Chapter XXVIII: Book V (1)

FROM THE EDICT OF TOLERATION TO THE PRESENT TIME.

(1787-1851.)

I.

This division of our history will be shorter than its predecessors. The period it embraces is not extensive; and it comprises no memorable events, or great successes and calamities; and it is more remarkable for ideas than for facts. But the recital of facts, not the discussion of ideas, is the object of our labours, and we will follow this plan to the end with the greater fidelity, in that we are nearer to the present generation. We have no desire to exchange the pen of the historian for that of the polemic.

This will explain the brevity of certain details, and even the absence of certain subjects, which perhaps excited, in their day, the most considerable interest. We omit them neither out of forgetfulness nor indifference, but from respect for our duty. It would be inconvenient in many ways, to eulogize or blame men still living, or to take part in questions yet under debate. This is a task that will be better accomplished hereafter.[134]

We step into a new world from the moment that we enter upon the history of the Revolution of 1789. Before that period, every petty reform had to be won by long negotiations, arrangements, and agreements of various kinds. The Edict of 1787, although it granted less than had been given by Henry IV. in the Edict of Nantes, cost twenty years of efforts. Now, on the contrary, we shall behold everything advancing with a firm and rapid step. The timorous scruples of the monarch, the subtle contrivances of his counsellors, the blind resistance of the privileged classes, no longer presided over the public affairs. A great assembly, the faithful interpreter of general intelligence and conscience, shook off the shackles of the past which had only sustained itself with artificial props, and enunciated principles that must resolve the most important problems of political and social order.

From the 21st of August, 1789, the Constituent Assembly overthrew the barriers, which had until then debarred the admission of Protestants to offices of state. Article 11 of the Declaration of Rights was thus conceived: “All citizens, being equal in the eye of the law, are equally admissible to every public dignity, place, and employment, according to their capacity, and without other distinctions than those of their virtues and their talents.”

With some slight differences of expression, this article was subsequently reproduced in each of the French constitutions. It may have been still disregarded in practice, as it has been, indeed, frequently, since 1814; but the principle was definitively won. It triumphed only after ages of persecution, iniquities, and combats. So tardy are human laws to inscribe the maxims of truth and justice!

The eighteenth article of the Declaration of Rights was destined to guarantee liberty of conscience and of worship. The committee of the National Assembly had drawn it up at first in these words: “No one shall be molested on account of his religious opinions, or disturbed in the exercise of his religion.” This was clear, precise, and unequivocal; but a curate proposed a restriction, which was adopted. The new article bore the appearance, in its embarrassed style, of the impress of the legislator’s hesitation: “_No one shall be molested on account of his opinions, or even for his religious opinions, provided that he does not, in manifesting them, disturb the public order established by the law._”

This addition was superfluous in one sense, since it is evident that every religion must respect legal order in its acts. In another sense it was dangerous, since it seemed to confer upon the civil power more authority than it ought to have possessed in such matters. The priest, who was inspired with this unfortunate thought, ought to have foreseen that he placed a weapon in the hands of the politicians, which they would perhaps turn against [the members of] his own communion. Did the persecutors of 1793 invoke anything else than the duty of maintaining the order established by the law?

Rabaut Saint Etienne, who had been nominated a member of the Constituent Assembly by the seneschalry of Nismes, perceived the danger, and pointed it out in a speech, which obtained great applause throughout the country. It is one of the most admirable specimens of advocacy that has ever been pronounced in favour of religious liberty: such an oration has a place in history.

The speaker began by showing that those who have opposed toleration in every age, have never alleged any other pretext than that adduced by the imprudent curate. “The Inquisition always said, in its soft and guarded language, that assuredly no attack should ever be made upon thought; that every one is free as to his opinions, provided he does not manifest them; but that, as this manifestation _might disturb public order_, the law ought to watch it with scrupulous attention; and under the favour of this principle, the intolerant classes have arrogated to themselves that power of inspection which has subjected thought, and enchained it during so many centuries!...

“I discharge a holy mission,” continued the orator; “I obey the voice of my constituents. I represent a seneschalry of three hundred and sixty thousand inhabitants, of whom more than one hundred and twenty thousand are Protestants, who have intrusted their delegates to solicit from you the complement of the Edict of November, 1787. Another seneschalry of Languedoc, and other places of the kingdom, have expressed the same hope, and ask that you should give the non-Catholics the liberty of their worship....” (_All! All!_ shouted a crowd of deputies.)

Rabaut Saint Etienne then appealed to the rights already sanctioned by the Assembly. “Your principles are that liberty is common property, and that every citizen has an equal right to it. Liberty, then, should belong to all Frenchmen alike, and in the same manner. Every one has a right to it, or no one has; he who would deprive others of it, is not worthy of it himself; he who distributes it unevenly, does not know what it is; he who assails the liberty of others, no matter in what [fashion it may be], assails his own, and deserves to lose it in his turn, as being unworthy of a gift, of which he cannot estimate the value.

“Your principles are that liberty of thought and opinion is an inalienable and indefeasible right. This liberty, gentlemen, is the most sacred of all; it is above the control of men; its refuge is in the depth of the conscience, whither it retreats as to an inviolable sanctuary, where no mortal has the light to penetrate; it is the only liberty that mankind has never submitted to the laws of universal society. To constrain it is unjust; to attack it is sacrilege.”

