free roots by which, in this close embrace, it still vegetates and
keeps erect have all been cut off short; torn from the soil and
grafted on the State, they derive their sap and their roots from the
civil powers. Before 1789, the clergy formed a distinct order in
temporal society and, above all others, a body possessing property and
exempt from taxes, a tax-payer apart which, represented in periodical
assemblies, negotiated every five years with the King himself, granted
him subsidies and, in exchange for this "disinterested gift," secured
for itself concessions or confirmations of immunities, prerogatives
and favors. Today, it is merely a collection of ordinary individuals
and subjects, even less than that - an administrative staff similar to
that of the university, of the magistrature, of the treasury, and of
the woods and forests, even more closely watched and bridled, with
more detailed precautions and stricter interdictions. Before 1789, the
curés and other second-class officials were, for the most part,
selected and installed without the prince's intervention, sometimes by
the bishop of the diocese or a neighboring abbé, sometimes by
independent collators, by the titular himself,[54] by a lay patron or
a chapter, by a commune, by an indultaire, by the pope, while the
salary of each titular, large or small, was his private property, the
annual product of a piece of land or of some indebtedness attached to
his office and which he administered. Nowadays, every incumbent, from
the cardinal-archbishop down to a canon, cantonal curé, and director
or teacher in a seminary, is appointed or accepted by the civil power
to which he swears fidelity. His salary, set down in the budget, is
simply that of a public employee, so many francs and centimes for
which he comes monthly to the office of the treasury paymaster, along
with others of his colleagues who are employed by the State in non-
Catholic cults, together with others, his quasi-colleagues, whom the
State employs in the university, in the magistrature, in the