that he could do no
more until he knew how he stood with Rome; for "you know that when
one cannot arrange matters with God, one comes to terms with the
devil."[156]

This dalliance with the "constitutionals" might have been more than an
astute ruse, and Consalvi knew it. In framing a national Church the
First Consul would have appealed not only to the old Gallican feeling,
still strong among the clerics and laity, but also to the potent force
of French nationality. The experiment might have been managed so as to
offend none but the strictest Catholics, who were less to be feared
than the free-thinkers. Consalvi was not far wrong when, writing of
the official world at Paris, he said that only Bonaparte really
desired a Concordat.

The First Consul's motives in seeking the alliance of Rome have, very
naturally, been subjected to searching criticism; and in forcing the
Concordat on France, and also on Rome, he was certainly undertaking
the most difficult negotiation of his life.[157] But his preference
for the Roman connection was an act of far-reaching statecraft. He saw
that a national Church, unrecognized by Rome, was a mere half-way
house between Romanism and Protestantism; and he disliked the latter
creed because of its tendency to beget sects and to impair the
validity of the general will. He still retained enough of Rousseau's
doctrine to desire that the general will should be uniform, provided
that it could be controlled by his own will. Such uniformity in the
sphere of religion was impossible unless he had the support of the
Papacy. Only by a bargain with Rome could he gain the support of a
solid ecclesiastical phalanx. Finally, by erecting a French national
Church, he would not only have perpetuated schism at home, but would
have disqualified himself for acting the part of Charlemagne over
central and southern Europe. To re-fashion Europe in a cosmopolitan
mould he needed a clerical police that was more than merely French. To
achieve those grander designs the successor of Caesar would need the
aid of the successor of Peter; and this aid would be granted only to
the restorer of Roman Catholicism in France, never to the perpetuator
of schism.

These would seem to be the chief reasons why he braved public opinion
in Paris and clung to the Roman connection, bringing forward his plan
of a Gallican Church only as a threatening move against the clerical
flank. When the Vatican was obdurate he coquetted with the
"c