Approaching the special question of the Protestants, he established [the fact] that the Edict of 1787 permitted the continuance of a shameful inequality between the religious communions, and that the penal laws against the worship of the Reformed had never been formally abolished. He claimed _their rights as Frenchmen for two millions of useful citizens_. It was not toleration he asked for, it was liberty. “Toleration!” he exclaimed; “sufferance! pardon! clemency! ideas supremely unjust towards the dissenters, so long as it is true that difference of religion, that difference of opinion, is not a crime! Toleration! I demand that toleration should be proscribed in its turn, and it will be,—that iniquitous word, that deals with us as citizens worthy of pity, as criminals to whom pardon is granted!...

“I demand for all non-Catholics that which you ask for yourselves—equality of rights, liberty; the liberty of their religion, the liberty of their worship, the liberty of celebrating it in buildings consecrated to that object; the same certainty of not being disturbed in their religion as you have in yours; and the perfect assurance of being protected as you, as much as you are, and in the same manner that you are by our common laws.”

Some speakers had cited the intolerance of certain Protestant people in justification of their own. “A generous and free nation,” answered Rabaut Saint Etienne, “will not permit that the example of these intolerant countries, who proscribe its worship among themselves, should be cited before yourselves. Your high place is to set examples, not to receive them; and because there are unjust people, are you to be so too? Europe pants for freedom, waits upon your teaching, and you are worthy to lead it.”

The speaker conjured up before the bar of the Assembly the great body of proscribed whom he was defending. “They would present themselves to you,” said he, “dyed with the blood of their fathers, and would exhibit to you the mark of the fetters wherewith they have themselves been bound. But my country is free, and I would forget with her both the ills we have shared, and the yet greater evils, of which we have been the victims. What I ask is, that my native land should show herself worthy of liberty, by distributing it equally among all her citizens, without distinction of rank, of birth, or of religion.”

In concluding, Rabaut Saint Etienne enunciated that every religion demands a worship in common; that one set of Christians cannot refuse it to another without contradicting their own maxims; and that every restriction placed upon the public exercise of a religion, is an attack upon the basis of all creeds, since belief inevitably produces worship, which corresponds to it.

Notwithstanding the logic and eloquence of Rabaut Saint Etienne, the Right, succumbing to religious prejudices, the Centre, governed by political views and pre-occupations, and the priests of the Left, obeying their doctrinal antipathies, formed a majority, which accepted the proposed restriction. Each party had occasion to repent of their resolution.

Four months after this memorable debate, the National Assembly confirmed, on the 24th of December, 1789, by the following decree, the admissibility of Frenchmen to all offices and employments. “1. That the non-Catholics, who should otherwise have complied with all the conditions prescribed by the preceding decrees, with regard to electors, and [such as were] eligible, might be elected to every department of public administration. 2. That the non-Catholics were capable of receiving appointments to every civil and military office, without exception.”

The opportunity of applying this law in the most striking manner soon presented itself. On the 15th of March, 1790, Rabaut Saint Etienne, the son of the long-proscribed pastor, who had been glad to shelter his venerable head under a hut of piled stones, was nominated president of the Constituent Assembly; he filled the chair of the Abbé de Montesquieu. It was on this occasion that he wrote to his father these words, that mark so well the change of ideas and situations: “The president of the National Assembly kneels at your feet.”

Rabaut Saint Etienne was born at Nismes in 1743. He completed his theological studies in the seminary of Lausanne. On his return to France, he was ordained to the ministry of the Gospel, and fulfilled his functions most courageously in the emergency when the Parliament of Toulouse condemned the pastor François Rochette, the three gentlemen glass-makers, and Calas to death. In the front of these execrable scaffolds, he unceasingly preached resignation, obedience to the law, and the duties of fraternal love.

In 1779, he pronounced, as we have elsewhere said, the funeral oration of M. Becdelièvre, bishop of Nismes. This discourse having been printed and communicated to Laharpe, by M. Boissy d’Anglas, that illustrious critic replied: “You have sent me an admirable composition, replete with true eloquence, that of the soul and of feeling. It is clear that everything which flows from the pen of the author, is inspired by the virtues which he celebrates.”

Rabaut Saint Etienne published other discourses, and a book entitled: _Amboise Borély, or the Old Cévenole_. In this last work he painted, under a dramatic form, the sufferings of the French Protestants at the period of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and during the eighteenth century.

Chosen by the seneschalry of Nismes first among the eight deputies of the Third Estate, his noble character, his oratorical talents, and his devotion to the public good, immediately obtained for him great influence in the Constituent Assembly, over which he was elected to preside on several occasions.

Having been sent to the National Convention by the department of Aude, Rabaut Saint Etienne brought to his place in the Assembly a wise moderation, as well as a generous love of liberty. He sided with the party of the Girondists, and boldly confronted the popular passions, by refusing to vote for the death of Louis XVI. “The nation,” he said, “has sent you to delegate its powers, not to exercise them all at once; for it is impossible that it should have desired only to change its masters. As for myself, I avow it, I am weary of my part in despotism; I am fatigued and harassed with it, and loathe the tyranny which I share in exercising; I sigh for the moment when you shall have created a national tribunal that will divest me of the features and the aspect of a tyrant.”

