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208 done, and was fully accomplished when Maximilian arrived in the capital as emperor. Alzog relates the rest of the chapter: "Directly on his arrival . . . the clerical party demanded the immediate and unconditional restoration of the ecclesiastical property confiscated and sold during the ascendency of Juarez and the French agency. As this amounted to about one-third of the real estate of the empire, and one-half of the immovable property of the municipalities, and had already passed from the first to the second, and in some instances to the third, purchaser, it was plainly impossible for the emperor to satisfy this demand." The papal nuncio avowed his inability to find any satisfactory solution of the question, and resigned. Maximilian instructed his ministers to bring in a bill, which was promptly passed, vesting the management and sale of ecclesiastical property in the council of state.

What Brantz Mayer wrote of the common clergy in 1844 doubtless continued to be true: "Through- out the republic no persons have been more universally the agents of charity, and the ministers of mercy, than the rural clergy. The village curas are the advisers, the friends, and protectors of