according to a great man, its inevitable effect 
 is to conduct us to the idea of our independence, and, consequently, 
 to revolt. Thus, the great criterion of religions and doctrines is 
 the measure of servility which they develop. According to this 
 reasoning, it is certain that if Atheism made subjects more docile, 
 it would be necessary to prefer it to religion. The Atheists of 
 Paris, whom General Bonaparte ridiculed at Milan, when he was 
 present at the , Te Deum, chanted after Marengo, might have 
 answered Portalis that the reign of the Ciesars was founded on 
 Epicurism; and that what is most easily moulded in the hands of a 
 master, is that clay soon changed into mud to which materialism 
 reduces human nature; that, consequently, it was a fault at the 
 point of view of a skilful despotism to deprive itself of its natural 
 supports. They would have been quite strong against the 
 learned counsellor of State, when the latter, passing from religion 
 generally considered to Christianity, sought to prove that, better 
 than any other religion, it forms men for obedience. Portalis 
 forgot to say that it formed them above all for obedience towards 
 God, and that there was there an invincible principle of resistance 
 to all immoral subjection, to all unjust oppression, to all encroach- 
 ment on the rights of conscience, so much so that it was in the 
 Christian conscience that the tyranny of the Caesars found its first 
 limit. They were martyrs and not atheists who, had in dying, won 
 the liberty, of the human race. Freed from the rust of ages of 
 error and superstition, taken in its origin, Christianity appears as 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
SPEECH OF PORTALIS. 47 1 
 
 the religion of liberty and enfranchisement, precisely because it 
 bows only before God, and because the God whom it serves is 
 that jealous God, Sovereign of consciences^ who commands re- 
 sistance to unjust laws by the same right with which He com- 
 mands submission to established order, when that order is not in 
 conflict with His own laws. At the point of view at which 
 Portalis had placed himself, Christians were then very dangerous 
 citizens for a: State which wished to arrogate to itself omnipotence, 
 and it is from them, in fact, that effectual resistance was to come, 
 even after having suffered themselves to be gagged by the laws 
 of Germinal. All this first portion of the speech of Portalis, 
 which has the appearance of a homage, is in reality an outrage, 
 for religion is humiliated as soon as it is presented as a means 
 and not as an end. It is to attempt to make a functionary of 
 God Himself, and such an attempt is not without a blending of that 
 Atheism which Portalis has rejected, not for its blasphemies, but 
 for its perils. Thus, I am not astonished to hear him maintain 
 that it is indifferent whether the religion adopted by the State be 
 true or false, provided that it exercise a repressive power and rule 
 the masses. What can we think of the paragraph devoted to the 
 mysteries of Christianity, which, if they are inconvenient in an 
 age of light, '^ are at least good for this, to occupy the place which 
 reason leaves empty, and which the imagination would indisputably 
 worse fill." Worse ! Behold a word which gives the measure 
 of this governmental Christianity. 
 
 The second part of the speech is devoted to the Bill itself 
 The question is of combating the absurd prejudice that this 
 beneficial and useful power of religion may be abandoned to 
 itself, and that politics would do enough by leaving a free course 
 to religious opinions and ceasing to disturb those who profess 
 them. Portalis has not disdain enough for those who suppose 
 that the Government can be satisfied with a negative toleration, 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
472 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 which would present nothing positive. Nothing is better than 
 that a private person should be satisfied with a negative toleration 
 in respecting the opinion of others; but with a government, 
 toleration ought to be positive, and go even to protection, and as 
 protection implies surveillance and domination, positive toleration 
 goes even to religious oppression, that is to say, even to in- 
 tolerance ; for as soon as the liberty of a worship is constrained 
 or suppressed, it is not tolerated as it would have the right to 
 be, without counting that positive toleration towards recognised 
 worships is a positive intolerance towards worships not recognised. 
 The reasoning of Portalis is, then, a sophism which destroys itself. 
 Setting out from the principle that the State has the deepes't 
 interest in securing to itself the co-operation of religion, the orator 
 concludes therefrom that it ought not to take a hostile attitude 
 towards it, like the regimes prior to the i8th of Brumaire; that it 
 ought to put an end to every measure of proscription, and attach 
 to itself this great social force not only by benefits, but also by 
 a legislation which preserves it from its own headlong impulses; 
 and enlists it in the service of the Government to promote in 
 common the good of the country. Thus, no proscription, but an 
 effective protection, and an active surveillance. The State should , 
 not admit a power so great as that of religion to exercise itself 
 without its control, for spiritual loyalty would soon carry it over 
 its own power. It was easy for Portalis to show that the organic 
 articles had sufficiently provided that, "by its vigilance over 
 doctrine and the police of worships, the State may direct institu- 
 tions so important towards the greatest public utility." Rejecting 
 with force and eloquence the idea of a dominant religion, the 
 learned lawyer reduced Catholicism to the rank of one of the 
 religions of the country, of that of the majority of the citizens, it 
 is true, but without its being invested with exceptional prero- 
 gatives; he branded the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
SPEECH OF PORTALIS. 473 
 
 announced that henceforth the Protestant Churches should have 
 part in the protection, in the pay, as in the high surveillance of the 
 State, equality of worships being the glorious and incontestible 
 result of the French Revolution. As for the organisation of the 
 Catholic Church, Portalis recalled what the First Consul had done 
 to extinguish the schism which but for him would have been per- 
 petuated and extended: "For," said the orator, ironically, "it 
 is clear that the theologians are of themselves incapable of 
 arranging their differences." The utility of the agreement with 
 the Holy See was clearly indicated. It was easy to show that 
 the First Consul had indeed found the Pope that was necessary 
 to him, this Pope still more useful by his distance than by his 
 religious sovereignty. Portalis boasted the merits of the happy 
 combination which gave to the Catholic Church " a foreign head, 
 whom the people do not see, who can never naturaUse his credit 
 as could a national Pontiff; who encounters in the prejudices, 
 manners, character, and maxims of a nation of which he does not 
 form a part, obstacles to the increase of his authority; who cannot 
 manifest pretentions without awakening all rivalries and jealousies; 
 who can always be arrested and restrained by means which the 
 rights of the people allow, means which, well managed, break 
 forth only outside, and thus spare us the dangers and scandal of a 
 war at once religious and domestic" Let any one weigh well the 
 following consideration: "The Pope, as a Sovereign, can no 
 longer be dreaded by any power; he will always have need of the 
 support of France, and this circumstance can only increase the in- 
 fluence of the French Government in the general affairs of the 
 Church, almost always mixed up with those of politics." It was 
 thus that in 1802 the temporal power of the Pope appeared to 
 the minister of the First Consul the surest means of holding him 
 in dependence on France. A warning to the Catholics who 
 defend the temporal power as the security for pontifical inde- 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
474 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 pendence ! Portalis only the better freed from all ambiguity the 
 formal negation of the most elementary religious liberty, and that 
 profanation of religion reduced to a mere political and utilitarian 
 agency. 
 
 He had spoken in the name of the Council of State ; Lucien 
 Bonaparte and Jaucourt carried to the Legislative body the opinion 
 of the Tribunate. Lucien Bonaparte treated as revolutionary pre- 
 judice the idea of abandoning worships to themselves. Such an 
 anomaly is easily understood in America, on account of the multi- 
 plicity of sects which neutralise each other ; but in France, the 
 existence of 40,000 independent congregations belonging to the 
 same worship would be a public danger. We can extract from 
 this speech only these noble words : " In the matter of conscience, 
 the majority does not make law." He should from that have 
 concluded that questions of religion and conscience ought never 
 to be decided by the Legislative majority. Jaucourt well-insisted 
 on the acknowledgment of the equality of worships by the Bill. 
 " The nineteenth century," said he, •" will compensate the wrongs t 
 of the century of Louis XIV." All these speeches produced but 
 little effect. The Legislative body was very decided to accept '; 
 what was demanded from it, or rather, what it was ordered to 
 vote. It knew what a shadow of resistance had cost it. But, if 
 it was disposed or forced to submit, it desired to do so promptlyi| 
 and silently, and philosophical or oratorical developments irritated 
 in place of convincing it. It chose servility without words. This 
 may be remarked in all abject parliaments. They accept the 
 fact, but do not wish the theory, and, strange thing ! they show 
 themselves particularly impatient with respect to their own orators. 
 The best proof of the little effect produced by this debate is, that 
 the Legislative body having presented itself the next day before 
 the First Consul to congratulate him on the signing of the peace, 
 made no mention of the measure to which the head of the 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
PUBLICATION OF THE CONCORDAT. 475 
 
 jovernment attached the most importance and of which he espe- 
 nally spoke in his answer. " Your session,'' said he, " com- 
 nences by the most important operation of all, that which has 
 "or its aim the appeasing of religious quarrels. Entire France 
 entreats the end of these deplorable quarrels, and the re-establish- 
 nent of the altars. I hope that in your joy you will be unani- 
 nous as she. France will see with a lively joy that its legislators 
 lave voted the peace of consciences.'' .... 
 
 The proud spirit which animated Napoleon prevented him from 
 leeing that, when the question is of conscience, it alone votes, 
 ind does not willingly admit of deputies, above all of deputies full 
 )f a joy so lively or of a fear so servile. This speech had all the 
 iffect which the First Consul expected : the deputies voted, 
 igainst their conscience, the peace of consciences. 
 
 But there was, nevertheless, a conscience which had no authentic 
 epresentative in the Legislative body ; it was that of the Holy 
 mther. They could not vote for him, however much they wished 
 t The Cardinal Caprera, his legate, had just arrived in Paris,. 
 Inhere he had been received according to the ancient rites. He 
 k^as charged to defend to the utmost the last scruples of the Pope, 
 specially as to the retractation demanded of the four Consti- 
 utional bishops who, despite the Court of Rome, had been 
 Lominated to new sees. Resistance was prolonged as much as 
 lossible, and yielded only before the outbursts of a feigned or 
 eal anger on the part of General Bonaparte, and, above all, before 
 he very emphatic threat which he made of breaking off all at 
 be last moment if compliance was not yielded. Thus was 
 ealised the peace of consciences ! 
 
 On the i8th of April, 1802, being Easter Sunday, the Con- 
 ordat was published ; and a solemn Te Deum was chanted in 
 reat pomp at Notre Dame to celebrate the general peace and 
 lie re-establishment of worship. An immense crowd filled the 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
476 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 Streets. The acclamations which saluted the Great Consul, as he 
 was called, were sufficiently explained by his glory and genius, as 
 well as by the services which he had rendered, without discovering 
 in them a proof of adhesion to the Concordat. Long files of 
 carriages, in which were crowded the fine ladies of the official 
 world, followed the carriage of the First Consul and the legate., 
 The ceremony at the church was cold and proper, with the 
 exception of the jesting attitude of some generals ; for this 
 singular spectacle amused those whom it did not sadden. After 
 all, it was a solemn comedy which was played under these vaults, 
 since faith was completely wanting in this religious festival. As 
 for the First Consul, he was, according to the testimony of his 
 historian, calm, grave, in the attitude of a chief of empire, who* 
 performs a great act of will, and who, by his look, commands 
 submission from everybody ; which doubtless signifies that he was 
 there without himself believing in the worship which he was 
 restoring, through condescension and policy, and as a man who 
 paid great honour to God by visiting Him in His temple. 
 Napoleon forgot that it is not standing, and proudly, as the 
 head of an empire, that one raises altars, but on one's knees, as a 
 Christian who is convinced for himself. These exhibitions by 
 command are a great profanation in the temples of God. On the 
 return from Notre Dame, after the ostentatious dinner which 
 celebrated the peace of consciences, the First Consul, who was 
 well satisfied with the success of so thorny a business, said to 
 some of his generals : " Is it not true that to-day everything 
 appeared re-established in the ancient order?" "Yes," answered 
 one of them, "except two millions of French who have died for 
 liberty, and whom we cannot bring to life again."* 
 
 " This Concordat," says Gregoire, " a work of iniquity like that 
 
 * " Memoires sur le Consulat." p. 163. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
PROCLAMATION OF THE FIRST CONSUL. 477 
 
 of 15 1 6, was proclaimed in the Cathedral of Paris. The Arch- 
 bishop BoisgeUn preached a sermon, in which, in order to give 
 himself the merit of contributing to the revival of worship, he 
 said that Christianity, which had gone forth from France with the 
 emigrated ecclesiastics, was re-entering with them. This falsehood 
 shocked the clergy of the two parties who had remained in 
 France, and the faithful who knew that in the midst of the 
 political tempests they had not been deprived of the essential 
 helps of religion. This Concordat was cried up in verse and 
 prose ; it was so by all the flatterers and ambitious persons who 
 aspired to the favours of the Government It was a rolling fire of 
 praises, directed towards the man who had restored the altars, the 
 Sent of the Most High, the man of right, the Cyrus, the 
 Constantine, the Charlemagne of the present times."* 
 
 The illusion could not be of long continuance. It was in vain 
 that, the better to maintain it, the First Consul declared to the 
 representatives of the Protestant clergy, after the promulgation of 
 the laws of Germinal, that he would permit to be treated as Nero 
 that one of his descendants ,who should violate the liberty of 
 worships. It might have been understood that he had spoken of 
 the equality of worships, and of the definitive abolition of the laws 
 of proscription against religious differences. But to attribute to 
 himself the honour of having founded religious liberty, after 
 having signed the Concordat, and promulgated the laws of Ger- 
 minalj was most strangely to abuse • words ; and what is more 
 prodigious is, that the majority of the country has, for a time, 
 accepted this equivocation. It was, nevertheless, easy to know 
 what these words signified in reality, for they had received before- 
 hand a sufficiently clear commentary in the proclamation which 
 accompanied the promulgation of the Concordat "Ministers of 
 
 * Gregoire, « Essai historique sjjrj^s lij?grti/deiM'^ Gallicane,"p. 170. 
 
