But the duplicity and falsehood of Louis, in its incidents, brought on the first blow against property; and with the attack on property, all the crimes and calamities, all the misery, poverty, and long list of woes of the Revolution commenced. Then society began to disintegrate; then France began to disbone; it never ended until morality, Christianity, civilization, were crushed to a jelly. Talleyrand was the leader in this raid, and on his head rests the responsibility. He was the great oracle on financial topics in the National Assembly; he was the member looked up to for the solution of the financial problem to save the nation from ruin; he had accepted the position almost thrust upon him; and his reputation was at stake in surmounting the crisis. With success he could compel the king to invite him into the ministry. Mirabeau admitted this in a letter to a friend, and a portfolio in the ministry was the goal of Talleyrand's ambition. All eyes were, therefore, turned to the Bishop of Autun, and the eyes of the bishop turned to the landed property of the church, from whence the wants of the treasury could be immediately and with facility supplied. He was willing to propose the double sacrilege on religion and on society; for it was no less an outrage on civilization or civil government than it was on Christianity, which is the foundation of good government. The coolness with which Sir Henry Bulwer states this desecration can only be compared with the absurdity in the line of argument with which Talleyrand advocated the measure. If some Bishop Colenso in the House of Lords should propose the seizure and confiscation of the wealth of the Anglican Establishment, the question would appear in a different aspect to the British diplomatist. He would view it with horror. {98} In either case, however, the measure would be infamous. Governments are instituted to protect property, not to squander it; and the only difference between that which is held by an individual for himself and that which is held in trust for the benefit of others, is in the circumstance that whatever is in trust is, in the public estimation, more sacred, because it is preserved for the welfare of the poor, the weak, the ignorant or infirm of mind, who cannot provide for themselves; just as the state extends a more paternal care over the property of infants, idiots, or orphans, than over the interests of men and women of full growth and sound mind. If a call must be made in a sudden exigency for funds, what government, not demented, would spare the mercantile houses of the rich, to sequestrate and spoliate the hospitals for the helpless?