friend Gouron at Rochefort, and to settle with him at Cayenne, where lands would also be given him for his property in France. These particulars were related to me by a neighbour, whose son had for two years previous to this, been under Gouron's care, but who was now among those placed out by our government. The boy's present master, he said, was a man of a notoriously bad and immoral character; but he was intimidated, and weak enough to remain contented, preferring, no doubt, his personal safety to the future happiness of his child. In your country, you little comprehend what a valuable instrument terror has been in the hands of our rulers since the revolution, and how often fear has been mistaken abroad for affection and content.

All these minutie and petty vexations, but great oppressions of petty tyrants, you may easily guess, take up a great deal of time, and that, therefore, a minister of police, though the most powerful, is also the most occupied of his colleagues. So he certainly is, but last year, a new organization of this ministry was regulated by Buonaparte; and Fouché was allowed, as assistants, four counsellors of state, and an augmentation of sixty-four police commissaries. The French empire was then divided into four arrondissements, with regard to the general police; not including Paris and its vicinity, inspected by a prefect of police under the minister. Of the first of these arrondissements, the counsellor of state Real, is a kind of deputy minister; the counsellor of state Miot, is the same of the second; the counsellor of state Pelet de la Lozere, of the third; and the counsellor of state Dauchy, of the fourth. The secret police agents, formerly called spies, were also considerably increased.

LETTER LXVIII.

Paris, October 1805.

MY LORD,

BEFORE Buonaparte sat out for the Rhine, the Pope's Nuncio was, for the first time, publickly rebuked by him, in Madame Buonaparte's drawing-room, and ordered loudly to write to Rome, and tell his Holiness to think himself fortunate in continuing to govern the Ecclesiastical States, without interfering with the ecclesiastical arrangements that might be thought necessary or proper by the government in France.

Buonaparte's policy is to promote among the first dignitaries. of the Gallican Church, the brothers or relatives of his civil or military supporters. Cambaceres's brother is therefore an archbishop and cardinal, and one of Le Brun's, and two of Berthier's cousins are bishops. As, however, the relatives of these senators, ministers, or generals, have, like themselves, figured in many of the scandalous and blasphemous scenes of the Revolution, the Pope has sometimes hesitated about sanctioning their promotions. This was the case last summer, when General Dessoles's brother was transferred from the bishoprick of Digne to that of Chamberry, and Buonaparte nominated for his successor the brother of General Miollis, who was a curate of Brignolles, in the diocese of Aix. This curate had not only been one of the first to throw up his letters of priesthood at the Jacobin Club at Aix, but had also sacrilegiously denied the divinity of the Christian Religion, and proposed, in imitation of the Parisian atheists, the worship of a Goddess of Reason in a common prostitute with whom he lived. The notoriety of these abominations made even his parishioners at Brignolles unwilling to go to church, and to regard him as their pastor, though several of them had been imprisoned, fined, and even transported as fanatics, or as refractory.

During the negotiation with Cardinal Fesch last year, the Pope had been promised, among other things, that, for the future, his conscience should not be wounded by having presented to him for the prelacy any person but those of the purest morals of the French empire; and that all his objections should be attended to, in case of promotions; his scruples removed, or his refusal submitted to. When Cardinal Fesch demanded his Holiness's Bull for the curate Miollis, the Cardinal secretary of state Gonsalvi, showed no less than twenty acts of apostacy and blasphemy, which made him unworthy of such a dignity. To this was replied that, having obtained an indulgence in toto for what was past, he was a proper subject; above all, as he had the protection of the Emperor of the French. The Pope's Nuncio here then addressed himself to our minister of the ecclesiastical department, Portalis, who advised him not to speak to Buonaparte of a matter upon which his mind had been made up: he nevertheless demanded an audience, and it was in consequence of this request that he, in his turn, became acquainted with the new Imperial eti

quette, and new Imperial jargon towards the representative of sovereigns. On the same evening, the Nuncio expedited a courier to Rome, and I have heard to-day, that the nomination of Miollis is confirmed by the Pope.

From this relatively trifling occurrence, his Holiness might judge of the intention of our government, to adhere to its other engagements; but at Rome, as well as in most other continental capitals, the sovereign is the dupe of the perversity of his counsel lors and ministers, who are the tools, and not seldom the pensioners, of the Cabinet of St. Cloud.

