THE PRESENT POSITION OF CATVIOLICS IN FRANCE. 



175 



if this constitution had had a fair trial, and had been maintained, 

 reli^,don in France and, consequently, in the largest part of 

 Christendom, would have been in a much healthier condition 

 than it is to-day. 



The Constitution Civile, however, interfered with vested 

 interests. The papacy opposed it on various flimsy pretexts, 

 but really to maintain and extend its own authority, while 

 the French bishops disliked it because it reduced their incomes 

 and prerogatives. The papacy and the episcopate mis-led a king, 

 who, like our own Charles I., was timid, unintelligent and 

 insincere. They frightened a large number of the clergy, and 

 they seduced that mischievous and credulous section of the laity 

 which is always inclined to be more fanatical than the clergy 

 themselves. They utilised and exacerbated the emigrant nobility, 

 intrigued with hostile and reactionary governments, operated 

 with foreign invaders, subordinated patriotism and even the 

 national safety to professional interests ; and by all these 

 machinations played on the ignorance and fanaticism of the 

 peasantry in many districts. These tactics led inevitably to re- 

 action and reprisals on the part of the majority, and are chiefly 

 responsible for the worst excesses and crimes of the revolutionary 

 factions. Everybody talks glibly enough about the Eeign of 

 Terror. Few Englishmen realise what caused that terror, which 

 was perfectly genuine and only too well founded; and still fewer 

 know anything about the wholesale atrocities committed by the 

 abominable White Terror, i.e., by partisans of the pope, the 

 bishops and the nobles. 



In spite of all these violences on both sides the Constitution 

 Civile did good work. It prospered, it w^as extending itself 

 through the nation, and would have satisfied it. Unfortunately, 

 it had an uncompromising enemy in Xapoleon. It was far too 

 liberal to suit his designs ; and, for his own ends, he eflected the 

 concordat of 1801. It was not the first time that a French 

 sovereign and a pope had sacrificed the interests of the 

 gallican church to their owm convenience. The result of 

 the concordat was to end gallicanism, by leaving the French 

 church exposed to ultramontane developments and aggressions ; 

 this, of course, was not Xapoleon's intention, but the inevitable 

 effects of the concordat were foreseen by Talleyrand, and by a 

 few other wise men, who knew what gallicanism had been and 

 who understood the papacy. 



For ultramontanisni came in, like a rising flood, with the 

 restoration of Pius VII. in 1814. It was due to three causes : 

 First, to that political reaction which was a natural consequence 