At the sitting of the 3rd of May, he presented the report of the Commission of Twelve who represented the party of the Gironde, and maintained an obstinate struggle against the violence of the Mountain. Its doom awaited so firm a courage. His arrest was decreed, and his retreat having been discovered, he was dragged before the Revolutionary tribunal, who ordered, upon his simple identification, that he should be executed within twenty-four hours. Rabaut Saint Etienne perished on the scaffold on the 3rd of December, 1793.

Let us return to the Constituent Assembly. A member of the Left, the Carthusian Don Gerle, a man of singular, but unsettled ideas, who had begun to experience some disquietude about the course he was following with his new associates, suddenly proposed, on the 12th of April, 1790, that (Roman) Catholicism should be declared the religion of the State, and that no other religious worship than the Romish should be authorized. The Right and a few Jansenists hailed this unexpected motion with transport. The bishop of Clermont even asked that it should be voted by acclamation, as a homage paid to the (Roman) Catholic religion.

The majority seemed for a moment to be undecided, and the sitting was adjourned until the following day. In the interval, the defenders of religious liberty had time to combine. Charles Lameth had already appealed to the maxims of the Gospel in favour of the dissenting communions. Public opinion, in the meanwhile, became agitated; tumultuous crowds gathered round the building occupied by the legislative body; Mirabeau recalled to mind the horrible recollections of the Saint Bartholomew massacre; and Don Gerle, by this time aware of the dangers of his proposition, withdrew it.

The Constituent Assembly hastened to give the Protestants new proof of its good-will. It ordered the restitution of property confiscated on account of religion, which was still in the possession of the State, to the heirs of the lawful proprietors. By another decree, it restored all the rights of French citizens to the descendants of the refugees, on the sole condition that they should return to France and take the civic oath. Finally, the constitution of 1791 sanctioned the liberty of religious creeds in these terms: “The Constitution guarantees to every man the exercise of the religious worship to which he is attached.”

The legislature had fulfilled its task by proclaiming true principles; the people had next to fulfil their duty. But if, in former periods, the manners of the nation were in advance of the laws, the laws were at this epoch in advance of popular manners, at least in the southern districts, where there existed greater ignorance and stronger religious passions in combination.

The province of Vendée did not rise until 1793, because it contained scarcely any Protestants within its territory. In the south, on the contrary, where they were very numerous, the old antipathies between the two communions began to explode from the year 1790. These facts were accompanied by results of grave importance, which require illustration.

II.

In the earliest days of the Revolution, the (Roman) Catholics and the Reformed lived in concord throughout the south of France, as in other provinces. “Everything worked easily and naturally by the concurrence of wishes,” says the historian of the disturbances of Gard, “and the only noise heard was that of rejoicing, on the receipt of the news of some favourable event at Paris. In many communes, the Protestants assisted at the _Te Deum_ of the (Roman) Catholics, and the (Roman) Catholics (it is a well-known circumstance), were also present at the thanksgivings of the Reformed.”[135]

But differences began to manifest themselves from the day that the Constituent Assembly decreed, on the proposition of the Bishop Talleyrand, the sale of the property of the clergy (2nd of November, 1789). The priests and the monks persuaded the multitude that it was intended to destroy the Church, to abolish religion, to persecute the (Roman) Catholics; and the lower orders of the south, not being able to vent their anger upon the philosophers and the Jansenists, of whom they knew nothing, turned all their fury against the Protestants, who were entirely strangers to the measures of which they complained.

Violent separations and burning enmities were the result. The elements of discord were kept alive, increased, and envenomed by some members of the privileged classes, who hoped, with the help of religious collisions, to give the signal for a counter-revolution in the southern provinces, afterwards to raise the west, then to march upon Paris, and once more to seize upon their ancient prerogatives. This fact has not only been avowed, but was publicly boasted of in 1814 and 1815, as an admirable combination to restore the cause of royalty, the priesthood, and the aristocracy.

Among others, there was a certain François Froment, afterwards cabinet secretary to Louis XVIII., who published, in October, 1815, a pamphlet entitled, _An Account of my Operations for the Defence of Religion and Royalty during the Course of the Revolution_. He relates therein, with a frankness that blushes at nothing, all the details of this conspiracy, of which he was one of the principal agents. His recital is accompanied by official documents, with which he substantiates his narrative.

“I went secretly to Turin,” he says, “to solicit the French princes for their approbation and assistance. At a council which was held on my arrival, January, 1790, I demonstrated to them that if they would arm the partisans of the altar and the throne, and combine the interests of religion with those of royalty, it would be easy to save both. I was then, as I am now, convinced of this truth, that a strong passion must be smothered by one still stronger, and that religious zeal could alone smother the rage of republicanism.”

François Froment reasoned correctly from his point of view. The people of the country and the towns would not willingly have defended privileges, by which they were the first to suffer. They were instinctively led to cherish a revolution, which had freed them from tithes and feudal services, and had bestowed upon them civil equality. But by appealing to their religious passions, by re-awakening their traditional hatred against heretics, they might have been roused to arm against a cause hostile to their own, and, once excited, might have been blindly urged further than they would have desired. This is the secret of all conspirators, and beneath many a flag recourse will be had to these tactics so long as ambitious men are found on one part, and ignorant or fanatical men are met with on the other.

