XXXIV.
The Catholic Establishment shall be maintained as
"la base de la morale, dont le maintien est essentiel à la tranquillité et au bonheur public. Ceux que auraient le malheur de n'être pas convaincus des vérités qu'elle nous enseigne"
will be ineligible for public office; but no step shall be taken in the direction of persecution or proscription.
Complete toleration shall be maintained in so far as it is compatible with public order.
Such was the constitution projected by d'Argenson during the few years before his death. Its real meaning is clear and unmistakable: yet it has not escaped the evil fortune which has pursued so many of its author's plans. It is true that to concede to thirty-two provincial assemblies a virtually absolute power, while providing that the authority of the Crown shall be in no way diminished, may appear at first sight as strange an inconsequence as M. de Broglie[429] and others have found it. Yet a patient reading of d'Argenson's scheme is sufficient to show that with all its elaborate reservations, it involved nothing more nor less than the provisional surrender of the Sovereignty of France into the hands of the French people.
It is to be remembered that in the years which succeeded the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, d'Argenson had been watching with growing alarm the disaffection which was beginning to ferment:[430] and at the same time his old belief in the sovereign virtues of absolutism had been profoundly modified by a more lengthened experience.[431] We have only to bear in mind this change of opinion in considering his project of reform, to be alive to the numerous hints which it contains and to detect the real significance of its provisions. What d'Argenson proposed was virtually this: the whole administration of the interior was to be ceded to the people of France, organised in their parishes, districts, and provinces; the royal bureaucracy, the entire system of intendancies and sub-delegacies was to be swept away; and the Crown was to be represented in each Province by four Royal Commissioners, who should open the Estates at the end of November and explain to the deputies the wishes of the King, while leaving the execution of them to the Provincial government. These Royal Commissioners had power to appoint a flying squadron of subordinates, who were attached to no particular place nor any defined duty, whose principal business was to report to their superiors, and who were strictly forbidden to act upon their own authority, or, except in cases of the last emergency, to employ force against the people. Within the province not only the whole administration, but the assessment, collection and payment of the taxes, was entirely in the hands of the Estates.