Chapter XVIII. Papal Demands.

Art the death of Pius IX he left to whosoever should succeed him, as an official inheritance, the decision of the question whether or no the Church should acquiesce’in and become reconciled to the abolition of the temporal power of the pope, or be agitated and possibly further disrupted by the demand for its restoration. In the meantime Italy had become an organized nation, and was so recognized throughout the world. The capital, after several removals, had been established at Rome, and legislative chambers were assembled almost within the shadow of the old senate-house of the Cesars, under the checks and guards of a written Constitution, to enact laws for and in the name of the Italian people. A king existed, but without absolute power, and had attained great popularity on account of his eminent fitness and recognized fidelity to the trusts committed to him. It, consequently, required but little practical knowledge of affairs to foresee that the future peace and welfare of the Church depended, in a large degree, upon the policy to be pursued with regard to the temporal power—which no longer existed, but had been abolished by Roman Catholic populations, who had, with great deliberation and extraordinary unanimity, taken the right to manage their own political affairs into their own hands, in imitation of the example set them by the people of the United States. Thoughtful minds were inspired by the hope that moderate, wise, and conciliatory counsels would prevail with the new pope, whosoever he might be.

The occasion rendered it necessary that the distinction between the Church as a Christian organization, and the papacy as a magisterial power over temporals, should be observed; that is, that the ability of the former for Christian usefulness was left unimpaired, whilst the latter was only designed to make the pope an absolute monarch over the Italian people. Nobody understood this better than Pius IX, and, therefore, the year before his death he signalized the first important exhibition of his infallible authority by issuing a decree amending the Confession of Faith, which had been prescribed by Pius IV nearly three hundred years before, and an “allocution,” or authoritative and ez-cathedra epistle to the clergy and the Church, with regard to the relations existing between the Church and the Government of Italy. The former concerns only those whose faith is influenced by it; the latter concerns all the progressive nations, and none more than the United States.

In this allocution he accused the invaders of his “civil principality””—that is, of his temporal power—with riding roughshod over every right, human and divine; with the attempt to undermine “all the institutions of the Church;” and characterized the act of establishing the Italian kingdom as one of “sovereign iniquity”—a “sacrilegious invasion.” He complained that the ministers of religion “were deprived of the right of disapproving the laws of the State which they considered as violating those of the Church”—which was equivalent to asserting it to be a principle of faith that he and the clergy should be permitted to defy any law of a State which he and they considered violative of their prerogative rights. He pointed out “the shameful and obscene spectacle” to be seen in Rome, in “the temples erected in these latter days to dissenting worship;” in “schools of corruption scattered broadcast,” and in “houses of perdition established everywhere”—thus intending, undoubtedly, to intimate what his meaning was when he said in his Syllabus, a few years before, that the Church could never be reconciled to the spirit of progress prevailing among the progressive nations. He insisted that the pope can not exist in Rome except as “a sovereign or a prisoner”—which has been disproved by all the subsequent years of actual experience—and that there can be no “ peace, security, or tranquillity for the entire Catholic Church so long as the exercise of the supreme ecclesiastical ministry is at the mercy of the passions of party, the caprice of Governments, the vicissitudes of political elections, and of the projects and actions of designing men”—meaning thereby, in plain words, that the pope must be so supreme wheresoever his clergy are as to require them to execute his decrees, notwithstanding the laws of Governments shall expressly provide otherwise. He expresses this idea with equal plainness by saying that the pope “ean not exercise full freedom in the power of his ministry” scattered throughout the world, so long as he “continues subject to the will of another party;” in other words, that he must be free to require his clergy, wheresoever they may be, to obey him and not the laws of any Government in conflict with his will. He congratulates himself that the “whole Catholic people,” everywhere, are united with him in supporting all these propositions, and makes it known that he expects them “to take in hand the cause and defense of the Roman pontificate;” that is, the restoration of the temporal power and kingship of the pope. He expresses the belief that the attachment shown to him by the multitudes of pilgrims who visit Rome “will go on increasing until the day when the pastor of the universal Church will be restored at last to the possession of his full and genuine freedom”—which he can not enjoy without the crown of absolute monarchy upon his head. And with a view to the accomplishment of this, he instructs all the ministers of the Church, everywhere, to “exhort the faithful confided to them to make use of all “the means which the laws of their country place within their reach; to act with promptness with those who govern; to induce these latter to consider more attentively the painful situation forced upon the head of the Church, and take effective measures towards dissipating the obstacles that stand in the way of his absolute independence.”

