Under the Restoration, it was no longer fear, but hope—hope, ill-founded, too—which misled the French clergy, betrayed them into the commission of many faults, and checked the progress of roused Christendom. In the then reaction against the Revolution, ecclesiastical ambition had its part; partisans of the Crown and of Rome—ardent ones—some through sincere devotion, others from political calculation, believed it to be necessary and possible to restore to the Catholic clergy a part at least of the social position and of the direct authority which they had possessed before 1789. This was evincing a strange ignorance of the fundamental character of French society, such as it has been made by its history and by its great modern Revolution. French society is essentially and insuperably "laic;" the separation of temporals from spirituals, and the empire of the laity in public affairs, are consummated and dominant facts, not to be attacked, or even menaced, without occasioning throughout the whole framework of society an irritation and a disquietude, perilous alike for Church and for State. Nothing in France at the present moment is more fatal to the influence of religion than the chance, or the appearance even, of ecclesiastical domination. This chance and this appearance were, under the Restoration, the plague of the Catholic religion and of the French clergy—a plague the grave consequences of which are the more to be deplored as it was neither very deep-seated nor very formidable. It is a fact too little remarked, that the clergy were not then the principal authors of the faults which subsequently both they and religion had such cause to rue. No doubt many inadmissible claims, many unreasonable and offensive requirements, many rash expectations, proceeded from the ranks of the clergy; but there was in all this more a suggestion of their past history, or an unmeaning vanity, than a real and ardent ambition; even the clergy felt instinctively that political power was not now suited to them, and that France would no longer accept at their hands as ministers even a Cardinal Richelieu or a Cardinal Mazarin. At first the contra-revolutionary and non-ecclesiastical party in the Chamber of 1815, and, afterward, the blind fanatical coterie of the Court of Charles the Tenth, hurried the clergy into their own vortex, and compromised the cause of religion by making its ministers instruments of their influence and auxiliaries in their combats. The ecclesiastics had not the courage to resist; in spite of their distaste for the new spirit which was abroad, most of the bishops and of the priesthood, warned by their experience in the Revolution, would have preferred to remain out of the sphere of politics, and to confine themselves to the functions of their religious mission, rather than to be constantly struggling against popular opinions; so, when any opportunity presented itself to show their sympathy, they hastened to embrace it. When, in 1824, the bill of M. de Villèle for the conversion of the "Rentes" created a great stir among the "Bourgeoisie" of Paris, it was the Archbishop of Paris, M. de Quélen, who constituted himself in the Chamber of Peers the principal organ of the Opposition; and when, in 1828, the movement of public opinion and of the magistracy against the religions congregations wrested from the King (Charles the Tenth) the Ordonnances of the 21st June, the Bishop of Beauvais, M. Feutries, at that time the Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs, did not hesitate to countersign them. The members of the priesthood live in close contact with the people, and cannot long remain in ignorance of the real state of their opinions, or long persist in holding them lightly. The French clergy, as a whole, were more resigned to the new state of society than King Charles the Tenth and his intimate friends; the false ideas and the unreasonable political pretensions of the monarch and of the coterie which formed his court, far more than the religious bigotry of the Church, occasioned the great faults committed under the Restoration.
At all epochs and in all parties some man is always met with in whom are centered and personified whatever good sense, sound views, and wise purposes there are in the party to which he belongs. Such a man under the Restoration and for the lay Legitimists was M. de Villèle. True to his friends, he nevertheless knew, or I should rather say he promptly learned in public life to understand, what France then actually was, and what qualities, to be successful, her government should possess. If he had had toward his party and his king as much independence and firmness in action as he had correct appreciation in thought, he might perhaps have obtained a more complete and more lasting success. The clergy on their side also had at this epoch a faithful representative of whatever religious or political sagacity existed in the French Church: it is here to the Abbé Frayssinous, Bishop of Hermopolis, that the honor and the merit belong. His task was far easier than that of M. de Villèle, for he was never put to any trial: he had no struggle to sustain; he remained naturally, or kept himself voluntarily, out of the arena of events and of parties; but it was in this precisely that he showed his good sense, and his correct appreciation of the permanent interests and the real dispositions of the clergy of his time. Neither as theologian, nor as orator, nor as statesman was the Abbé Frayssinous a man of eminence, or remarkable for power of intellect; but in the different phases of his career, in his personal conduct, and in his writings, he had an unerring instinct of what was just and possible, and showed no common tact in retiring with dignity from untenable positions, and escaping from questions that he could not settle. Upon these occasions he would confine himself to his mission of a priest and moralist of the Christian religion. From 1803 to 1822 he held, suspended, and resumed in the Church of St. Sulpice, his "conferences upon religious subjects;" remarkable not only by a judicious defense of the great truths of Christianity, but by a continuous, although somewhat timorous, effort to place the doctrines of the Church in harmony with the principles of natural justice and of civil liberty. He was not, like the Père Lacordaire or M. de Montalembert, a Catholic Liberal; he was a priest—moderate and equitable, not from luke-warmness in his faith, but from respect to legal rights and human sentiments. Although his "conferences" had not the success and popularity that distinguished later, in Notre-Dame, those of the Père Lacordaire, they attracted a numerous auditory, and exercised material influence in giving to the awakening of Christianity a wider range and a firmer basis. [Footnote 11]
[Footnote 11: The "conferences" of the Abbé Frayssinous at St. Sulpice have been published under this title: Defense du Christianisme, ou conférences sur la religion. 3 vols. 8vo. Paris: 1825. The Abbé Frayssinous published also in 1818 a work with the following title: Les vrais principes de l'église gallicane sur la puissance ecclesiastique, la Papauté, les Libertés gallicanes, la Promotion des évêques, les trois Concordats, et les Appels comme d'abus.]
