In revising the Charter, the Chamber of Deputies abrogated the 6th article, upon the religion of the state, and re-adopted the terms of the Concordat upon the religion of the majority of the French. In doing this, there was much less desire to give satisfaction to Protestantism than to the opinion excited against the usurpation of the clerical power. M. Dupin explained this very clearly in his report. “The expressions of the 6th article,” he said, “have awakened impudent pretensions to an exclusive domination, as much opposed to religion as to the freedom of conscience and the peace of the kingdom. A threefold interest demands the erasure of terms which, without adding anything to what religion will always possess of the holy and venerable in our eyes, had become the source of many errors, and, finally, caused the disgrace of the reigning family, and brought the state to the brink of ruin.”
Two months afterwards, M. Dupin, then procurator-general at the Court of Cassation, who has since maintained different opinions, demanded true conditions of religious liberty. The question was still the same; namely, whether it required the permission of the authorities or a simple preliminary declaration, before opening a new place of worship and forming regular assemblies of Protestants in communes, where none had ever before existed. It was the important question of a preventative or a repressive régime, of censorship or of liberty, of the arbitrary intervention of power in religious matters, or of the independence of believers.
M. Dupin also said, respecting the affair of the Protestants of Levergies (and his words are still worthy of quotation), “He who wills the end, wills the means. What avails a proclaimed liberty, if the means of its enjoyment be denied? What! The free exercise of worship is permitted, and at the same time there is a prohibition to exercise it in every place! The exercise is to be interdicted in the streets and public squares: that would shock other creeds. And when its exercise is asked for in any special edifice, it is forbidden! Such liberty is a mockery! What is the obligation thus imposed of obtaining permission to celebrate one’s worship, but tantamount to the preliminary censorship applied to the freedom of the press?... In the actual condition of our constitutional legislation, I can conceive that the administrative authority has a right to keep a watch upon the exercise of worship, as upon every other kind of assembly; a right to inquire into and punish offences arising out of this exercise, and by this very fact the utility of a preliminary declaration to prepare the authorities. But I can admit neither the peremptory right of refusal, nor the silence equivalent to this refusal, as a lawful means of preventing citizens from exercising their religious worship with full liberty. This liberty is not subject to preliminary authorization; it is not subordinated to optional permission any more for those, who are not Catholics, than for those who are so.” (October, 1830.)
The external condition of the French Reformation seemed therefore more favourable than it had ever been, and we may read in the Protestant journals of the day how full of hope they were. There were to be no longer any direct or indirect inequality between the two communions, or obstacles of any kind to the manifestation of the Reformed faith! There was thenceforth to be an end to the necessity of waiting about the antechamber of priest-led prefects to solicit their authorization in ecclesiastical matters, or about the office of a minister, governed by political calculations! The ill-will of a mayor or a royal procurator was not to be any longer sufficient to dissolve religious meetings, and the tribunals would not punish the prayers of a few peaceable men out-numbering the perilous figure of twenty persons, as if they were crimes! We shall soon see how completely their expectations were deceived.
Many Protestants thought that the occasion was propitious for demanding the alteration of the law of the 18th Germinal. It appeared to them that a government sprung from the triumph of liberal ideas could not, without self-contradiction, maintain a law which had been inspired by an excessive reaction against all liberty. Complaints and petitions to this effect were presented to the ministers of Louis Philippe; but they were thrown aside. If the popular origin of the government were a means, it was also an obstacle. The new power, conscious of its weakness and want of solidity, would not increase the difficulties of its position by meddling with the ecclesiastical questions, and it adopted as a rule of conduct in these matters, to make no change unless under absolute necessity.
Perhaps it would have been The government, therefore, refused to make the least change in the law. Whereupon another question presented itself. Leaving the organic articles intact, was it not possible to have deduced more liberal applications from them, and to have given a less dependent position to Protestantism? The intervention of the legislative bodies was not necessary in this case; the discussion might be carried on with closed doors; the consistories and the minister of public worship might arrange everything, and a simple royal ordinance would suffice. Several consistories insisted upon this point; pastoral conferences drew up programmes for the administration of the Reformed churches; the government itself nominated a commission to prepare the draft of the ordinance, and there was finally a prospect of something favourable to the Reformed. Expectation was again deceived. The new regulation drawn up by this commission, instead of extending liberty, seemed to restrict it to still narrower limits than before; and the minister of public worship encountered the most energetic opposition from the consistories, when he consulted them upon it. The government ceased to do any more, and the régime of 1802 remained in its entirety. In other respects, according to the genius of the middle classes, who directed public affairs at this time, the material, or pecuniary side of the situation of the Reformed churches, not only suffered no attack, but was sensibly ameliorated. The majority of the pastors received augmented allowances, new places were created, and funds for building places of worship and opening schools were granted with liberality. All this is mentioned with gratitude. Nothing was refused that money can accomplish for the development of a religious communion. It must also be said in honour of Louis Philippe’s government, that it never sought to mix itself up with the internal questions of the churches, when its intervention was not sought by the churches themselves. If it decreed the removal of some pastors, and did other acts which ought not to depend upon the decision of the civil power, it was unwillingly, and after long delays [that it did so]. Protestantism might have been much more free under this reign, if it had seriously striven to become so.