ic and vague, but verified and defined; for
he is a calculator as close as he is profound, and deals only with
positive facts.

To restore tranquillity, many novel measures are essential. And first,
the political and administrative concentration just decreed, a
centralisation of all powers in one hand, local powers conferred by the
central power, and this supreme power in the hands of a resolute chief
equal in intelligence to his high position; next, a regularly paid army,
carefully equipped, properly clothed, and fed, strictly disciplined, and
therefore obedient and able to do its duty without wavering or
faltering, like any other instrument of precision; an active police
force and _gendarmerie_ held in check; administrators independent of
those under their jurisdiction--all appointed, maintained, watched and
restrained from above, as impartial as possible, sufficiently competent,
and, in their official spheres, capable functionaries; finally, freedom
of worship, and, accordingly, a treaty with Rome and the restoration of
the Catholic Church--that is to say, a legal recognition of the orthodox
hierarchy, and of the only clergy which the faithful may accept as
legitimate--in other words, the institution of bishops by the Pope, and
of priests by the bishops. This done, the rest is easily accomplished.

The main thing now is to dress the severe wounds the revolution has
made--which are still bleeding--with as little torture as possible, for
it has cut down to the quick; and its amputations, whether foolish or
outrageous, have left sharp pains or mute suffering in the social
organism.

Above all, religion must be restored. Before 1789, the ignorant or
indifferent Catholic, the peasant at his plough, the mechanic at his
work-bench, the good wife attending to her household, were unconscious
of the innermost part of religion; thanks to the revolution, they have
acquired the sentiment of it, and even the physical sensation. It is the
prohibition of the mass which has led them to comprehend its importance;
it is the revolutionary government which has transformed them into
theologians.

From the year IV. (1795) the orthodox priests have again recovered their
place and ascendancy in the peasant's soul which the creed assigns to
them; they have again become the citizen's serviceable guides, his
accepted directors, the only warranted interpreters of Christian truth,
the only authorised dispensers and ministers of divine grace.