In the last sitting of the Estates the Abbot of Bois Aubry, secretary of the Clergy in the preparation of their cahier, strongly condemned the use of force in religious matters. “The conscience,” he said, “suffers no one to command it but reason; and therefore to desire in our days to deprive the followers of the pretended Reformed religion of the exercise of their reason can produce nothing but evil. It would be driving them to atheism;--a thing which every good Catholic should hold in horror and execration.... It is only by means of a Council that we can remedy the evil of religious diversity now among us, and not by the sword or the gibbet. Nine royal edicts were issued during the former reigns, and the courts of Parliament have published decrees without number, in order to abolish this so-called Reformed religion, by the punishment of fire and other severe pains and penalties. They omitted nothing to prevent its growth, and did not succeed. Our Holy Father (it is said) will never consent to permit the exercise of their religion; but what answer would he make if any one should ask him why he allows the Jews the exercise of their religion at Rome and Avignon, and in all the States of the Church? Would he say that the religion of the Jews, who do not believe in Christ, is better than the religion of those who do believe in him?” The Estates separated without settling any thing: they did nothing toward reconciling the two religious parties or relieving the finances of the kingdom. They called for the redress of many grievances; and when the court would have been willing to concede a few reforms in exchange for pecuniary supplies, the Estates said that their instructions, which they could not exceed, gave them no power or authority to raise money. They thus virtually threw away “the keys of the purse”--the most potent guarantee of good government. It was a fatal mistake, but it does not appear that the court observed it any more than the Estates. The government saw only that the States-General was a body too numerous for the dispatch of business, and it was agreed that the provincial Estates, grouped into thirteen assemblies, should each elect three deputies, and that the thirty-nine thus returned should meet in the following August. The bishops were also convoked to this assembly, and a great number of them actually obeyed the summons.