But, in the kingdom of Italy, the parish and dioceses are, if possible, still worse served than in this country. Some of the bishops there, after having done duty in the national guards, worn the jacobin cap, and fought against their lawful Prince, now live in open adultery; and, from their intrigues, are the terror of all the married part of their flock. The Bishop of Pavia keeps the wife of a merchant, by whom he has two children; and, that the public may not be mistaken as to their real father, the merchant received a sum of money to establish himself at Brescia, and has not seen his wife for these two years past. General Gourion, who was last spring in Italy, has assured me that he read the advertisement of a curate for his concubine, who had eloped with another curate; and that the police minister at Milan openly licensed women to be the house-keepers of priests.

A grand vicar, Sarini, at Bologna, was in 1796, a friar, but relinquished then the convent for the tent, and exchanged the breviary for the musket. He married a nun of one cloister, from whom he procured a divorce in a month, to unite himself with an abbess of another, deserted by him in her turn, for the wife of an inn-keeper, who robbed and eloped from her husband.Last spring he returned to the bosom of the church; and by making our Empress a present of a valuable diamond cross, of which he had pillaged the statue of a Madonna, he obtained the dignity of a grand vicar, to the grand edification, no doubt, of all those who had seen him before the altar, or in the camp; at the brothel, or in the hospital.

Another grand vicar of the same bishop, in the same eity, of the name of Rami, has two of his illegitimate children as singing boys, in the same cathedral where he officiates as a priest.

Their mother is dead, but her daughter by another priest, is now their father's mistress. This incestuous commerce is so little concealed, that the girl does the honours of the grand vicar's house; and with naiveté enough, tells the guests and visitors of her happiness, in having succeeded her mother. I have this anecdote from an officer, who heard her make use of that expression..

In France, our priests, I fear, are equally as debauched and unprincipled; but, in yielding to their vicious propensities, they take care to save the appearance of virtue, and though their guilt is the same, the scandal is less. Buonaparte pretends to be severe against all those ecclesiastics who are accused of any irregularities, after having made their peace with the church. A cu rate of Picardy, suspected of gallantry, and another of Normandy, accused of inebriety, were last month, without further trial or ceremony, than the report of the minister Portalis, delivered over to Fouché, who transported them to Cayenne, after they had been stripped of their gowns. At the same time, Cardinal Cambaceres and Cardinal Fesch equally notorious for their excesses, were taken no notice of, except that they were laughed at in our courtcircles.

I am almost every day, more and more convinced that our government is totally indifferent about what becomes of our religious establishment, when the present race of priests is extinguished, which, in the course of nature must happen in less than thirty years. Our military system and our military education discourage all young men from entering into orders, while, at the same time, the army is both more honourable and more profitable than the church. Already we want curates, though several have been imported from Germany and Spain, and, in some departments, four and even six parishes have only one curate to serve them all. The bishops exhort, and the parents advise their children to study theology; but then the law of conscription obliges the student of theology, as well as the student of philosophy, to march together; and when once in the ranks, and accustomed to the licentiousness of a military life, they are either unwilling, unfit, or unworthy to return to any thing else. The Pope, with all his entreaties, and with all his prayers, was una

Dd

ble to procure an exception from the conscription of young men preparing themselves for priesthood. Buonaparte always answered: "Holy Father, were I to consent to your demand, I should soon have an army of priests, instead of an army of soldiers." Our Emperor is not unacquainted with the real character and spirit of his Volunteers. When the Pope represented the danger of religion expiring in France, for want of priests to officiate at the altars; he was answered, that Buonaparte, at the beginning of his consulate, found neither altars nor priests in France; that if his reign survived the latter, the former would always be standing, and survive his reign. He trusted that the chief of the Church would prevent them from being deserted. He assured him, that when once he had restored the liberties of the seas, and an uninterrupted tranquillity on the Continent, he should attend more, and perhaps entirely, to the affairs of the Church. He consented, however, that the Pope might institute, in the Ecclesiastical States, a seminary for two hundred young Frenchmen, whom he would except from military conscription. This is the stock from which our church establishment is to be supplied!

MY LORD,

LETTER LXIX.

Paris, October, 1805.

THE short journey of Count de Haugwitz to Vienna, and the long stay of our Imperial Grand Marshal Duroc at Berlin, had already caused here many speculations, not quite corresponding with the views, and perhaps interests of our Court; when our violation of the Prussian territory made our courtiers exclaim, "this act proves that the Emperor of the French is in a situa tion to bid defiance to all the world, and therefore no longer courts the neutrality of a Prince, whose power is merely artificial; who has indemnities to restore, but no delicacy, no regard to claims." Such was the language of those very men, who, a month before, declared" that his Prussian Majesty held the balance of peace or war in his hands; that he was in a posi tion in which no Prussian monarch ever was before; that while his neutrality preserved the tranquillity of the North of