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CHAP. without facilitating heritage to monastic establishments. It was for such futile aims that the Church sacrificed the monarchy. The latter, as M. Guizot observes, could have stemmed the current of opposition, had the efforts of government been directed merely to the restoration of lay institutions. Laws respecting these, such as the re-establishment of entail, and the right of the eldest son, would have been considered as not affecting the peasant or the citizen. But the clergy were ubiquitous, their tyranny was everywhere. Not the smallest place or favour under government was to be had, in the reign now opening, without the applicant having attended confession and obtained a priest's certificate. This kind of tyranny came home to every cottage, and divided not only towns but villages into independent and hypocritical devotees. "Up to this period," says M. Guizot, "the current of ideas was in favour of religion and its restoration. But from the moment that the clergy made use of their power at court to dominate and tyrannize, a reaction took place, infidelity became the stronger current; and the works of Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau, which had almost disappeared, once more saw the light, and, despite of prohibitions, became the intellectual food of even the humblest readers."

If the law of Sacrilege afforded a fertile theme for the philosophic orators of the liberal press, like Royer Collard, the indemnity to the émigrés was chiefly opposed by those of imperialist leanings. The scheme itself could scarcely be considered by impartial judges as illiberal or unjust, however foolish and criminal was the first emigration, which ran away rather than submit to constitutional reforms, and undertook to invade France and subdue it, in concert with the foreign enemy. But those who escaped from the Terror, or from the proscription of successive parties, could not have deserved the loss of property. If the nation had benefited by the division of the soil and the substitution of

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the lower and middle for the upper class in the possession of land, the nation could afford to pay for what in this case had been unwarrantable spoliation. indeed would have admitted this, had the old proprietorial families accepted the new order of things, and could it be seen that the pecuniary indemnity fully satisfied them. Far from this the Royalists, chiefly émigrés who formed the court, and the majority in the Chamber, were making use of their power to reverse all that had been achieved by the revolution; and therefore the indemnity to them was resisted, as so much paid into the treasury of a foe. The late severe measures against the general officers of the empire was coupled by General Foy with the present munificence to the émigrés, and he asked if the crumbs which fell from the splendid banquet table of the émigrés might not be allowed to fall to those discarded veterans who had immortalised the republic and achieved the glories of France.

Whilst the opposition in the Lower Chamber to the law of indemnity thus aroused all the passions of party, in the Chamber of Peers the objections had more weight because they were purely financial. Count Roy, exminister of finance, brought forward the principal objection to the bill, which was, that the rate of interest had not fallen below 5 per cent. The subsequent year proved him to be correct, the Three per Cents in some months after conversion being quoted at 60, not at 75. Great bankers had, however, speculated on Villèle's former bill of conversion, and still held large quantities of Five per Cent. stock which the new law of conversion alone would allow them to get rid of without loss. Hence urged the opposition to M. de Villèle's law: "Reject it, and the only untoward result will be lamentations and loss in Jerusalem." The law, however, passed for the conversion of 140,000,000 of francs of the Five per Cents. which, by a singular coincidence of figures,

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were in the hands of 140,000 holders. How circumscribed was the monied interest in France at that epoch is shown, not only by these figures, but by the argument admitted on both sides, that the holders of the higher stock must accept the terms of the minister, there being at the time no other possible mode of investment. Fierce as had been the cries of opposition against the indemnity to the émigrés, the liberal party obtained no small portion of it. The Duke of Orleans received a large sum; the Duke de la Rochefoucault-Liancourt, 60,000l.; the Duke de Choiseul, 40,000l.; Lafayette, 18,000l. Whilst Villèle was pouring these sums into the laps of the émigrés, he was singularly ungrateful to the man who had enabled their government and the Duke d'Angoulême to achieve the conquest of Spain. Ouvrard demanded his price, a large one certainly, between two and three millions sterling. He received the greater part, but with opposition in parliament. The Liberals and the Ultra-royalists thundered against the dilapidations of the War Office, and hinted that Ouvrard could never have obtained such a bargain except by bribing all around the commander-in-chief. Villèle could not screen Ouvrard, and abandoned him, even although, by so doing, he abandoned his colleague the Duke de Bellune, and even the Dauphin. Ouvrard, another Beaumarchais, was sent to prison and there wrote his memoirs, which, if not so witty, are quite as piquant as those of the dramatist.

