‘Then,’ said the curé, ‘I appeal to the country against ecclesiastical tyranny. You spiritual lords, with your cringing subserviency to the crown, with your utter worldliness, with your obstructiveness to all religious movement in your dioceses, with your tenacious adherence to abuses, and with your arbitrary despotic treatment of your clergy, have taught us to hate the name of Establishment; to cry to God and the people to destroy a monstrous, odious sham, and restore to the Church its primitive independence. I wait the assembly of the States-general, at which the clergy shall have a voice; and then, my Lord, then I shall speak, and you _shall_ hear me.’ He turned abruptly on his heel, and left the room. CHAPTER XV. By an order dated January 24th, 1789, the king required that the desires and reclamations of all his subjects should be transmitted to him. Every parish was to draw up a statement of its grievances and its wishes, which was to be handed into the assembly of the secondary bailiwick, by it to be fused into one which was forwarded to the grand bailiwick. The secondary bailiwicks of Beaumont-le-Royer, Breteuil, Conches, Ezy-Nonancourt, Orbec, and Bernay, belonged to the grand bailiwick of Évreux. The nobility and the clergy drew up their papers separately. Another operation, not less important than the composition of these _cahiers_, was to be simultaneously accomplished. This was the election of delegates. According to the edict of the 24th January, the ancient distinction of electors and deputies into three orders, the clergy, the nobility, and the third estate, was maintained. These orders had a common electoral circumscription, the grand bailiwick. The mode of election in the two first orders was made the same, but it was different in the third. The nomination of deputies for the clergy was to be made directly by the bishops, abbés, canons, and other beneficed clergy in the grand bailiwick. The curés, who subsisted on the _portion congrue_, in another word, nearly all the clergy in country parishes, could only vote in person if their parish were within two leagues of the town in which was held the assembly, unless they had a curate to take their place during their absence, and provide for the religious requirements of the people. The election was equally direct for the deputies of the nobility. The nobles possessing fiefs within the jurisdiction of the grand bailiff, might appear by representatives, but all others were required to appear in person.