France is cut up into geometrical sections like a chess-board, and, within these improvised limits, which are destined for a long time to remain artificial, nothing is allowed to subsist but isolated individuals in juxtaposition. There is no desire to spare organized bodies where the cohesion is great, and least of all that of the clergy.
"Special associations," says Mirabeau,[51] "in the community at large, break up the unity of its principles and destroy the equilibrium of its forces. Large political bodies in a State are dangerous through the strength which results from their coalition and the resistance which is born out of their interests." ii --That of the clergy, besides, is inherently bad,[52] because "its system is in constant antagonism to the rights of man." An institution in which a vow of obedience is necessary is "incompatible" with the constitution. Congregations "subject to independent chiefs are out of the social pale and incompatible with public spirit." As to the right of society over these, and also over the Church, this is not doubtful. " Corporate bodies exist only through society, and, in destroying them, society merely takes back the life she has imparted to them." "They are simply instruments fabricated by the law.[53] What does the workman do when the tool he works with no longer suits him? He breaks or alters it." -- This primary sophism being admitted the conclusion is plain. Since corporate bodies are abolished they no longer exist, and since they no longer exist, they cannot again become proprietors.
"Your aim was to destroy ecclesiastical orders,[54] because their destruction was essential to the safety of the State. If the clergy preserve their property, the clerical order is not destroyed: you necessarily leave it the right of assembling; you sanction its independence." In no case must ecclesiastics hold possessions. "If they are proprietors they are independent, and if they are independent they will associate this independence with the exercise of their functions." The clergy, cost what it will, must be in the hands of the State, as simple functionaries and supported by its subsidies. It would be too dangerous for a nation ,"to admit in its bosom as proprietors a large body of men to whom so many sources of credit already give so great power. As religion is the property of all, its ministers, through this fact alone, should be in the pay of the nation;" they are essentially "officers of morality and instruction," and "salaried" like judges and professors. Let us fetch them back to this condition of things, which is the only one compatible with the rights of man, and ordain that " the clergy, as well as all corporations and bodies with power of inheritance, are now, and shall be for ever incapable of holding any personal or landed estate."[55]
Who, now, is the legitimate heir of all these vacated possessions?
Through another sophism, the State, at once judge and party in the cause, assigns them to the State:
"The founders presented them to the Church, that is to say, to the nation."[56] "Since the nation has permitted their possession by the clergy, she may re-demand that which is possessed only through her authorization." "The principle must be maintained that every nation is solely and veritably proprietor of the possessions of its clergy."This principle, it must be noted, as it is laid down, involves the destruction of ecclesiastical and lay corporations, along with the confiscation of all their possessions, and soon we shall see appearing on the horizon the final and complete decree[57] by which the Legislative Assembly,"considering that a State truly free should not suffer any corporation within its bosom, not even those which, devoted to public instruction, deserve well of the country," not even those "which are solely devoted to the service of the hospitals-and the relief of the sick,"suppresses all congregations, all associations of men or of women, lay or ecclesiastical, all endowments for pious, charitable, and missionary purposes, all houses of education, all seminaries and colleges, and those of the Sorbonne and Navarre. Add to these the last sweep of the broom: under the Legislative Assembly the division of all communal property, except woods: under the Convention, the abolition of all literary societies, academies of science and of literature, the confiscation of all their property, their libraries, museums, and botanical gardens; the confiscation of all communal possessions not previously divided; and the confiscation of all the property of hospitals and other philanthropic establishments.[58] --The abstract principle, proclaimed by the Constituent Assembly, reveals, by degrees, its exterminating virtues. France now, owing to it, contains nothing but dispersed, powerless, ephemeral individuals, and confronting them, the State, the sole, the only permanent body that has devoured all the others, a veritable Colossus, alone erect in the midst of these insignificant dwarfs.
Substituted for the others, it is henceforth to perform their duties, and spend the money well which they have expended badly. --In the first place, it abolishes tithes, not gradually and by means of a process of redemption, as in England, but at one stroke, and with no indemnity, on the ground that the tax, being an abusive, illegitimate impost, a private tax levied by individuals in cowl and cassock on others in smock frocks, is a vexatious usurpation, and resembles the feudal dues. It is a radical operation, and in conformity with principle. Unfortunately, the puerility of the thing is so gross as to defeat its own object. In effect, since the days of Charlemagne, all the estates in the country which have been sold and resold over and over again have always paid tithes, and have never been purchased except with this charge upon them, which amounts to about one-seventh of the net revenue of the country.