All this is plain and emphatic—not susceptible of misunderstanding. It makes the restoration of the temporal power of the pope, so as to make him king of Italy against the positive and expressed will of the people of that country, a politico-religious question, and commands the faithful in every part of the world to form themselves into a politico-religious party to influence the Governments of their respective countries to contribute to that result. This counsel is given in face of what the world knows to be the fact, that the temporal power can not be restored without war—without drenching the plains of Italy with blood, in order to force upon the people of Italy a king whom they have repudiated by their highest act of sovereignty.

This allocution was among the first fruits of the pope’s infallibility, and makes known with distinctness the method dictated by Pius IX for reconstructing the papacy. At the time of its issuance he had encountered so many embarrassments without the ability to resist them successfully, he could scarcely have expected that his hopes would be realized during his pontificate. He was confronted by the existence of a kingdom, still Roman Catholic but not papal, within the limits of which Rome was included, and no man knew better than he that what he sought after would have to await the formation of a politico-religious party beyond the limits of Italy, and among the peoples of other nations, strong enough to coerce the Roman Catholic people of Italy, at the point of the bayonet, into obedience to the papacy they had repudiated. Therefore this infallible allocution may properly be considered his last pontifical will and testament, whereby he devised all his right and title to the temporal power to his successor; or perhaps it would be more apt to say, as the politicians do, that it was intended to be the main plank in the papal platform. How far it became so we shall see.

When, after the death of Pius IX, the cardinals assembled in Conclave, February 17, 1878, their first official act was specially significant. It displayed a settled purpose to hold the wavering, if there were any, to the policy of Pius IX with reference to the restoration of the temporal power, and to make that the test of fidelity to the Church; in other words, that his successor should be pledged to carry out that policy, and elected with that express view. The cardinals, therefore, entered into an agreement among themselves to confirm and maintain all the protests made by Pius IX against the Italian Government. This agreement was to the effect that they “thereby renewed all the protests and reservations made by the deceased sovereign pontiff, whether against the occupation of the States of the Church, or against the laws and decrees enacted to the detriment of the same Church and the Apostolic See;” and that they were unanimously “determined to follow the course marked out by the deceased pontiff, whatsoever trials may happen to befall them through the force of events.”

It may fairly be supposed that Cardinal Peeci was the projector of this plan of procedure, as it is stated by his biographer that he “stood in the foremost place at the head of his brethren.” At all events, he, together with the other cardinals, was pledged to it. When, therefore, he was elected pope—as he was soon after—and took the name of Leo XIII, he accepted the pontificate under the solemn obligation so to employ all his powers and prerogatives as to regain the temporal power his predecessor had lost, upon the distinct ground that fidelity to the doctrines and faith of the Church required it.

