rcely anything to the tax-payer; at any rate, they cost
nothing to the actual, existing tax-payer not even the tithes, for,
established many centuries ago, the tithes were a tax on the soil, not
on the owner in possession, nor on the farmer who tilled the ground, who
has purchased or hired it with this tax deducted. In any case, the real
property of the Church belonged to it, without prejudice to anybody,
through the strongest legal and most legitimate of property titles,
the last will and testament of thousands of the dead, its founders and
benefactors. All is taken from it, even the houses of prayer which,
in their use, disposition and architecture, were, in the most manifest
manner, Christian works and ecclesiastical objects, 38,000 parsonages,
4000 convents, over 40,000 parochial churches, cathedrals and chapels.
Every morning, the man or woman of the people, in whom the need of
worship has revived, passes in front of one of these buildings robbed of
its cult; these declare aloud to them through their form and name what
they have been and what they should be to-day. This voice is heard
by incredulous philosophers and former Conventionalists;[3184] all
Catholics hear it, and out of thirty-five millions of Frenchmen,[3185]
thirty-two millions are Catholics.

VII. The Confiscated Property.

Reasons for the concordat.--Napoleon's economical
organization of the Church institution.--A good bargainer.
--Compromise with the old state of things.

How withstand such a just complaint, the universal complaint of the
destitute, of relatives, and of believers?--The fundamental difficulty
reappears, the nearly insurmountable dilemma into which the Revolution
has plunged every steady government, that is to say the lasting effect
of revolutionary confiscations and the conflict which sets two rights to
the same property against each other, the right of the despoiled owner
and the right of the owner in possession. This time, again the fault is
on the side of the State, which has converted itself from a policeman
into a brigand and violently appropriated to itself the fortune of the
hospitals, schools, and churches; the State must return this in money or
in kind. In kind, it is no longer able; everything has passed out of
its hands; it has alienated what it could, and now holds on only to the
leavings. In money, nothing more can be done; it is itself ruined,
has just become bankrupt, lives on expedients from day