One of the chief haranguers, standing on the steps terminated his speech by stating that schism ought to be stopped at any cost, that no worship but his should be allowed, that women should be whipped and priests knocked on the head." And, in fact, "a young lady accompanied by her mother is whipped on the steps of the church." Elsewhere nuns are the sufferers, even the sisters of Saint-Vincent de Paul; and, from April, 1793, onward; the same outrages on modesty and against life are propagated from town to town.

At Dijon, rods are nailed fast to the gates of all the convents; at Montpellier, two or three hundred ruffians, armed with large iron--bound sticks, murder the men and outrage the women .-- Nothing remains but to put the gangsters under the shelter of an amnesty, which is done by the Constituent Assembly, and to legally sanction the animosity of local administrations, which is done by the Legislative Assembly.[2281] Henceforth the nonjuring ecclesiastics are deprived of their sustenance; they are declared "suspected of revolt against the law and of evil intentions against the country."-- Thus, says a contemporary Protestant, "on the strength of these suspicions and these intentions, a Directory, to which the law interdicts judicial functions, may arbitrarily drive out of his house the minister of a God of peace and charity, grown gray in the shadow of the altar" Thus, "everywhere, where disturbances occur on account of religious opinions, and whether these troubles are due to the frantic scourgers of the virtuous sisters of charity or to the ruffians armed with cow-hides who, at Nimes and Montpellier, outrage all the laws of decorum and of liberty for six whole months, the non-juring priests are to be punished with banishment.

Torn from their families whose means of living they share, they are sent away to wander on the highways, abandoned to public pity or ferocity the moment any scoundrel chooses to excite a disturbance that he can impute to them."-- Thus we see approaching the revolt of the peasantry, the insurrections of Nimes, Franche-Comte, la Vendee and Brittany, emigration, transportation; imprisonment, the guillotine or drowning for two thirds of the clergy of France, and likewise for myriads of the loyal, for husbandmen, artisans, day-laborers, seamstresses, and servants, and the humblest among the lower class of the people.

This is what the laws of the Constituent Assembly are leading to .-- In the institution of the clergy, as in that of the nobles and the King, it demolished a solid wall in order to dig through it an open door, and it is nothing strange if the whole structure tumbles down on the heads of its inmates.

The true course was to respect, to reform, to utilize rank and corporations: all that the Assembly thought of was the abolition of these in the name of abstract equality and of national sovereignty.