ies, still protect an
order, and four or five provinces; but this protection extends only
to the order itself or to the province, and, if it protects a special
interest it is commonly at the expense of the general interest.

II. The Clergy

Assemblies of the clergy.--They serve only ecclesiastical
interests.--The clergy exempted from taxation.--Solicitation
of its agents.--Its zeal against the Protestants.

Let us observe the most vigorous and the best-rooted of these bodies,
the assembly of the clergy. It meets every five years, and, during the
interval, two agents, selected by it, watch over the interests of the
order. Convoked by the government, subject to its guidance, retained or
dismissed when necessary, always in its hands, used by it for political
ends, it nevertheless continues to be a refuge for the clergy, which it
represents. But it is an asylum solely for that body, and, in the series
of transactions by which it defends itself against fiscal demands,
it eases its own shoulders of the load only to make it heavier on the
shoulders of others. We have seen how its diplomacy saved clerical
immunities, how it bought off the body from the poll-tax and the
vingtiemes, how it converted its portion of taxation into a "free gift,"
how this gift is annually applied to refunding the capital which it has
borrowed to obtain this exemption, by which delicate art it succeeds,
not only in not contributing to the treasury, but in withdrawing from
it every year about 1,500,000 livres, all of which is so much the better
for the church but so much the worse for the people. Now run through
the file of folios in which from one period of five years to another
the reports of its agents follow each other,--so many clever men thus
preparing themselves for the highest positions in the church, the abbes
de Boisgelin, de Perigord, de Barral, de Montesquiou; at each moment,
owing to their solicitations with judges and the council, owing to the
authority which the discontent of the powerful order felt to be behind
them gives to their complaints, some ecclesiastic matter is decided in
an ecclesiastical sense; so feudal right is maintained in favor of a
chapter or of a bishop; some public demand is thrown out.[1401] In 1781,
notwithstanding decision of the Parliament of Rennes, the canons of St.
Malo are sustained in their monopoly of the district baking oven.
This is to the detriment of the bakers who prefer to bake a