478 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 a religion of peace,'' one read therein, " let the most profound 
 oblivion cover your dissensions, your misfortunes, and your faults ; 
 let this religion, which unites us, attach you all by the same ties, 
 by indissoluble ties, to the interests of the country. Display for 
 it all that your ministry gives you of force and ascendency over 
 minds. Let your lessons and examples form the young citizens 
 to the love of our institutions, to respect and attachment for the 
 tutelary authorities which have been created to protect them ; let 
 them learn from you that the God of peace is always the God of 
 armies, and that He fights with those who defend the indepen- , 
 dence and liberty of France." The meaning of this exhortation^ 
 is clear enough. Not content with placing religion under the 
 hand of his Government, Napoleon pretended to rank God 
 Himself under his flag, and to make Him march with his eagles. 
 He wished to have a French, and especially a Napoleonic God,. , 
 whose ministers should docilely serve his policy. ' 
 
 Public opinion was not deceived concerning -the import of the 
 conclusion of the Concordat, as we may be convinced by this 
 passage of the "Memoires de Miot de Melitto:" "Just in pro- 
 portion as religious toleration, and the liberty left to each one to 
 honour the Divinity in his own way, was a benefit, so did the 
 renewing of the ancient relations with Rome, and, above all, the 
 pomp with which the Government had celebrated this return, seem 
 to me alarming for the enlightened minds who dreaded, as one 
 of the greatest scourges which can afflict a people, the recall of 
 religion and its ministers into the political order. In fact, it was 
 easy to foresee that all the power of Bonaparte would not suffice 
 to hold in the narrow limits which he thought to prescribe to them, 
 the dangerous auxiliaries which he gave to himself; and the end 
 has proved that, at the time of his reverses, he had no more 
 intractable enemies than those priests to whom he had given so 
 dangerous an influen5;|/Y/gy#|,yi?i?j(ei§g6«®But at the time when 
 
NOT FAVORED BY PUBLIC OPINION. 479 
 
 Bonaparte crossed this slippery gi-ound, persuaded that, of all 
 religions, the Catholic religion was the most favourable to the 
 arbitrary power to which he aspired, and that, in the pulpit and 
 confessional, he would have the most powerful defenders of his 
 system, and professors in passive obedience to his advantage, he 
 closed his eyes on every other consideration, and regarded the 
 re-establishment of worship as a step necessary for mounting to 
 supreme authority. Without attaching to himself this clergy who 
 were so little grateful, he alienated from himself many minds ; 
 and, although placed in a very isolated position,*' it was in my 
 power to convince myself of this truth. Despite the attachment 
 which, in general, the Corsicans bore to the Catholic religion, the 
 unexpected resolution which established it anew in France pro- 
 duced generally in the island very little sensation. The pomp 
 with which I caused the law to be published, the Te Deums, and 
 the solemn masses, produced only a very moderate effect. The 
 penetrating instinct of the Corsicans caused them to guess that it 
 was not to the intimate conviction of the excellence of Catholicism 
 that the proceeding of the First Consul was to be attributed, but 
 to more profound designs, "f It is thus that religion has in vain 
 been taken as an instrument of domination. It does not lend 
 itself to this part, which dishonours it ; and it contributes to the 
 public peace only when it is loved for its own sake, and when it is 
 sufficiently respected to serve it in place of making use of it. 
 
 * The author was on a mission in Corsica. 
 
 I " Memoires de Miot de Melitto," II., pp. 21, 22. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
chapter iiu 
 
 Effects of the Concordat. — Conclusion. 
 
 We shall not occupy ourselves with the period which follows the 
 conclusion of the Concordat, except in so far as it serves 
 to determine its true import, for it is of moment to show 
 that, as soon as concluded, this fatal treaty which was to 
 secure religious peace, perpetuated in France the most shamefiil 
 oppression of consciences, raised between the two conlracting;| 
 parties the most fatal discords, and profoundly disturbed the 
 Church. 
 
 We have seen that the Legislator of Germinal year X., had con- 
 tented himself with constituting paid worships, without acknowledg- 
 ing, by a single article, the right of the dissident worships which 
 might beperpetuated or established. Now, rehgious liberty, properly ; 
 so called, exists only" in the measure in which this right is admitted, . 
 for official worships, making part of the administration, arise not 
 from liberty but from privilege. It has not been sufficiently 
 remarked that the first consequence of the Concordat was the J 
 total suppression of liberty of worships, the clandestine practice 
 of which was rendered more difficult by the admirable net-work 
 of the imperial administration than by the violences of the Terror. 
 History has disdained to mark this fact, which possesses, never- 
 theless, much more importance than questions of war or finance. 
 The equal balancing of a budget or a plan of campaign mar- 
 vellously combined, a^|^^e'c?4'^/croSW^^ *^" *^ suppression 
 
EFFECTS OF THE CONCORDAT. 48 1 
 
 • 
 
 of the first and most sacred of rights. I know that religious 
 liberty at this period was ill represented, for those who were the 
 first to claim it, belonged to that theophilanthropic religion 
 whose rites were ridiculous, and which had committed the 
 wrong of turning to their own account the protection of the 
 Directory. The sect still reckoned at the period of the Con- 
 cordat a certain number of adherents who were not disposed to 
 connect themselves with official Churches, and who simply desired 
 to celebrate their worship conformably to their convictions. This 
 worship was much open to criticism from the religious or philo- 
 sophical point of view, but it had nothing immoral, and ought 
 consequently to escape the repression of the State. The theo- 
 philanthropists were perfectly justified in invoking religious liberty 
 in their favour. From that moment everything ridiculous dis- 
 ippears; there was no longer anything but a sacred right in 
 face of the oppressive force. On the 12 th of Ventose year X., 
 the chief of the sect had made a declaration to the competent 
 luthority, to announce that they wished to continue the exercise 
 of their worship in a locality rented by them. They could not 
 obtain an official certificate from this declaration ; all their claims 
 vere unavailing. In the very reasonable protest which they 
 hrew up, we read these words, to which we can give only an 
 mtire assent : " Where would be liberty of worships, if it was 
 permitted to follow only one of those which are established ? * 
 such was, nevertheless, the theory of the new Government " I 
 lo not wish a dominant religion," said Napoleon to his Council 
 )f State, " nor that new religions should be established. The 
 eligions acknowledged by the Concordat, viz. : the Catholic, the 
 Reformed, and the Lutheran, are sufficient, "f The First Consul 
 
 * " Annales de la Religion," XV., p. 297. 
 
 \ " Opinions de Napoleon sur divers sujetsde Politique at d'Adminis- 
 
 ration," p. 208. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
482 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLTJTION. 
 
 • 
 
 did the theophilanthropists the honour of devoting to them one 
 of his passionate harangues, to which he had accustomed the 
 Council of State. "They complain," said he, "that the Pope 
 governs in France. Those people act like a club. I will not 
 torment anyone for religious opinions, but I do not wish that 
 under this pretext they should occupy themselves with political 
 affairs. Let a chapel be given to them. . . . And, then, here are 
 the Constitutional priests with which they embarrass me.'' He 
 resumed, after reflection : " Give an order to stop the theo- 
 philanthropists.* It was impossible more explicitly to deny 
 liberty of worships. This negation equally springs from the 
 more than severe words pronounced by Napoleon against the 
 Jews up to the day when he organised the synagogue, and gave to 
 it the official sanction. We know the force of the prejudices 
 against the Jews, above all in the countries where, like every 
 oppressed race, they availed themselves, with a skill much to be 
 regretted, of the evil resource of the feeble against the strong, of 
 that cunning cleverness which in commercial affairs allowed them 
 to oppress entire villages. That was what happened in Alsace. 
 The men of 1789 had had difficulty in triumphing over these 
 prejudices ; they had, however, succeeded, and had maintained ; 
 without exception the essential principle of the new society, to 
 wit, that no one can be disturbed or trammelled in his rights on 
 account of his religious opinions. Napoleon trod under foot those 
 principles in full Council of State, when he expressed himself 
 thus, on the case of the Jews : — " Simple laws are here necessary, 
 Imvs of exception. The harm which the Jews commit does not 
 . come from individuals, but from the very constitution of this 
 people : they are caterpillars, locusts which ravage France, to 
 whom commerce ought to be forbidden." That was evidently to 
 
 " Memoires sur le Consulat," p. i6i. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
. MORAL DECLINE OF PROTESTANTISM. 483 
 
 outlaw a religious opinion. The Emperor went so far as to 
 say : " The Jews are not in the same category as the Pro- 
 testants and Catholics. We must judge them according to 
 the political, and not according to the civil right, since they 
 are not citizem."* Such maxims amounted to nothing less 
 than a sort of revocation of the great edict of toleration of 
 1789 to the detriment of a particular worship. It was a return to 
 the most deplorable confusion between civil rights and certain 
 religious opinions. Judaism escaped in France the laws of 
 exception only by re-entering into the administration. It 
 remains not the less true that the head of the State believed 
 everything permitted to him with respect to worships which 
 were not noted in the margin of his budget, and did not receive 
 his orders. 
 
 We have rendered homage to the firmness with which the First 
 Consul had struck out of the Concordat all that resembled the 
 domination of one worship over another. But this equality in 
 protection was also an equality in servitude. Protestantism, in our 
 opinion, lost more than it gained by the new state of things, for 
 religious liberty and the full enjoyment of civil rights would have 
 sufficed for its speedy revival. In glancing over the ecclesiastical 
 repertory of the Protestant Churches, published in 1807, by 
 Rabaut junior, a most curious collection, which contains a rapid 
 history of the greater number of these Churches, we acknowledge 
 that, in most of them, worship had continued to be celebrated 
 even during the revolutionary tempest, sometimes in a barn, 
 sometimes in a remote house. - Supposing that public peace had 
 been restored to France under the shield of the principles of 
 1789 and not by favour of despotism, French Protestantism 
 would not have failed to develop and consolidate itself. It 
 
 '- " Memoires5m;.^e^^gn^lat,^^r4. 
 I I 2 
 
484 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 would have found resources enough to build religious edifices 
 convenient or majestic, and it would not have been trammelled 
 by those fatal laws of Germinal which have so contributed to 
 retard its progress. It did not immediately feel the inconvenience, 
 because its ancient zeal was momentarily extinguished, and 
 because in its need of repose and political consolidation, it did 
 not even go to the end of its chain. It was wrapt up in the very 
 comprehensible joy of having its place in the sun of the country, 
 and of raising its temples opposite the Catholic churches. But 
 better would . it have been to have had less honour and more 
 liberty. We may say that it was, as it were, decapitated in its 
 interior organisation by the want of those great deliberative 
 assemblies which had contributed so much to its glory in the 
 past Persecution had not succeeded in. robbing it of them, for 
 the Church of the desert never renounced synodal organisation. 
 But governmental protection prevented what the dragonades 
 could not interrupt, and it did so without frankness by means of 
 the administrative despotism, in reducing to a dead letter a right 
 of the first order. The laws of Germinal year X. declared that 
 the Protestant Churches should have synods ; but as the Power 
 carefully abstained from organising them, it was only a chimerical 
 promise, the effect of which is yet to be awaited after fifty years. 
 A very curious document reveals to us the true intention of the 
 Legislator of the year X. on this most important point ; a note 
 which had emanated from the Direction of non-Catholic worships in 
 1824, and designed to interpret the organic articles according to 
 the tradition faithfully preserved by the ministry, contains the 
 following words on the article of the synods : " The synods exist 
 only in law. The Reformed sometimes demand their effective 
 existence. But this would be to add to the consistence of the 
 Churches to unite them in groups of five by a common regime. 1 
 Their state of isolatiog)/^j^gr/,^^^f:iSloJ^ir tranquillity, the result 
 
