CLERGY - REVOLUTION - Lot 162

CLERGY - REVOLUTION Autograph letter, unsigned, addressed to Abbé de Seyssel in Münster. August 27, 1797 at Mde Henen, near Porte d'Auguste; 3 pages in-12, address, small black wax seal (small tears from broken seal). Very interesting missive on the submission of the clergy, after the law of 19 fructidor V imposed a new republican oath on ecclesiastics. The writer of the letter, probably a refractory priest, had sent his correspondent, a former vicar of Arras who had emigrated to Germany, the memoir by Abbé du Voisin [Jean-Baptiste Duvoisin, future bishop of Nantes], which should be as successful as that of Abbé de La Sépouze, since it has already been approved by a large number of prelates, including the archbishop of Reims [Alexandre de Talleyrand-Périgord] and other trusted persons such as the comte de Saint-Priest, even if public approval cannot be expected. "prescription is not based on natural law, being even in itself contrary to natural justice, cannot be applied to the rights of sovereigns, unless there has been some agreement between them or between civilized nations, that would have made it a positive law, just as civil prescription only has force through the law of a particular sovereign. [...] We must therefore confine ourselves to saying. That the rights of legitimate sovereigns, although imprescriptible, can be suspended, and this not by a positive law, but by the natural law which no longer allows them to be exercised when this could only lead to the ruin of the society for whose preservation they were given. This defense can only be known by facts, and can only be understood morally. It becomes quite clear when the legitimate sovereign's cause has been supported in vain by a long and cruel war, and he no longer has sufficient strength left to bring his people back to obedience. It is then that he must lay down his arms and let them live under the government they have chosen or to which they have submitted, until experience or the cry of conscience recalls this misguided people, if not entirely, at least the great majority to their duty, and gives them the necessary energy to shake off the yoke they have allowed to be imposed on them". And in a postscript, in the upper margin: "Bonaparte has just had all the French priests who have taken refuge in the Republic removed by a dragnet. priests in the Cisalpine Republic and locked them up in Mantua. It's M. l'évêque de Langres [César Guillaume de La Luzerne], who reports it here to Mde de Montboissier and who only escaped himself by a miracle". In 1795, Abbé Duvoisin had his Examen des principes de la Révolution françoise printed in Germany. again in 1798 under the title "Défense de l'ordre social contre les principes de la Révolution française".