IV. The Clergy.
Where recruited. - Professional inducements. - Independence of
ecclesiastics. - Their substantial merits. - Their theoretical and
practical information. - Their distribution over the territory. -
Utility of their office. - Their conduct in 1790-1800. - Their
courage, their capacity for self-sacrifice.
Likewise in the Church where nearly all its staff, the whole of the
lower and middle-class clergy, cur?s, vicars, canons and collegiate
chaplains, teachers or directors of schools, colleges and seminaries,
more than sixty-five thousand ecclesiastics, formed a healthy, well
organized body, worthily fulfilling its duties.
"I do not know," says de Tocqueville,[67] "all in all, and
notwithstanding the vices of some of its members, if there ever was in
the world a more remarkable clergy than the Catholic clergy of France
when the Revolution took them by surprise, more enlightened, more
national, less entrenched behind their private virtues, better endowed
with public virtues, and, at the same time, more strong in the faith.
. . . I began the study of the old social system full of prejudices
against them; I finish it full of respect for them.
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