freely
if they liked, and to remain if they liked. Those who elected to leave
were to receive a pension. The position of those who remained was
regulated in a series of decrees, adverse to the system, but
favourable to the inmate. It was not until after the fall of the
throne that all monastic orders were dissolved, and all their
buildings were seized.

When the property of the Church became the property of the State, the
committee drew up a scheme of distribution. They called it the Civil
Constitution of the Clergy, meaning the regulation of relations
between Church and State under the new Constitution.

The debate began on May 29, and the final vote was taken on July 12.
The first object was to save money. The bishops were rich, they were
numerous, and they were not popular. Those among them who had been
chosen by the Church itself for its supreme reward, the Cardinal's
hat--Rohan, Lomenie de Brienne, Bernis, Montmorency and
Talleyrand--were men notoriously of evil repute. Here then the
Committee proposed to economise, reducing the number by fifty, and
their income to a thousand a year. Each of the departments, just
created, was to become a diocese. There were no archbishops. This was
not economy, but theory. By putting all bishops on the same level,
they lowered the papacy. For the Jansenists influenced the Assembly,
and the Jansenists had, for a century, borne persecution, and had
learnt to look with aversion both on papacy and prelacy, under which
they had suffered, and they had grown less averse to presbyterianism.
As they took away the patronage from the king, and did not transfer it
to the Pope who was a more absolute sovereign than the king, and
besides was a foreigner, they met the difficulty by the principle of
election, which had been upheld by high authorities, and had played a
great part in earlier times. The bishop was to be chosen by the
departmental electors, the parish priest by the district electors; and
this was to be done in the Church after Mass. It was assumed, but not
ordained, that electors of other denominations would thereby be
excluded. But at Strasburg a bishop was elected by a Protestant
majority. In conformity with the opinion of Bossuet, the right of
institution was taken away from Rome.

It was the office of the king to negotiate with the Pope, and he
might have saved the Revolution, the limited monarchy, and his own
life, if he had negotiated wisely. The new dioceses, the new reven