In view of the result to be thus attained, the election of Leo XIII was unquestionably wise. Besides possessing the highest intellectual qualifications—being, in fact, one of the foremost men of the present time—his Christian character is pure and without a blemish. He is cool, calm, and deliberate in considering great questions, and not apt, as Pius IX was, to be misled by indiscreet advisers, or entrapped by enemies. His passions seemed well restrained, and he brought to the duties of his high office abilities far exceeding those of any of the eminent men who composed the College of Cardinals. There is not a sovereign in Europe of whom he is not the equal, if not the superior, in all such qualities as fit a man for rank, station, and authority. In the rightful and proper sphere of his spiritual duties he is “sans peur et sans _ reproche.” But when he ventures to depart from that sphere, and employ the authority of his high office to reopen a political issue already closed, to deny to the people of Italy the right to regulate their own temporal affairs, as those of the United States have done, and prescribes or approves a plan of Church organization which shall measure the value of a professed Christian life by the depth to which its possessor shall sink in the mire of politico-religious controversy in those countries where Church and State have been separated, he presents himself to the world in another and different aspect. If, by imitating others who have grasped after kingly crowns, he sees proper to lay aside the rightful weapons of his spiritual ministry, and arm himself and his followers with such as pertain to the strife of politics, there can be no just ground of complaint against those whose policy of civil government he assails, if they shall arraign him and them at the bar of public opinion, and challenge his and their right to disturb the peace by scattering the seeds of discord among them.

The people of Italy achieved their independence by revolution, and decided to separate Church and State, and that they would not have the pope for their king; they put an end to the absolute monarchism of the papacy, and substituted a constitutional monarchy, with such checks and guards as they deemed necessary to their own protection. In doing this they exercised the same power of popular sovereignty as the people of the United States, when they decided that no king should ever rule over them. In each case the act was intended to be final—not subject to reversal by any earthly power. Neither country, therefore, has the right to plot against the quiet and peace of the other; nor have the populations of either the right to do so. All this is forbidden by the law of nations, and if knowingly tolerated would be, by that law, just cause of war. If a politico-religious party should be formed in Italy to change our institutions by reuniting Church and State, and substitute a king in the place of the people in the management of public affairs, it would incite the spirit of resistance in every loyal American heart. And if a politico-religious party, formed under any plea whatsoever, shall be permitted to combine in this country for the avowed object of reuniting Church and State in Italy, and compelling the people of that country to accept the pope as an absolute sovereign, in the face of the result they have accomplished by their revolution, wherein do we escape “condemnuation by the law of nations? The question whether or no any people shall exercise the right of self-government is political, not religious. This has been decided by the people of the United States. Consequently, to demand of them that they shall reverse this decision, violates the spirit of their institutions, and mocks at their authority.

No liberal and fair-minded people questioned the right of Pius IX to declare himself infallible, or that of others to concede it to him, in matters purely spiritual. Nor is this same right denied to Leo XIII. But when he extends his infallibility so far as to include authority over the fundamental principles of civil government, and thus seeks to imperil the fortunes of the modern progressive nations where Church and State have been separated, it should not be expected that those who share those fortunes in common will sanction his imperial assumption by direct affirmance or by silent acquiescence. The age of “passive obedience” has passed, and is not likely to be revived so long as the Reformation period shall continue to bear its rich and abundant fruits, like such as spring from the popular institutions of the United States. The fundamental principle upon which all such institutions rest is the separation of Church and State; for without that there can be no freedom of religious belief and no such development of the intellectual faculties as fits society for self-government. Every assault upon this great fundamental principle must be resisted, no matter under what pretense it may be made or from what quarter it shall come. When it was assaulted and condemned by the vacillating and irascible Pius EX, it was in far less peril than now, when the calm and sagacious Leo XIII has become the general-in-chief of the aggressive forces. The former was not even master of himself—the latter is master of vast multitudes of men.