MORAL DECLINE OF PROTESTANTISM. 485 
 
 of weakness."* We willingly admit that, under the Bourbons of 
 the elder branch, in the palmy days of the congregation. Protes- 
 tantism has been the object of a special disfavour ; nevertheless, 
 the obscure scribe who -wTote this ministerial note, is quite the 
 faithful interpreter of the legislation of the year X. Napoleon 
 would not, any more than his successors, have tolerated free 
 discussions in the midst of the reconstituted synods. He con- 
 voked deliberative assemblies of any kind, only when he had an 
 interest in making them accomplish some act signalised by 
 collective cowardice. The Legislative body perfectly sufficed 
 him for that ; and the experiment of the National Council which 
 he caused to sit at Paris in 18 ii, turned out too ill for him to be 
 tempted to convoke a synod. Besides, the Protestants remained 
 very sincerely attached to him, and, in the South, often paid for 
 this honourable fidelity with their blood ; they showed him more 
 gratitude than they owed him, for more than once he made use of 
 their Churches, as of a card in his diplomatic game, to frighten 
 the Pope with the ascendency which he might grant them, if he 
 wished. In a letter to Pius VII., dated from Munich the 7th 
 January, 1806, Napoleon, enumerating his grievances against the 
 Court of Rome, wrote these significant lines: "I have experienced 
 on the part of your Holiness only refusals on all subjects, even on 
 those which were of an interest of the first order for religion, as 
 for example, when the question was of preventing Protestantism 
 from raising its head in France." \ Napoleon thought to be the 
 absolute master of the Reformed Churches : " I am head of the 
 Protestant ministers," said he, " since I nominate them." Un- 
 
 * " Bulletin de la Societe de I'Histoire du Protestantisme Franjais," 
 12 annee, p. 181. 
 
 f " Opinions de Napoleon sur divers sujets de Politique et d' Ad- 
 ministration," p. 211. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
486 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 happily, the clergy of both Churches, by imprudent flatteries, did 
 all that was necessary to maintain him in this illusion, so full of 
 peril for himself. 
 
 I know no reading more sad than that of the ecclesiastical 
 documents of this time. We again find there that profanation of 
 holy things which dishonoured the Church of the Lower Empire. 
 We know that in its skill to draw from the sacred books unknown 
 formulas of servility, this Church arrived at the truly astonishing 
 result of giving new life to flattery, after three centuries of base- 
 ness. It must be acknowledged that in France the leader of this' 
 too harmonious choir was the Pope's legate. In his circular letter, 
 in which he institutes the festival of Saint-Napoleon for the 15th 
 of August, he boldly attributed to the Emperor the honour of 
 having carried the ark of God across the Jordan, a happy image 
 designed to depict the revolutionary tempest. " If your sons en- 
 quire," adds the legate, "who has so happily done such great. 
 things for Christianity, you will tell them that it is our Emperor^ 
 who has imitated the illustrious kings, Cyrus and Darius, in restor- 
 ing the house of God." * This theme of the new Cyrus was infi-S 
 nitely varied in the episcopal charges. A graver sign of this 
 servility was the warlike tone of the representatives of a religion of 
 peace when war broke out anew. The Englishman was devoted to 
 the anger of the Almighty with an energy that was little, edifying. ; 
 Perfidious Albion was compared to Tyre and Sidon, and the] 
 threatenings of the prophets turned against her with an inexhaus- 
 tible abundance. "The voice of the blood of our brothers^ 
 we read in the charge of the Bishop of Saint Brieuc, " cries for| 
 vengeance against the Englishman." The Cardinal Archbishop ofj 
 Tours made a fine discovery, which he hastened to communicate' 
 to his diocese ; it was that the war which was commencing was 
 
 * " Archives de I'Engp^Jci^J^gjy^^^ Concordat," II., p. 137. 
 
SERVILITY OF THE HIGH CLERGY. 487 
 
 he war of peace.* The homages rendered by the clergy to the 
 :hief of the State equalled all the exaggerations that had been 
 een under the ancient monarchy. " We know not how to render 
 00 much honour," we read in a circular of Portalis of the 4th 
 klessidor year XI., " and to testify too much gratitude, respect and 
 ove, to the restorer of religion and the State." The clergy receive 
 lim on the threshold of the temple chanting the anthem : Ecce 
 niito angelum metim qui praparabit viam meam (Behold I send 
 ay angel who shall prepare my way). After the sprinkling, he is 
 :onducted to the principal altar, and the Salvwn is intoned. In 
 he solemn circumstances, there were imposed on the clergy pro 
 estations of exceptional devotedness. On the occasion of the 
 lonspiracy of Pluviose year XII., Portalis wrote to the bishops a 
 :ircular thus couched : " In such a moment, it belongs to the 
 ninisters of religion to enlighten the citizens by their instructions, 
 :nd to make them feel, more than ever, that they owe gratitude, 
 ttachment, and love to a Government that is a restorer of worship, 
 . protector of all good people, and a repairer of all the evils which 
 lave so long afflicted France." The addresses of the clergy left 
 lothing to be desired by the most devoted courtiers ; the First 
 Consul, in the audience which he granted them on this occasion, 
 ;xpressed to them his lively satisfaction, and particularly the 
 )leasure which he experienced in seeing the ecclesiastics in long 
 obes. The holy militia had taken the uniform which he had pre- 
 cribed, with as much eagerness as his soldiers, and it was not 
 ess disposed to accept his orders. How would he not have ap- 
 )lauded the following words addressed by the Bishop of Dijon to 
 lis parish priests before the taking of their oath : " After that the 
 )refects and mayors, speaking to those whom they govern as citi- 
 ;ens, shall have communicated to them the laws or decrees of the 
 
 ' Annales de la Religion," XVII., p. 180. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
400 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 Government, and shall have made of their execution a social duty, 
 the pastors, still speaking in the same, direction to those whom 
 they govern as Christians, will make of it a moral duty. The 
 political magistrate will appeal to their honour; the religious 
 magistrate to their conscience ! The former will connect with it 
 their temporal interest ; the latter, their eternal salvation. Thus 
 is born a regime, according to which morality is bom of legislation,, 
 and by which connexion, co-operation, and unity of action are 
 established between two governments made for one another." * 
 Surely, never was religion more submissively yoked to the chariot 
 of the State. What asylum would remain to liberty in the world 
 when the spiritual and civil power should thus form two perfectly 
 concentric circles, and the bishop be no more than a prefect in a 
 long robe? Can there be deeper abjectness for a Church than 
 this ? This was, however, the part it played after this so boasted 
 Concordat. 
 
 The head of the State felt himself as at home in the Christian 
 temples as in his own palace. , He there caused to be read at the 
 sermon, the bulletins of the Grand Army. When the question 
 was of repairing its losses by those formidable levies of conscripts 
 which his Senate so benevolently granted to him, he requested his 
 bishops to aid his prefects in bringing back to him the refractory. 
 The Government severely censured every mark of pity for so 
 many unfortunate young people sent to the war under age. It 
 caused its gendarmes to seize in the sacristy of a church, a con- 
 script who was in the act of confession.! In addition to which, the 
 priests frequently supplied the place of the gendarmery in this sad 
 office. When it has been stated to what degree of abasement. 
 
 * " Annales de la Religion,'' p. 117. 1 
 
 f " Memoires sur les Affaires Ecclesiastiques de la France au com- 
 mencement du dix-ne;g^^^eji^cl^;; L,^23S. j 
 
THE IMPERIAL CATECHISM. 489 
 
 the greater part of the Concordat clergy had suffered themselves 
 to be reduced, we can but subscribe to these words of Gregoire, 
 despite their rough severity : " Are not these the same men who 
 ordered so many Te Deums for victories, for every kind of scenes 
 of carnage, even those of the sacrilegious war in Spain ? Are 
 they not the same men who, at the fall of the potentate, have 
 with this multitude of senators, counsellors, prefects, judges, 
 magistrates, despised the man to whom the day before they were 
 burning incense ? Are they not the same who, after having 
 exhausted all the phrases of servility, worn all liveries, professed 
 all doctrines, courted all parties, always end by floating on the 
 surface ? " * 
 
 We know the history of the famous Imperial Catechism imposed 
 by the New Empire on the whole Church of France. It was its 
 way of saying : Suffer the little cJiildreti to come unto me. The 
 famous chapter on the duties of French Christians with respect to 
 their Emperor, has gained the notoriety which it deserves, but it 
 is always useful to recall these outrages against conscience which 
 combine the ridiculous with the odious. " For the first time since 
 the establishment of Christianity,'' says Grfegoire again, " is seen 
 the scandal of a catechism drawn up expressly in favour of an indi- 
 vidual and of a family." 
 
 " Q. What are the duties of Christians, in respect to the princes 
 ivho govern them?" we read at page 55, "and what, in particular, 
 are our duties towards Napoleon the First, our Emperor? — A. 
 Christians owe to the princes^^who govern them, and we owe in 
 particular to Napoleon the First, our Emperor, love, respect, obe- 
 dience, fidelity, military service, the taxes usual for the preserva- 
 tion and expenses of the empire and of his throne. ... To honour 
 and serve our Emperor is, then, to honour and serve God Himself. 
 
 * " Essai Historique sur I'Eglise Gallicane," p. 270. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
49° THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 " Q. Are there not special motives which ought more strongly to 
 attach us to Napoleon the First, our Emperor? — A. Yes, for it is 
 he whom God has raised up in difficult circumstances to re-establish 
 the public worship of the holy religion of our fathers, and to be 
 its protector. He has brought back and preserved public order 
 by his profound and active wisdom ; he defends the State by his. 
 powerful arm ; he has become the help of the Lord by the conse- 
 cration which he has received from the sovereign Pontiff, the head 
 of the Universal Church. 
 
 " Q. What ought we to think of those who should be wanting 
 in their duty towards our Emperor ? — A. According to the holy 
 Apostle Paul, they would be resisting the order established by God 
 Himself, they would be rendering themselves worthy of eternal 
 damnation." 
 
 Thus, the new despotism profaned at once rehgion and child- 
 hood, and showed itself guilty of a double sacrilege. Nothing more 
 was wanting to it, except to erect on the Vendome column the 
 statue of the god Mars with the features of General Bonaparte, 
 and to claim adoration after the example of the Roman Csesars. 
 The Papacy carried compliance so far as highly to approve the 
 famous catechism, and the legate recommended its use in all the 
 dioceses. 
 
 It is vain to hold under control an inthralled Church ; it is 
 always a difficult and perilous task imperiousl/ to rule spiritual' 
 powers. The spirit blows where it wills, and mocks the best- 
 appointed administration ; it passes through meshes of legal net- 
 work with which it is endeavoured to entangle it Thence arises 
 a perpetual uneasiness for the despot who wishes to regulate all, to 
 domineer over all, to inspire all. Napoleon would have wished 
 that no public speech should resound in the empire without the 
 postscript of his prefects. The latter were to watch very closely 
 
 over all the episcopal charges. The Government complained that 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
MINUTE SURVEILLANCE EXERCISED OVER THE HIGH CLERGY. 49 1 
 
 nodern philosophy was too often put on trial in the discourses or 
 iermons. The head of the State himself corrected the documents 
 vhich went forth from tlie Archbishopric of Paris ; the greatest 
 vigilance was recommended to the bishops over the preachers who 
 iscended their pulpits, and had the privilege so dreaded by the 
 jovernment of addressing the people. Controversy was forbidden 
 hem. A preacher was thrown into prison for having uttered a 
 )hilippic against Voltaire and Rousseau ; and the superior autho- 
 ity did not blame tlie act in itself, but only the administrative 
 rregularity which accompanied it. A prefect, opposed to auste- 
 ity, blamed his bishop for having insisted too much on abstinence 
 rom flesh in time of Lent.* Missions were not less strictly 
 vatched over. In 1807 the missions in the interior were sup- 
 pressed on the ground- that they agitated the people. As for 
 breign missions, Napoleon wished to authorise them only in the 
 neasure in which apostolic zeal would be useful as well to the 
 state as to religion.! 
 
 The Emperor was not satisfied with exercising vigilance, or 
 ;ausing it to be exercised, over the charges of his bishops. Just 
 IS on occasion he became journalist, he endeavoured also to- 
 landle the episcopal crook. He transmitted, in a very curious- 
 etter to his uncle the Cardinal Fesch, recently raised to the see 
 )f Lyons, a sketch of a very edifying discourse destined to- 
 estore peace to his diocese. " Say," wrote he to him, " that 
 :very sentiment which would produce pride is a sin, that to wish- 
 o humble our neighbour is to violate the Gospel," J &c., &c. 
 
