France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799; France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799 -- Causes
So much for the first year of the schism, May 1790 to May 1791. The
second year is but an intensification of the process apparent in the
first.
It opens with the King’s flight in June 1791: that is, with the first
open act of enmity taken against the authority of the National
Parliament since, two years before, the National Parliament had declared
itself supreme. Already the Court had been generally identified with the
resistance of the clergy, and a particular example of this had appeared
in the opinion that the King’s attempted journey to St. Cloud in April
had been prompted by a desire to have communion at the hands of a
non-juring priest.[8] When, therefore, the King fled, though his flight
had nothing whatsoever to do with the clerical quarrel, it was
associated in men’s minds with the clerical quarrel through his attempt
to leave Paris in April and from a long association of the Court with
the clerical resistance. The outburst of anti-monarchical feeling which
followed the flight was at the same time an outburst of anti-clerical
feeling; but the clergy were everywhere and could be attacked
everywhere. The Declaration of Pillnitz, which the nation very rightly
interpreted as the beginning of an armed European advance against the
French democracy, was felt to be a threat not only in favour of the King
but in favour also of the rebellious ecclesiastics.
And so forth. The uneasy approach of war throughout that autumn and
winter of 1791-92, the peculiar transformation of the French
temperament which war or its approach invariably produces--a sort of
constructive exaltation and creative passion--began to turn a great part
of its energy or fury against the very persons of the orthodox priests.
The new Parliament, the “Legislative” as it was called, had not been
sitting two months when it passed, upon November 29, 1791, the decree
that non-juring priests should be deprived of their stipend. And here
again we must note the curious lack of adjustment between law and fact
in all this clerical quarrel! For more than a year public money had been
paid to men who, under the law, should not during the whole of that year
have touched any salary! Yet, as in the case of the oath, special action
was necessary, and moreover the Parliament added to this tardy and
logical consequence of the law a declaration that those who had not so
taken the oath within eight days of their decree should be rendered
“suspect.”
The word “suspect” is significant. The Parliament even now could not
act, at least it could not act without the King; and this word
“suspect,” which carried no material consequences with it, was one that
might cover a threat of things worse than regular and legal punishment.
It was like the mark that some power not authorised or legal makes upon
the door of those whom that power has singled out for massacre in some
city.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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