The election of Leo XIII caused general satisfaction outside the circle of Church influence. He was regarded as a representative of the highest enlightenment, and this gave rise to the hope that he would become reconciled to the existing condition of affairs in Italy, in order to pacify those members of the Church who had wrenched from his immediate predecessor the scepter of temporal sovereignty. A more favorable opportunity for pacification could not have existed; and if it had been accepted in a conciliatory spirit, the rejoicing would not have been confined to the Italians alone, but would have been well-nigh universal. But little time elapsed, however, before there were signs indicating that, instead of throwing oil upon the troubled waters, he preferred that they should remain in agitation. Two facts now conspire to account for this: First, the agreement made by the College of Cardinals to adopt the principles and adhere to the policy of Pius IX; and, second, his Jesuit education and training. Both of these facts are stated by his biographer, and the last with such particularity as to show that when he was only eight years of age he was separated from his family and placed under Jesuit care, and that his education was obtained at the colleges of that society at Viterbo and at Rome. If the world had known, at the beginning of his pontificate, how solemnly he had pledged himself to his brother cardinals before his election, and how his youthful mind had been trained and fashioned by the Jesuits, it is not probable that anything would have been anticipated, or even hoped for, beyond what has transpired; for the skill of the Jesuits is displayed in nothing more effectually than in the indelible impressions they understand so well how to make upon young and undeveloped minds. Although the question to be decided seemed simple enough to the general public, both in the United States and in Europe, yet to the Jesuits it was of supreme importance; for with Church and State separated in Italy, and with Rome as the permanent capital of a kingdom independent of the pope and submissive to the popular will, their society would be crushed by the weight of public odium resting upon them. During the progress of the controversy and before the abolition of the temporal power, Pius IX had been compelled to expel them from the States of the Church on account of this odium existing in Italy; but they rallied again, with their unabated energy, after his successor had been chosen, doubtless realizing how readily a mind trained and disciplined under their system of education would yield to their demands. For a time Leo XIII seemed to be hesitating, as if in the issue between liberalism and retrogression there was some middle ground. But the Church and the world did not have long to wait before the issuance of his first official encyclical letter, which put an end to all hopes of reconciliation or compromise. In this celebrated document the war upon liberalism and progress, as recognized by the modern nations, was continued with increased and Jesuitical violence—”war to the knife, and the knife to the hilt.” There was no longer any hesitation or faltering, but the distinct avowal of the purpose to revive the papacy, by the restoration of the temporal power, and to carry on the conflict until the world shall be turned away from all. modern civilization and back towards the Middle Ages. His biographer takes special pains to make this plain, so that the encyclical may be interpreted according to the pope’s intention. After stating that there were those who expected Leo XIII “to devise a modus vivendi with the masters of Rome and Italy,” and reconcile the Church and the papacy to “modern society and its exigencies,” he boastingly proclaims that the encyclical “woefully disappointed all who fancied or hoped that a pope could reconcile the revealed truth of which he is the divinely-appointed guardian, the righteousness, justice, and divine morality which flow from the revealed law of life, with the awful errors, the unbridled licentiousness of thought and word and deed, the iniquity and the immorality which are cloaked over by their pretended civilization.”

This learned biographer does not intend that the pope’s encyclical shall be misunderstood; and when he thus indicates the “awful errors,” the “unbridled licentiousness,” ” the iniquity and the immorality,” which have been scattered over the world by modern progress and civilization—which he characterizes as “pretended” and not real—he manifestly understood the mind and motives of the pope, as he also did the issue which the papacy has made with all the most enlightened peoples of the world, and, more especially, with the prevailing popular sentiment in the United States. We must consequently accept this arraignment of our form of civilization as intentionally and deliberately made. And that he understood this issue as not confined to Italy alone, but as universal in its character, he proceeds immediately to show that the pope “speaks with authority to all mankind, the light imparted by his teaching illuminates both hemispheres.”

But this encyclical itself leaves no room to doubt with regard to the universality of jurisdiction and authority claimed by the pope. Almost at the beginning it announces that he considers himself called upon, by virtue of his spiritual sovereignty, to decide matters of general import, and not merely such as are understood to pertain to the Church of Rome or to the people of Italy. Regarding himself as possessing this unlimited jurisdiction because he occupies ““ the place of the Prince of Pastors, Jesus Christ,” he asserts pontifical authority over the whole world, in these words: “From the very beginning of our pontificate we have had before our eyes the sad spectacle of the evils which assail mankind from every side.” And, accordingly, he makes his purposes known by drawing a sad picture of modern society, “impatient of all lawful power,” and threatened, in consequence, with anarchy and dissolution, on account of its “contempt of the laws of morality and justice.” All this, to his mind, has arisen out of the lawless spirit of revolution which modern peoples have invoked to free themselves from the crushing weight of imperial and absolute monarchism, which he proposes to revive in Italy by the re-establishment of the temporal power which the people of that country wrested from the hands of his immediate predecessor by revolution. What we, somewhat triumphantly, call patriotism, liberty, and natural right, he denounces as “a pestilential virus which creeps into the vital organs and members of human society, which allows them no rest, and which forebodes for the social order new revolutions ending in calamitous results.”

