nment: all alike bound
themselves to watch over governmental interests. The stability of
France was further assured by a clause granting complete and permanent
security to the holders of the confiscated Church lands--a healing and
salutary compromise which restored peace to every village and soothed
the qualms of many a troubled conscience. On its side, the State
undertook to furnish suitable stipends to the clergy, a promise which
was fulfilled in a rather niggardly spirit. For the rest, the First
Consul enjoyed the same consideration as the Kings of France in all
matters ecclesiastical; and a clause was added, though Bonaparte
declared it needless, that if any succeeding First Consul were not a
Roman Catholic, his prerogatives in religious matters should be
revised by a Convention. A similar Concordat was passed a little later
for the pacification of the Cisalpine Republic.

The Concordat was bitterly assailed by the Jacobins, especially by the
military chiefs, and had not the infidel generals been for the most
part sundered by mutual jealousies they might perhaps have overthrown
Bonaparte. But their obvious incapacity for civil affairs enabled them
to venture on nothing more than a few coarse jests and clumsy
demonstrations. At the Easter celebration at Notre Dame in honour of
the ratification of the Concordat, one of them, Delmas by name,
ventured on the only protest barbed with telling satire: "Yes, a fine
piece of monkery this, indeed. It only lacked the million men who got
killed to destroy what you are striving to bring back." But to all
protests Bonaparte opposed a calm behaviour that veiled a rigid
determination, before which priests and soldiers were alike helpless.

In subsequent articles styled "organic," Bonaparte, without consulting
the Pope, made several laws that galled the orthodox clergy. Under the
plea of legislating for the police of public worship, he reaffirmed
some of the principles which he had been unable to incorporate in the
Concordat itself. The organic articles asserted the old claims of the
Gallican Church, which forbade the application of Papal Bulls, or of
the decrees of "foreign" synods, to France: they further forbade the
French bishops to assemble in council or synod without the permission
of the Government; and this was also required for a bishop to leave
his diocese, even if he were summoned to Rome. Such were the chief of
the organic articles. Passed under the plea of securing pub