his ministers and counselors, Gallicans or Jacobins, his spokesmen in
the legislative assembly or the tribunate, all imbued with Roman law
or with the Contrat Social are capital megaphones for proclaiming the
omnipotence of the State in polished sentences. "The unity of public
power and its universality," says Portalis,[46] "are a necessary
consequence of its independence." "Public power must be self-
sufficient; it is nothing if not all..." Public power cannot tolerate
rivals; it cannot allow other powers to establish themselves alongside
of it without its consent, perhaps to sap and weaken it. " The
authority of a State might become precarious if men on its territory
exercise great influence over minds and consciences, unless these men
belong to it, at least in some relation." It is careless "if it
remains unfamiliar or indifferent to the form and the constitution of
the government which proposes to govern souls," if it admits that the
limits within which the faith and obedience of believers "can be made
or altered without its support, if it has not, in its legally
recognized and avowed superiors, guarantees of the fidelity of
inferiors." Such was the rule in France for the Catholic cult
previous to 1789, and such is to be the rule, after 1801, for all
authorized cults. If the State authorizes them, it is "to direct such
important institutions with a view to the greatest public utility."
Solely because it is favorable to "their doctrine and their
discipline" it means to maintain these intact and prevent "their
ministers from corrupting the doctrine entrusted to their teaching, or
from arbitrarily throwing off the yoke of discipline, to the great
prejudice of individuals and the State."[47] Hence, in the legal
statute by which a Church is incorporated and realizes what she is, it
states in precise terms what it exacts or permits her to be;
henceforward she shall be this or that and so remain; her dogmas and
her canons, her hierarchy and her internal regime, her territorial