Cardinal Consalvi discovered in the article thus worded two fatal defects: firstly, it tended to enslave the Church by placing her at the mercy of the civil power; and secondly, it implied on the part of the Church a sanction of the principle which would serve to legalise such enslavement. For many years, court lawyers had spoken but too plainly concerning the supposed right of the crown to regulate external worship; and so far had this right been extended in practice, that the Church found herself almost, or even altogether, the slave of the civil power. "I had good reason, therefore", says the Cardinal, "to entertain a sovereign dread of that indefinite and elastic phrase 'regard being had to' (_en se conformant_)". Besides, many things pointed to the probability that in virtue of such a convention signed by the Holy See, the police, or rather the government, would interfere in everything, and submit everything to its own will and pleasure, without the Church being able to object, her liberty being tied up by the expression in the treaty. No doubt the Church frequently finds herself in such circumstances, as lead her to tolerate _de facto_ violations of her rights and laws, such toleration being recommended either by prudence, or by charity, or by lack of power, or by other just motives. But she never can authorize by a solemn engagement the principle from which such violations spring. Whilst fully decided never to accept at any risk an article so fraught with mischief to the Church, Consalvi was too loyal and too honest to deny the force of some of the arguments brought into the field by the French commissioners. Hence he proposed various expedients by help of which the dreaded dangers to the public peace might be turned away. One of these expedients was a Papal Bull to the French clergy, commanding them to abstain for some time from certain public ceremonies in places where those hostile to Catholicism were numerous or intolerant; another was, to insert an additional article limiting the duration of the proposed exception, and determining the cases in which the police might interfere: but all was in vain; the government obstinately clung to its idea. The Cardinal tells us that he would have preferred to omit all mention of the right to publicity of worship, and thus cut the knot it was so troublesome to unravel; but his orders from Rome to include that point were too decided, and he was not allowed to send a courier to solicit fresh instructions from the Holy Father on the subject. He felt, therefore, that, even at the cost of a rupture between the two contending parties, he was bound by his most solemn and sacred duty to refuse his sanction to the obnoxious proposition.