Page:History of Freedom.djvu/131

 MAY'S DE1\10CRACY IN EUROPE 87

vVashington. They wished to decentralise the govern ment, and to obtain, for good or evil, the genuine expression of popular sentiment. Necker himself, and Buzot, the most thoughtful of the Girondins, dreamed of federalising France. In the United States there was no current of opinion, and no combination of forces, to be seriously feared. The government needed no security against being propelled in a wrong direction. But the French Revolution was accomplished at the expense of powerful classes. Besides the nobles, the Assembly, \vhich had been made supreme by the accession of the clergy, and had been led at first by popular ecclesiastics, by Sieyès, Talleyrand, Cicé, La Luzerne, made an enemy of the clergy. The prerogative could not be destroyed without touching the Church. Ecclesiastical patronage had helped to make the cro\vn absolute. To leave it in the hands of Louis and his ministers was to renounce the entire policy of the constitution. To disestablish, was to make it over to the Pope. I t was consistent \vith the democratic principle to introduce election into the Church. It involved a breach with Rome; but so, indeed, did the laws of Joseph II., Charles III., and Leopold. The Pope was not likely to cast a\vay the friendship of France, if he could help it; and the French clergy were not likely to give trouble by their attachment to Rome. Therefore, amid the indifference of many, and against the urgent, and probably sincere, remonstrances of Robespierre and Marat, the J ansenists, who had a century of persecution to avenge, carried the Civil Con- stitution. The coercive measures \vhich enforced it led to the breach with the King, and the fall of the monarchy; to the revolt of the provinces, and the fall of liberty. The J acobins determined that public opinion should not reign, that the State should not remain at the mercy of po\verful combinations. They held the representatives of the people under control, by the people itsel( They attributed higher authority to the direct than to the indirect voice of the democratic oracle. They armed themsel ves \vi th po\ver to crush every ad verse, every