Froment had little difficulty in procuring the adoption of his project. The emigrant princes (we continue to use his own narrative), confided to him the charge of forming a royalist party in the south, and of organizing and commanding it. Money was given to him, with the promise of men and ammunition, as soon as the struggle should begin. He returned to France, travelled through the south, communicated with the nobles and priests, whose opinions corresponded with his own, and soon after the two towns of Montauban and Nismes were deluged in blood.

The conspirators pursued everywhere a pre-arranged and uniform course. They circulated atrocious calumnies against the Protestants, and even scattered about the streets and public squares, incendiary libels without number. The following extract, by no means the most violent, from one of these pamphlets, will serve as a specimen of their style: “Close against the Protestants the door of public offices and civil and military honours. They seek to participate in the advantages which you enjoy; but you will no sooner have associated them with yourselves than their only aim will be to despoil you; and they will shortly succeed. Ungrateful vipers, whose benumbed strength, disabled from hurting you, warmed by your benefactions, only recover to kill you. They are your born enemies!”

These odious provocations did not fail to produce their effect upon the masses of the people. The Protestants were systematically excluded from all the municipal councils; and generally from all elective offices. This was a first step: the communal authority might be now wielded to the advantage of the counter-revolution, and an appearance of legality thrown over the plans of the faction.

A second line of action was to excite the (Roman) Catholics to sign addresses demanding unity of religion. Many conferences were held upon this subject, usually at the houses of the curates, or in the convents. The devotees flocked to sign, thinking they obeyed the will of God by attacking the most sacred rights of human conscience, and their fanaticism increased to a frenzy. The women of the populace, particularly, enslaved by a servile bigotry, abandoned themselves to the most savage fury. The Protestants, on their side, were profoundly irritated, when they saw that their opponents were bent upon soliciting a new Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. All this had been foreseen by the conspirators, and formed a feature of their plan.

But more was wanted: an armed force was necessary. The regular troops were faithful to the government that had issued from the Revolution. In the national guard, many Protestants had obtained high rank, because they generally possessed more intelligence and ampler fortunes than the (Roman) Catholics. How were soldiers to be obtained? Companies of volunteers were organized, who obeyed concealed leaders. Recruited for the most part from among the dregs of the people, or agricultural labourers, their ignorance was a guarantee for their docility, and the contest might be ventured upon with no mean prospect of success.

These miserable partisans not only raised the cry of “_Long live the King, and the Cross!_” but they shouted also: “_Down with the Nation!_” as if they did not belong to a nation that had just resumed its rights and its liberties. Many wore, instead of the national cockade, a white cross, in imitation of the old Leaguers. The brotherhoods of penitents, who dated so far back as the religious wars of the sixteenth century, furnished their contingent of devotees. The League in fine was resuscitated, the League without the Guises; the League without Philip II. and Sixtus V., the League after Voltaire—an empty phantom summoned in vain from its bloody tombs!

On the 10th of May, 1790, the day of the Rogations, which had been chosen by the municipal council to visit the convents about to be suppressed, the people rose at Montauban. Six dragoons, or picked national guards, of whom five were Protestants and one a (Roman) Catholic, were killed at the Hôtel de Ville, before they could defend themselves. Many others were shamefully maltreated and thrown into prison, where, however, they found a refuge from the bloodthirstiness of the assassins. We forbear from relating the details.

On the 13th of June in the same year, the struggle known under the name of _bagarre_ began at Nismes, and lasted four days. The official report laid before the Constituent Assembly after a most searching inquiry, shows who were the provokers and aggressors in this ill-fated collision. The conspiracy is evident; and it is easy to discover its origin, to follow its windings, and to convince oneself that religion was only used as a pretext for bringing about a counter-revolution.

The (Roman) Catholics of the lowest order, whom the leaders of the faction had armed and collected, committed the most atrocious acts. We will only cite one instance, that happened on the 14th.

The youth Peyre, fifteen years of age, was carrying victuals to his brother, and on his way passed before a company posted on the bridge of the Isles: a man asked him if he were a (Roman) Catholic or a Protestant. The lad answered: “I am a Protestant.” Whereupon the man shot the child dead. A companion of the assassin exclaimed: “You might as well have slain a lamb.” “I have promised,” rejoined the ruffian, “to kill four Protestants as my share, and this youngster will count as one.”[136]

Negotiations were opened; but the reports of some guns fired from a convent, interrupted them. The (Roman) Catholics, attached to the cause of the Revolution, joined the Protestants, and fearful reprisals were exacted. On one side and the other, a hundred and thirty-four individuals were deprived of life during these fatal days; for which let those who prepared, organized, and excited these insurrections be responsible to posterity! It is gratifying and consoling to add, that several curates of the neighbourhood of Nismes, hearkening only to the voice of their consciences, hastened, at the head of the national guards of their communes, to aid in restoring order and peace between the two communions.

In the report read to the Constituent Assembly, M. Alquier attests in the most formal terms that it was not the Protestants, who had provoked these conflicts.

