This opposition of the clergy did not arrest [the purposes of] the magistracy; nor was it a barrier for the statesman, who, less influenced by legal traditions than the members of the Parliaments, and more struck with the damage, which the ordinances of Louis XIV. had inflicted upon public interest, therefore went still further than the others in their propositions in favour of the Reformed.
From the year 1754, Turgot, who in many points was in advance of the times in which he lived, demanded the separation of the spiritual and civil powers for all creeds. He put these words into the king’s mouth: “Although you be in error, I will not the less treat you as my children. Show yourselves obedient to the laws, continue to be useful to the state, and you shall receive from me the same protection as my other subjects. My mission is to render you all happy.” Then, asking himself the question whether the assemblies of the dissenting creeds would not be dangerous, he answered it by saying: Yes, so long as they are interdicted; not, when they shall be authorized.
The Baron de Breteuil, a minister of the king’s household, gave instructions to Rulhières to draw up “The Historical Evidences concerning the cause of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes,” which have helped us so often in our researches; and in 1786 he presented, under his own name, a memorial to Louis XVI., upon the necessity of restoring their civil condition to the Protestants.
Nevertheless, royalty was loth to take a definitive step. Louis XV., indifferent to everything that did not concern his debasing pleasures, had constantly adjourned the serious examination of this subject. Louis XVI. was animated with generous intentions, but his intellect was narrow, his conscience easily alarmed by petty scruples of devotion, his will feeble, and he was greatly governed by a childish superstitious fear at the bare idea of touching the laws of his predecessors. Louis XIV. had contemptuously cast aside “the perpetual and irrevocable” edict of Henry IV., and Louis XVI. trembled to correct in the slightest degree that monstrous iniquity of Louis XIV.
Rulhières and the Baron de Breteuil were compelled to invent subtle distinctions to prove that Louis XIV. did not intend to deprive the Protestants of their civil rights; and that they might better quiet the conscience of the new king, they represented toleration as the best means of converting the heretics. They said, “We do not abandon the hope of reuniting the French Calvinists to the Church; we would rather aim at it by a more secure way; we would return to the true course, which has been too long neglected and disregarded.”
While Louis XVI. hesitated, public opinion assumed a higher tone. The close relations of France with North America contributed to spread ideas of civil and religious liberty. General Lafayette, on his return from the War of Independence, went to Nismes and visited Paul Rabaut, embraced the old man cordially, and invited his son Rabaut Saint Etienne to follow him to Paris and plead the cause of his brethren.
The upright Malesherbes gave the Reformed the assistance of his knowledge and his virtue. He composed, in 1785 and 1786, two memoirs upon the marriage of Protestants, and annexed to them a projet de loi upon the subject. “It is but right,” said he, “that I should do the Protestants some good service, since my father did them so much injury!” Lamoignon de Malesherbes was a descendant of the ferocious Lamoignon de Bâville.
All these feelings broke out in the assembly of the Notables held in 1787. In the records of the proceedings of that meeting, we read, “The Marquis de la Fayette proposed to petition his majesty to grant the same civil condition to the Protestants as to the (Roman) Catholics, and to order the reformation of the criminal laws. He asked permission to read a proposition on this subject. This having been read, the Count d’Artois observed that the object being wholly foreign to those which had been submitted to the assembly, it would be going beyond the powers of the Notables to take cognizance of it; that he would, however, willingly undertake to mention it to the king, if the meeting desired it. Consequently, he asked for the opinions of the members, and they were unanimous for adopting the motion of the Marquis de la Fayette.” A suitable address was drawn up, appealing to the king’s goodness on behalf of “this numerous portion of his subjects, who groaned under a régime of proscription that was alike injurious to the general interests of religion, to morality, to the whole population of the country, to the national industry, and to every principle of politics and morals.”
The Edict of Toleration was signed, at length, in the month of November, 1787, a hundred and two years after the Revocation, not in the form that would have been required by the principle of well-understood religious freedom, but restricted within the limits of the opinions of Louis XVI. and his most influential advisers. The name of Protestant does not occur in it; the law only spoke of non-Catholics. The preamble even announced that the king “would always countenance and favour with all his power, the means of instruction and persuasion, which should tend to bind all his subjects by a common profession of the ancient faith of the kingdom.” The 1st article states that “The Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion alone shall continue to enjoy the right of public worship in our realm.”
The new edict granted these four things only to the non-Catholics. The right of living in France, and of exercising a profession or a trade in the kingdom, without being disturbed on account of religion; the permission to marry legally before the officers of justice; the authority to record the births of their children before the local judge; and a regulation for the interment of those, who could not be buried according to the Roman Catholic ritual.