Against these threatened calamities he felt himself constrained, by virtue of the universality of his spiritual dominion, to warn the world, especially that part of it which has voluntarily brought what he considers affliction upon itself, by separating Church and State and establishing freedom of religious belief,.free speech, a free press, and free popular government. He seems to have allowed his mind to become disturbed and agitated by this gloomy condition of affairs, because it has been produced by the rejection of the pope’s divine right to regulate whatsoever sentiments and opinions he may deem to be within the circle of his spiritual jurisdiction. “The cause of all these evils,” he says, “lies principally in this: that men have despised and rejected the holy and august authority of the Church, which, in the name of God, is placed over the human race, and is the avenger and protector of all legitimate authority;” that is, that no authority whatsoever, whether of governments, peoples, or individuals, can be set up against it as rightful or legitimate. Then, looking down from this high pinnacle upon the disturbed and raging elements below, and sorrowing because his temporal dominion has been lost, he enumerates some of the principal causes which, in his opinion, threaten to wreck the happiness and welfare of society. Among these, he makes conspicuously prominent the following: Overturning the constitution of the Church by laws in force “in most countries;” obstacles to the “free exercise of the ecclesiastical ministry,” which those laws have created; “the unbridled liberty of teaching and publishing all manner of evil;” depriving the Church of ““ the right,” which he considers irrefragable, to “ train and educate the young;” and, far from being least in magnitude or importance, the sacrilegious violation of the Divine law by the abolition of the pope’s temporal power and imperial sovereignty over the Italian people. This enumeration was manifestly made, as may be implied from the language of his biographer, to enable him to point out more clearly to “ the Catholic hierarchy” in all parts of the world, “toward what purpose their common zeal must be chiefly directed;” that is, what he expects them to contribute toward turning the world away from “these modern innovations upon the papal policy, so that it may be carried back to its condition during the Middle Ages, when the papal supremacy was maintained by the terrible tribunal of the Inquisition. hat he prefers thai period, with its ignorance and superstition, to the present, with its advanced enlightenment and prosperity, is plainly and emphatically avowed in these words: “If any sensible man in our day will compare the age in which we live, so bitterly hostile to the religion and Church of Christ, to those blessed ages when the Church was honored as a mother of the nations, he will surely find that the society of our day, so convulsed by revolutions and destructive upheavals, is moving straightway and rapidly toward its ruin; while the society of the former ages, when most docile to the rule of the Church and most obedient to her laws, was adorned with the noblest institutions, and enjoyed tranquillity, riches, and prosperity.” This is strange infatuation to be indulged in during the nineteenth century, when human energy is taxed to the utmost to give increased velocity to the car of progress, and to outstrip all previous ages in placing checks and guards upon the ambition of temporal monarchs. It requires but little research to learn that the “blessed ages” to which Leo XIII refers, and gives such marked preference over the present period, were especially distinguished by the ignorance and superstition of the multitude. History is crowded with evidences of this. Maitland—who is highly appreciated and often quoted by papal writers on account of his criticisms of Robertson, the historian—says that “the ecclesiastics were the reading men and the writing men;” but does not pretend that such was the case with the peasants or common people, as the bulk of the populations were called. There is nothing better established than that no facilities for learning were afforded them, and that they were kept down at a common level of ignorance, so as to reconcile them more easily to submission and obedience. This is shown by the picture of society drawn by all the early chroniclers, especially by Froissart and Monstrelet, as well as by the more modern historians, Hallam, Robertson, and Berington. The men of learning and letters belonged to the “upper classes,” for whom alone colleges and schools were provided. The people, as such, were left uninstructed, in order to make them passively obedient to the authority of Church and State, Which were united by ties they were powerless to break. They were forced—with but little less severity than was shown to the captives of the Pharaohs who built the pyramids, the temple of Karnak, and other Egyptian monuments—to serve taskmasters in erecting magnificent palaces, cathedrals, and churches, designed for display by those whose vanity and pride made them oblivious to the fact that they were the product of unrewarded labor, and did not contain a stone or marble block not stained by the tears and sweat and blood of numberless humiliated victims. But all these unrequited victims were ignorant, and therefore obedient— obedient, and therefore happy! But Leo XIII, exulting at this reflection, instructs the modern nations that the curse of God is resting upon their progressive advancement, and that he, in Christ’s name and place, is divinely empowered to turn them back to those “blessed ages,” because, if they do not, “they must, by corrupting both minds and hearts, drag down by their very weight, nations into every crime, ruin all order, and at length bring the condition and peace of a commonwealth to extreme and certain destruction.”

