The articles which they objected to were those which guaranteed to all religious denominations of Christians perfect liberty of conscience, freedom of worship, an equality of civil rights and indiscriminate eligibility to all public employments.[36] To swear to the observance of such a law, the prelates declared to be neither more nor less than to exact equal protection for error as for truth,--and to countenance the admission to places of honour and trust, without distinction of religion, was merely sanctioning, by anticipation, measures that might hereafter be taken for permitting the interference of protestants in the affairs of the catholic community. The words of the Constitution established the unlimited exercise of public worship, “unless where it gave rise to any public disturbance,” _lorsqu’il a été l’occasion d’un trouble_; “but the bishops protested, that to give a power to the government to interfere under any limitation, was to submit the church to the authority of its enemies; and that _to swear obedience to any constitution which presumed the Catholic Church to be subject to the temporal law was manifestly to subscribe to its humiliation_.”[37] “To ascribe,” they said, “to a sovereign of a different faith, _a right of interference in the regulation of national education_ would be to hand over public instruction to the secular power, and would exhibit a shameful betrayal of the dearest interests of the church. There are other articles of the Constitution,” continues the manifesto, “which no true child of the Catholic Church can ever undertake, by a solemn oath, to observe or to support, and _above all others that which establishes_ THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS!” This singular document bore the signatures of the Prince Maurice de Broglie, Bishop of Ghent, Charles Francis Joseph Pisani de la Gaude, Bishop of Namur, François Joseph, Bishop of Tournai, and of J. Forgeur and J. A. Barrett, the Vicars-General of Malines and Liege. I have preserved it and the memorial to the Congress of Vienna, as the most remarkable denunciations against liberty of conscience that modern times have produced, and a singular evidence of how little influence the example, or the intimate association of twenty years with the liberalism of France, was capable of producing on the spirit and genius of the church of Rome.