The Sun.
London, England, 1841-12-14 00:00:00

`~

DON, TUESDAY, DECEMBER i 4, 1841

arrival in Paris There were then but three courses for I
him to pursue. To disavow his personal and political friends '
who were engaged in this matter, which they made their
own. To accept the position of candidate, which they made
for him, and to solicit an office for which he had no am-
bition, or in fine to submit in silence to the judgment
of the Chamber, and to execute its commands. To dis-
avow his friends who compromised themselves for him,
and to deprive them of the ground on which they stood
by an anticipated refusal, would be worse than cowardice
—it 4ould amount to ingratitude. He was incapable of
it. To solicit the Presidency would be to repudiate his
own declaration that he did not desire it, and would be,
perhaps, to take upon himself the responsibility of a par-
tial and momentary breaking up of the majority. There
only remained, therefore, a third course, and that is
what M. de Lamartine has adopted. To remain silent,
to wait the will of the Chamber, and to obey it."
The King, went to Versailles yesterday at two o'clock.
The Council of Ministers sat yesterday at Marshal
Soult's. _ _

We have announced that the Mayor of Pouille (in La
Vendee) has been suspended from his office for having
published the announcement of the marriage of a Roman
Catholic priest. The fact is confirmed by the documents
before us, but this priest has ceased to exercise the func-
tions of the priesthood ever since 1829; since 1830 he has
publicly professed a form of worship in which the law-
fulness of a marriage by its ministers is allowed as in the
Protestant churches. The Bishop of Lucon, by an act of
1832, published and posted up in all the churches of his
diocese, cut himself off from the Roman Catholic com-
munion. It is certain that it is not, by an abuse of con-
fession, or of the sacerdotal functions that he has obtained
the hand of the young woman whom he desires to marry;
there remains, therefore, only the question of the per-
petuity of religious vows which the Constitutional Assem-
bly abolished by a law of 10th February, 1790, in the
following terms.—Art. 1. " The constitutional law of
the kingdom will no longer recognise, solemn monastic
vows of persons of either sex, in consequence of which
the regular orders and congregations in which such vows
are made, are and shall continue to be suppressed in
France, nor shall any such be established in future."--
No law has since abolished this solemn declaration ;
on the contrary, the ordinance approving the statutes of
religious communities, contain the following clause :
" Seeing that the said statutes contain no perpetual vows,
tor any clauses contrary to the laws of the kingdom,
yet the Keeper of the Seal has ordered the King's At-
torney at Fontenay formally to oppose the intended
marriage, which he did, in a letter to the Mayor, in
which he says that all the precedents and the jurispru-
dence of the Court of Cessation lays it down that the
engagements in holy orders are an obstacle to marriage,
and that it is most important, for the sake of public
morality, that this rule' hould be rigorously observed."—
The Prefect on his side has been suspended from the ex-
ercise of his functions.—Constitutionnet