and defeat each other's action, like palsied limbs. If Italy should break with its past; if it should forget the labours, and sufferings, and dangers which united its Pontiffs and its people in the wars of its independence, freedom, and unity; if it should forget the confederations wrought by the Pontiffs, by which they made all the divisions of Italy work together for the liberties of the whole Peninsula, from the Alps to its foot-then, indeed, I should despair of its future. It could have no other in store than a chronic warfare of parties, and the final sway of some successful soldier.

Of the population of 26,000,000 Italians not three millions have launched themselves in the revolution of the last twenty years. The great bulk of the people are, as they have always been, Christian, Catholic, and loyal. The Electoral body who have votes to return the Italian Parliament do not exceed in number some half million. Of these hardly onehalf record their vote. The Italian Deputies are, therefore, chosen by one-hundreth part of the popu lation. The whole Chamber is, therefore, revolu tionary, and may be divided into two parties-the moderate revolution and the extreme revolution. The Catholic voters abstain from all participation in such a state. They are not revolutionists, either extreme or moderate. They could elect no deputy but one of their own principles; and no such deputy could sit, because to take his place he must bind

himself by oath to the existing state of things, including, therefore, the violation of the sovereignty of the Pontiff. More than this, the existing state of the law has invaded the liberties and jurisdiction of the Church. It has abolished religious orders and institutions, it has harshly turned out their inmates upon a pittance, which, if paid, would not suffice for food. It has confiscated property, seized upon colleges, abolished theology from the universities, and the Christian doctrine from schools. And all this, be it remembered, not to meet the distracted state of a people who have lost their religious unity, and must be provided with civil marriage and secular education, but in the midst of a population absolutely and universally Catholic. This, and not what Mr. Gladstone, with a strange want of accuracy, supposes, is what the Syllabus condemns. It nowhere condemns the civil policy which is necessary for a people hopelessly divided in religion. For us this may necessity. In Italy it is a doctrine of the Doctrinaires. To force upon the united people of Italy that which is necessary for the divided people of England is a senseless legislation, and a mischievous breaking with the glorious past of Italy. I do not now stay to dwell upon the unpatriotic and un-Italian agitation of men who for twenty-five years have threatened Pius IX. with violence, and assailed him as the Vampire, the Canker, the Gangrene of Italy. Such men, from Aspromonte to this day, have been the chief hindrance

be a

to the unification and pacification of Italy. And those who in this country have encouraged and abetted those agitators-not that they knew any thing but that Garibaldi was fighting against the Pope-have been among the worst friends of Italy; I might say among the unconscious but most mischievous enemies. It is strange how this one taint of bigotry will pervert everything. Garibaldi was raising insurrection in Sicily and Naples against a lawful sovereign; and those who put us now to question about our loyalty cheered and aided him by all moral influence. More than this, when the leader of rebellion came to England he was received with royal honours, and red carpets were spread for him at the threshold of aristocratic houses, until his name was found to be contagious. Then, in twentyfour hours he was sped from England with the profuse facilities of departure which wait upon an unwelcome guest. In my judgment—and I have formed it not in London from newspaper correspondents, but in Rome during many a long residence, extending in all over seven years those who have encouraged this chronic agitation against the religion of Italians and the independence of Rome, have been among the chief causes of the present disorders of Italy. They could put no surer bar to its unity or to the solution of the Roman question which they confidently believe to be settled. They are keeping it open by encouraging the Government of

the day to persist in quarreling with the Catholic Church and with its Head. But this part of the subject has outgrown its proportion. I return, therefore, to the proposition I set out to prove, that by the collisions which now exist between the Civil Powers and the Church, the Governments of Europe are destroying the main principle of their own stability. And I must add that they who are rekindling the old fires of religious discord in such an equal and tempered Commonwealth as ours, seem to me to be serving neither God nor their country.

CHAPTER V.

THE MOTIVE OF THE DEFINITION.

My last proposition is that the motive of the Council of the Vatican for defining the Infallibility of the Roman Pontiff was not any temporal motive, nor was it for temporal ends; but that the Definition was made in the face of all temporal dangers, in order to guard the Divine deposit of Christianity, and to vindicate the Divine certainty of Faith.

I have read many things in Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet which are unlike himself, but none seems more so to me than this question, 'Why did that Court, with policy for ever in its eye, lodge such formidable demands for power of the vulgar kind in that sphere which is visible, and where hard knocks can undoubtedly be given as well as received?' 1

Would it not have been more seemly and more dignified if the question had been couched in some such words as these: Why has the Catholic Church, in a moment of great peril, when a revolution is at the gates of Rome, and the Civil Powers of the world are uniting, not only to forsake it, but even to

1 Expostulation, p. 47.