His first proceedings had indeed given no We promise of the moderation and prudence afterwards to characterize him; he had succeeded in exasperating all parties; the officials of his father, the well-served, whom he dismissed in favor of inferiors like Jean Balue, Oliver le Daim and Tristan Lermite; the clergy, by abrogating the Pragmatic Sanction; the university of Paris, by his ill-treatment of it; and the nobles, whom he deprived of their hunting rights, among them being those whom Charles VII.
The papacy had abandoned none of its pretensions to dominate consciences, not of Catholics only, was again proved in 1910 when, at the very moment when the pope was praising the English people for the spirit of tolerance which led the British government to introduce a bill to alter the form of the Declaration made by the sovereign on his accession into a form inoffensive to Roman Catholics, he was remonstrating with the government of Spain for abrogating the law forbidding the Spanish dissident churches to display publicly the symbols of the Christian faith or to conduct their services otherwise than semi-privately.
It was largely due to his tact and good management, in concert with Lord Pauncefote, the British:ambassador, that negotiations for abrogating the ClaytonBulwer Treaty and for making a new treaty with Great Britain regarding the Isthmian Canal were successfully concluded at the end of 1901; subsequently he negotiated treaties with Colombia and with Panama, looking towards the construction by the United States of a trans-isthmian canal.