of the last ten years of the century were less, not greater, than the lawlessness and confusion which had been universal since the Regency. The Terror itself, which has occupied a space in men's minds so entirely out of proportion alike with its actual destructiveness and its latent political significance, was leniency and order compared with the methods by which Christianity had propagated itself in the hands of the Inquisition, of Alva, of the English Protestants in Ireland, of the dragoons of Louis XIV. Men have vented bitter sarcasms on the dissemination of Liberty and Fraternity by the guillotine, and have laughed at the missionary cry of "Sois mon frère, ou je te tue." Would it be so much less difficult for some Burke of the other side, to paint Religion stalking over Europe with words of charity and blessing and brotherly love on her lips, with the cord and the knife and the torch in her hands, with her feet crimson and wet with the blood of slaughtered confessors? Once more, let us be just. Crimes, as Burke has taught us, are the acts of individuals, and not of denominations of men. The Revolution had fierce and anarchic sons, but then it found ferocity and anarchy.

That order in Church and State which Burke deplored the loss of, was a mere thin semblance of order.

Dazzled by the whiteness of the sepulchre, he refused to see that, inside, it was full of dead men's bones and corruption. Compared with that benign and holy Church which he figured in his sensitive and sympathetic imagination, the reign of Fouquier Tinville, of Hébert, of Collot d'Herbois, of Couthon, was monstrous and unendurable enough. But the benignity was imaginary. If the Revolution had its suspects and its suspects d'être suspects, so had the Church. In the middle of the eighteenth century to be suspected of cognisance of a Calvinistic assembly, of which they had not given notice to the authorities, even though they had taken no share in the proceedings, was punishable in the case of a woman by imprisonment, and in the case of a man by the galleys of Toulon. A house which was believed to have given shelter to a Calvinist pastor was razed to the ground even so late as 1754.1 All offences in matters of religion were punished, in the words of a royal ordinance, "sans

1 M. Chassin's Génie de la Révolution, ii. 161. Whether we like or dislike M. Chassin's theory of the Revolution, everybody will be grateful for the industry which has ransacked the Cahiers of 1789, the pamphlets and the procès-verbaux, and by copious and accurate transcription, has presented us with a photographic reproduction of the grievances and aspirations of the hour, which to the foreign student at least is invaluable. The work unfortunately is still unfinished.

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forme ni figure de procès." If two newly-converted persons ventured to get married out of France, their parents, guardians, and tutors were supposed to deserve the galleys, banishment, and confiscation. To have a marriage sanctified by the blessing of a Calvinist pastor was to be guilty of relapse; the husband went to the galleys, the wife to prison, for life. To be married except by a priest and unless according to Catholic usage was to live in concubinage, to have a dishonoured wife and to produce bastards. I recall all this, not to show that Catholics in France were as severe to a minority in France, as the Protestants were to the majority in Ireland, but to point out its results in a political sense. It is calculated by different authorities that there were in the last part of the old régime between four and five hundred thousand of these Calvinistic and illegal unions. There was thus about a twentieth part of the population, and not the least virtuous part of it, living in concubinage. There were three or four generations of bastards, and the consequent disturbance of inheritances overwhelmed everything in a confusion that at last became intolerable.1

In 1787 appeared the Edict, which conceded a measure of civil rights to the non-Catholics.

1 Chassin, ii. 167.

They

might be born, married, and buried without a false and hypocritical recognition of the religion of the State. They might follow any calling except that of a teacher or a judge. They were henceforth admitted to all the advantages and rights of property and succession. But the free exercise of their religion was as little permitted as ever. Whoever should allow himself to speak against the State religion would be punished with all rigour. They were bound to contribute to the maintenance of the State religion; they were still forbidden to presume to look upon themselves as a body or corporation, or to perform the slightest act in any collective capacity. It is clear, therefore, that the Church had no right to complain. The only thing that the Edict did was to give a civil status to the Calvinists and other non-Catholics. Yet, mark the spirit in which that vast body whom Burke viewed as the guardians of truth and the bulwarks of order, received this attempt to stay a mortal civil confusion. Solemn remonstrances poured in upon the King from every side. The release of women from the prisons, the return of men from the galleys, the registration of clandestine marriages, the legitimation of children, made the clergy cry out in holy anguish, "Ah! Sire, quelle source inépuisable d'amertumes pour

l'Église, et de séductions pour les enfants, si l'indulgence de la nouvelle législation préparait la voie à un tolérantisme universel!" 1 Another Assembly prayed

the King to leave this evil path, and to complete the noble task that Louis the Great began and Louis the Well-Beloved had continued. The new France, when

its hour arrived, did not forget this.

“Who but a tyrant," cried Burke, who did forget it, "could think of seizing on the property of men, unaccused, unheard, untried, by whole descriptions, by hundreds and thousands together? Who that had not lost every trace of humanity could think of casting down men of exalted rank and sacred function, some of them of an age to call at once for reverence and compassion, of casting them down from the highest situation in the commonwealth, wherein they were maintained by their own landed property, to a state of indigence, depression, and contempt ? The spectacle was sad, but the champion of these venerable sufferers might have remembered that they too had seized on the property, and destroyed the freedom and happiness, of whole descriptions of men, unheard and untried. Surely, their exalted rank and sacred function rather aggravated than palliated the 1, Chassin, ii. 178.