VI. 1789. a-year (50,000 francs); that of the superior bishoprics CHAP. at 25,000 francs, or £1000 a-year; that of the inferior at £750; that of the smallest at £500 a-year. The curés of the larger parishes received 2000 francs, or £80 a-year; 1500 francs, or £60, in the middle-sized; and 1200 francs, or £48, in the smallest. The incomes of the greater part of the clergy, especially the great beneficiaries, were, by this change, reduced to one-fifth of their former amount.* 23. on this step. The arguments which prevailed with the Assembly were the same as those urged on similar occasions by all Reflections who endeavour to appropriate the property of public bodies. It is, no doubt, plausible to say, that religion, if true, should be able to maintain itself; that the public will support those who best discharge its duties; and that no preference should be given to the professors of any peculiar form of faith. But experience has demonstrated that these arguments are fallacious, and that religion speedily falls into discredit unless its teachers are not only maintained, but amply maintained, at the public expense, or from separate property of their own. The marked and almost unaccountable irreligion of a large proportion of the French, in the great towns, ever since the Revolution, is a sufficient proof that the support of property, and a certain portion of worldly splendour, are requisite to maintain even the cause of truth. The reason is apparent. It arises from the difference between immediate interests, obvious to all, and ultimate interests, powerful only with a few. Worldly enjoyments are agreeable in the outset, and only painful in the end. Religious truth is unpalatable at first, and its salutary effects are only experienced after the lapse of time. Hence, the first may be safely intrusted to the inclinations or taste of This decisive measure of spoliation was carried by a majority of 568 to 341. Forty declined voting, and 246 were absent. As resistance to this spoliation was unpopular, it may be presumed that in secret they disapproved of it, but stayed away from fear. Had they come forward and opposed the great measure of robbery, it might have been prevented and the whole character of the Revolution changed.—Histoire Parlementaire, iii. 256. VI. 1789. CHAP. individuals; the last require the support or direction of the state. If individuals are left to choose for themselves, they will select the best architects or workmen ; but it does by no means follow that they will pitch upon the best religious guides. The ardent will follow, not the most reasonable, but the most captivating; the selfish or indifferent, the most accommodating; the wicked, none at all. Those who most require reformation will be the last to seek it. An established church, and ecclesiastical property, are required to relieve the teachers of religion from the necessity of bending to the views, or sharing in the fanaticism, of the age. Those who live by the support of the public will never be backward in conforming to its inclinations. When children may be allowed to select the medicines they are to take in sickness, or the young the education which is to fit them for the world, the clergy may be left to the voluntary support of the public, but not till then. 24. sale of the perty, and the issuing This violent measure led to another, attended by conLeads to the sequences still more disastrous. The church estates were church pro- immense, but no purchasers for them could be found; and it was indispensable immediately to raise a fund on the secuof assignats. rity of the property thus acquired. The necessities of the state required the immediate sale of ecclesiastical property to the amount of 400,000,000 of livres, or £16,000,000 13th Dec. sterling; to facilitate it, the municipality of Paris, and of the principal cities of the kingdom, became the purchasers in the first instance, trusting to reimbursement by the sale of the property, in smaller portions, to individuals. But an insuperable difficulty arose in finding money sufficient to discharge the price of so extensive a purchase before the secondary sales were effected; to accomplish this, the expedient was adopted of issuing promissory notes of the municipality to the public creditors, which might pass current till the period of their payment arrived. This was immediately done; but when they became due, still no means of discharging them existed, and recourse was 19th Dec. VI. 1790. and April 9, had to government bills, which might possess a legal cir- CHAP. culation, and pass for money from one end of the kingdom to the other. Thus arose the system of ASSIGNATS, the source of more public strength, and private suffering, than any other measure in the Revolution. By a decree March 17, of the Assembly, passed in the following spring, govern- 1790. ment was authorised to issue assignats to the amount of 400,000,000 francs, or about £16,000,000 sterling, to be secured on the domains of the crown, and the ecclesiastical property to that value. Thus was the public hand for the first time laid on private property, and the dangerous benefit experienced of discharging obligations without providing funds at the moment for their liquidation-an expedient fostering to industry, and creative of strength in the first instance; but ruinous to both in the end, if not accompanied by prudent management, and based on provision made for ultimate payment. It is a remarkable fact, that this irrevocable step was taken by the Assembly in direct opposition to the opinions of the country. Out of thirty-seven