that they attend
regularly the catechism and the schools, to fines and such sums as they
may amount to together; even to greater penalties. Midwives, physicians,
surgeons, apothecaries, domestics, relatives, who shall not notify the
parish priests of births or illnesses, to fines. Persons who shall
exhort the sick, to the galleys or imprisonment for life, according to
sex; confiscation of property. The sick who shall refuse the sacraments,
if they recover, to banishment for life; if they die, to be dragged on a
hurdle. Desert-marriages are illegal; the children born of them are
incompetent to inherit. Minors whose parents are expatriated may marry
without their authority; but parents whose children are on foreign soil
shall not consent to their marriage, on pain of the galleys for the men
and banishment for the women. Finally, of all fines and confiscations,
half shall be employed in providing subsistence for the new converts."

Just as the last edicts of Louis XIV., the edict of 1724 rested upon an
absolute contradiction: the legislators no longer admitted the existence
of any reformers in the kingdom; and yet all the battery of the most
formidable punishments was directed against that Protestant church which
was said to be defunct. The same contradiction was seen in the conduct
of the ecclesiastics: Protestants could not be admitted to any position,
or even accomplish the ordinary duties of civil life, without externally
conforming to Catholicism; and, to so conform, there was required of them
not only an explicit abjuration, but even an anathema against their
deceased parents. "It is necessary," said Chancellor d'Aguesseau,
"either that the church should relax her vigor by some modification,
or, if she does not think she ought to do so, that she should cease
requesting the king to employ his authority in reducing his subjects to
the impossible, by commanding them to fulfil a religious duty which the
church does not permit them to perform."

At this point is revealed a progress in ideas of humanity and justice:
the edict of 1724 equalled in rigor the most severe proclamations of
Louis XIV.; it placed the peace, and often the life, of Reformers at the
mercy not only of an enemy's denunciation, but of a priest's simple
deposition; it destroyed all the bonds of family, and substituted for the
natural duties a barbarous and depraving law; but general sentiment and
public opinion were no longer in accord with the