Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/186

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166
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

carried away, but where it was thrown he never heard.

A decision of the Privy Council in 1825, for reasons more technical than equitable, excluded the monastic communities from any share in the indemnity fund. Sir John Leach, Master of the Rolls, delivered judgment to the effect that these communities being illegal by English law, they must be regarded as French establishments, and as such not entitled to share in the lump sum given by France to indemnify British subjects. Even as recently as 1874 the House of Commons was petitioned to reconsider the question.

A word as to the history of the Irish college, the only British institution besides the Austin nunnery which still exists in Paris. Macdermott and several of the remaining students took refuge at St. Germain, where Jerome Bonaparte was Macdermott' s pupil. The school was afterwards reinstated in the college, and altogether lost its religious character. The students were young men of fashion, more conversant with Voltaire and Rousseau than with the Bible. In 1801 the English and Scotch colleges in Paris, as also the provincial ones, were amalgamated with the Irish college; that is to say, the wreck of their property left by the Revolution was lumped together, and the scholars all congregrated in one building, an arrangement still in the main continued. In 1813