f public
worship in our realm."

Opinion, however, moved very fast in those days. The Declaration of
Rights of 1789 overthrew the barriers which debarred the admission of
Protestants to public offices. On the question of tolerance, Rabaut
Saint-Etienne, son of Paul Rabaut, who sat in the National Assembly
for Nismes, insisted on the freedom of the Protestants to worship God
after their accustomed forms. He said he represented a constituency of
360,000, of whom 120,000 were Protestants. The penal laws against the
worship of the Reformed, he said, had never been formally abolished.
He claimed the rights of Frenchmen for two millions of useful
citizens. It was not toleration he asked for, _it was liberty_.

"Toleration!" he exclaimed; "sufferance! pardon! clemency! ideas
supremely unjust towards the Protestants, so long as it is true that
difference of religion, that difference of opinion, is not a crime!
Toleration! I demand that toleration should be proscribed in its turn,
and deemed an iniquitous word, dealing with us as citizens worthy of
pity, as criminals to whom pardon is to be granted!"[84]

[Footnote 84: "History of the Protestants of France," by G.
de Felice, book v. sect. i.]

The motion before the House was adopted with a modification, and all
Frenchmen, without distinction of religious opinions, were declared
admissible to all offices and employments. Four months later, on the
15th March, 1790, Rabaut Saint-Etienne himself, son of the long
proscribed pastor of the Desert, was nominated President of the
Constituent Assembly, succeeding to the chair of the Abbe Montesquieu.

He did not, however, occupy the position long. In the struggles of the
Convention he took part with the Girondists, and refused to vote for
the death of Louis XVI. He maintained an obstinate struggle against
the violence of the Mountain. His arrest was decreed; he was dragged
before the revolutionary tribunal, and condemned to be executed within
twenty-four hours.

The horrors of the French Revolution hide the doings of Protestantism
and Catholicism alike for several years, until Buonaparte came into
power. He recognised Catholicism as the established religion, and paid
for the maintenance of the bishops and priests. He also protected
Protestantism, the members of which were entitled to all the benefits
secured to the other Christian communions, "with the exception of
pecuniary subvention."

The comparative liberty