The record of persecution during the first five years of the Kulturkampf is an appalling arraignment of its perpetrators. Five bishops imprisoned, and all bishops fined and insulted, fourteen hundred priests incarcerated, all the seminaries closed, it seemed little short of miraculous that religion survived the merciless onslaught. Yet the end had not arrived. On December 4, 1874, Bismarck suppressed the embassy to the Vatican, an act which moved the Catholic people to send to the Sovereign Pontiff an address signed by all the faithful of the Empire. It was in answer to this address that Pius IX. published that eloquent encyclical of February 5, 1875. Strange to say, however, all the previous legislation had not begotten the results that were expected. The clergy like the episcopate resisted the anti-religious laws, preferring exile, imprisonment and fines to defection, however tempting. The faithful stood loyally by their afflicted pastors, refusing with one mind the ministrations of ecclesiastics sent to them by governmental orders. The Chancellor, therefore, was driven to a final resort to effect his purpose of extinguishing Catholic faith in Germany. Accordingly a new series of laws was elaborated, entitled the Sperrgesetz, or laws suppressing the payments made to ecclesiastics by the State. One cannot rightly term these payments "salaries," a word which indicates no other claim than remuneration for services performed. The amounts annually payed to the Church by the State were moneys which the State owed to the Church since the beginning of the century on account of the wholesale confiscation of ecclesiastical properties and revenues following upon the Treaty of Luneville in 1803. As such they had been formally recognized, and hence their payment to the officials of the Church was a matter of justice which the State could not afford to refuse without incurring the stigma of robbery. This, however, was the object of the new laws which were as follows: Article 1. Beginning from the day on which the present law shall be published, the payment of all that the Government has hitherto allotted to dioceses, to institutions and to ecclesiastics who belong to such dioceses shall be suppressed. The same measure shall be extended to such ecclesiastical funds as the State administers permanently. Art. 2. The ecclesiastical salaries shall be re-established whenever the bishop, or the diocesan administrator shall pledge himself in writing to observe the laws of the State. Art. 3. In the dioceses of Posen-Gnesen and Paderborn the ecclesiastical salaries shall be re-established as soon as a new bishop shall be appointed in concert with the Government.