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 REVOLUTION

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REVOLUTION

belonged to the nation. Louis X\'rs conscience began to be alarmed. He temporized for five weeks, then merely published the decrees as general principles, reserving the right to approve or reject later the measures which the Assemblj' would take to enforce them.

Declaration of the Rights of Man. Cathol- icism Ce.^ses to be the Religion of the State. — Before giving P>ance a constitution the Assembly judged it necessarj' to draw up a "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen", which should form a preamble to the Constitution. Camus's suggestion that to the declaration of the rights of man should be added a declaration of his duties, was rejected. The Declaration of Rights mentions in its preamble that it is made in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, but out of three of the articles proposed by the clergy, guaranteeing the respect due to religion and public worship, two were rejected after speeches by the Protestant, Rabaut Saint-Etienne, and ^lirabeau, and the only article relating to religion was worded as follows: "No one shall be disturbed for his opinions, even religious, provided their mani- festation does not disturb the puljlic order established by law." In fact it was the wish of the Assembly that Catholicism should cease to be the religion of the State and that liberty of worship should be estab- lished. It subsequently declared Protestants eligible to all offices (24 Dec, 1789), restored to their posses- sions and status as Frenchmen the heirs of Protestant refugees (10 July and 9 Dec, 1790), and uook measures in favour of the Jews (28 January, 2C July, 16 Aug., 1790). But it soon became evident in the discussions relating to the Civil Constitution of the clergy that the A.ssembly desired that the Catholic Church, to which the majority of the French people belonged, should be subject to the State and really organized by the State.

The rumours that Louis XVI sought to fly to Metz and place himself under the protection of the army of Bouill6 in order to organize a counter-revolu- tionarj' movement and his refusal to promulgate the Declaration of the Rights of Man, brought about an uprising in Paris. The mob set out to Versailles, and amid insults brought back the king and queen to Paris (6 Oct., 1789). Thenceforth the Assembly sat at Paris, first at the archiepiscopal residence, then at the Tuileries. At this moment the idea of taking possession of the goods of the clergy in order to meet financial exigencies began to appear in a number of journals and pamphlets. The plan of confiscating this property, which had been suggested as early as 8 August by the Marquis de Lacostc, -wuh resumed (24 Sept.) by the economist, Dupont de Nemours, and on 10 October was supported in the name of the Committee of Finances in a report which caused scandal by Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, who under the old regime had been one of the two "general agents" charged with defending the financial in- terests of the French clergv. On 12 October Mirabeau requ(iKt<^5d the Assernbly to decree (1) that the ownership of the church i)roperty belonged to the nation that it might provide for the support of the Drif«t«; (2) that the salary of each curt'- should not be less than 12CJ0 livres. The plan was discussed from 13 OctoV>er to 2 November. It was opposed by lioisgelin, la Luzerne, Bonal, Dillon, the Abb*'; de Montf«fjuieu, and tlic Abb('; Maury, who contended that the clergy being a moral person could be an owner, disput^^l the ffstimaffs placed upon the wealth of the clergy, and suggested that fhcir nos- BfHKion)" should simfily hctvc as a guarantee for a loan of 4(KJ.fKK),fKK) livres to the nation. The a^lvocates of confisfatiori maintained that the clergy no longer existwl as an order, that the; property wan like an escheatefl Huccfrssion, and that thr- State had th«' right to claim it, that moreover the Royal Government had

never expressly recognized the clergj' as a proprietor, that in 1749 Louis XV had forbidden the clergy to receive anything without the authoritj' of the State, and that he had confiscated the property of the Society of Jesus. Malouet took an intermediate stand and demanded that the State should confiscate only superfluous ecclesiastical possessions, but that the parochial clergy should be endowed with land. Finally, on 2 November, 1789, the Assembly decided that the possessions of the clergy be "placed at the disposal" of the nation. The results of this vote were not long in following. The first was Treilhard's motion (17 December), demanding in the name of the ecclesiastical committee of the Assembly, the closing of useless convents, and decreeing that the State should permit the religious to release themselves from their monastic vows.

The discussion of this project began in February, 1790, after the Assembly by the creation of assemblies of departments, districts, and commons, had pro- ceeded to the administrative reorganization of France. The discussion was again very violent. On 13 February, 1790, the Assembly, swayed by the more radical suggestions of Barnave and Thouret, decreed as a "constitutional article" that not only should the law no longer recognize monastic vows, but that re- ligious orders and congregations were and should remain suppressed in France, and that no others should be established in the future. After having planned a partial suppression of monastic orders the Assembly voted for their total suppression. The proposal of Cazalcs (17 P^ebruary) calling for the dis- solution of the Constituent Assembly, and the right- ful efforts made by the higher clergy to prevent Catholics from purchasing the confiscated goods of the Church provoked rejirisals. On 17 March, 1790, the Assembly decided that the 400,000,000 livres^ worth of alienated ecclesiastical properties should be sold to municipalities which in turn should sell them to private buyers. On 14 April it decided that the maintenance of Catholic worship should be provided for without recourse to the revenues of former ecclesiastical property and that a suflficient sum, fixed at more than 133,000,000 livres for the first year, should be entered in the budget for the allowances to be made to the clergy; on 17 April the decree was passed dealing with the assignats, papers issued by the Government paying interest at 5 per cent, and which were to be accepted as money in payment for the ecclesiastical jjrojierty, thenceforth called national property; finally, on 9 July, it was decreed that all this property should be put up for sale.

Civil Constitution of the Clergy. — On 6 February, 1790, the Assembly charged its ecclesias- tical committee, appointed 20 Aug., 1789, and com- posed of fifteen members to prepare the reorganiza- tion of the clergy. Fifteen new members were added to the committee on 7 February. The "constitu- ents" were disciples of the eighteenth-century philosophes who subordinated religion to the State; moreover, to understand their standpoint it is well to bear in mind that many of them were jurists im- bued with Gallican and Josephist ideas. Finally Taine has proved that in many respects their re- ligious policy merely followed in the footstei)s of the old regime, but while the old regime protected the Catholic Church and made it llie church exclusively recognizcfl, the constituents planned to enslave it after h.-iving stripyx'd it of its privileges. Further- more they did not take into account that there are mixed matters that can only be regulated after an agreement with ecclesiastical authority. They were especially incensed against the clergy after the consistorial address in which Pius VI (22 March, 1790) reproved some of the measures already taken by the Constituent Assembly, and by the news re-