it with resignation, because the Church commands obedience to the
authorities, and the same Church commands disobedience to these
authorities when, abusing their power, they encroach on its rights.

Now, ten years ago, the State had done nothing else, and, to the old
Concordat which was not good, it had just substituted a Concordat that
was worse. This new alliance, concluded by it with the Church in
1802, is not a religious marriage, the solemn sacrament by which, at
Rheims, she and the King promised to live together and in harmony in
the same faith, but a simple civil contract, more precisely the legal
regulation of a lasting and deliberate divorce. - In a paroxysm of
despotism the State has stripped the Church of its possessions and
turned it out of doors, without clothes or bread, to beg on the
highways; next, in a fit of rage, its aim was to kill it outright, and
it did partially strangle it. Recovering its reason, but having
ceased to be Catholic, it has forced the signature of a pact which is
repugnant, and which reduces their moral union to physical
cohabitation. Willingly or not, the two contracting parties are to
continue living together in the same domicile, since that is the only
one they possess; but, as there is incompatibility of humor, they will
do well to live apart. To this end, the State assigns a small,
distinct lodging to the Church and allows her a meager supply of food;
this done, it fancies that it may cry quits; and, worse still, it
imagines that she is always its subject, and still pretends to the
same authority over her; the State is determined to retain all rights
conferred upon it by the old marriage, and these rights it exercises
and adds to. Meanwhile, it admits into the same lodging three other
Churches which it subjects to the same régime: that makes four mess-
rooms to be maintained and which it watches, supports and utilizes the
best it can for the temporal advantage of the household. There is