no
resource against the majority; he was a minister at the mercy of his
partisans.

Amongst these were some of opposite pretensions, and who lent him their
support on very unequal conditions. If he had only had to deal with
those I shall designate as the politicals and laymen of the party, he
might have been able to satisfy and govern in concert with them.
Notwithstanding their prejudices, the greater part of the
country-gentlemen and royalist citizens were neither over-zealous nor
exacting; they had fallen in with the manners of new France, and had
either found or recovered their natural position in present society,
reconciling themselves to constitutional government, since they were no
longer considered as the vanquished side. The indemnity to the
emigrants, some pledges of local influence, and the distribution of
public functions, would have long sufficed to secure their support to
M. de Villele; but another portion of his army, numerous, important, and
necessary, the religious department, was much more difficult to satisfy
and control.

I am not disposed to revive any of the particular expressions which were
then used as weapons of war, and have now become almost insulting. I
shall neither speak of the _priestly_, nor of the _congregational
party_, nor even of the _Jesuits_. I should reproach myself for reviving
by such language and reminiscences the evil, heavy in itself, which
France and the Restoration were condemned at that time, the one to fear,
and the other to endure.

This evil, which glimmered through the first Restoration, through the
session of 1815, and still exists, in spite of so many storms and such
increasing intelligence, is, in fact a war declared by a considerable
portion of the Catholic Church of France, against existing French
society, its principles, its organization, political and civil, its
origin and its tendencies. It was during the ministry of M. de Villele,
and above all when he found himself alone and confronted with his party,
that the mischief displayed its full force.

Never was a similar war more irrational or inopportune. It checked the
reaction, which had commenced under the Consulate, in favour of creeds
and the sentiment of religion. I have no desire to exaggerate the value
of that reaction; I hold faith and true piety in too much respect to
confound them with the superficial vicissitudes of human thought and
opinion. Nevertheless the movement which led France back towards