To become and remain master in such an annexed country it is always advisable to exhibit the sword.

Nevertheless, it would not be wise to strike incessantly; the blade, used too often, would wear out; it is better to utilize the constitution of the annex, rule over it indirectly, not by an administrative bureau (regie), but by a protectorate, in which all indigenous authorities can be employed and be made responsible for the necessary rigors.

Now, by virtue of the indigenous constitution, the governors of the Catholic annex--all designated beforehand by their suitable and indelible character, all tonsured, robed in black, celibates and speaking Latin--form two orders, unequal in dignity and in number; one inferior, comprising myriads of cures and vicars, and the other superior, comprising some dozens of prelates.
Let us turn this ready-made hierarchy to account; and, the better to use it, let us tighten the strings.

In agreement with the upper clergy and the Pope, we will increase the subjection of the lower clergy; we will govern the inferiors through the superiors; whoever has the head has the body; it is much easier to handle sixty bishops and archbishops than forty thousand vicars and cures; in this particular we need not undertake to restore primitive discipline; we must not be either antiquaries or Gallicans.

Let us be careful not to give back to the second-class clergy the independence and stability they enjoyed before 1789, the canonical guarantees which protected them against episcopal despotism, the institution of competition, the rights conferred by theological grades, the bestowal of the best places on the wisest, the appeal to the diocesan court in case of disgrace, the opposing plea before the officialite, the permanent tie by which the titular cure, once planted in his parish, took root there for life, and believed himself bound to his local community like Jesus Christ to the universal Church, indissolubly, through a sort of mystic marriage.