“They became,” said he, “the objects of the hatred of a party, as soon as a party was formed against the Constitution, at the period of your first decrees respecting the property of the clergy; and loaded with the vile outpourings of calumnies, fabricated against them in order to excite disturbances, and the outbreak of a counter-revolution, their only enemies have been the enemies of the Revolution itself.”

At Toulouse, Bordeaux, Montpellier, Marseilles, where the Protestants were of too small numbers to afford the opportunity of throwing more importance into the religious than into the political question, there was no stir. The attitude of these places preserved the south from civil war, and the conspirators were driven to seek the aid from foreign powers, which their own country refused them.

When quiet was restored at Nismes, the Reformed opened a place of worship there, according to the right which had been guaranteed to them by the Constitution. They placed this inscription upon the front: “An edifice consecrated to religious worship by a private society: peace and liberty.” The venerable Paul Rabaut pronounced the inaugurative prayer, with a faltering voice and tearful countenance.

In the other provinces of France, the Protestants also applied themselves to their new organization, paying the pastors from their own purses, as they had long been accustomed to do, and no longer seeking from the civil power anything else than the preservation of their liberty under the safeguard of the common laws.

The Revolution, however, daily exhibited a more hostile feeling towards the (Roman) Catholic clergy. After having deprived them of their property, it was determined to impose upon them a constitution and an oath. This was the work of the Jansenists, and particularly of the representative Camus. They were irritated by the remembrance of the long injuries inflicted upon them by the majority of the priests, and they were unfortunately powerful enough to draw into their quarrel the party of the Left in the Constituent Assembly, which had a presentiment it was about to commit a serious mistake. The Protestants took no part in this debate.

The Civil Constitution imposed upon the (Roman) Catholic church, precipitated the Revolution out of the limits, which it ought to have respected. A great part of the clergy resisted. The priests, who were refractory or had not sworn, fled to the woods and caves, pursued by the insults of that same people, who had so many times outraged the pastors of the Reformation. France had not been taught by her spiritual leaders to bow before the independence of the human conscience, and the ministers of Rome were now the victims of the lessons of persecution they had themselves taught. Woe to them, who take the sword of intolerance; sooner or later it recoils upon themselves!

These sad conflicts do not belong to our subject. The (Roman) Catholic clergy, we say freely, did their duty then, and the politicians failed in theirs. They outstepped the boundaries of civil authority by pretending to regulate ecclesiastical points in which doctrine was necessarily implicated; and having been guilty of this first error, they committed a second—that of attacking, and of proscribing religion itself, in order to take revenge for the lawful resistance with which they had been met.

It is true that no express law was ever passed against religious liberty. The Constitution of 1793 still contained an article (22), which professed _to guarantee to the whole French people the free exercise of their worship_. But the Convention by the arbitrary acts of its agents, overthrew the rights it had inscribed in its legislation, and itself passed decrees which assailed every religious communion. Thus, on the 22nd September, 1793, it replaced the ancient division of the week by that of the Decade, and attempted to compel all the French people to work on the Sabbath, whatever might be their scruples of faith.

This unjustifiable tyranny was not exercised without opposition, in spite of the terror which weighed upon France. The younger Rabaut relates, in his _Ecclesiastical Repertory_, a circumstance connected with the Protestant communion, which happened in the commune of La Salle (Gard): “A country labourer, called Alègre, about sixty years of age, was arrested and thrown into prison for not having worked on a Sunday. A week after, this man, dressed in his best clothes, presented himself before the committee. Being asked what he wanted, he replied that he was now an old man, that he had worked the whole week long, that he absolutely required rest; that if he went to work on the Sabbath he would be only robbing his employer, and that he preferred to be put in prison. The committee, who expected that he was about to denounce some one, were surprised by his answer and sent him home.”

On the 7th of November, 1793, Gobel, the constitutional bishop of Paris, abjured the (Roman) Catholic faith at the bar of the Convention, accompanied by some priests, who were well worthy to follow in his rear. He laid down the insignia of his office upon the table, declaring that there was no necessity for any other worship than that of liberty, equality, and morality. Certain members of the Assembly, (Roman) Catholic and Protestant ecclesiastics, followed his example. The Bishop Gregory alone had the courage to ascend the tribune and disavow this apostasy. Rabaut Saint Etienne was then absent and proscribed.

The abjuration of Gobel was the signal for the invasion of the churches and the abolition of all religious worship. No one spoke any longer, according to the language of the period, but of invoking reason, of listening to the voice of nature, of lighting the lamp of truth upon the altar, and of rendering mankind happy by stifling the monster of superstition.

The temples of the Protestants, which had been opened only the day before, were closed like the churches of the (Roman) Catholics, and the pastors were compelled to abstain from their functions under pain of being held as suspected, and consequently liable to capital punishment. The delegate of the Convention in Gard and Lozère, published, on the 16th Prairial, in the year II., a decree commanding the priests and the pastors to withdraw, within the space of eight days, to a distance of twenty leagues from the communes where they had exercised their ministry. The Terrorist had invented nothing new; he merely copied or reproduced an ordinance dictated by the Jesuits in the reign of Louis XIV.

