So much the worse if I am sovereign only in name, and through the imagination; I consent to my sovereignty being illusory, but with the understanding that the sovereignty of others is regarded likewise; so I prefer servitude and privation for all, rather than liberties and advantages for a few, and, provided the same level is passed over all heads, I submit to the yoke for all heads, including my own." Such is the internal composition of the instinct of' equality, and such is the natural instinct of Frenchmen.

It is beneficial or mischievous according as one or the other of its ingredients predominates, at one time the noble sentiment of equity and at another time the low envy of foolish vanity;[3304] healthy or unhealthy, however, its power in France is enormous, and the new Regime gratifies it in every possible way, good or bad.

No more legal disqualifications! On the one hand, the republican laws of proscription or of exception were all repealed: we have seen an amnesty and the return of the emigres, the Concordat, the restoration of Catholic worship, the compulsory reconciliation of the constitutionalists with the orthodox; the First Consul admits no difference between them; his new clergy are recruited from both groups and, in this respect, he forces the Pope to yield.[3305] He gives twelve of the sixty episcopal thrones to former schismatics; he wants them to take their places boldly; he relieves them from ecclesiastical penitence and from any humiliating recantation; he takes care that, in the other forty-eight dioceses, the priests who formerly took the civic oath shall be employed and well treated by their superiors who, at the same epoch, refused to take the civic oath.

On the other hand, all the exclusions, inequalities and distinctions of the monarchy remain abolished.

Not only are the Calvinist and even Israelite cults legally authorized, the same as the Catholic cult, but, again, the Protestant consistories and Jewish synagogues[3306] are constituted and organized on the same footing as the Catholic churches.