addresses from the principal commercial 224 April. cities of France, only seven were in favour of assignats. v. 321, 325. The clamour of demagogues, the passion for spoliation, Deux Amis, and financial necessity, had already overturned the whole Hist. Parl. influence of property, whether landed or commercial, and perverted from its original objects the entire principles Calonne, 28. of the Revolution.1 1 Decree, Hist. Parl. iv. 154, 157. iv. 4, 16, 37, 292. Th. i. 234, 235. subdivision By this means, the alienation of the ecclesiastical pro- 25. perty was rendered irrevocable, and the foundation of a And to the paper circulation, inconvertible into the precious metals, laid of land. in the kingdom. The necessities of the state made the continuance and extension of the system in future years unavoidable; and this led to a third consequence, more important in the end than either of the former-viz. the establishment of a vast body of small landholders, whose properties had sprung out of the Revolution, and whose interests were identified with its continuance. The public creditor was not compelled, in the first instance, to accept VI. 1790. CHAP. land instead of money, but he received assignats, which passed current in the market, and ultimately came into the hands of some prudent or far-seeing individuals, who made them the investment of a little capital, and, instead of circulating them as money, presented them for discharge, and received small fragments of the ecclesiastical estates. The extreme difficulty of finding a secure place of deposit for funds in those distracted times, and the innumerable bankruptcies of mercantile men which took place during the progress of the Revolution, produced an universal opinion among the labouring classes, that the purchase of land was the only safe way of disposing of money. And this feeling, coupled with the excessive depreciation which the assignats afterwards reached, and the great accession to the national domains which Stacl, 72. the confiscated estates of the nobles produced, occaMig. i. 106. Toul. i. 179. sioned that universal division of landed property which De Tocque- forms the most striking feature in the modern condition of France. It existed, as Arthur Young had noticed, in the Pays d'Etat, about a fourth of France, before the Revolution; it now became universal.1 1 Baron de ville, France avant la Rév. 204, 207. 26. The clergy, finding the administration of a large portion The clergy of their estates transferred to the municipalities, and a vehemently resist. paper money created which was to be paid from their sale, were seized with the most violent apprehensions. As a last resource, they offered to lend the state the 400,000,000 francs upon being reinvested with their property; but this offer, as tending to throw doubt upon the confiscation of their estates, was immediately rejected. The utmost efforts were immediately made by the church to excite public opinion against the Revolution. The pulpits resounded with declamations against the Assembly; and the sale of the ecclesiastical estates was universally represented to be, as in truth it was, iniquitous in the highest degree. But these efforts were in vain. Some disturbances broke out in the south of France, and blood was shed in many of the provinces in defence of the priesthood, VI. 1790. but no general or national movement took place; the CHAP. emigration of the nobles had deprived the peasantry in the country of their natural leaders, and after some resistance, the clergy were everywhere dispossessed of their property. The irreligious spirit of the age secured this triumph to the enemies of the Christian faith; but no violent or unjustifiable proceeding can take place without ultimately recoiling on the nation which commits it. From this flagrant act of injustice may be dated the unconquerable aversion of the clergy in France to the Revolution, and the marked disregard of religious observances which has since distinguished so large a portion of its urban inhabitants. From this may be dated that dissoluteness of private manners which extended with such rapidity during its progress, which has spread the vices of the old noblesse through all the inferior classes of the state, and threatens, in its ultimate effects, to counterbalance all the advantages of the reforms it introduced, by poisoning the fountains of domestic virtue, from which public prosperity must 107. Lac. spring. From this, lastly, may be dated the commence- Th. i. 199, ment of the fatal system of assignats, which precipitated 211, 235. and rendered irrevocable the march of the Revolution, and iv. 146, 151. ultimately involved in ruin all the classes who participated iv. 4, 7. in this first deed of unpardonable iniquity.1 1 Mig. i. 106. vii.290,291. Deux Amis, Hist. Parl. of resisting The only way in which it is possible to avoid these 27. dreadful calamities, which at once dry up all the sources Only mode of national prosperity, is to assume it as a fundamental these evils. principle, that the estates set apart for the church are inalienable property, not to be encroached on or impaired, without the same violence which sets aside all private rights. Without that safeguard, ecclesiastical property will, in every country, at some period or other, fall a prey to financial embarrassments. Having no bayonets in its hands, like the army; having lost the spiritual thunder which maintained its authority in the ages of superstition; speaking to the future, not the present wants of mankind, it will ever be the first to be sacrificed to the |