Some of the pastors perished by the Revolutionary axe; others were imprisoned, and among them the veteran of the desert, Paul Rabaut, who was led to the citadel of Nismes upon an ass, as his age and infirmities had deprived him of the strength to travel on foot. “He had seen his eldest son die upon the scaffold, had wept over the proscription of two other children (Rabaut-Pomier and Rabaut-Dupuy), and he was in his turn incarcerated himself. We are witnesses of the resignation he displayed at this painful moment. Imperturbably calm with respect to his own fate, he showed anxiety only for his children and for his fellow-captives, whom he consoled and supported by his example.”[137]

Protestantism counted as many victims in proportion to (Roman) Catholicism, if not more, either pastors or laymen, in the days of 1793. The _Dictionary of the Condemned_ indicates, for the department of Gard, where the Reformed did not constitute half of the whole population, forty-six Protestants, ninety-one (Roman) Catholics, and one Jew. The members of the Revolutionary tribunal of Nismes were, with one exception, all (Roman) Catholics. The French Reformation, to use the expression of M. Aignan, was never named in the mourning and terror of France, and it paid the tribute of blood twice over,—first to the intolerance of Rome, next, to that of impiety.

We find it impossible to trace the Protestant religion at this epoch. It appears that at Sainte Foy and the neighbourhood, the public exercise of religion was never completely interrupted. Doubtless the memory of the aged has also preserved other instances, but books make no mention of them. Piety, which had generally been greatly weakened, nearly everywhere secluded itself in the depth of the conscience, or in the asylum of the domestic roof.

The day of the 9th Thermidor marked the term of this oppression, for as soon as public opinion dared to raise its voice, it demanded and obtained religious freedom. A decree of the 3rd Ventose, year III. (21st February, 1795), authorized the free exercise of religious worship, leaving to the faithful the care of making a provision for it out of their own subscriptions, and prohibiting them from celebrating any worship upon the public highways. The constitution of the year III. confirmed this regulation by the following article: “No one shall be prevented from exercising the worship he has chosen, provided he conforms to the laws; no one can be forced to contribute to the expenses of any creed; the Republic salaries none.”

A police law, issued on the 7th Vendémiaire, year III. (28th September, 1795), commanded that a preliminary declaration should be made before the opening of places of worship, and obliged the ministers of the different communions to sign this formula: “I acknowledge that the universality of French citizens is supreme, and I promise submission and obedience to the laws of the Republic.” The condition of an oath to the following effect was afterwards added: “I swear hatred to royalty and to anarchy, attachment and fidelity to the Republic and to the Constitution of the year III.” The promise of obedience to purely political laws was just; the order to swear hatred to royalty was not so, and excited legitimate remonstrances.

Some Reformed churches seized the opportunity, offered by the appeasement of the public mind and the protection of the authorities, to re-establish themselves. This restoration was laborious and slow. There were but few pastors; some had died during the Revolutionary tempest; others had definitively abandoned the ministry of the Gospel; and the youths of the seminary of Lausanne were dispersed. The laity also displayed little zeal: the scandal of apostasies had produced a deplorable impression upon them, and many had given themselves up to the negations of scepticism, or to the chimeras of theo-philanthropy.

In the midst of this painful re-establishment of Protestantism, Paul Rabaut gave up his soul to God. He had been set at liberty after the 9th Thermidor; but the weight of his years no longer permitted him to participate in the reconstruction of the sanctuary. He died at the age of seventy-six years, on the 26th of September, 1795, invoking the name of the Lord, whom he had confessed before four generations of Christians.

III.

The first consul found the affairs of the (Roman) Catholic church in great disorder. Sworn and unsworn priests assailed each other in violent controversies, and divided their flocks. Buonaparte’s advisers almost unanimously recommended him to abstain from interfering in the religious question, assuring him that the advantage he could reap would be but small, while the difficulties were infinite; and that it would be better to leave the Church itself to pacify, as it could, its internal struggles. The new chief of the state did not adopt this advice, and opened negotiation with the Holy See. We are assured that he confessed, fifteen years afterwards, that this was the greatest mistake of his reign.

A Concordat was signed between the first consul and the legate of Pius VII., on the 26th Messidor, year IX. (15th July, 1801). This re-establishment of the alliance between the temporal and the spiritual powers was necessarily destined to react upon the position of French Protestantism.

The pope had strongly insisted that the (Roman) Catholic religion should be proclaimed as the _state_, or at least as the _dominant religion_. Neither the one nor the other of these pretensions were admitted, lest, as the negotiator of the consular government stated, the supposition might be excited of the return of an intolerant and oppressive religion. The following declaration was merely inserted in the preamble of the Concordat: “The government of the Republic recognises the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion, as the religion of the great majority of the French people.”

This was nothing more than the enunciation of a simple fact. Nevertheless the council of state conceived that it was bound to remove any interpretation that might be unfavourable to the Protestants. We read these remarkable words in a report submitted to the Consuls in the beginning of 1802: “While the government has declared that Catholicism is in the ascendant in France, it has not intended to authorize any civil or political pre-eminence in its favour. It has simply signified the priority of the measures it has taken to secure the independence, which it proposes to guarantee to all creeds. Protestantism is a Christian communion, which unites in the same belief and the same rites a very great number of French citizens. On that ground alone, this communion is entitled to the protection of the government. In other respects it deserves marks of consideration and favour. Its founders were the first to spread liberal maxims of government in Europe; they gave an impulse to morals, philosophy, and the useful arts and sciences. In later times, the Protestants were the first to hasten to the standard of liberty, and have never deserted it. It is, therefore, the duty of the government to insure its protection to the peaceable assemblies of this enlightened and generous minority of citizens, met together in their temples with the praiseworthy view of hearkening to the precepts of the religion of Christ.... Everything that is secured to the different Christian communions by the articles agreed upon between his holiness and the government of the Republic, is equally guaranteed to the Protestants, _with the exception of pecuniary subvention_.”

