The new constitution of the clergy was simplicity itself. Monasteries, chapters, canons, dioceses, all impediments to uniformity, were abolished. One bishop was appointed for each department, and one priest for every parish. Incomes, ranging from about fifty thousand francs for the wealthiest bishops to about six thousand francs for the poorest priests--incomes in themselves thoroughly equitable and a marked improvement upon the mingled poverty and extravagance of the older system--were voted for the maintenance of the new hierarchy. The fondness of the Assembly for deliberative bodies was satisfied by giving the bishops ecclesiastical councils to advise them, and its attachment to elective principles was shown by the astonishing decree, which declared that in future both bishops and priests were to be elected by the votes of their flocks. It was inevitable that so sweeping a change should excite opposition and result in failure. Even on the financial side, which on paper showed a very large saving to the State, difficulties speedily arose. The Assembly, fully intending to act fairly, undertook to pension the numerous ecclesiastics whose interests suffered vitally from the reforms. But money was scarce, and the charges undertaken by the State were very heavy. The dispossessed ecclesiastics, the monks and nuns, soon began to feel the meaning of the change, and their history soon began to exhibit many pitiful cases of want and distress. With the disestablishment of the monastic foundations, the institutions which they had maintained declined, and their schools and asylums languished. The destruction of so ancient and widespread a system could not, however necessary it might be, be carried through, in a time of revolution, without a good deal of suffering and injustice. But the methods of the Assembly aggravated the violence of the change. They had the power, and probably the right, to disestablish and to disendow the old Church. But they had neither the right nor the power to force men's consciences to accept their substitute for it, whether they would or not. Moreover, they did not understand that the new constitution of the clergy was absolutely repugnant to the spirit of Roman Catholicism, and involved ideas which that spirit could not possibly accept. They believed that all authority and government ought to begin with the people, to come from below; and in accordance with that view they framed the new system of their Church. But if there was one principle which the Roman Church held dear, and which it had clung to even more closely than to its dogmas, ever since it established its ascendency in Europe, it was the principle that all authority in the Church proceeded from above. To every faithful Catholic the Pope held a spiritual power derived from Heaven; without the Pope's consent no share of that spiritual power could pass to bishop or to priest; and without such sanctions and