The ceremony of the coronation followed the close of the session, and was as splendid as the zealots of the old monarchy could make it. Hugo and Lamartine were its laureates. Châteaubriand poured forth his loyalty in prose on the occasion, and got little in return save an empty jest from Charles the Tenth. The King perhaps remembered that Châteaubriand had hailed with equal enthusiasm the birth of the King of Rome. The vial of Holy Oil which had anointed Clovis, and which the

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Convention had broken on a dung heap, was miraculously CHAP. discovered and used again, far more to the amusement of the wits, than the edification of the multitude. Both the Sacrilege law and other sacerdotal ones of the session, the crowning and anointing of Charles the Tenth, might have been accepted as a national pageant. But the spirit of the new reign and government was already too evident for the public to feel any other sentiment towards it than derision.

Although Villèle succeeded in carrying his financial measures, they passed in both Chambers opposed by a minority far more formidable than the minister expected. The truth was, that the Septenniality, which he intended to result in increased servility, produced on the contrary more independence. Whilst La Bourdonnaye drew away the Ultra-royalists, Châteaubriand seduced the Moderates, and liberalism though counting few voices in the Chamber, acquired louder action in the nation. The death of General Foy at this time from a heart disease, revealed the immense popularity of this chief of opposition. His loss eclipsed every topic, and almost suspended business. As he died poor, a national subscription, set on foot for his widow and children, produced a large sum; Lafitte contributed 2,000l., the Duke of Orleans 400Z.

Such events as these kindled the national enthusiasm in favour, unfortunately, of all that the government repudiated. And the clergy took most preposterous pains to excite animadversion, and keep alive the anger against them. As the year 1826 began a new quarter of a century, they instituted what they called a Jubilee, which was the occasion for religious processions, fêtes, and scandal. For all who did not join in these processions were marked out for disgrace by the ruling powers. The consequence was that the timid and the time-serving joined in them. The Duke of Orleans showed his gratitude to the King by figuring in these

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CHAP. exercises, even Marshal Soult thought it prudent to bear in one of these processions the torch of a penitent. All the Royalists did not show equal submission to the times. An Auvergnat gentleman of this party, named Montlosier, came forward to denounce the existence of the Jesuits, and their establishment in France as illegal and as menacing.* The liberal journals took up the theme, and the procureur-général commenced prosecutions against them for a tendency to bring religion into contempt. The journals chose M. Dupin for their advocate. No individual more fully represented the spirit and character of the old French lawyer than Dupin. Steadily monarchic, his jealousy of ecclesiastical encroachments upon the rights of judge and jurisconsult equalled that of the old parliament which banished the Jesuits. The Cour Royale could not resist his eloquence. And the journals were acquitted.

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By gratifying the religious party in their schemes for sacerdotalising the internal government and administration of France, Villèle at least succeeded in putting an extinguisher upon the plans of the Châteaubriand party for initiating a new and aggressive foreign policy. His colleagues indeed of the War Office pursued a dangerous course, if France was contemplating a new war. not only were all the imperialist officers dismissed, but the army itself so disgusted by its subjection to the priests, that even young officers resigned, and abandoned the military career in disgust. Châteaubriand had chalked out a far different course, and the Czar Alexander for a long time counted on his co-operation. That monarch expired about this time at Taganrog; and his death suspended for a while the schemes of the French ultra-royalists for a Russian alliance. Europe indeed was interested by a cause far more sacred than the

*The tomb of Montlosier stands erected at a few paces from his family château, the ecclesiastics of

his district refusing him sepulchre in their cemeteries.

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