To escape these dreadful consequences, and save modern society from keeping open the gaping wounds it has inflicted upon itself, he makes known his pontifical purpose in these words: “We declare that we shall never cease to contend for the full obedience to our authority, for the removal of all obstacles put in the way of our full and free exercise of our ministry and power, and for our restoration to that condition of things in which the provident design of the Divine Wisdom had formerly placed the Roman pontiff.” Having thus instructed all the faithful that whatsoever prohibits him from acquiring all the power and authority “formerly” possessed by the popes, must be resisted and put out of the way, whether it be constitutions, laws, or customs, he declares to them, by way of encouragement, that the world shall have no rest until this is accomplished; “not only because the civil sovereignty is necessary for the protecting and preserving of the full liberty of the spiritual power, but because, moreover—a thing in itself evident—whenever there is a question of the temporal principality of the Holy See, then the interests of the public good and the salvation of the whole of human society are involved.” His enthusiasm is always heightened, and his eloquence of style becomes captivating, when his mind displays its power at the contemplation of that “ temporal sovereignty” by which he hopes that he and his successors shall bring all mankind within the bounds of the pontifical jurisdiction, so that they shall have no care for this or a higher life but what is involved in the duty of passive and uninquiring obedience. It is when this enthusiasm fully possesses him that he seizes upon the occasion to give the word of command to his ecclesiastical army in all parts of the world; as when he tells them they must display their “priestly zeal and pastoral vigilance in kindling in the souls of your [their] people the love of our holy religion, in order that they may thereby become more closely and heartily attached to this chair of truth and justice, accept all its teachings with the deepest assent of mind and will, and unhesitatingly reject all opinions, even the most widespread, which they know to be in opposition to the doctrines of the Church.”

