The execution of this plan, which organized the sovereignty of the people, which enabled all citizens to concur in the election of their magistrates, and entrusted them with their own administration, and distributed them into a machinery which, by permitting the whole state to move, preserved a correspondence between its parts, and prevented their isolation, excited the discontent of some provinces. The states of Languedoc and Brittany protested against the new division of the kingdom, and on their side the parliaments of Metz, Rouen, Bordeaux, and Toulouse rose against the operations of the assembly which suppressed the Chambres de Vacations, abolished the orders, and declared the commissions of the states incompetent. The partisans of the ancient régime employed every means to disturb its progress; the nobility excited the provinces, the parliaments took resolutions, the clergy issued mandates, and writers took advantage of the liberty of the press to attack the revolution. Its two principal enemies were the nobles and the bishops. Parliament, having no root in the nation, only formed a magistracy, whose attacks were prevented by destroying the magistracy itself, whereas the nobility and the clergy had means of action which survived the influence of the body. The misfortunes of these two classes were caused by themselves. After harassing the revolution in the assembly, they afterwards attacked it with open force-- the clergy, by internal insurrections--the nobility, by arming Europe against it. They had great expectations from anarchy, which, it is true, caused France many evils, but which was far from rendering their own position better. Let us now see how the hostilities of the clergy were brought on; for this purpose we must go back a little.