Here was the mistake of the brilliant but unhappy De la Mennais. He called upon the church to cut herself loose from her entangling alliance with the state, and throw herself back on the people; which would have been not bad counsel, if the people were hostile to her only because they supposed her allied with despotic governments, or if they were less hostile to her than the governments themselves. But such is not the fact at present. The people are to-day controlled by Catholics who care little for any world but the present, by Protestants, rationalists, Jews, infidels, and humanitarians; and to act on the Lamennaisian counsel would seem very much like abandoning weak, timid, and too exacting friends, to throw one's self into the arms of powerful and implacable enemies. When, in the beginning of his reign, the holy father adopted some popular measures, he was universally applauded, but he did not win those who applauded him to the church; and his measures were applauded by the outside world only because believed to be such as would tend to undermine his own authority, and pave the way for the downfall of Catholicity. The movement party applauded, because they thought they could use him as an instrument for the destruction of the church. In the French Revolution of February, 1848, originating in deep-seated and inveterate hostility to the church, the ready acceptance of the republic, the next day after its proclamation, by the French bishops and clergy, did not for a moment conciliate the hostility in which the revolution had its origin. They were applauded indeed, but only in the hope of making use of them to democratize, or secularize, and therefore to destroy the church as the authoritative representative of the spiritual order. The bishops and priests, all but a very small minority, showed that they understood and appreciated the applause they received, by abandoning the revolution at the earliest practicable moment, and lending their support to the movement for the Establishment of imperialism; for they felt that they could more safely rely on the emperor than on the republic.