 * See ^11 these details, and many others, in the " Memoires pour 
 ervir a I'Histoire Ecclesiastique du di.x-neuvieme siecle," I., pp. 211 
 
 -237- 
 + Letter to the Archbishop of Paris, of August 28, 1802. 
 
 I Letter of the 6th of September, 1802. — " Correspondance dc; 
 Napoleon Bonaparte," VI II., p. 28. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
492 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 This homily on humility and forgiveness does not prevent this 
 novice-father of the Church from writing, some days later: "As 
 for some enthusiast refractories, as soon as they shall be known, 
 I will cause them to be removed."* Sometimes we find in his 
 -correspondence, artless expressions of the despot which excite a 
 smile. " Give to M. the Bishop of Poitiers," writes he on the 
 2nd of June, 1805, "instructions suitable _;2ir changing the spirit 
 of this diocese, the worst in France." To what lengths does the 
 intoxication of material power carry men ! To change the spirit 
 of a diocese appears to him as simple as to order a change in the 
 uniform of his guard. He perceived only too well his own 
 incapacity for reigning in this domain of ideology, for which he 
 revenged himself by vain sarcasms, and then, not being able to 
 change the spirit, he had recourse to the vulgar resources of all ■ 
 tyrannies : constraint and arbitrary power. He caused the priests 
 to be removed and imprisoned, and asked of his Minister. of 
 Worships what were the canonical forms for degrading them.t 
 Later, at the height of his contest with the Holy See, he spoke 
 only of fusillading the recalcitrants. He had formally declared 
 that such would be the fate of all those who should have a 
 hand in the bull of excommunication. Happily, these bloody 
 threats were not executed, but it is not sufficiently well known 
 that he applied to the priests measures more than severe. 
 Before the Concordat, a preacher named Fournier, who had 
 developed Ultramontane maxims in the pulpit of Saint-Roch, i 
 was cast into Bicetre as a lunatic. The clergy of Paris having 
 presented themselves at the Tuileries to prefer some complaints 
 to the First Consul, the latter answered in these terms : " The 
 prefect has acted only by order of the Government. I have 
 
 * Letter of the nth of November, 1802. 
 f Letter of the 30th of March, 1804. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
MORE THAN FIVE HUNDRED PRIESTS INCARCERATED. 49J 
 
 Wished to prove to you that if I should put my cap awry, it 
 would be necessary that the priests should obey the civil power." * 
 His cap was seldom right, for during his reign more than five 
 hundred priests were put in prison without trial, t With the 
 exception of the effusion of blood, he followed the worst revo- 
 lutionary practice in ecclesiastical affairs. 
 
 The Concordat had not reconciled the two hostile clergies, 
 and their quarrels unceasingly led to the grievous and tyrannical 
 intervention of the State-t It remains to us to show that neither 
 did it consolidate peace between the Government of France and 
 the Holy See. The organic articles had been a first leaven of 
 discord, for they had been decreed by only one of the contract- 
 ing parties to the detriment of the other without any previous, 
 agreement. We do not deny that in the giving of a Concordat, 
 the State might not have had reason to take precautions with 
 respect to the foreign power to which so great a number of its 
 subordinates were attached by intimate ties. It will be always 
 thus so long as the highest office in Catholicism shall be united to 
 a temporal sovereignty. The independence of the Churches is 
 impossible wherever they represent ought else but religion, 
 wherever they depend on a political sovereign. It is, then, 
 necessary to foresee cases of conflict, and. to guarantee pubhc 
 security by regulations to be regretted in themselves, but im- 
 posed by a wise policy in a complicated and false situation. But 
 what is not necessary is, at the very moment when the two 
 powers are in diplomatic conference, that one of them — the civil 
 
 * Memoires sur le Consulat," p. 159. 
 
 •f De Pradt, "Las Quatre Concordats," II., 259. 
 
 I See on these relations, "rHistoire de Pie VII.," by the Chevalier 
 Artaud ; the twelfth and thirteenth volumes of the " Quatre Con- 
 cordats," by de Pradt ; and, in fine, the very interesting " Memoires du 
 Cardinal Pacca." 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
494 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 power — should at its pleasure add to the concluded treaty, 
 articles which serve its own convenience, and thus, by an abuse of 
 power, take to itself the lion's share. This was what the First 
 Consul attempted with his usual audacity, and he had thus left in 
 the heart of his new ally a leaven of bitterness which was to 
 render good harmony impossible. A treaty' violated as soon 
 as concluded, inaugurated war and not peace. The good 
 understanding lasted all the time which appeared necessary to 
 Napoleon to obtain a new concession from the Holy Father, all 
 to the profit of his personal ambition. He had a wish for 
 the little phial, according to the witty expression of General 
 Lafayette, and he desired to astonish the world by causing to 
 be consecrated by the hands of the Pope at Notre Dame, I do 
 not say the representative, but the victorious son of tbe French 
 Revolution. He used, in order to bring Pius VII. to his views, 
 the same bait by which he had decided him to the Concordat.; 
 We know that the vaguest promises in a strange manner acquire 
 precision in minds pre-occupied with a long-cherished desire ; they 
 interpret and complete in their own direction a word, an equivocal 
 sign. Nothing was then more easy than to lead to a false step a 
 respectable old man who thought his conscience interested in re- 
 establishing the temporal power in its ancient limits. He would 
 have run to the end of the world after the shadow of one of the 
 lost provinces ; he must think that the Legations were indeed 
 worth a mass at Paris, so much the more that, after all, no sacrifice 
 was demanded of his conscience. We cannot doubt that such 
 was the principal motive for his journey to France, when we read 
 the memorial which he caused to be sent to the Minister of 
 Foreign Affairs. This memorial begins thus : " We have been 
 for a long time uncertain, if, in yielding to the repeated invita- 
 tions of your Majesty to manifest to you the demands of our 
 heart, we should make, no i^^^'W-^ °^«S'^ lands belonging to the 
 
DEBATES WITH ROME. 495 
 
 <iomain of the Holy See." The words at once reveal the skil- 
 fulness of French diplomacy, which has caused Rome to hope 
 everything, without making any positive engagement The 
 memorial turns principally on the penury of the Holy See, on 
 the immensity of its needs, and the imperious necessity which 
 drives it to demand the restitution of the Legations. The Holy 
 Father promised to Napoleon the glory of a new Charlemagne if 
 he imitated the munificence of the first Carlovingians. The 
 memorial concluded by this petition, more fervid than dignified : 
 ■" Would to heaven that for your glory and our complete consola- 
 tion, that might be written of you which we find written in the 
 monuments of the Church, of one of our predecessors, Stephen 
 IV., and of Louis the Pious, son of Charlemagne, who had 
 received from him the imperial" crown. The Lord deigned to 
 grant to this Pontiff" so much protection, that he obtained all that 
 Jie asked from this Prince, so much so that this pious monarch, 
 in his love for Stephen IV., amongst other gifts which he offered 
 him, made a present to the holy Apostle Peter of a manor out 
 of his own private property."* The entire explanation of the 
 coronation is in these words. Portalis respectfully declined the 
 -demands of the Holy Father, by appealing to the rights acquired 
 by the new State formed in Italy. It was soon to be seen what 
 these rights counted for in the eyes of the conqueror, when the 
 question was of extending Ijiis own empire. The Holy Father 
 returned to Rome with a bitter 'deception, which made him little 
 favourably disposed to the new concessions which the Emperor 
 did not fail to ask of him. 
 
 Two incidents contributed to envenom the relations between 
 Napoleon and the Pope, relations which, if it had not been for 
 the untameable despotism of the first, might have easily remained 
 
 'Flistoire de Pie VII.," II., pp. 29, 31. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
496 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 on a good footing, for these two persons had a mutual sym- 
 pathy which never entirely disappeared. Jerome Bonaparte, the 
 youngest of the Emperor's brothers, had married an American 
 lady of Baltimore, worthy of every consideration and of striking 
 beauty. This marriage had violently irritated the head of the 
 family, who wished that his blood should, henceforth, mingle with 
 that of the oldest royal races. He demanded of the Pope to 
 dissolve this marriage, by alleging that it had been contracted 
 with a Protestant. The reasons assigned for invalidity did not 
 appear sufficient at Rome ; the Holy Father, in passing over the 
 difference of religion, showed himself truer to religious liberty 
 than the former General of the Republic. "The disparity of 
 religion," it was written from Rome to Paris, " considered by the 
 Church as an invalidating obstacle, is not examined into between 
 two baptised persons, although one of them should not be of the 
 CathoUc religion." Napoleon passionately insisted, but without 
 success. The other incident was his imperious desire to conclude, 
 in favour of the newly-constituted kingdom of Italy, a Concordat 
 at least as advantageous to the civil power as that of 1802. The 
 Pope had a thousand reasons for being less in haste than he. 
 The relations became more and more embittered. On the 13th 
 of February, 1806, the Emperor wrote to the Pope a letter which, 
 however powerful and dreaded the writer of it might be, was not 
 less a culpable insolence towards the Catholic Church: "Our] 
 conditions ought to be," wrote Napoleon, " that your Holiness 
 shall have the same regard for me in temporal affairs that I bear 
 to you in spiritual." In truth, the Holy Father would not have 
 imprudently, pledged himself in simply promising reciprocity of 
 regards. " Your Holiness is Sovereign of Rome," added Napo- 
 leon, "but I am its Emperor. All my enemies ought' to be 
 
 yours I am accountable to God, who has indeed wished to 
 
 make use of my arm f2Sg^S%?9iy?feJw®ent of religion, and hor 
 
EFFECTS OF THE CONCORDAT.— CONCLUSION. 497 
 
 " can I, without lamenting, see it compromised by the delays of 
 the Court of Rome, where nothing is ever finished ? On account 
 of worldly interests, souls are left to perish. Let those answer for 
 it before God who employ so much zeal tn protecting Protestant 
 marriages.'" Let it not be forgottten that it is the pretended 
 representative of a Revolution, made in the name of liberty of 
 ■conscience, who holds this language to the representative of the 
 Roman theocracy. What a strange inversion of parts ! The 
 Holy See answered with firmness, protesting especially against the 
 pretention of Napoleon to be Emperor of Rome. He used 
 the powerful weapon which had been left him and which had 
 succeeded with Louis XIV. ; the refusal of the bulls to the new 
 bishops sufficed to throw the whole Church of France into con- 
 fusion. Already even excommunication was spoken of at Rome. 
 Napoleon decided to strike a great blow. He no longer main- 
 tained any reserve in the letter which he wrote on this occasion to 
 the viceroy of Italy. He declared that the Pope who should 
 denounce him to Christendom would cease to be the Pope in his 
 eyes, and that he should no longer regard him except as Anti- 
 christ, whilst thanking God for his powerlessness. The following 
 words show to what his orthodoxy held : " If it was thus, I would 
 separate my peoples from all communion with Rome, and I would 
 -establish such a police that these mysterious documents should 
 no longer be seen to circulate. What does Pius VII. wish to do 
 by denouncing me to Christendom ? To excommunicate me . . . 
 Does he think, then, that the weapons will fall from the hands of 
 my soldiers ? The present Pope has given himself the trouble to 
 come to my coronation at Paris, but he wished me to yield him 
 the Legations ; I have neither been able nor willing to do it. The 
 present Pqpe is too powerful; priests are not made to govern. 
 Why does not the Pope wish to render to Csesar that which is 
 Caesar's; and is he on the earth more than Jesus Christ? Perhaps. 
 Digitized bf-fMsrosoft® 
 
498 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 the time is not far distant, if they will continue to trouble the 
 affairs of my States, when I shall acknowledge the Pope only as 
 Bishop of Rome, only as equal and in the same rank as the 
 bishops of my States. I shall not fear to unite the Gallican, 
 Italian, German, Polish Churches in a council, in order to transact 
 my affairs without the Pope. The duties of the tiara are, in reality, 
 only humiUty and prayer. Jesus Christ has not instituted a 
 pilgrimage to Rome, as Mahomet did to Mecca." Nothing-is 
 equal to the frankness and style of the master in his first sketch, 
 before his scribes had diluted it in their circulars. For the time, 
 Napoleon is indeed the representative of the Revolution, not of 
 that which, with Mirabeau, proclaims liberty of worships, but of 
 that which made the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, and made 
 use of violence to cast the Church at the foot of the State. He 
 was no more that day than a crowned revolutionist. 
 
