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Untitled Article
mixes with the French people , and studies their character at home . They who dispute the improvement , must admit the change . Books a half century old lead you to expect in our neighbours frivolity and vanity : the actual inspection of their manners and habits soon impresses , you with the
conviction that if these qualities once belonged to their character * they are an altered people * There may be a greater appearance of Iight-heartedness and freedom from care in the populace of France than in that of England , seen out of doors : they are in fact more sociable , and have more public amusements ; but in conversation with individuals , and in the retirement of
families * Englishmen in France are surprised to observe a prevailing sedateness approaching to seriousness . The French themselves are conscious of the change , and ascribe it to the Revolution . It does not follow of necessity that because they are more sober-minded , they are more contemplative , but the one habit is certainly favourable to the other . In Paris there are many indications of your being in the midst of a reading public * And when to these considerations is added the circumstance of the French
people being proverbially temperate , it can scarcely be doubted that France is in a course of moral improvement . No one out of France can readily conceive of the deep interest taken by the people in the political questions of the moment . The struggle is not of faction with faction , but of the Nation with the Caurt . Whether they be
right or wrong , the people think that the Charter is in jeopardy , and theiir object is to preserve and to obtain securities for civil and religious l $ > e ? jt , y ;» The general persuasion is that they will succeed . This is here stated less as a political topic , than as a symptom , of the public mind , and an indicatipa of the light that is abroad , and of the determinatian aad earnestness of the national character .
The Roman Catholic and Protestant Religions are equally established in France : the former , indeed , is declared to be the religion of the nation a * nl the court , and some special privileges are granted to it ; but the ministers of both are salaried by the government , and it is somewhat curious that the Protestant pastors have larger salaries appointed to them than the ordinary Catholic priests , on the ground of their not being doomed , like these , to celibacy . A good Catholic might call this difference , a bribe to heresy and schism .
As an Established Church , the Roman Catholic religion of France has few of the attributes and distinctions , and little of the influence that we are accustomed to associate with the Church of England . The Revolution stripped the Church of its lands and tithes , and shut up the ecclesiastical courts . Napoleon restored the national religion , but he was neither able nor willing to reinstate the priesthood in their temporalities . At present , the French ecclesiastics have no political power but that which they may derive from their personal character . One of their bishops lately put out a
* We learn from a recent number of a French paper , ( Le Compilntewr , ) that there are now ia Paris 152 journals , literary , scientific , and religious , and 17 political— -in all 169 . Of these papers 1 , 51 are Constitutional , or , as they are called , Liberal—the 18 others being more Monarchical in their spirit . The 151 Constitutional Journals have , it is stated , 197 , 000 subscribers , 1 , 500 , 000 , readers , and
produce an income of 1 , 155 , 000 francs . ; the 18 others have 21 , 000 subscribers , I 92 jOGO readers , with an income of 437 , 000 francs . Besides these Journals , published in the capital , there are printed , it is calculated , in the provinces , 75 , exclusive of papers for advertisements and ministerial bulletins . Of the country journals 66 are described as Constitutional .
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778 Religious State and Prospects of France .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1829, page 778, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2578/page/34/
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