CONTESTS OF NOBLES AND CLERGY.

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to restore power to the priests, was a thing quite contrary to the ideas of the nobility; they had ever been waiting and hoping for the spoils of the clergy. The interests of these two orders were adverse and hostile. The Revolution, which seemed likely to bring them together, had caused a wider separation. Nobles who were proprietors, in certain provinces, in Languedoc for instance, gained by the suppression of church tithes more than they lost by their feudal rights.

In the debate on the monastic vows (February), not one noble sided with the clergy. They alone defended the old tyrannical system of irrevocable vows. The nobles voted with their usual adversaries for the abolition of vows, the opening of the monasteries, and the liberty of the monks and nuns.

The elergy take their revenge. When the question is to abolish the feudal rights, the nobility cry out, in their turn, about violence, atrocity, &c. The clergy, or at least the majority of the clergy, let the nobility cry on, vote against them, and help to ruin them.

The advisers of the Count d'Artois, M. de Calonne and others, and the queen's Austrian advisers, were certainly, like the party of the nobility in general, very favourable to the spoliation of the clergy, provided it was performed by themselves. But rather than employ ancient fanaticism as a weapon, they much preferred making an appeal to foreigners. On this head they had no repugnance. The queen beheld in the foreigners her near relations; and the nobility had throughout Europe connexions of kindred, caste, and common culture, which rendered them very philosophical on the subject of the vulgar prejudices of nationality. What Frenchman was. more a Frenchman than the general of Austria, the charming Prince de Ligne! And did not French philosophy reign. triumphant at Berlin? As for England, for our most enlightened nobles, she was precisely the ideal, the classic land of liberty. In their opinion there were but two nations in Europe, the polite and the impolite. Why should they not have called the former to France, to reduce the others to reason?

So, we have here three counter-revolutions in operation without being able to act in concert.

1st. The queen and the ambassador of Austria, her chief adviser, are waiting till Austria, rid of her Belgian affair, and

346

DEBATE ON THE MONASTERIES.

securing the alliance of Europe, shall be able to threaten France, aud subdue her (if necessary) by physical force.

2nd. The emigration party, the Count d'Artois, and the brilliant chevaliers of the Eil-de Bœuf, who, tired to death of Turin and wanting to return to their mistresses and actresses, would like the foreign powers to act at once, and open for them a road to France, cost what it would; in 1790 they were already wishing for 1815.

3rd. The clergy are still less inclined to wait. Sequestrated by the Assembly, and gradually turned out of house and home, they would like at once to arm their numerous clients, the peasants and farmers ;-at once, for to-morrow perhaps they would all grow lukewarm. How would it be if the peasant should think of purchasing the ecclesiastical lands? Why then the Revolution would have conquered irrevocably.

We have seen them in October firing before the word was given. In February, there was a new explosion even in the Assembly. It was the time when the agent of Nimes, on his return from Turin, was scouring the country, organising Catholic societies, and thoroughly agitating the South.

In the midst of the debate on the inviolability of vows, a member of the Assembly invoked the rights of nature, and repelled as a crime of ancient barbarity this surprising of man's will, which, on a word that has escaped his lips or been extorted from him, binds him and buries him alive for ever. Thereupon loud shouts of "Blasphemy! blasphemy! He has blasphemed!” The Bishop of Nancy rushes to the tribune: "Do you acknowledge," cried he, "that the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Religion, is the religion of the nation?" The Assembly perceived the blow, and avoided it. The answer was, that the question of the suppression of the convents was especially one of finances; that there was nobody who did not believe but that the Catholic religion was the national religion; and that to sanction it by a decree would be to compromise it. This happened on the 13th of February. On the 18th, they issued a libel, diffused in Normandy, wherein the Assembly was devoted to the hatred of the people, as assassinating at the same time religion and royalty. Easter was then approaching; the opportunity was not lost: they sold and distributed about the churches, a terrible pamphlet,-"The Passion of Louis XVI."

To this legend the Assembly was able to oppose another, of equal interest, which was, that Louis XVI., who, on the 4th of February, had sworn fidelity to the constitution, still kept a permanent agent with his brother, amid the mortal enemies of the constitution; that Turin, Treves, and Paris, were like the same court, kept and paid by the king.

At Treves was his military establishment, paid and maintained by him, with his grand and private stables, under Prince de Lambesc.* Artois, Condé, Lambesc, and all the emigrants were paid enormous pensions. And yet alimentary pensions of widows and other unfortunates of two, three, or four hundred francs were indefinitely postponed.

The king was paying the emigrants in defiance of a decree by which the Assembly had, for the last two months, attempted to withhold this money which was thus passing over to the enemy; and this decree he had precisely forgotten to sanction. The irritation increased, when Camus, the severe reporter of the financial committee, declared he could not discover the application of a sum of sixty millions of francs. The Assembly enacted that, for every decree presented for royal sanction, the keeper of the seals should render an account within eight days of the royal sanction or refusal.