This instruction is comprehensive enough to include all, both priests and laymen. It has the merit of simplicity, requiring only obedience to the pope, the full “assent of mind and will” to all the doctrines he shall announce, and the rejection of “all opinions” in opposition to them; no matter if their submission shall involve disobedience to the constitutions and laws under which they may live. He descends also to particulars, and prescribes a course of conduct for all his subordinates—like a commanding general laying down the plan of a military campaign. They must obtain the control of education, so as to “scatter the seeds of heavenly doctrines broadcast,” in order to save “the young especially” from the deadly influences of State and public schools, where, according to his teaching, the method of education “clouds their intellect and corrupts their morals.” They are required to instruct their pupils “in conformity with the Catholic faith, especially as regards mental philosophy,” as taught by Thomas Aquinas and “the other teachers of Christian wisdom.” They are to make exterminating war upon the “impious laws” which allow civil marriages, because those thus united, “ desecrating the holy dignity of marriage, have lived in legal concubinage instead of Christian matrimony.” And lastly, and no less imperatively, all are to be instructed in the indispensable obligation “to obey their superiors.” But Leo XIII has not been content with these distinct avowals of his pontifical opinions and purposes, He has chosen to give emphasis to them in other official methods. After the death of Cardinal Franchi, his secretary of state, he appointed Cardinal Nina to that place. Whether he considered the latter not sufficiently instructed with regard to his opinions, or availed himself of the occasion to express anew and more explicitly the principles of his pontifical policy, there is no means of deciding; but whether the one or the other, he addressed to him an official communication, wherein these principles were made known with perfect distinctness. Still contemplating “the very serious peril of society from the ever-increasing disorders which confront us on every side,” and “the intellectual and moral decay which sickens society,” in consequence of its having thrown off allegiance to the temporal power of the pope, he arraigns as prominent among the existing evils the separation of Church and State—precisely that condition of things which exists in the United States more distinctively than anywhere in the civilized world. Upon this subject—which involves so much that is absolutely fundamental in free popular government—he says: “The chief reason of this great moral ruin was the openly proclaimed separation and the attempted apostasy of the society of our day from Christ and his Church, which alone has all the power to repair all the evils of society.” And referring to the manner in which the pope had been “despoiled” of his temporal power, he admonished him “to consider that the Catholics in the different States can never feel at rest till their supreme pontiff, the superior teacher of their faith, the moderator of their consciences, is in the full enjoyment of a true liberty and a real independence;” that is, that Roman Catholics everywhere are expected to contribute immediate and active aid in bringing about the restoration of the temporal power, so that “the progress made by heresy” may be arrested, and “heteredox temples and schools” shall be destroyed.

There is nothing in all this, or in anything officially done by Leo XIII—howsoever earnestly it may be rejected by liberal minds—that should detract in the least degree from the estimate in which he deserves to be held by all who appreciate upright conduct and the consistent observance of Christian virtue. For these his life has been eminently distinguished, and when its end shall have been reached— fears of which are expressed at the time these words are written—he will well deserve a lofty niche in the papal mausoleum among the greatest and best of the pontiffs. If his opinions and utterances were to be estimated alone by his personal integrity and private virtues, the force of any criticism of them would be materially lessened. But they belong to and are an essential part of the papal system which he represents and is bound by the necessities of his position to maintain against everything in conflict with it. What he has said, and so frequently repeated, is echoed back from the tombs of those of his predecessors who fought their battles with liberalism and progress when the forces which defended them were weak and the papacy was strong. He could not break a single thread in the net which encompasses him, howsoever anxiously he might desire it, and is consequently constrained to carry on the battle waged by his predecessors until final victory is won or the flag of the temporal power is sunk out of sight forever. His task grows harder and harder every day; for now the progressive forces are growing stronger while the powers of the papacy, lessened by the loss of temporal sovereignty, are steadily waning away.

He is struggling against the patriotic sentiments of mankind, like a strong man battling with the waves of a tempestuous sea. Although the light of modern progress is not permitted to penetrate the walls of the Vatican, and he is shut in behind impenetrable screens especially to keep it out, he ought, nevertheless, to know that those to whose prosperity and advancement it has contributed are unwilling to acquiesce in its extinction, or to sit silently by when it is attempted. Whilst his arraignment of civil institutions which have grown up within the circle of this light may be well attributed to the papal system he officially represents, he has expressed his desire for their overthrow in such terms of censure and rebuke as to excite the suspicion that he is moved by an uncompromising and unconciliatory spirit. Whatsoever he has shown of this may rightfully be assigned to his Jesuit training and education. Having been placed under the care of that scheming and insinuating society before his opinions were matured and whilst his youthful mind was unable to detect their sophistry or their cunning, they were enabled to mold him to their purposes, as the softened wax is impressed by any seal. Any intelligent investigation of his pontifical policy, in so far as it involves the relations of the papacy to existing civil governments, will demonstrate this to all whose faculties have not been dwarfed by the same system of education and guardianship. We see every day, in the natural world, conclusive proof that “as the twig is bent so the tree is inclined.”

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