The clergy, sympathizing, as is the case with every national clergy, with the sentiments of their age and nation in all things not strictly of faith, had little disposition to labor to keep alive the spirit of freedom in the hearts of the people, and would not have been permitted to do it, even if they had been so disposed. Schools were sustained, but, affected by the prevailing despotism, education declined; free thought was prohibited; and it is hard to find a literature tamer, less original and living, than that of Catholic Europe all through the eighteenth century, down almost to our own times. As the Catholic religion was professedly patronized by the sovereigns, the Church, in superficial minds, seemed to sanction the prevailing Cæsarism. The clergy, because they preached peace, and thought to fulfil their mission without disturbing the State, came, for the first time in history, to be regarded as the chief supporters of the despot. They who retained some reminiscences of the liberties once enjoyed by Catholic Europe, and the noble principles of freedom, asserted in the Middle Ages by the monks in their cells, and the most eminent Doctors of the Church from their chairs, became alienated from Catholicity in proportion as they cherished the spirit of resistance, and, unhappily, imbibed the fatal conviction that to overthrow the despot's throne they must break down the altar. Rightly interpreted, the old French Revolution, although bitterly anti-Catholic and infidel, was not so much hatred of religion, and impatience of her salutary restraints, as the indignant uprising of a misgoverned people against a civil despotism that affected injuriously all orders, ranks and conditions of society. The sovereigns had taken good care that an attack on them should involve an attack on religion, and to have it deeply impressed on their subjects that resistance to them was rebellion against God. The priest, who should have labored publicly to correct the issue made up by the sovereigns in accord with unbelievers, would have promoted sedition, and done more harm than good; besides, he would have been at once reduced to silence, in some one of the many ways despotism has usually at its command.