 Here was the supreme peril of the situation created by the] 
 Concordat. The gravest interests of religion depended on a 
 mind, profound without doubt, but fickle to excess, which seized^ 
 with its imcomparable vigour, the point of view which the passion 
 of the moment presented to him. He knew, with the fecundity 
 and suppleness of his genius, how to group around his idea of 
 the day the most striking considerations, and to cause to burst 
 forth, in some sort, from all the subjects which he struck with his 
 picturesque bluntness, coruscations which he took for lights and 
 reasons.* The delicate affairs of the soul and conscience 
 appeared to him his own affairs ; he treated them according to his 
 rapid and thundering method, a sure means of finishing nothing, 
 of appeasing nothing, and of contending in interminable and 
 dangerous struggles. J 
 
 * M. de Pradt very well characterises this intoxication of Napoleoiv 
 ty his own discourses 6)^a»|^te;figft?gfdats," II., p. 459) . | 
 
EFFECTS OF THE CONCORDAT. CONCLUSION. 499 
 
 We know what was the issue of his discussion with Rome. The 
 'ope, as soon as the European war began anew, did not observe 
 le conduct of a sure and faithful ally. It is asking too much ot 
 lie oppressed to require that he should warmly espouse the cause 
 f him who holds him under his yoke. The coaUtion did not 
 lil to hatch its conspiracies at Rome, but it only compromised 
 le weak power which it could not efficiently defend. The 
 ontifical city was occupied, provisionally at first, by the French 
 ■oops on the occasion of the invasion of the kingdom of Naples, 
 len the occupation became definitive, the Papal gendarmery was 
 icorporated on the i6th of March, 1808, with the Imperial 
 rmy, in consequence of an insulting decree. The Pope 
 Qswered these acts of violence by his allocution of the 8th of 
 uly ; he there protests, with firmness, his inviolable attachment 
 ) his people, and invites the Emperor to withdraw from the 
 ounsels of perfidious men. 
 
 We have had, hitherto, only the prologue of the drama. The 
 ecree of the re-union of the pontifical States to the empire 
 iused to be poured out the cup of bitterness which already over 
 owed from the day when the French soldiers had crossed the 
 ireshold of the pontifical palace to carry off the Cardinal 
 acca, the Secretary of State to his Holiness. The bull of 
 ^communication which had long been ready, was instantly 
 asted at Rome, by those skilful and invisible hands which the 
 apacy has not always kept in its service. We regret to find in 
 lis document, otherwise eloquent, complaints that the compen 
 tions promised by the author of the Concordat have been 
 fused to the Court of Rome. It was necessary that day to 
 rget all that recalled the temporal sovereignity, and to represent 
 ily the spiritual power in the lists with despotism. On this 
 tritory, it was easy to retrieve equality and even superiority. It 
 necessary to read in the "d0m»1^ivtkh£miina.] Pacca," all 
 
 K K 2 
 
500 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCHRE VOLUTION. 
 
 the odious details of this military execution. What a profound 
 
 echo was not such an outrage to have in Catholic consciences ? 
 
 More grave than material violence, is moral violence, such as was 
 
 practised at Savona, and then at Fontainebleau,' with a skill and 
 
 perseverance truly culpable, on an unfortunate priest, weakened 
 
 by isolation and captivity, from whom was finally wrested the 
 
 disavowal of his own cause. The shameful Concordat concluded 
 
 at Fontainebleau in 1813, which hands over to the civU power all 
 
 the liberties of the Church, and even the right of disposing of the 
 
 canonical institution, accuses much more the arm of iron which 
 
 has imposed it, than the trembling hand which has signed it 
 
 The dissolution of the Council held at Paris in 1811, from the 
 
 day on which it seriously lays hold of and acknowledges the 
 
 sovereignty of the Holy Father ; the banishment of the Cardinals 
 
 who refused to violate the canonical rules by assisting at the 
 
 second marriage of Napoleon ; the harsh captivity of Cardinal ' 
 
 Pacca, deprived of religious aids, as but lately the refractories of 
 
 Aix and Rochefort ; all these persecuting measures reveal the 
 
 triumph of the bad revolutionary tradition, in full monarchies^ 
 
 restoration, in the midst of a brilliant and servile Court, presided 
 
 over by an Austrian archduchess. This result of the Concordat 
 
 is sufficient to condemn it. We may apply to the profound 
 
 politician who had conceived it the estimation which he always 
 
 found decisive. Not only can we say to him, you have offended 
 
 against right and liberty; we know that that touches you 
 
 little, but you have not succeeded ! Besides, he has himself 
 
 acknowledged it in oft-cited words, and which are the forced 
 
 onclusion of this chapter. "When Napoleon," we read in the 
 
 ' Quatre Concordats " of M. dePradt, "felthimself entangled in 
 
 the ever-increasing religious quarrels ; when after having laboured 
 
 with the view of pacifying all, he found that he had sown seeds 01 
 
 discord; when after he<a*(^^efe*:MffBf*e/Pthe support of the clergy,! 
 
EFFECTS OF THE CONCORDAT. — CONCLUSION. 50I 
 
 e found them bristling with umbrages against him, he sought 
 hence proceeded a result so different from what he deemed he 
 ad prepared ; and reaping the sad fruits of his experience, he 
 cknowledged, with grief, the error which he had committed in 
 leddling with religion, otherwise than as an advocate of liberty 
 f worships. He has often said to me : ' The greatest error of 
 ly reign is having made the Concordat, but it is too late to 
 ;pent of it.' "* This is what he was heard to repeat several times 
 fter the dissolution of the unlucky Council of 1811. "We reap 
 nly what we have sown," said he to M. de Pradt ; " the Con- 
 ordat is the greatest error of my life."t Already, once before, 
 e had exclaimed, in presence of his Council of State : " I seek in 
 ain to place the limits between the civil and religious authorities, 
 heexistence of these limits is only a chimera. In vain I look, I 
 leeonly clouds, obscurities, difficulties." J 
 
 Whilst Napoleon was regretting the Concordat, one of the most 
 [itelligent representatives of the Holy See, Cardinal Pacca, ex- 
 iressed views of singular boldness on the separation of the two 
 lowers at Rome itself : "However grievous might be the loss of 
 he States of the Holy See," says he in his " Memoires," "I 
 lelieved that the Lord could draw from it a great good for His 
 ;!hurch. I thought that the fall of the temporal power of the 
 'opes would at least weaken and destroy that jealousy and 
 ilind antipathy which almost everywhere exist against the clergy 
 ,nd Court of Rome ; and that the sovereign Pontiffs, delivered 
 fom the pressing burden of temporal affairs, would henceforth 
 ;onsecrate all their diligence to the spiritual welfare of their flock; 
 
 * "Les Quatre Concordats," II., p. 269. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 499- 
 
 J " Opinions de Napoleon sur divers sujets de Politique et d'Ad- 
 
 ninistration," p. 305. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
502 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 that the Church, stripped of the eclat of honours and riches, 
 should no longer see enter the lists of her clergy any but those 
 who desire a good work, and that the Popes would no longer have 
 so much regard to birth and the recommendations of Courts in 
 the choice of their counsellors and ministers ; and, in general, in 
 the Roman promotions of which it could "often be said : Thmi 
 hast multiplied the nation, but thou hast not increased the joy. In 
 fine, there would be no longer room to fear that, ecclesiastical 
 decisions would ever be influenced by political and material 
 considerations, whose weight thrown into the balance could have 
 made it incline towards excessive compliance. "=i= 
 
 Would to heaven that this experience, so dearly purchased on 
 both sides by the two contracting powers to the Concordat, had 
 not been so soon lost ! We should not then see, after more than 
 half-a-century, the relations of civil and religious society present 
 as many inextricable difficulties as on the morrow of the French.! 
 Revolution. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Napoleon said, in- returning from Notre Dame after the cere- 
 monies which had marked the conclusion of the Concordat: 
 "Now the French Revolution is finished." This history has 
 shown how much he was mistaken. Not only was the French 
 Revolution not finished, but it was even arrested in the track on 
 which it had set out from its first day, and was, in a manner, fixed 
 in its most fatal error. What was very decidedly finished was the 
 rigime of intolerance and persecution ; equality of worships, con- 
 sidered as a right, was gained for ever. But, with respect to true 
 
 * " Memoires du Cardinal Pacca," I., pp. 22, 23. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
CONCLUSION. 503 
 
 nd sincere religious liberty, the Revolution was hardly com- 
 (lenced. Apart from a short and stormy period, in which the 
 eparation of Church and State had been proclaimed and realised 
 irith surprising success in the most difficult circumstances, the 
 leavy hand of the civil power had not ceased for a single day 
 o weigh on the religious conscience ; and as it is there that we 
 nust seek the inmost spring of liberty, despotism had taken the 
 lurest guarantee against all moral independence. To persecution 
 lad succeeded imperious protection. The great corporations of 
 :he past had disappeared ; there remained no longer any but indi- 
 viduals before the State, but individuals disarmed, to whom the 
 right of association was strictly prohibited. . Nothing was more 
 ;asy for the civil power than to knead, at its pleasure, this fine 
 dust ; but this power was also soon to learn how frail are the 
 edifices constructed with such materials. The true cement was 
 wanting ; for the cement is liberty, and, before all, the first of 
 liberties, that of souls. No, the Revolution was not finished in 
 ]8oi. 
 
 Nor is it finished at this day. Neither liberty in general, nor 
 religious liberty in particular, has received a sufficient sanction. 
 The organic laws are still in vigour, and place at the disposal of 
 the State a powerful curb to restrain the Churches that it has in its 
 pay. It is still armed with the famous 291st article of the Penal 
 Code, revived by the decree of the 23rd of March, 1852, by 
 virtue of which all meeting for worship is subjected to previous 
 authorisation. The administration has 'shown itself not less pene- 
 trated with the duty, sacred in its eyes, of watching over, and, too 
 often of hindering all religious manifestations which do not ente 
 into its framework. The vexatious perplexities which result from 
 the traditional relations of Church and State are incessantly 
 
 renewed. 
 
 The very soul of France is bound and garotted in the fatal 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
504 THE CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 administrative network which encloses it on every side, and 
 permits neither poHtical thought nor religious belief freely to 
 show themselves in the open day by speech or association. Let 
 them beware ! this moral captivity is weakening her : it would 
 end by turning her activity towards bad and low preoccupations, 
 of which a debased literature would become the most certain 
 sign ; or else it would precipitate her into the terrible game of 
 war, alone capable of distracting her from her burdensome ennui 
 by uselessly embroiling Europe. It is time to free this soul of 
 France, so generous, so living, and to deliver this giant from the 
 slender and innumerable bonds with which he is entangled, as if 
 he had fallen asleep in the country of Lilliput. This is the noble 
 task and the most elevated aspect of liberalism in present circum- 
 stances. 
 
 We have thought to serve not only the cause of religion, but 
 also the liberal cause, in its most immediate and most elevated , 
 interests, by bringing out from the confusion of events the grand 
 lesson which is evolved from the religious and ecclesiastical 
 struggles of the French Revolution. This lesson is summed up 
 in that famous formula of the free Church in the free State which 
 impresses itself with more or less logic on all generous minds. 
 Let it be thoroughly understood ; we shall not have the free State, 
 except with the free Church — I mean fully free, without pay and 
 without fetters, without emoluments and without organic laws, with 
 the regime of the common right sincerely accepted. Thus will be 
 secured against the invasions of monarchical or demagogical 
 despotism the inviolable asylum of religious liberty, mother of all 
 others ; and universal suffrage will be constrained to comprehend 
 that for its tumultuous waves, as for the billows of ocean, there is. 
 a voice to say : Thus far and no farther. The idol of false popular 
 sovereignty will be broken. Such a reform will re-act on the whole 
 
 political organisation ; it will re-produce itself in all its degrees. 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
CONCLUSION. 505, 
 
 and will establish the true line of demarcation between the central 
 civil power and individual Uberty. Then the Church, under these 
 normal conditions, living only by liberty, will find its first interest 
 in serving and defending it. Thus will be cemented this holy and 
 finitful alliance between religion and liberalism, the delay of which 
 has been so fatal to the French Revolution, and the realisation of 
 which vKOuld inaugurate for our country the new aud final era to 
 which we aspire. Then, truly, the Revolution would be achieved ; 
 for it would have enfranchised conscience, and made of it the 
 immoveable rock on which the edifice should repose. We will 
 conclude by repeating that noble word of Mirabeau : God is as 
 necessary as liberty to the French people. He was too much the child 
 of his age to give to these words their whole import It is for us, 
 who have seen what he did not see, and who know how precarious 
 is the liberty which is only a human right, how ready it is to sink 
 down or to sell itself j it is for us, the inheritors and admirers of 
 this grand Revolution, which we wish to achieve whilst correcting 
 or completing it ; it is for us to say again, with full conviction, 
 that God is as necessary as liberty to the French people. The 
 Divine idea can alone preserve liberty, but it is on the condition 
 that liberty be not refused to the Divine idea. Everything, then, 
 leads us back to the free Church in the free State. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Ablecourt, Abbe d', Motion of, 94. 
 
