comprising myriads of cures and vicars, and the
other superior, comprising some dozens of prelates.

Let us turn this ready-made hierarchy to account; and, the better to use
it, let us tighten the strings. In agreement with the upper clergy and
the Pope, we will increase the subjection of the lower clergy; we will
govern the inferiors through the superiors; whoever has the head has
the body; it is much easier to handle sixty bishops and archbishops
than forty thousand vicars and cures; in this particular we need
not undertake to restore primitive discipline; we must not be either
antiquaries or Gallicans. Let us be careful not to give back to the
second-class clergy the independence and stability they enjoyed before
1789, the canonical guarantees which protected them against episcopal
despotism, the institution of competition, the rights conferred by
theological grades, the bestowal of the best places on the wisest, the
appeal to the diocesan court in case of disgrace, the opposing plea
before the officialite, the permanent tie by which the titular cure,
once planted in his parish, took root there for life, and believed
himself bound to his local community like Jesus Christ to the universal
Church, indissolubly, through a sort of mystic marriage. "The number of
cures," says Napoleon,[5195] "must be reduced as much as possible, and
the number of assistants (desservans) multiplied who can be changed at
will," not only transferable to another parish, but revocable from day
to day, without formalities or delay, without appeal or pleading in any
court whatsoever. Henceforth, the sole irremovable cures are the four
thousand; the rest, under the name of succursalists, numbering
thirty thousand,[5196] are ecclesiastical clerks, surrendered to the
discretionary power of the bishop. The bishop alone appoints, places and
displaces all belonging to his diocese at his pleasure, and with a nod,
he transfers the most competent from the best to the worst post, from
the large borough or small town, where he was born and has lived at ease
near his family, to some wretched parish in this or that village buried
in the woods or lost on a mountain, without income or presbytery; and
still better, he cuts down his wages, he withdraws the State salary of
five hundred francs, he turns him out of the lodgings allowed him by
the commune, on foot on the highway, with no viaticum, even temporary,
excluded from ecclesiastical ministries, without resp