The Protestant pastors were therefore to receive no salary from the public treasury, while the bishops and the priests had one. This was returning to the decree of the Constituent Assembly, which granted incomes in effect to the ministers of the (Roman) Catholic creed only, but different reasons were relied upon. The Constituent Assembly regarded the salary of the clergy as an indemnification for the loss of their property. The council of state of 1802, left out this consideration altogether. It justified its intention of paying the priests without paying the pastors, upon three grounds. Firstly, certain expenses might be imposed upon all for the interest of the majority. Next, the voluntary offerings raised by the priests for the maintenance of the (Roman) Catholic worship, begot prodigality and abuses, which, for different causes, did not exist among the Protestants in the same degree. Finally, “in the articles agreed upon between the head of the Roman church and the government of the Republic, the burden imposed upon the State was compensated by the right acquired by the government, to interfere directly and efficaciously in the administration of the Church by its nomination of the principal ministers and its control over the subordinate ministers.”

Thus there arose two very distinct positions for the (Roman) Catholics and the Protestants. For the former, a state salary, but also the intervention of the government in the appointment of the bishops and cantonal curates: the civil power provided the money, and by its money _acquired_ the right of interference in the affairs of the Church. For the latter, no salary, but also a full liberty of internal action [was permitted]. [There was to be] no sacrifice of money on the one side, no sacrifice of independence on the other.

In reality a decree of nine articles was drawn up, on the 21st Ventose, year X. (12th March, 1802), by which there was no question [admitted] but of general measures of police and common right for the communion of the Protestants. Buonaparte wrote in the margin of the minute of this decree, that two articles were wanting,—one respecting the oath of the Protestant ministers, another respecting the manner of their appointment; but the project went no farther.[138]

It may be thus seen that the Reformed communion narrowly escaped completely realizing the separation of Church and the State. The obstacle came from the first consul, who, anxious to secure authority over Protestantism by the oath and the appointment of the pastors, felt at the same time that he must, in compensation, support the Reformed faith at the cost of the public treasury; and out of the desire to possess this influence flowed the law of the 18th Germinal, year X. (7th April, 1802).

If we had proposed to ourselves to write observations upon the history of French Protestantism instead of relating the history itself, we might ask what would have been the destiny of their churches, and what would be their position to-day if Buonaparte had adopted the advice of his council of state, and had left them wholly independent without granting them any endowment. Opposite opinions might be maintained upon this question with equal good faith; but the examination of this subject would lead us away from our subject.

The historical fact, which is the only point that engages our present attention, is, that the majority of the Protestants, both pastors and laity, right or wrong, hailed the law of the 18th Germinal as an inestimable favour. They cared less for the sacrifice of a part of their religious independence than for the advantages they hoped for from a state endowment; in which they beheld two great advantages,—a legal and incontestable recognition, and the official pledge of a perfect equality with the Roman Catholics.

Rabaut-Dupuy, who presided in the legislative body in 1802, made himself the organ of the feelings of gratitude and joy of his co-religionists at the closing of the session. “Legislators,” he said, “this law of justice has been received with thankfulness by all Christians; the Protestants have recognised all its value.... Restored to the freedom of civil, political, and religious rights, now that the law organizes all creeds _in a parallel manner_, they will be the firmest supporters of a protecting government.”

He also said, in 1807, in a letter addressed to the Reformed of the Empire: “You, who have lived like us under the yoke of intolerance, the relict of so many persecuted generations, see and compare.—It is no longer in deserts, and at the peril of your life, that you pay to the Creator the homage which is due to Him. Our places of worship are restored to us, and every day new ones spring up. Our pastors are recognised public functionaries; _they are salaried by the government_; the sword of a barbarous law is no longer suspended over their heads.... Alas! those whom we have outlived, ascended the mountain of Nebo, whence they beheld the land of promise; but we alone have gone in to possess it.”

At the same time, however unanimous the Protestants of that epoch may have been in their sentiments concerning the law of Germinal, it must be acknowledged that it has in many essential points changed the constitution of the French Reformation, and has made it pay dearly for the advantage of the political equality of the religions.

In bringing the new organic articles before the legislative body, the councillor of state, Portalis, afterwards minister of worship, announced that the law had been made upon verbal or written instructions taken from the Protestants. “If it appertains,” he said, “to the laws to admit or to reject different creeds, the different creeds have an existence by themselves, which they cannot hold of the law, whose origin is not thought to take its source in human wishes.” One would thereupon suppose that the government had confined itself to interrogating the Protestants upon their articles of faith and discipline, and that it had simply sanctioned them. But we have only to compare, in order to undeceive ourselves, the law of the 18th Germinal with the rules established by the national synods.