 Agen, Bishop of, 166. 
 
 Agoult, D', 161. 
 
 Aix, Archbishop of, 73, 90, 108, 129, 
 
 260. 
 Albite, 239. 
 Amortizemement 67. 
 Anglas, Boissy d', the calm image of 
 
 the inflexible law, '331 ; claims right 
 
 ■of conscience against religion, ^^'^ ; 
 
 his part in the civic festivals, 357 ; on 
 
 liberty of worships, 373. 
 Anjou, Religious agitation in, 233. 
 Annales Religieuses, 398. 
 Antoinette, Marie, executed, 296. 
 Apostacies at the Convention, 302. 
 Aries, Archbishop of, 150 ; massacred, 
 
 268. 
 Assemblies, Primary, 285. 
 Atheistic movement, 297. 
 Aubert, the married priest, 252. 
 Auch, Archbishop ol^ 153; new bishop 
 
 of, 187 ; municipality of, 246. 
 August 4th, Night of, 45. 
 Authorities, Ill-will of, towards religion, 
 
 403 
 Autun, Bishop o£j denounced as an in- 
 fidel, 181. 
 Avignon, Annexation of, to France, 177 ; 
 
 massacres at, 219. 
 Azara, Chevalier d', 217. 
 
 Baboeuf, Party of, 72. 
 
 Bailly doubles the guards, 112, 165; 
 sends a letter of thanks to the Na- 
 tional Guard, 200 ; executed, 296. 
 
 Barnave, a Protestant, 103, 133 ; on the 
 taking of the oath to the Civil Con- 
 stitution of the Clergy, 164, 167 ; op. 
 poses the bishops, 168; executed, 296. 
 
 Barras appoints Napoleon in Vende- 
 miaire, 330; his character, 3625 
 hated religion, 365. 
 
 Barr^, Deputy, against the priests, 333. 
 
 Barrfere, his pastoral poems, 275 ; de- 
 mands the formal acknowledgment 
 of liberty of worships, 287; opposes 
 the intermeddling of armed force in 
 religious affairs, 319; against the 
 refractory priests, 319, 321. 
 
 Barthelemy, Honest, 362. 
 
 Bastille taken, 44. 
 
 Bazire, 289. 
 
 Benefices, Secular and regular, 65. 
 
 Benoiston on the civic oath, 265. 
 
 Berlier, Deputy, 351. 
 
 Bernis, Cardinal de, 149. 
 
 Bishops, Answer of, to the Pope, 183 ; 
 only four take the oath, 185, 
 
 Blanc, Louis, 240, 243. 
 
 Boisgelin, Bishop, sermon at Notre 
 Dame, 477. 
 
 Bonaparte, Napoleon, quells the insur- 
 rection of Vendemiaire, 330; writes 
 to the Court of Rome, 368; on liberty 
 of the press, 417; on metaphy- 
 sicians, 422, 439 ; on the servility of 
 the French, 423 j against Atheism, 
 425 ; his opinion on religion, 427 ; 
 writes to the Bishop of Malta, 429 ; 
 his speech to the priests at Milan, 429 ; 
 his confidences at Malmaison, 43 1 ; 
 first measures with regard to religion, 
 435 ; negotiates with Rome, 437 j 
 writes to Cacault to " dodge the old 
 fox," 437 j his explanations on the 
 Concordat, 441 ; a Pope is necessary 
 to him, 442 j interdicts religious dis- 
 cussion, 443 ; incensed with the de- 
 lays of Rome, 449 ; at the publication 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
So8 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 of the Concordat, 476 ; his proclama- 
 tion on, 477 ; opposed to the estab- 
 lishment of new religions, 481 ; to 
 free speech and missions, 491 j his 
 debates with Rome, 494; desires 
 from the Pope a divorce for his bro- 
 ther Joseph, 496 ; threatens to do 
 without the Pope, 497 ; excommu- 
 nicated, 499; repents of the Concor- 
 dat, 501. 
 
 Bonaparte, Joseph, si^ns the Concordat, 
 45 3 ; his marriage an offence to Na- 
 poleon, 496. 
 
 Bonaparte, Lucien, his speech on the 
 Concordat, 474. 
 
 Book, The Great, instituted, 294. 
 
 Borde, De la, 53. 
 
 Bordeaux, National Guard of, 145. 
 
 Bossuets, La Politique, &c., 7, 182; 
 funeral oration over Letellier, 27. 
 
 Bouch^, Abbe, 178. 
 
 Bouille, Marquis de, 161. 
 
 Bourrienne quoted, 425, 439. 
 
 Brief from Rome on the Civil Constitu- 
 tion of the Clergy, 180. 
 
 Brienne, Lomenie de. Archbishop of 
 Toulouse, anti-Protestant, 26 j resigns 
 his Cardinalate, 186. 
 
 Bull Unigenitus issued, 15. 
 
 Buzot on tithes, 47. 
 
 Ca ira, 188. 
 
 Cacault, Napoleon's letter to, 437 ; his 
 representative at Rome, 448 j ordered 
 to quit Rome, 450; writes to the 
 First Consul, 454. 
 
 Cadroy, 347. 
 
 Caen, Disturbances at, 234. 
 
 Cahier-Gerville, Minister of the Inte- 
 rior, Liberal report of, to the Assem- 
 bly, 249. 
 
 Calas, Condemnation of, 18. 
 
 Calendar, New, voted, 298 ; months of, 
 325. 
 
 Cambacer^s favours private worship with- 
 out authorisation, 353 ; on the Con- 
 stitution of the year VIII., 418, 438. 
 
 Cambon proposes to leave to each sect to 
 pay its own ministers, 288, 341. 
 
 Camus opposes religious liberty, 54; 
 identifies the cause of religion with 
 that of property, ^ gj^^^^^ 
 
 cause of the learned orders, 100 ; on 
 the election of bishops, 133, 1345 a 
 Jansenist, 160; would apply force to 
 the resisting clergy, 162 ; in favour of 
 the nonjuring priests celebrating mas& 
 in all temples, 194. 
 
 Caprera, Cardinal, the Pope's legate in 
 Paris, 475. 
 
 Carmagnole, 22, 309. 
 
 Carnot, Culpable- silence of, 274 j 
 honest, 362 ; Napoleon's word to, on. 
 the priests, 433. 
 
 Cassation, Cour de, 276. 
 
 Castellane, Motion of, 55. 
 
 Catechism, The Imperial, 489. 
 
 Catholics of Paris address the King, 211. 
 
 Catholicism alone recognised under the 
 ancient regime, 9. 
 
 Cavour on the Free Church, 92, 
 
 Gazales on the pay of the New Clergy^ 
 1 34 ; adjourns the debate on the oath, 
 156, 160; opposes the decree on the 
 refusal of the oath, 164, and the 
 Assembly touching the spiritual, 167 ; 
 invokes the rights of the Church, 
 169 ; entreats the Assembly not to> 
 persecute, 201. * 
 
 Chabot, ex-Capuchin, proposes to abandon 
 the clause of the oath, 258 j abjura- 
 tion of, 306. 
 
 Chapelier, on the property of the clergy, 
 76 ; contrasts the poor curates with 
 the rich prelates, 134. 
 
 Charges, Violent, 153. 
 
 Charlier on the transportation of the 
 priests, 281. 
 
 Chasset, Deputy, 75 ; member of Eccle- 
 siastical Committee, 93 ; his report of 
 Tithe Committee, 104; presents the 
 decree against the refusal of the oath, 
 169. 
 
 Chaumette, Fair-spoken, 296 j allied 
 with Hebert, 301 ; for introducing the 
 feast of Reason into the Calendar, 
 303 ; advocates the worship of Rea- 
 son, 313; his speech in favour of 
 religious liberty, 317. 
 
 Chazal suspends the decree of the 20th 
 of Fructidor, 359. 
 
 Childhood profaned, 188, 300. 
 
 Christian era abolished, 298. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 5°9 
 
 221; tries to fill the void of the 
 ancient worship, 308, 355, 34.8. 
 •Church of France, position on the eve 
 of the Revolution, 5 ; vfealth and 
 privileges, 10 ; subordinate to the 
 civil power, 11 ; schism in, 184; en- 
 joying liberty will preserve it, 505 ; 
 Constitutional, revives, 396 ; re- 
 organised, 405. 
 Churches, Treasures of, carried to the 
 Commune, 307 ; no longer inter- 
 dicted to worship, 352. 
 Chollet, 380. 
 Civil Code, 421. 
 
 Civil Constitution of the Clergy, Bill of, 
 125 ; analysis of, 126; adopted, 134; 
 too faithful to the ancient rigime, 135 ; 
 refiisal of the oath to, 163 j address ex- 
 planatory 0^ 1 70 ; attacks against, 292. 
 Clauzcl, 355. 
 
 Clergy, Stipends of, 135 ; distinction be- 
 tween high and low, 29; servility of 
 high, 486 ; surveillance over, 491 ; 
 renunciations of, 45, 68 ; emigrate, 
 190 ; bishops of the New, 185. 
 Clergies, The two hostile, 387; not re- 
 conciled by the Concordat, 493. 
 Clermont, Bishop of, identifies religion 
 with property, 72 ; member of Eccle- 
 siastical Committee, 93, 94 ; mouth- 
 piece of the high clergy, 100, no; 
 his protestations, 117, 132, 163 ; ad- 
 dresses letters to the departmental 
 authorities, 154; his pamphlet on the 
 restrictive oath, 164. 
 Clermont-Tonnerre, Count dc, on free- 
 dom of conscience, 121. 
 Clootz, Anacharsis, 297, 301. 
 Comedians obtain civil rights, 122. 
 Commendam, Right of, 65. 
 Commune of Paris proposes to buy the 
 alienated property of the clergy, 96 ; 
 atheistic, 296 ; attacked by Robes- 
 pierre, 314; renewed boldness of, 316. 
 Concordat between Francis I. and Leo 
 X., 12; between the Pope and Napo- 
 leon, 414; political circumstances pre- 
 pared for, 417; true motive of, 425; 
 only a revised edition of the Civil Con- 
 stitution of the Clergy, 437; opinion 
 adverse to, 439 ; signed, 453 ; its prin- 
 
 sented to the Tribunate and Legislative 
 
 body, 467, 468 ; published, 475 ; 
 
 opinion not favourable ' to, 478 ; an 
 
 error, 498 ; not a success, 500. 
 Concordat of 1 8 1 3, 500. 
 Conde, Prince of, murdered, 422. 
 Condorcet's plan of Constitution, 283. 
 Constituent Assembly, Judgment on, 204. 
 Constitution of 1793, 286 ; of year IIL, 
 
 357 j of year VIIL, 418. 
 Constitutional Clergy and the Pope's 
 
 brief, 251; opposed by the Convention, 
 
 292. 
 Convention, General character of, 271; 
 
 impiety of, 303, 310; recantation of, 
 
 318. 
 Corday, Charlotte, Letters of, 392. 
 Council, National, First, 405 ; acts of, 
 
 407. 
 Council, National, Second, 408 ; dis- 
 solved, 457. 
 Coup d'Etat of Fructidor, 376; of i8th 
 
 Brumaire, 383. 
 Court, Bonaparte's first attempt at a, 423. 
 Couthon, The too famous, 225 ; of the 
 
 Mountain, 322. 
 Coz, Claude le, chosen Bishop, 185, 
 
 Danton opposes the transportation of the 
 priests, 282 ; urges to new persecutions, 
 287; in favour of State pay of wor- 
 ship, 289 ; attacks the Constitutional 
 Clergy, 293 ; incurs the hatred of 
 Robespierre, 318, 320; imprisonment 
 and death, 321, 322. 
 
 David proposes to inter the remains of 
 Marat in the Pantheon, 310. 
 
 Daunou on the Commission of the New 
 Constitution, 357. 
 
 Decime, 64. 
 
 Delacroix, 347. 
 
 Desbois, Bishop, 397. 
 
 Demagogism, Saint Bartholomew of, 266. 
 
 Desmoulins, Camille, against the clergy, 
 111,174; his " Revolutions de France," 
 &c., 175 ; opposes the Directory of 
 the Seine, 243 ; characterised, 274, 
 321 ; incurs the hatred of Robespierre, 
 320. 
 
 Diamond Necklace, The, 17. 
 
 Diderot's " La Religieuse," 98 . 
 
 cipal clauses, 454; oppos?^^^eiyaiJ-M/cRJiH?i!^'«''°P °^> 487- 
 
51° 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Dioceses reduced in number, 44 j. 
 Directory, Tlie, shameful rSgime of, 362 ; 
 
 hostile to liberty of worships, 365 ; 
 
 violence of, against the Court of Rome, 
 
 366. 
 Directory of Seine, Proclamation of, 210 ; 
 
 petition to the King, 241. 
 Directories, some favourable to religious 
 
 liberty, 246. 
 Dom Gerle, member of Ecclesiastical 
 
 Committee, 93 ; motion of, 109. 
 Domilcillary visits, 295, 380. 
 Dominican convent at Paris invaded, 247. 
 Ducos, 229. 
 Duhot, 380. 
 
