XVIII.

These two decrees struck terror to the heart of the king, and consternation to his council.  The constitution gave him the right of suspending them by the royal veto; but to suspend the effects of the national indignation against the armed enemies of the Revolution, was to invoke it on his own head.  The Girondists artfully fomented these elements of discord between the Assembly and the king.  They impatiently awaited until the refusal to sanction the decrees should urge irritation to its height, and force the king to fly or place himself in their hands.

The most monarchical spirit of the Constituent Assembly still reigned in the Directory of the department of Paris.  Desmeuniers, Baumetz, Talleyrand-Perigord, Larochefoucauld, were the principal members.  They drew up an address to the king, entreating him to refuse his sanction to the decree against the nonjuring priests.  This address, in which the Legislative Assembly was treated with much disdain, breathes the true spirit of government as regards religious matters.  It is comprised in the axiom which is or ought to be the code of all consciences, “Since no religion is a law, let no religion be a crime!”

A young writer whose name, already celebrated, was to be hereafter consecrated by martyrdom, Andre Chenier, considering the question in the highest strain of philosophy, published on the same subject a letter worthy of posterity.  It is the property of genius not to allow its views to be obscured by the prejudices of the moment.  Its gaze is too lofty for vulgar errors to deprive it of the ever-during light of truth.  It has by anticipation in its decisions the impartiality of the future.

“All those,” says Andre Chenier, “who have preserved the liberty of their reason, and in whom patriotism is not a violent desire for rule, see with much pain that the dissensions of the priests have of necessity occupied the first sittings of the Assembly.  It is true that the public mind is enlightened on this point, on which even the Constituent Assembly itself is deceived.  It has pretended to form a civil code of religion, that is to say, it had the idea of creating one priesthood after having destroyed another.  Of what consequence is it that one religion differs from another?  Is it for the National Assembly to reunite the divided sects, and weigh all their differences?  Are politicians theologians?  We shall only be delivered from the influence of these men when the National Assembly shall have maintained for each the perfect liberty of following or inventing whatsoever religion may please it; when every one shall pay for the worship he prefers to adopt, and pays for no other; and when the impartiality of tribunals, in such cases, shall punish alike the persecutors or the seditious of all forms of worship:  and the members of the National Assembly say also, that all the French people are not yet sufficiently ripe for this doctrine.  We must reply to them,—­this may be, but it is for you to ripen us by your words, your acts, your laws!  Priests do not trouble states when states do not disturb them.  Let us remember that eighteen centuries have seen all the Christian sects, torn and bleeding from theological absurdities and sacerdotal hatreds, always terminate by arming themselves with popular power.”