The moral aristocracy was mowed down in the name of uniformity; the social aristocracy is mowed down in the name of equality.

For the second time, an absolute principle, and with the same effect, buries its blade in the heart of a living society.
The success is complete.

One of the deputies of the Legislative Assembly, early in its session, on being informed of the great increase in emigration, joyfully exclaims, "SO MUCH THE BETTER; FRANCE IS BEING PURGED!" She is, in truth, being depleted of one-half of her best blood.
IV .-- Abuse and lukewarmness in 1789 in the ecclesiastical bodies.
How the State used its right of overseeing and reforming them .-- Social usefulness of corporations .-- The sound part in the monastic institution .-- Zeal and services of nuns .-- How ecclesiastical possessions should be employed .-- Principle of the Assembly as to private communities, feudal rights and trust-funds .-- Abolition and expropriation all corporations.
-- Uncompensated suppression of tithes .-- Confiscation of ecclesiastical possessions .-- Effect on the Treasury and on expropriated services .-- The civil constitution of the clergy .-- Rights of the Church in relation to the State.
-- Certainty and effects of a conflict .-- Priests considered as State-functionaries .-- Principal stipulations of the law.
-- Obligations of the oath .-- The majority of priests refuse to take it .-- The majority of believes on their side.
-- Persecution of believers and of priests.
There remained the corporate, ecclesiastic, and lay bodies, and, notably, the oldest, most opulent, and most considerable of all the regular and secular clergy .-- Grave abuses existed here also, for, the institution being founded on ancient requirements, had not accommodated itself to new necessities.[2237] There were too many episcopal sees, and these were arranged according to the Christian distribution of the population in the fourth century; a revenue still more badly apportioned--bishops and abbes with one hundred thousand livres a year, leading the lives of amiable idlers, while cures, overburdened with work, have but seven hundred; in one monastery nineteen monks instead of eighty, and in another four instead of fifty;[2238] a number of monasteries reduced to three or to two inhabitants, and even to one; almost all the congregations of men going to decay, and many of them dying out for lack of novices;[2239] a general lukewarmness among the members, great laxity in many establishments, and with scandals in some of them; scarcely one-third taking an interest in their calling, while the remaining two-thirds wish to go back to the world,[2240]--it is evident from all this that the primitive inspiration has been diverted or has cooled; that the endowment only partially fulfills its ends; that one-half of its resources are employed in the wrong way or remain sterile; in short, that there is a need of reformation in the body .-- That this ought to be effected with the co-operation of the State and even under its direction is not less certain.

For a corporation is not an individual like other individuals, and, in order that it may acquire or possess the privileges of an ordinary citizen, something supplementary must be added, some fiction, some expedient of the law.
If the law is disposed to overlook the fact that a corporation is not a natural personage, if it gives to it a civil personality, if it declares it to be capable of inheriting, of acquiring and of selling, if it becomes a protected and respected proprietor, this is due to the favors of the State which places its tribunal and gendarmes at its service, and which, in exchange for this service, justly imposes conditions on it, and, among others, that of being useful and remaining useful, or at least that of never becoming harmful.

Such was the rule under the Ancient Regime, and especially since the Government has for the last quarter of a century gradually and efficaciously worked out a reform.
Not only, in 1749, had it prohibited the Church from accepting land, either by donation, by testament, or in exchange, without royal letters-patent registered in Parliament; not only in 1764 had it abolished the order of Jesuits, closed their colleges and sold their possessions, but also, since 1766, a permanent commission, formed by the King's order and instructed by him, had lopped off all the dying and dead branches of the ecclesiastical tree.[2241] There was a revision of the primitive Constitutions; a prohibition to every institution to have more than two monasteries at Paris and more than one in other towns; a postponement of the age for taking vows--that of sixteen being no longer permitted--to twenty-one for men and eighteen for women; an obligatory minimum of monks and nuns for each establishment, which varies from fifteen to nine according to circumstances; if this is not kept up there follows a suppression or prohibition to receive novices: owing to these measures, rigorously executed, at the end of twelve years "the Grammontins, the Servites, the Celestins, the ancient order of Saint-Benedict, that of the Holy Ghost of Montpellier, and those of Sainte-Brigitte, Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie, Saint-Ruff, and Saint-Antoine,"-- in short, nine complete congregations had disappeared.
At the end of twenty years three hundred and eighty-six establishments had been suppressed, the number of monks and nuns had diminished one-third, the larger portion of possessions which had escheated were usefully applied, and the congregations of men lacked novices and complained that they could not fill up their ranks.