The new laws abolished articles fifteen, sixteen and eighteen of the Prussian Constitution, which guaranteed the autonomy of the different forms of worship; they bestowed on the State the nomination to ecclesiastical functions, and went so far as to forbid bishops the use of their right to declare apostates excluded from the Catholic communion. They suppressed the subsidies and allowances which the State, until that time, paid to the diocesan establishments and the clergy generally, notwithstanding that such subsidies were not gratuitously bestowed by the government, but were nothing else than, as in France and Belgium, the restitution, in part, of the debt due by the State to the Church. It was provided, however, that such members of the clergy as should make their submission should at once have their salaries restored. By a refinement of cruelty, all collections and subscriptions, whether public or private, for the requirements of public worship and the support of the clergy were forbidden, and elective lay commissions were charged with the management of all ecclesiastical property. Finally, all religious orders, as well of men as of women, were suppressed, with the exception, and that provisionally only, of such as were devoted to the care of the sick. If Chancellor Bismarck really believed, at any time, that the Catholic clergy were without faith and conscience, ready to submit to any terms the State might impose, in order to save their incomes and the institutions of the Church, he must have been greatly surprised when he found them all, without exception, prepared to welcome poverty, imprisonment and exile, rather than abandon the inalienable rights of conscience. On the 26th May, 1873, the Bishops of Prussia signed a collective declaration, in which they stated, with regret, that it was impossible for them to obey. “The Church,” said they, “cannot acknowledge the heathen state principle, according to which the laws of the State are the source of all right, and the Church possesses only such rights as it pleases the State to grant. By so doing, it would deny its own Divine origin, and would make Christianity wholly dependent on the arbitrary will of men.” In regard to temporal matters connected with the Church they could afford to be less strict: and so they authorized their people to take part in the election of the new lay managers of the properties of the churches. This wise policy was attended with the most happy results. The chancellor’s plans were everywhere completely marred. He had reckoned that the Catholics would abstain from voting, and so allow a “liberal” (infidel) minority, however small, to dispose of the churches and presbyteries.