most grinding poverty, or to the precarious bounty of parishioners, who had themselves but little to give. Many of them were without habitations, and, in various instances, without a church in which to officiate. No share was allotted to them in the education of youth; no means, independently of the mere force of their ecclesiastical character, were imparted, by which they could acquire authority or command respect. The necessity imposed upon them, of co-operating in measures hateful to the people, and of outraging public opinion, by the propagation of sentiments notoriously insincere, tended to deprive them even of the influence arising from the sacred character of their ministry.

The country churches were suffered to remain in a state of wretched dilapidation, and where it was found indispensably necessary to build or to repair, the burden was thrown upon the parishes, however miserably poor. It was but two or three years ago that the clergy were exempted from the conscription. In the year 1806, the superior of the seminary of St. Sulpice was compelled to make the most painful exertions, in order to save the whole body of the youth of that institution from being swept away into the armies. The exemption now extends to those only who have reached the grade of sub-deacon, in their advancement to the priesthood; a grade which, according to the discipline of the catholic church, is not to be attained until after the individual has reached his majority.

This liability to the conscription, united to the poverty, the privations, and the contempt, to which the clergy are subjected, strips the clerical state of all its attraction for the youth of France, and has produced a lamentable dearth of candidates for the ministry. The priests who survived the storm of the revolution, and returned to France, are worn out by age and infirmities, and find but few successors. Religion must, therefore, languish from a want of pastors, if from no other cause. Ten archbishops, and fifty bishops composed the hierarchy in 1806, and are, among the clergy, the chosen organs and the most important instruments of the imperial will. The income allotted to the first, was but three thousand dollars a-year, and to the last two thousand. It must be apparent to you, that if Buonaparte had ever seriously aimed at the restoration of the religious spirit, he would have placed the clergy upon another footing, and, particularly, have made them participate in the education of the youth of France. But the whole was a mere political juggle. A minister was appointed to regulate the department of public worship, in the same manner as that of war, of the marine, or of the police, is governed, and precisely for the same purposes.

Much parade was made about toleration, and the admission of protestants

L 2

protestants to the free exercise of their religion. This part of the transaction bore the same character as the rest. The protestant clergy were but another spring, set in motion to work the political machine. The nomination of every functionary attached to their churches was reserved to the Emperor; no doctrinal point can be determined, no matter of discipline regulated, without the express authority of the government. Consistories were established, and laymen, selected from the most opulent class of the dissenters, placed at their head. The latter take a particular oath of fidelity to the Emperor, receive a salary from the treasury, and are classed with the other public functionaries. They, together with some of the clergy, are decorated with the cross of the legion of honour, and in common with all those who officiate among the dissenting congregations, hold the same language, and perform the same agency, in favour of the military system, as do the catholic priests. The consistorial circulars differ not at all in spirit from the mandemens of the bishops and archbishops.

It is somewhat amusing to compare the professions of respect and patronage made by the French government towards the body of protestants, with one of the topics of invective, employed against the British, in the proclamations addressed to the Spaniards, by Buonaparte. The British are repeatedly stigmatized as vile heretics. The same epithet was before applied to them, as a serious reproach, in the Moniteur. The French Emperor must forget, that he has several millions of protestant subjects within the present limits of the empire, and that his scheme of dominion embraces the incorporation of countries containing many millions

more.

The Jews also have had their share in the benignant meditations, and paternal solicitude,' of the French government. The farce or the tragedy, for I know not which they would now please to call it, played with them in Paris, at the assemblage of the Sanhedrin, was, perhaps, of all the numberless impositions attempted by their rulers, on the world, the most wanton and impudent. The convocation was a broad burlesque in the eye of the parties immediately concerned, and a source of merriment and ridicule even to the populace. The sittings of the Sanhedrin took place during the period of my residence in Paris, and were accessible to the public. The president, Furtado, a shrewd man, from Bordeaux, was attired in a magnificent court dress. A particular costume, with rich embroidery, was also worn by the inferior officers of the meeting. The elders were men of a venerable aspect, and together with the majority of their brethren, distinguished for their wealth, and the respectability of their character. A long string of formal interrogatories was, as you know, propounded to them on various points of

their

their faith. These were discussed in much detail, and with great solemnity of form and manner;-voluminous and becoming replies were framed, and the convocation was at length dissolved, after several pompous discourses from the president, containing highflown panegyrics on the private and public virtues of the emperor, and an annunciation of certain undefined, but magnanimous intentions, in favour of the children of Israel. No concession, however, was made to them; they reaped no immunities of any importance, to compensate for the expense and ridicule incurred in this transaction. A thick veil of mystery was drawn over the true motive, and the actual result, of their meeting.

