representatives on the spot, its popular defenders against ministerial
and royal absolutism. All these powers, which once counterbalanced
episcopal power, have disappeared. Restricted to their judicial
office, the tribunals have ceased to be political authorities and
moderators of the central government: in the town and department, the
mayor and general councilors, appointed or elected for a certain time,
enjoy only temporary credit; the prefect, the military commandant, the
rector, the treasurer-general are merely passing strangers. The local
circumscription, for a century, is an exterior post where individuals
live together in contact but not associated; no longer does any
intimate, lasting and strong bond exist between them; nothing remains
of the old province but a population of inhabitants, a given number of
private persons under unstable functionaries. The bishop alone has
maintained himself intact and erect, a dignitary for life, the
conductor, by title and in fact, of a good many persons, the
stationary and patient undertaker of a great service, the unique
general and undisputed commander of a special militia which, through
conscience and professions, gathers close around him and, every
morning, awaits his orders. Because in his essence, he is a governor
of souls. Revolution and centralization have not encroached on his
ecclesiastical prerogative. Thanks to this indelible quality he has
been able to endure the suppression of the others; these have come
back to him of themselves and with others added, comprising local
superiority, real importance and local ascendancy; including the
various honorable appellations which, under the ancient régime,
denoted his rank and preeminence; at the present day, under the modern
régime, they are no longer in use for a layman and even for a minister
of state; after 1802, one of the articles of the Organic Laws,[24]
interdicts them to bishops and archbishops; they are "allowed to add
to their name only the title of citizen and monsieur." But