 Dumas, Matthieu, 262,411. 
 Dumont, 359. 
 Dumouriez, 253, 260. 
 Duphot, General, killed, 383. 
 Dupont, Jacob, an avowed Atheist, 278. 
 Dupuis, 312; his impious boolc, 458. 
 Durand, Maillane, historian and member 
 
 of the Ecclesiastical Committee, 59, 93. 
 Duval, Jean-FranQois, proposal of, 225. 
 
 Ecclesiastical Committee instituted, 92; 
 property before the Revolution, 63 ; 
 costume suppressed, 254, 
 
 Eglantine, Fabre d', on the New Calen- 
 dar, 299. 
 
 Espilly, member of Ecclesiastical Com- 
 mittee, 93 ; Bishop of Quimper, 183, 
 185,187. _ • 
 
 Espremenil, D', ridiculous frealc of, 26 ; 
 
 "3. 133- 
 
 £schass6riaux. Senior and Junior, 356. 
 
 Estournel, D', 114. 
 
 Eustache, Saint, Church of, orgies at, 309. ■ 
 
 Eymar, Abbe d', 73; stigmatises a poor 
 religion, 117. 
 
 Excommunication, Bull of, against Na- 
 poleon, 499. 
 
 Faith, Enervation of, 15. 
 
 Fauchet preached at Court, 226 ; reads the 
 
 petition of Camille Desmoulins, 244 ; 
 
 puts off his ecclesiastical garb, 254, 
 Fenelon's Telemaque, 8. 
 Fesch, Cardinal, 491. 
 Feuillants, Club of, closed, 245. 
 Fine Arte encouraged, 294. 
 Fleury, 66. Digitized by 
 
 Eonfrede, 287. 
 
 Foucault, Marquis de, 115. 
 
 Foucault, Deputy, 164. 
 
 Fournes refuses the oath, 166. 
 
 Fouche, 311 ; Minister of Police, 435. 
 
 Free State not to be had without the Free 
 
 Church, 504. 
 Froment, the agent of the emigrant 
 
 princes, 143 ; 144. 
 Funerals, Republican, 311. 
 
 Gap, Bishop of, 200. 
 
 Garat, Junior, 75; Senior, loi. 
 
 Gaudet, 239, 253,259. 
 
 Genissieu, 353. 
 
 Gensonne, Speech of, 231. 
 
 Gironde, The, in the Legislative on the 
 left, 208; procure amnesty for the 
 assassins of Avignon, 220 ; imposes its. 
 men on the King, 251 ; conquered, 
 264 ; lamented, 274, 
 
 Girondists executed, 296. 
 
 Glaci^re, La, Massacre of, 219. 
 
 Gobel chosen Archbishop of Paris, 1S5; 
 his character, 186, 251 ; charge on 
 the death of Mirabeau, 187 ; his ridic- 
 ulous farce, 188 ; his apostacy, 302. 
 
 Godard on the Jews at Paris, 122. 
 
 Gonzalvi, Cardinal, the Pope's Secretary 
 of State, 447 ; repairs to Paris, 451. 
 
 Goulard foreshadows the abasement of a 
 paid clergy, 130. 
 
 Goupil dePrefeln, no, 391 . 
 
 Gouttes, Abbe, on the clergy, 30 j mo- 
 derate opinion of, 77, 
 
 Gregoire, Abbe, his "Lettres aux Cures," 
 30 ; pleads for the learned orders, 100, 
 103 ; opposes the Tithe Committee, 
 loS^and the nomination of bishops by 
 non-Catholics, 133 ; complaints of in- 
 sults to the priests, 139; advocates the 
 Civil Constitution of the Clergy, 163 ; 
 chosen Bishop of Blois, 185; his cha- 
 racter, 185; noble conduct of, 304 j 
 opposes the persecution of the priests, 
 336 i his zeal for religion, 397, 401 ; 
 convolves the bishops at Paris, 397 ; 
 on the Concordat, 477. 
 
 Haute-Vienne, Bishop of, abjures, 306. 
 Haiiy,^89. 
 'W'MeggfiP filthy swearer, 297 ; his hostility 
 
INDEX. 
 
 S" 
 
 to Christianity, 361 ; admires Marat, 
 *97i 3^0 j opposed by Robespierre, 
 314; repudiates his impiety, 317; im- 
 prisoned and guillotined, 3x1, 322. 
 Herbois, Collet d', condemns 120 priests 
 to death in one day, 282. 
 
 Impiety, First manifestation of, 301 ; of 
 
 the Convention, 303, 310. 
 Inconsistencies of both parties, 119; of 
 
 Mirabeau, 173. 
 Indult, The, 65. 
 Insurrection of Girondists, 294. 
 Irish College invaded, 210, 211. 
 Isnard, Deputy, 219; violence of, 235, 
 
 277. 
 
 Jacobins' Club oppose religion, 245. 
 
 Jansenism, Moral decline of, 15. 
 
 Jansenists in the Ecclesiastical Com- 
 mittee, 125. 
 
 Jaquemard, 133. 
 
 Jaucourt's speech on the Concordat, 474. 
 
 Jews, Civil rights granted to, 121 ; ill- 
 treated in Alsace, 142. 
 
 Jordan, Camille, his report on liberty of 
 worships, 371, 
 
 Jorente, D', Bishop, 186. 
 
 Jourdan (Coupe-tSte), 2,ig. 
 
 Jourdan, General, 373. 
 
 Juigne, De, Archbishop of Paris, 51. 
 
 Juilien, De, Toulouse, 303, 391. 
 
 Juilien, De, Bourdeaux, 325. 
 
 Juliet, 74. 
 
 Just, Saint, 275, 321. 
 
 "Justice, then justice, and still justice," 
 376. 
 
 Laboulaye, M., 87. 
 
 Lacroix, 292. 
 
 Lafayette, favours toleration, 25; doubles 
 the guards, 1 12 ; assures the Assembly 
 of protection, 115; supports the right 
 of conscience, 192, 200; his farewell 
 proclamation, 210 ; writes to the As- 
 sembly, 260 J sets out to Paris, 261 ; 
 stipulates for liberty of the press, 417 ; 
 his witty word to the First Consul, 
 425 ; counsels him to adopt religious 
 equality, 439. 
 
 Lagrevol, Deputy, 254. 
 
 Lalande, Bishop, abjuration of, 3°^'D/g/Y/zec/ t^fHicrosoft® 
 
 Laloi, President of the Convention, 301. 
 
 Lamarque, 374, 
 
 Lameth, Charles de, lot, no. 
 
 Lamourette chosen bishop, 1855 tearful, 
 speech of, 238. 
 
 Langres, Nuns beaten at, 248. 
 
 Lanjuinais, Member of the Ecclesiastical 
 Committee, 93 ; on the Revolutionary 
 Tribunal, 276 } report of, on worship 
 in public edifices, 352; helps at Con- 
 stitution, 357. 
 
 La Reveillifere-Lepaux against the priests, 
 351 ; a theophilanthropist, 362, 399 j 
 intolerant, 365 ; withdraws, 378 ; 
 on the restorative laws, 380. 
 
 Lanthenas, Bill of, on public instruction, 
 
 Lariaviere reads a chapter from the " Con- 
 trat social" 259. 
 
 Lasource, 265 ; guillotined, 410. 
 
 Latour Maubourg stipulates for liberty of 
 the press, 417. 
 
 Lecointre of Versailles, 347. 
 
 Leclerc, 130. 
 
 Lecoz, Bishop, 254 \ allied with Gre-- 
 goire, 397 ; preaches at the opening 
 of the First Council, 406. 
 
 Lecuyer, Murder of, 219. 
 
 Legations, The, given up to France by 
 the Pope, 370 ; their restoration de- 
 sired, 449, 453, 494, 497. 
 
 Legislative body purged, 459. 
 
 Legislation of Germinal year X, 463. 
 
 Legrand, Alarming report of, on ecclesias- 
 tical affairs, 203. 
 
 Lemontey, Deputy, could not read the 
 report of the horrors at Avignon, 219 ; 
 holds religious opinions sacred, 237 j 
 on confiscated ecclesiastical pensions, 
 239. 
 
 Leon, Bishop of, 153. 
 
 Lequino, 265, 293, 355. 
 
 Lesage, Deputy, 349. 
 
 Liberty, Loss of; in France, how brought 
 about, 2 ; of the Church inseparable 
 from a free regime, 433. 
 
 Liberty of Worships, first debate on, 5 3 ; 
 new debates on, 193, 373 ; derisive 
 decree on, 320 ; law of Ventose year 
 III. on, 346 ; Camille Jordan's report 
 on, 371 ; suppressed by the Concordat, 
 
512 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Liberty religious not understood, 21; 
 discussion on, 51 ; riot against 191 ; 
 not yet enjoyed in France, 503. 
 
 Lindet, Bishop, 303, 308. 
 
 Lots et ventes, 67. 
 
 Lodfeve, Count Clement de, 114, 
 
 Louis XrV.j his letter to the Pope, 13 ; 
 on the authority of kings in the 
 Church, 83, 136; his oath to the 
 Catholic religion, 114. 
 
 Louis XVI. writes to the Pope, 148 ; his 
 plan of flight, 161 ; hindered from 
 going to St. Cloud, 191 J manifesto on 
 his flig?it, 202 ; deprived of his guard, 
 259 j his palace invaded, 261. 
 
 Lyons, Persecution at, 253 ; impious pro- 
 cession at, 310. 
 
 Mably's "Considerations," &c., 19. 
 
 Machault, 19, 85. 
 
 Maillane-Durand a partisan of the Civil 
 Constitution, &c., 2775293, 
 
 Malesherhes, 25. 
 
 Malouet, Speech of, 77 ; pleads for the 
 rioters at Nimes, 142, 165, 168. 
 
 Marat, Journal of, 174; characterised, 
 275 ; his remains laid in the Pan- 
 theon, 310. 
 
 Marbceuf, De, Charge of, 34. 
 
 MaroUes chosen bishop, 185. 
 
 Marron, Pastor, 412, 
 
 Marsh, The, 300, 
 
 Marseillaise Conspirators arrive, 264. 
 
 Martineau, 125. 
 
 Masquerades repeated, 310. 
 
 Massacres, September, 267. 
 
 Mattei, Cardinal, 369. 
 
 Maury, Abbe, 73, 94,95, no, 115, 116, 
 167, 169, 194; retires from the As- 
 sembly, 2035 memorial of, to the 
 Pope, 216. 
 
 Michelet, M., 240, 243, 313, 328, 
 
 Miot de Melitto on the Bonapartes, 
 424; on the Concordat, 478. 
 
 Mirabeau, Intellectual greatness of, 37; 
 his proud answer to the King's usher, 
 40; on tithes, 48 j on liberty, 5 1 ; on to- 
 leration, 53i article by, in the '* Courier 
 de Provence," 58 ; on patriotic gifts, 
 69 ; on the property of the clergy, 
 70, 80 ; on the Bartholomew massa- 
 cre, 114; characterised, i^}^itize<^ ts^ 
 
 the priesthood, 157 ; his inconsistency, 
 158, 170, 173; denounces the Bill of 
 the -Municipality, 165; on the eligi- 
 bility of the clergy, 168; Bill of, 
 170; on liberty of conscience, 17I; 
 on the rights of the Avignonescj 1795 
 Viscount de, 113, 115. 
 
 Moi'se, 185, 457. 
 
 Momoro against the Sabbath, 309 ; op. 
 posed by Robespierre, 314. 
 
 Monastic orders, Discussion on, 96. 
 
 Monks, Allowance to, 102. 
 
 Montauban, Disturbances at, 144. 
 
 Montesquieu, Abbe de, 73 ; on Ecclesias- 
 tical Committee, 93, 94, 95 j excellent 
 speech of, loi ; sensitiveness of^ 108 ; 
 President of the National Assembly, 
 120, 
 
 Montesquieu, " Lettres Persanes," 19; 
 his "Esprit des Lois," 20. 
 
 Mont-Terrible, Department of, 403. 
 
 Months in New Calendar, 298. 
 
 Monteze, 229. 
 
 Montpellier, Disturbances at, 215. 
 
 Mountain, The, in the Legislative, 208 j 
 victorious, 264, 277, 294. 
 
 Moy brands the Civil Constitution, &c., 
 258. 
 
 Municipality of Paris take the initiative 
 in August loth, 264. 
 
 Municipalities, Registration confided to, 
 266. 
 
