his speeches, been appointed to draw up a constitution, taken active
part in the declaration of Rights, and made himself generally
conspicuous and efficient. At the present apparently hopeless financial
crisis, Talleyrand uncovered a new source of revenue, claimed that the
property of the Church belonged to the nation, and that as the nation
was on the brink of financial ruin, this confiscation was a supreme
necessity. The Church lands represented a value of two thousand millions
of francs,--an immense sum, which, if sold, would relieve, it was
supposed, the necessities of the State. Mirabeau, although he was no
friend of the clergy, shrank from such a monstrous injustice, and said
that such a wound as this would prove the most poisonous which the
country had received. But such was the urgent need of money, that the
Assembly on the 2d of November, 1789, decreed that the property of the
Church should be put at the disposal of the State. On the 19th of
December it was decreed that these lands should be sold. The clergy
raised the most piteous cries of grief and indignation. Vainly did the
bishops offer four hundred millions as a gift to the nation. It was like
the offer of Darius to Alexander, of one hundred thousand talents. "Your
whole property is mine," said the conqueror; "your kingdom is mine."

So the offer of the bishops was rejected, and their whole property was
taken. And it was taken under the sophistical plea that it belonged to
the nation. It was really the gift of various benefactors in different
ages to the Church, for pious purposes, and had been universally
recognized as sacred. It was as sacred as any other rights of property.
The spoliation was infinitely worse than the suppression of the
monasteries by Henry VIII. He had some excuse, since they had become a
scandal, had misused their wealth, and diverted it from the purposes
originally intended. The only wholesale attack on property by the State
which can be compared with it, was the abolition of slavery by a stroke