In his work upon the true principles of the Gallican Church, the Abbé Frayssinous manifested the same moderate and conciliatory spirit—not always tracing principles to their sources, but never pushing facts or ideas to their extreme consequences; while remaining the faithful servant of the Church he showed himself also rather the friend of Christian peace than the jealous advocate of ecclesiastical power. His mode of life was as modest as his opinions; he never made power his aim, neither did he ever seek for honors, whether political, ecclesiastical, or academic; he declined them even when within his reach. He joined the Cabinet in 1824, as Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs and of Public Instruction; he withdrew from it in 1828, when the mounting wave of Liberalism demanded that a more vigorous policy should be adopted against the religious congregations than the pupil and orator of St. Sulpice was willing to sanction. He neither had the qualities necessary for governing the French clergy, nor did he pretend to govern them; but he represented them, nevertheless, in all their more irreproachable and prudent opinions. Unfortunately, mere common sense and prudence do not suffice more in the Church than in the State to save nations from the consequences of their faults of omission and commission; for this object, higher qualities are necessary as well as more rude efforts.
It was one of the first effects of the Revolution in 1830, to make visible to all the injury that the faults of their friends, rather than the blows of their adversaries, had inflicted, under the Restoration, upon the clergy, and through the clergy upon religion. The acts of violence which, during the revolutionary crisis from 1830 to 1832, were directed at the Churches—the crosses thrown down, the insulting cries, and antichristian manifestations; a little later, the riot before the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, on the occasion of the service celebrated on the anniversary of the death of the Duke de Berri—the archiepiscopal palace ruined and pillaged—the church broken into and closed—the menaces directed at the priests—what were all these deplorable acts but the explosion of a popular reaction, provoked by the share a part of the clergy had taken in favor of a retrograde policy—of a return to the ancient régime and to absolutism? Violent men profited by this reaction to satisfy their impiety and licentiousness, but they could never have excited the movement or made it successful had they hoisted their own banner; there must be some little truth before a populace will suffer itself to be so misled; and the crowd who in February, 1831, so furiously rose in insurrection before St. Germain l'Auxerrois, would have paused in astonishment had it perceived that what it was so brutally attacking and destroying was—not the ancient régime, not absolutism—but religion and liberty.
To put an end to this confusion, full at once of deception and of peril, but a single thing was required: to banish from the Church, and from its relations with the State, worldly ambition and influences, and to replace them by influences of a moral description; instead of a political banner, they should have only hoisted the banner of religious faith and liberty of conscience. That was the great work, or, to use a better expression, the great progress, which from 1830 to 1848 was aimed at and accomplished.
The efforts made and the debates instituted at this epoch by the most eminent champions of the Church are remarkable, because they no longer proposed to restore any fragment of its ancient power, but to insure to it its place and its share in the new public institutions of liberty. The little militant party of Catholic Liberals quitted the arena of the ancient political regime, and took up their position on that of the new constitution, claiming for the Church, for its ministers, and for its faithful subjects, the exercise of all the rights and the free development of all the power that, under the constitution, either belonged, or ought to belong, to all citizens. They made no reservation of opinion, no effort more or less covert, in furtherance of any pretensions of bygone times, whether dynastic, aristocratic, or theocratic; the frank acceptance of the present age and actual society, provided that Christian faith, Christian morals, and Christian institutions, might have free room to work; such was, in the midst of all the factions and political plottings of this period, the constant attitude of the Catholic Liberal party, that is, of M. de Montalembert, the Père Lacordaire, M. Charles Lenormant, Frederic Ozanam, and of the friends in small number grouped around them.
Whoever feels astonished that their number was so small, shows little acquaintance with our country or our times. The enterprise which they undertook was singularly bold and difficult; to drag France out of its rut of incredulity and irreligion, and at the same time to extricate Catholicism from its rut of impolicy, its alliance with absolutism, its timorous immobility in the presence of liberty; to proclaim and simultaneously to defend, in spirituals, the Christian faith, and, in temporals, the regime of liberty. Certainly in France, and in the 19th century, the devotion of men to such a task supposes an enthusiasm and an energy of conviction of which few are capable; and if the new Christian Liberals flattered themselves that success would be easy, events must soon have disabused them. Attacked with ardor by the opponents of all religion, they were also assailed by Catholics devoted to the ancient régime of the Church, and alarmed at the new system pressed upon their acceptance. The former of these two attacks caused the Catholic Liberals neither surprise nor embarrassment; but the latter brought with it bitter annoyance and disappointment, for they found directly opposed to them members of their own faith. Soon they were to have as their adversary a man who, by his vigorous talents—employed with equal violence against the incredulous of all shades of opinions, and against the Catholic Liberals—too exercised an influence upon a great number of Catholics, whether of the laity or priesthood, and indisposed them to any reconciliation with that modern society which he irritated still more against them. I knew M. Veuillot at the commencement of his literary career, when he accompanied General Bugeaud to the seat of his government in Algeria. At this epoch he addressed to me two memorials upon the subject of the moral condition of the colony and of the army. They struck me by their decided tone, and the straightforwardness and candor with which he expressed sentiments already distinguished by devotion. Already he regarded the religion of his own Church, and of it alone, as the sure basis of human morality and social order; but he had not yet proclaimed as his doctrine the deplorable error that Faith enjoins war upon Liberty. He merited a better understanding of the cause of Christianity; he merited to be a better advocate of the Church at Rome than an advocate who, although one of its most devoted defenders, has yet most injured the cause that he sought to serve.