 Nancy, Bishop of, 100, 108. 
 Nantes, Francois de, his report, 256. 
 Napoleon j see Bonaparte. 
 Neckar, 67. 
 , Necklace, The Diamond, 17. 
 Neuchateau, Francois de, 236. 
 New-style, table for changing into old, 
 
 325. 
 
 Nimes, Massacres at, 141 ; Catholic 
 party at, oppose the election of Pro- 
 testants, 143. 
 
 Noir, Abb^, Death of, 263. 
 
 Nonjuring priests, Popular violence 
 against, 209, 246, 253, 263, 281 j ; 
 boldness of. In the departments, 213 ; 
 their protestation to the King, 2495 
 decrees against, confirmed, 264 ; re- 
 turn to France, 333 j rigorous mea- 
 M/crosc^Mgainst, 348 ; decee of 18th Fruc- 
 
INDEX. 
 
 513 
 
 tidor year III. against, 351 ; last mea- 
 sure of Convention against, 359; new- 
 decree of proscription against, 365, 
 379) progress of their worship, 391, 
 395; the object of surveillance, 394. 
 Nuns whipped, 189, 248 j persecuted, 
 Z47, 283. 
 
 Oath to the Civil Constitution of the 
 Clergy proposed, 155; first effects of 
 its decree, 160 ; sanctioned by the 
 King, 161; refusal of, 165; decree 
 against its refusal, 169 j new formula 
 of, 280. 
 
 Official instructions of the Clergy, 32. 
 ,, „ of the Third Estate, 34. 
 
 „ „ „ _ Nobility, 34. 
 
 Orders, The three, union.of, 35. 
 
 Order of the Clergy divided, 38. 
 
 Orders, Monastic, discussion on, 97. 
 
 Pacca, Cardinal, carried off, 499, 500 ; on 
 the separation of the temporal and 
 spiritual power at Rome, 501. 
 
 Pacot, Abbe, on political liberty, 30. 
 
 Paquot, Abbe, massacred, 268. 
 
 Parens, apostate priest, 302. 
 
 Paris, People of, not averse to religion at 
 first, 43 ; attached to religion, 279 ; 
 agitation amongst, ill; their irrita- 
 tion against the nonjurors, 189. 
 
 Paris Chronicle, The, 1 1 1 . 
 
 „ Arch bishop of, begins the emigra- 
 tion, 139. 
 
 Payment of worships proposed, 105 ; 
 passed, 117; proposal to discontinue, 
 288 ; abolished, 341. 
 
 Penn, William, 20. 
 
 Pfere DuchSne newspaper, 307, 
 
 Perrin (des Vosges), 334. 
 
 Petion on the riches of the clergy, 76 ; 
 on the disorders of the convents, loi, 
 159; on the Avignonese, 179; im- 
 plicated in the loth of August, 264. 
 
 Philosophy attacljs the Church, 16. 
 
 Pierre, Bernardin de Saint, a theophilan- 
 thropist, 391. 
 
 Pierrucchi, Count, 368. 
 
 Pius VI. carried off, and dies at Va- 
 lence, 383 ; his ashes transported to 
 Rome, 435. 
 Pius VII., his character, 446; deserts 
 
 Napoleon ; his allocution of July 8 ; 
 excommunicates Napoleon, 499. 
 
 Plain, The, 300. 
 
 Poitiers, Bishop of, 167. 
 
 Pol de Leon Saint, Bishop, 150. 
 
 Pompignan, Lanfranc de, 29. 
 
 Pontifical gendarmery incorporated with 
 the Imperial army, 499. 
 
 Pontifical States, Reunion of, to the Em- 
 pire decreed, 499. 
 
 Pope, The, opposes the Revolution, 146 , 
 writes to the King, 147 j to the bis- 
 hops, 150 J brief to the nonjuring 
 priests, 251 ; sends his counter-plan of 
 Concordat, 449 ; protests against Na- 
 poleon's claim to be Emperor of Rome, 
 
 497- 
 
 Portalis, Speech of, on the Concordat, 
 469 ; his circular to the bishops, 487. 
 
 Portion congrue. La, 64. 
 
 Priests, Popular irritation against, 189; 
 persecution of, 246 j their sufferings on 
 the hulks, 334; two hundred for 
 transportation, 336, 380 ; 76 out of 
 187 die at Rochefort, 336 ; used as a 
 tool by Napoleon, 433, 441 ; more 
 than 500 imprisoned, 493. 
 
 Property, Ecclesiastical, before the Revo- 
 lution, 63; of the clergy alienated, 95. 
 
 Protestantism, Moral decline of, 483. 
 
 Protestants persecuted, 24, 28 ; at Nimes, 
 144 ; motion in favour of, 120; at 
 Paris abjure, 307; churches in 1800, 
 410. 
 
 Prefeln, Goupel de, no, 391. . 
 
 Prudhomme on the King's veto, 245. 
 
 Public Safety, Committee of, 277 ; Public 
 Instruction, Committee of, get up civic 
 festivals, 355. 
 
 guimper. Bishop of, 153; Expilly, new 
 bishop of, 184. 
 
 Rabaut-Saint-Etienne at the tribune, 
 56 j President of the National Assem- 
 bly, 120, 143. 
 
 Ramond protests against bastard State 
 religion, 229; favours full religious 
 liberty, 258- 
 
 Reason, Worship of, prepared for, 301; 
 organised, 309 ; Goddess of, at the 
 Convention, 309. 
 
 Digitged by Microsoft® 
 
SM 
 
 Recalcitrants, Severe measures against, 
 492. 
 
 Reforms opposed, 25. 
 
 Refractory} see Nonjuring. 
 
 Registration, Civil, transferred to the 
 Municipalities, a66. 
 
 Religiun not restored by Napoleon, 4.12. 
 
 Resignations, Numerous, 184. 
 
 Revolution, The, too faithful to the 
 ancient regime, 85 j and religion, war 
 between, J39 J not finished, 502. 
 
 Revolutionary army and tribunal, 295. 
 
 Rewbel), 336, 347, 362, 365. 
 
 Richard, 292. 
 
 Rights, Declaration of, 51. 
 
 Riot, its part in the Revolution, 42. 
 
 Robespierre, on the Monks, 103 ; on the 
 Jews, 121 J on the Civil Constitution 
 of the Clergy, 1 3 1 } on the nomination 
 of the bishops by the people, 133; an 
 enemy of liberty, 274, 288; in (avour 
 of transporting the priests, 282 ; his 
 plan of Constitution, 285 ; defends 
 State payment of worships, 289 ; at- 
 tacks the Commune of Paris, 314} his 
 speech at the Jacobins, 316 j manifesto 
 to Europe, 318 ; gets liberty of wor- 
 ships voted, 319; crushes the Dan- 
 tonists, 321 ; breathes freely, 322 ; 
 speech of, on the Supreme Being, 323 ; 
 opposes the abolition of the payment 
 of worships, 341. 
 
 Rochefoucauld, Abbe de, 27, 113, 115 ; 
 Cardinal de la, 201. 
 
 Rochelle La, Nuns whipped at, 248. 
 
 Roederer, 135. 
 
 Rohan, Cardinal, 17. 
 
 Roland becomes Minister of the Interior, 
 251 ; favours the illegal persecutions, 
 255 J reads a haughty letter to the 
 King, 259. 
 
 Rousseau, Baleful influence of, 21. 
 
 Royer Collard, Speech of, 374. 
 
 Sabbath, A husbandman's reverence for, 
 
 412. 
 Satire at Rome, 452. 
 Saturnalia, Impious, 310. 
 Savines, De, Bishop, 186. 
 Schoolmasters at the Convention, 300. 
 Senez, Bishop of, 150, 153, zoo. 
 
 September massacres, 267. 
 
 Digitized by 
 
 Servan replies to Siey^s, 71. 
 
 Sicard, Abbe, his narrative of massacres 
 268. 
 
 Sieyfes, Abbe, Pamphlet by, 30 ; on tithes 
 J.9 j on ecclesiastical property, 7 1 ; on 
 liberty of worships, 197 ; abjuration of, 
 306; master of the situation, 378; 
 author of the Constitution of year VIII., 
 418. 
 
 Sisters of charity forbidden to instruct, Z02. 
 
 Soissons, Bishop of, 154. 
 
 Solution, The true, 89. 
 
 South, Disturbances in the, 140, 21^, 
 
 Spina, Bishop, 447. 448. 
 
 Stael, Madame de, 440. 
 
 States-General, Opening of, 31. 
 
 State, The right of, in respect to corpor- 
 ations, 87. 
 
 Statement of principlesby the bishops, 
 
 ISO- 
 Supreme Being, Festival of, 326. 
 
 Tainville, Fouquier, 322. 
 
 Talleyrand-Perigord on the wealth of 
 the clergy, 69, 93, 95 j a politician more 
 than a bishop, i86j on liberty of wor- 
 ships, 195 j his part in the Concordat, 
 447- 
 
 Tallien, 329 ; chief of the violent party, 
 359 ; Madame, 331. 
 
 Temples, Di'ssident, Resolution of the 
 Directory on, 190. 
 
 Temporal power of the Holy See, 217, 
 
 449- 473- 493- 494. 197. 499- 
 Tenth-day, Forced celebration of, 381, 
 Terror, Reign ot; 295. 
 Theatines, Church of, 191 ; disturbance 
 
 at, 199. 
 Themines, 34. 
 Theophilanthropists, 389. 
 Thermidor, 9th of, 327. 
 Thermidorians, Immorality of, 33 1. 
 Thiers, M , 425. 
 
 Third Estate, The, conduct of, 37. 
 Thoumin-Devonspons, Abbe, 150. 
 Thouret, 75, 102, 107, 201. 
 Thuriot, 292 
 Tithes, Abolition of, 47 ; and benefices 
 
 distinguished, 64; committee of, 104. 
 Tocqueville's, M. de, unfinished work, 
 
 4; quoted 32. 
 MMa5Wg>Tf"'y'>f'370- 
 
INDEX. 
 
 515 
 
 Toleration universally demanded, 19 ; 
 edict of 1780, 25 ; tyrannical, 54. 
 
 ToUendal, Lally, 459. 
 
 Torne, Bishop, 227, 237, 254. 
 
 Toulon, Bishop of, 150, 152. 
 
 Transportation, Debate on, 281. 
 
 Treguier, Senseless charge of, 139, 
 
 Treilhard in the Ecclesiastical Com- 
 mittee, 93, 94 J on the wealth of the 
 clergy, 95, 107 j his report on religious 
 orders, 99, 102; on the Civil Consti- 
 tution, &c., 129 ; desires the equality 
 of all bishops, 132; President of the 
 National Assembly, 189; advocates 
 the cause of tiie nonjurors, 194. 
 
 Tribunal de Cassation, 276. 
 
 Tribunal, Revolutionary, 295. 
 
 Tribunate purged, 459. 
 
 Tuileries, The, invaded June 20, 1792, 
 261. 
 
 Turgot, Article by, 71. 
 
 Vaublanc, 229. 
 
 Vayer Boutigny de le, master of requests 
 
 to Louis XIV., 136. 
 Vendee La, Report on, 212; moderate 
 
 demands of, 214 ; war in, 294 ; insur- 
 rection in, subdued, 322 ; good effect 
 of toleration in, 349. 
 
 Verdun, Bishop of, 1 54. 
 
 Vergniaud pleads for amnesty to the 
 assassins of Avignon, 220 ; on the re- 
 fractory priests, 257, 265 ; his speech 
 against the King, 261 ; on the Con- 
 vention, 27s ; on liberty of worships, 
 287. 
 
 Vlenne, Archbishop of, 152. 
 
 Vincent, Samuel, 465. 
 
 Voydel opposed to the clergy, 103 ; re- 
 ports on the civil disturbances, 144. 
 
 Voltaire's love of toleration, 19 ; on the 
 monastic life, 98 j ashes of, removed 
 to the Pantheon, 200. 
 
 Winter of 1795, terrible, 335. 
 
 Worship, Private, may be celebrated 
 without authorisation, 353; police of, 
 decree on, 354; plan of replacing by 
 civic festivals, 355; of the theophil- 
 anthropists, 389; re-established, 398, 
 401. 
 
 UNWIN BKOTHdB^/WBetfSJSAfllgfilQ^»®UEV, LONDON. 
 
Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
;£* 
 
 :m''^ 'Ssdl^''' Z: /^y 
 
 h.'*i! 
 
 1^ 
 
 A^A-..".-. 
 
 :u=^^ 
 
 
 'm^'. 
 
 Wi 
 
 ^ -**.'. 
 
 m 
 
 '■«i^ 
 
 ■^ 
 
teii 
 
 
 \ii ' ': . ■ Digitized by Microsoft®