The mass of deputies were unwilling to recognise the Catholic as the national religion, lest by so doing they should enable the Church the more readily to regain ascendency. A compromise was arrived at. The Convention declared that the public exercise of all forms of worship was permissible, but that henceforth the State would provide neither buildings nor funds for any religious body. Small pensions, however, varying from 35_l._ to 52_l._, which under the Terror had been accorded to bishops and priests who had resigned their offices were granted to the whole body of the Constitutional clergy. Further, various restrictions were laid on the public exercise of religion. No ceremonies might be performed outside the building set apart for worship, whether in streets, burial grounds, hospitals, or prisons. Ecclesiastics might not wear a special dress out of doors, and even the ringing of bells was prohibited (February 22). ♦The White Terror.♦ Though their position was far more precarious--for none of the laws against them had been repealed--nonjurors, as well as the Constitutional clergy, resumed their functions. With the connivance of municipal bodies they had come in numbers out of their hiding-places, or had returned to France from abroad. In the departments of the south-east, where the Royalists had always possessed a strong following, emigrants of all descriptions readily made their way back; and here the opponents of the Republic, instigated by a desire for vengeance or merely by party spirit, commenced a reaction stained by crimes as atrocious as any committed during the course of the revolution. Young men belonging to the upper and middle classes were organised in bands bearing the name of companies of Jesus and companies of the Sun, and first at Lyons, then at Aix, Toulon, Marseilles, and other towns, they broke into the prisons and murdered their inmates without distinction of age or sex. Besides the Terrorist and the Jacobin, neither the Republican nor the purchaser of State lands was safe from their knives; and in the country numerous isolated murders were committed. This lawless and brutal movement, called the White Terror in distinction to the Red Terror preceding Thermidor 9, was suffered for weeks to run its course unchecked, and counted its victims by many hundreds, spreading over the whole of Provence, besides the departments of Rhône, Gard, Loire, Ain, and Jura. ♦Insurrection of Prairial.♦