“Such rigour might perchance cost an effusion of blood?  I know it!  But if you do not make use of it, will not more blood flow?  Is not civil war a still greater misfortune?  Cut off the gangrened member to save the whole frame.[10] Indulgence is the snare into which you are tempted.  You will find yourselves abandoned by the nation for not having dared to sustain, nor known how to defend, it.  Your enemies will hate you no less.  Your friends will lose confidence in you.  The law is my God:  I have no other—­the public good, that is my worship!  You have already struck the emigrants—­again a decree against the refractory priests, and you will have gained over ten millions of arms!  My decree would be comprised in two words:  compel every Frenchman, priest or not, to take the civil oath, and ordain that every man who will not sign shall be deprived of all salary or pension.  Sound policy would decree that every one who does not sign the contract should leave the kingdom.  What proofs against the priest do we require?  If there be but a complaint lodged against the priest by the citizen with whom he lives, let him be at once expelled!  As to those against whom the penal code shall pronounce punishment more severe than exile, there is but one sentence left:  Death!!”

X.

This oration, which pushed patriotism even to impiety, and made of the public safety an implacable deity, to which even the innocent were to be sacrificed, excited a frantic enthusiasm in the ranks of the Girondist party, a bitter indignation amongst the moderate party.  “To propose the printing of such a speech,” said Lecos, a constitutional bishop, “is to propose the printing of a code of atheism.  It is impossible that a society can exist, if it have not an immutable morality derived from the idea of a God.”  Derisive sneers and murmurings hailed this religious protest.  The decree against the priests, presented by Francois de Neufchateau, and adopted by the legislative committee, was couched in these terms:—­“Every ecclesiastic not taking the oaths is required to present himself before the expiration of the week at his municipality, and there take the civil oath.

“Those who shall refuse are not entitled in future to receive any allowance or pension from the public treasury.

“Every year there shall be an aggregate made of those pensions which the priests have forfeited, and this sum shall be divided amongst the eighty-three departments, to be employed in charitable works, and in giving succour to the indigent.

“These priests shall be, moreover, from their simple refusal of the oath, reputed as suspected of rebellion and specially surveilles.

“They may in consequence thereof be sent from their domicile, and another be assigned to them.

“If they refuse to change their domicile when called upon to do so, they shall be imprisoned.