But these concessions, which were strict and narrow enough according to the letter of the law, necessarily involved much more in the practice. The legal existence of the Protestants was recognised. How could they be prohibited thenceforth from having pastors, at least to bless their marriages, to baptize their children, and to console the faithful on their death-bed? How could they he forbidden to assemble for the service of their worship, since they had done this under the severest tyranny? Finally, who was to distinguish between the private worship authorized by the edict, and the public worship, which it still persisted in interdicting? Moreover, there was no penal sanction whatever against the delinquents.
If this incomplete law gave but little, it allowed of everything being taken. The Protestants were not deceived in this. “The Edict of 1787,” says the younger Rabaut, “spread joy and consolation throughout the families of the Reformed, and their religious assemblies resounded with thanksgivings to God, and blessings on the king and his ministers. The execution of this beneficent edict followed close upon its promulgation, and the Reformed were soon seen hastening in crowds to the royal judges for the registration of their marriages and the births of their children.... Old men might be seen registering, together with their own marriages, those of their children and their grandchildren.”[133]
The edict raised some difficulties in the Parliament of Paris. The impetuous D’Espremenil was one of its opponents. M. de Lacretelle says that he had been initiated into the sect of the Martinists or Illuminati, and that he imagined he heard the voice of the Virgin Mary, who commanded him to speak against the Protestants. In fact, D’Espremenil exclaimed, as he displayed to his colleagues an image of Christ, “Will you crucify the Saviour again?” This oratorical incident was out of season, and after addressing some representations to Louis XVI., the Parliament registered the Edict of Toleration.
All the churches laboured from this moment to reconstitute themselves upon the bases of the ancient discipline: and we may convince ourselves that Protestantism had preserved a strong hold in the north as well as in the south, and that the blasts of the storm, however they might have bent it to the earth, had neither broken, nor uprooted it.
The last consideration that forces itself upon us, is not the least important. The Reformed people of France had suffered more and longer than any others in the world. From 1660 to 1787 they had been deprived of all favours, excluded from all employments, fettered in every liberal career, expelled from the corporations of arts and trades, and violently driven back in agriculture and commerce. At the Revocation, France lost its most illustrious men, the most opulent, the most industrious, and the most energetic and active [of its people]; the rest, overburdened with garrisoned soldiers, crushed with taxes and fines, chased to the woods and mountains, without schools, without legitimate family, without assured or certain inheritance, without civil rights, had been treated like a race of Pariahs; and yet, wonderful to behold! astonishing to relate! it was found in 1787 that the Reformed people of France had lost nothing either in intellectual and moral vigour, or in industrial power. Far from sinking into degradation, like the Irish under a régime incomparably less oppressive, it had not only maintained itself on a level with the Roman Catholic population, but had, in the main, attained a loftier step in the social scale, and possessed a more extensive and a higher degree of intelligence and instruction. This fact, which is beyond all serious doubt, offers one of the grandest spectacles in the history of mankind.
BOOK V.
FROM THE EDICT OF TOLERATION TO THE PRESENT TIME.
(1787-1851.)
I.
This division of our history will be shorter than its predecessors. The period it embraces is not extensive; and it comprises no memorable events, or great successes and calamities; and it is more remarkable for ideas than for facts. But the recital of facts, not the discussion of ideas, is the object of our labours, and we will follow this plan to the end with the greater fidelity, in that we are nearer to the present generation. We have no desire to exchange the pen of the historian for that of the polemic.
This will explain the brevity of certain details, and even the absence of certain subjects, which perhaps excited, in their day, the most considerable interest. We omit them neither out of forgetfulness nor indifference, but from respect for our duty. It would be inconvenient in many ways, to eulogize or blame men still living, or to take part in questions yet under debate. This is a task that will be better accomplished hereafter.[134]