The State, the first seller, owes this voucher to the purchasers; let it procure this and negotiate accordingly; let it apply for this to the rightful party, to the owners whom it has dispossessed, to the immemorial and legitimate authorities, I mean to the ancient corporations.

These have been dissolved by revolutionary law and have no longer a representative who can sign for them.

Nevertheless, in spite of revolutionary law, one of these corporations, with more vitality than the rest, still subsists with its proper, if not legal, representative, its regular and undisputed chief.

This chief is qualified and authorized to bind the body; for, institutionally, he is supreme, and the conscience of all its members is in his hand.

His signature is of the highest value; it is very important to obtain this, and the First Consul concludes the Concordat with the Pope.
By this Concordat, the Pope "declares that neither himself nor his successors shall in any manner disturb the purchasers of alienated ecclesiastical property, and that the ownership of the said property, the rights and revenues derived there from, shall consequently remain in commutable in their hands or in those of their assigns."[3193] Henceforth the possession of this property is no longer a sin; at least, it is not condemned by the spiritual authority, by that external conscience which, in Catholic countries, governs the inward conscience and often supplies its place; the Church, the moral head, removes with its own hands the moral scruple, the last small stone, troublesome and dangerous, which, lying underneath the cornerstone of lay society, breaks the level of the entire structure and compromises the equilibrium of the new government .-- In exchange, the State endows the Church.