Great was the outcry and lamentation on this outrageous exaction against the royal will. Camus replied by printing the too celebrated "Red Book," (April 1,) which the king had given up in the hope that it would remain a secret between him and the committee. This impure book, defiled at every page with the shameful corruption of the aristocracy, and the criminal weaknesses of royalty, showed whether people had been wrong in shutting up the filthy channel through which the substance of France was flowing away. A glorious book, in spite of all that! For it plunged the Revolution into the hearts of men.

* Everything was carried on exactly as at Versailles; it was a ministry that the king kept publicly abroad. Whatever was done at Paris was regulated at Treves. The accounts of expenses and other unpublished papers, show Lambesc signing the accounts, executing petitions sent from Paris, appointing employés for Paris, pages for the Tuileries, &c. Uniforms for the body-guards were made in France to be sent to Treves; and horses were brought over from England for the officers at that place. The king entreats Lambesc to be so good as to employ at least French horses.

BB

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SALE OF ECCLESIASTICAL ESTATES.

"Oh! how rightly we have acted!" was the general cry; and how far people were, even in their most violent, accusations, from suspecting the reality! At the same time, the faith grew stronger that this monstrous old system of things, contrary to nature and God, could never return. The Revolution, on beholding the hideous face of her adversary, unveiled and unmasked, felt strong, living, and eternal. Yes, whatever may have been the obstacles, delays, and villainies, she lives and will live for ever!

A proof of this strong faith is that in the universal distress, and during more than one insurrection against indirect taxation, direct taxes were punctually and religiously paid.

Ecclesiastical estates are set up for sale to the value of four hundred millions of francs; the city of Paris alone purchases the value of half, and all the municipalities follow this example.

This method was very good. Few individuals would have wished themselves to have expropriated the clergy; the munici palities alone were able to undertake this painful operation. They were to purchase, and then sell again. There was much hesitation, especially among the peasantry; for this reason, the cities were to give them the example in purchasing and selling again, first the ecclesiastical houses; after which would come the sale of the lands.

All those properties served as mortgage for the papermoney created by the Assembly. To each note a lot was assigned and affected; and these notes were called assignats. Every piece of paper was property,-a portion of land; and had nothing in common with those forged notes of the Regency, founded on the Mississippi, on distant and future possessions.

Here the pledge was tangible. To this guarantee, add that of the municipalities that had purchased of the State and were selling again. Being divided among so many hands, those lots of paper-money once given out and circulated, were about to engage the whole nation in this great operation.. Everybody would have a part of this money, and thus both friends and enemies would be equally interested in the safety of the Revolution.

Nevertheless, the remembrance of Law, and the traditions of so many families ruined by his system, were no slight obstacle.

PROPOSALS OF THE CLERGY.

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France was far less accustomed than England or Holland to behold real values circulating in the form of paper. It was necessary for a whole nation to rise superior to their every-day habits; it was an act of spiritualism, of revolutionary faith, that the Assembly demanded.

The clergy were terrified on seeing that their spoils would thus be in the hands of the whole people; for after having been reduced to impalpable powder, it was very unlikely that they should ever come again into their possession. They endeavoured at first to liken these solid assignats, each of which was land, to the Mississippi rubbish: “ I had thought,' said the Archbishop of Aix in a perfidious manner, "that you had really renounced the idea of bankruptcy." The answer to this was too easy. Then, they had recourse to another argument. "All this," said they, "is got up by the Paris bankers; the provinces will not accept it.' Then, they were shown addresses from the provinces demanding a speedy creation of assignats.

They had expected at least to gain time, and in the interval to remain in possession, ever waiting and watching to seize some good opportunity. But even this hope was taken from them : "What confidence," said Prieur, "will people have in the mortgage that founds the assignats, if the mortgaged estates are not really in our hands?" This tended to dispossess and dislodge the clergy immediately, and to put all the property into the hands of the municipalities and districts.

In vain did the Assembly offer them an enormous salary of a hundred millions: they were inconsolable.

The Archbishop of Aix in a whining discourse, full of childish and unconnected lamentations, inquired whether they would really be so cruel as to ruin the poor, by depriving the clergy of what was given for the poor. He ventured this paradox that a bankruptcy would infallibly follow the operation intended to prevent the bankruptcy; and he accused the Assembly of having meddled with spiritual things by declaring vows invalid, &c.

Lastly, he went so far as to offer, in the name of the clergy, a loan of four hundred millions, mortgaged upon their estates. Whereupon Thouret replied with his Norman impassibility: "An offer is made in the name of a body no longer existing."