social and moral idea throughout his empire.--With what rigidity and
pertinacious intent, with what variety and convergence of means, with
what plenitude and certainty of execution, with what detriment and with
what danger, present and to come, for corporations, for the public, for
the State, for himself, we shall see presently; he himself, living and
reigning, is to realize this. For his interference, pushed to extremes,
is to end in encountering resistance in a body which he considers as
his own creature, the Church: here, forgetting that she has roots of her
own, deep down and out of his reach, he carries off the Pope, holds
him captive, sends cardinals into the interior, (Page 198/504)imprisons
bishops, banishes priests, and incorporates seminarians in his
regiments.[31138] He decrees the closing of all small seminaries,[31139]
alienates forever the Catholic clergy like the royalist nobility,
precisely at the same moment and through the same absolutism, through
the same abuse of power, through the same recurrence to revolutionary
tradition, to Jacobin infatuation and brutality, even to the frustration
of his Concordat of 1802 as with his amnesty of 1802, even to
compromising his capital work of the attempted reconciliation and
reunion of old France with the new France. His work, nevertheless,
although incomplete, even interrupted and marred by himself, remains
substantial and salutary. The three grand machines which the Revolution
had demolished with so little foresight, and which he had reconstructed
at so little cost, are in working order, and, with deviations or
shortcomings in result, they render to the public the required services,
each its own, worship, charity and instruction. Full toleration and
legal protection to the three leading Christian cults, and even to
Judaism, would of itself already satisfy the most sensitive of religious
demands; owing to the donation furnished by the State and communes and
by private individuals, the necessary complement is not wanting.

The Catholic community, in particular, the most numerous of all,
exercises and celebrates its system of worship in conformity with
its faith, according to ecclesiastical canons under its own orthodox
hierarchy; in each parish, or within reach of each parish, dwells one
authorized priest who administers valid sacraments; in his stole he says
mass publicly in a consecrated edifice, plainly decorated at first but
gradually beautified; not less publ