According to the ancient order, which is the system of Calvinistic presbyterianism, religious society exists in and by itself. It has its supreme authority, its secondary authorities, its doctrine, its discipline, its means of government, and its penalties. In the new order, religious society having no longer any confession of faith officially recognised; having no power to establish another without the permission of the civil magistrate; possessing no longer any general and fixed rules outside or independent of its relations with the state, and, controlled in the conduct of its internal affairs by the secular power, having no government, in the true sense of the word; it seems to lean for its very existence on a strength that does not emanate from its own foundation.

Formerly, it was the pastors and the elders who, assembled in conferences, in provincial synods, and in national synods, sovereignly decided upon all ecclesiastical questions. They appointed ministers, tried and adjudged disputes arising in the flocks, inflicted spiritual penalties, ordered changes that were thought to be useful; directed, in short, the churches in their quality of churches, in everything that concerned piety, morals, edification, and Christian life. Under the _régime_ of 1802, there was nothing that did not seem to originate with the temporal authority, and everything centres in it one way or another—the confirmation and removal of pastors, dogmatic decisions, modifications in discipline, the projects of ministers of worship or of the consistories, and disputes among the flocks. Does not this seem to be an essentially civil organization substituted for an essentially ecclesiastical organization?

The chief differences, which exist in the general outline, are also reproduced in the details.

The primitive element, which corresponded to that of the commune in the political society, that is to say, the individual church, having its consistory and its pastor, is suppressed, at least in its proper and distinct authority, by the articles of 1802, and replaced by the creation of the consistorial church, which is composed of a certain number of agglomerated Protestants. The five or six particular churches of which it consists, are nothing more than sections or fragments of the body, and their consistories have no legal title. It is absolutely as if all the communes in the domain of the state were suppressed with their municipal councils, and absorbed in the purely conventional existence of the cantons.

The law of the year X. concentrates the consistorial capacity in the ranks of the persons paying the largest amount of direct taxes. Twenty-five of these tax-payers nominate the first consistory. Then the consistory itself designates the notables, who are, in concert with itself, to provide for the re-elections to the vacancies. The two conditions of piety and of fortune may doubtless be found in union; but when they are not so, it is wealth that will prevail, if the legal text be strictly complied with. The mass of the faithful, or the people, according to the expression of the ancient discipline, have no right of election, of veto, nor of consent.

In the place of the provincial synods, which reckoned from thirty to forty members, and occasionally more, since each particular church of the province deputed a pastor and an elder to them, the law of Germinal instituted district synods, formed of five consistorial churches. The assembly, therefore, can consist of ten members only, and may last only six days. It has no privilege of meeting but with the permission of the government, after having informed it of the matters for discussion, and in presence of a prefect or sub-prefect. Even farther, all the decisions which emanate from these synods, of whatever description they may be, must be submitted for the approbation of the civil power. And yet, for nearly half a century, there has been, in spite of these excessive precautions, only one district synod, that of Drôme, which was convoked in 1850.

Lastly, there is no longer a national synod; for the organic articles having stated nothing about the composition and the attributes of this assembly, and not having even pronounced the name, while they carefully determined everything concerning the district synods, it is beyond all doubt that the silence of the legislature is equivalent to an entire suppression.

The law of Germinal, therefore, is not the confirmation of the ancient discipline of the Reformed, as might be inferred from the speech of M. Portalis; it is, in some respects, its destruction. It is true, that the change of ideas and manners must necessarily induce modifications in ecclesiastical regulations, and that no intelligent man could have desired a complete restoration of the past. It is also true, that the internal defects of Protestantism have done more harm to liberty than the organic articles, and that faith might have corrected in many respects the vices of the law. Let us not impute to the legislator what must chiefly be laid to the charge of the Protestants themselves. Nevertheless, the _régime_ of 1802, established after the recent excesses of liberty, bears the marks of an extreme reaction. No subsequent government would have exacted so many sacrifices of independence, and the unanimous opinion of French Protestantism, in the present day, is, that the revision of the articles of the year X. is imperatively required. Some members of that communion demand more, others less; but all desire a law that shall more fully guarantee the freedom of the churches.

It was not so, as we have seen, in the time of the Consulate. A memorial was simply presented to the political authority, soliciting the formation of a _central commission_, which would have been composed of a pastor and an elder from each district synod. This commission, subjected to all the rules imposed upon the inferior synods, would have endeavoured to establish some unity in dogma, worship, and discipline, under the eye of the government commissioner. But the memorial produced no effect.

Twenty-seven consistorial presidents were summoned to the coronation of Napoleon. In a preliminary conference, they discussed whether they ought to assist at the religious service, and after some hesitation, they decided in the affirmative, either because the emperor was pledged to take the oath to protect the liberty of worship, or because they feared that their absence might be injurious to the interests of the Reformed churches. “It would be absurd to suppose,” they said, in a deliberation recorded upon the registers of the consistory of Paris, “that any pastor-president could be compromised, or have any scruple of conscience respecting a mute assistance at ceremonies,—religious it is true in their nature, but which require no consent, no outward sign of adoration on the part of the spectators,—ceremonies which are so intimately associated with the civil ceremonies, that they almost lose the peculiar character imparted to them by the Roman Catholic creed.”