The conjectures indulged by the Parisians, with respect to this affair, were various. It was at one time called a mere persiflage or hoax; at another, a scheme for the extortion of money from the synagogue. The supposition which appeared to me to be the most rational was this: that Buonaparte was desirous of establishing a correspondence of espionage between them and their brethren in other parts of Europe, and, for this purpose, had selected such of their body, to compose his Sanhedrin of political propagandists, as were known to possess most intelligence and influence. The order issued at the time, by the king of Sweden, forbidding the Jews of his dominions to hold communion with those of France, gives colour to this surmise; or proves at least, that a suspicion to this effect was entertained by the cabinets of the north. I am inclined to think, that Buonaparte did not find the instruments whom he chose for the purpose quite as pliable, or corrupt, as he could have wished; otherwise the meetings of the Sanhedrin would have been followed by some show of benefaction. The journey of the pope to Paris produced also, a most disgusting exhibition of treachery and imposture. The good prelate was tempted to cross the Alps, at the most inclement season of the year, and to officiate at the imperial coronation, by glowing representations of the solid benefits of which his presence in the French capital might be productive to the cause of religion. He was received on the confines of France by Abdallah Menou, then governor of Piedmont, who was deputed by his master to do the honours on the occasion. The Turk superintended the religious festivals prepared for the sovereign pontiff, and even received the apostolical benediction, with every demonstration of profound reverence and religious zeal. The venerable traveller, on his arrival in Paris, was sumptuously lodged in the Thuileries, and deluded, during his residence there, by a most cruel and revolting mockery of respect and friendship.

When the crowd followed him, through curiosity, in the streets, or assembled, from the same motive, to gaze upon him, as he stood

in the balcony of the palace, the Moniteur pronounced lofty panegyrics on the piety of the people, and proclaimed their eagerness to deserve the blessings of heaven, by offering suitable homage to the successor of St. Peter. A good portion of his time was occupied in receiving solemm deputations of the public functionaries, organized at the instigation of their ruler. A multitude of persons, many of them notorious deists and renagado republicans, were made to embrace his knees, and to kiss his feet. In the mean time, however, the police found it not a little difficult to repress the ribaldry and the witticisms in which the licentious infidelity of no small proportion of the Parisians prompted them to indulge at his expense. After he had peformed the part destined for him in the coronation, and when it was found that he was not to be subdued into a complete subserviency to the designs of Bonaparte, he was dismissed with the bitter reflection, that he had served merely as a theatrical puppet in the hands of the crafty tyrant, and had not, by the sacrifice of his dignity, been able to secure a solitary favour for the church. The subsequent usurpation of his temporal authority and fortunes, and the indignities and sufferings now heaped upon him, yield unerring proofs of the spirit by which Buonaparte was previously animated in his regard.

The situation of the clergy of France, at this moment, is truly to be commiserated. Most of them have, I think, been at all times actuated by honest motives, and in lending themselves, as far as they have done, to the personal and political views of their oppres sor, have been either impelled by force, or allured by the hope of being able to educe good from evil. They and the pope were of opinion, that the cause of christianity would be essentially benefited, by the continuance even of the mere forms of divine worship, and were therefore disposed to make great sacrifices, in order to achieve this end. They fondly cherished the expectation, that the hardy plant of religion, if it could once be made to take root in the soil, would flourish in spite of all obstacles; and were, at one time, even credulous enough to imagine, that the professions of Buonaparte in favour of the altar were not wholly destitute of sincerity. They must now, I presune, be completely undeceived, and have, in the aspect of the future, nothing left to console them for the wretchedness and degradation of their present condition. I can, in fact, conceive no state more calamitous or galling, than that to which such of them are reduced, as retain any independence of character or purity of intention. They must be conscious that by the political agency which they are compelled to exercise, they prostitute their ministry to the corroboration of a system that tends directly to defeat the labours of their spiritual vocation, and has regularly stifled the seeds of piety as fast as they have been sown. What,

more

moreover, can be worse, than to be forced to receive from the insolent and precarious bounty of the known enemies of christianity, as are most of their rulers, a sordid maintenance for religion, 'measured out to them,' as Mr. Burke said of the allowance made by the National Assembly, for the support of the clergy, 'on the standard of the contempt in which it is held, and for the purpose of rendering those who receive the pittance, vile and of no estimation. in the eyes of mankind.'

I can collect from the French newspapers, that the clergy as well as the pope have disappointed the views and kindled the resentment of Buonaparte. He has not probably found them as servile and profligate as he expected. The arm of terror and violence, although so long raised over their heads, has not, perhaps, sufficed to drive them into a complete apostacy, not only from all the most imperious duties of their religion, but from the common feelings and inflexible laws of humanity. Such of them as dare to stand firm may expect to be treated with still less mercy than has been displayed towards the virtuous and aged pontiff of Rome. If the majority should prove contumacious, they will be swept away from the altar, and hunted down by a proscription as relentless as that which assailed them at the commencement of the revolution. Judg ing from the language now held by Buonaparte, on the subject of the catholic religion, and from the tenour of several open attacks upon christianity, that have recently issued from the Parisian press, I should not be surprised if an attempt were speedily made, either to new model the christian religion, or to erect, under the imperial auspices, some other religious banner than that of the cross.

The present government of France has affected to extend its care to the establishment of a wholesome system of public instruction, and boasted loudly of the benefits which have resulted to the people, from the scheme now in operation. The same spirit, however, you may be assured, which guided the military ruler, as to the affairs of religion, dictated his measures in this regard. The issue of his labours has been about equally profitable to the nation. I paid much attention to the state of education, and was intimately acquainted with persons, who, from their stations, as inspectors of this branch of the military economy, and professors in the lycées, were enabled to afford me the most accurate and copious information. My limits will not permit me to indulge in many details on this point. I shall, therefore, confine myself to a general history and outline of the new system.

The revolution, as you know, destroyed nearly all the public schools throughout France, and left the lower classes particularly, destitute of the means of instruction. A plan of national education was digested under the directorial government, and carried partially