the last century, king, ministers, and magistrates pursued a course much more displeasing and harsh than the present Government. Rome has taken occasion to embitter the controversy, not only from the annihilation of public liberty on the Continent of Europe, but from the Piedmontese Constitution itself, which acts as a check on the arbitrary power of the Government. So that M. de Montalembert is right when he says, in a recent publication, that liberty is not to be blamed for the discord which at present exists; but that, on the contrary, it may be affirmed that Rome is indebted to free institutions alone for the licence in which her own followers participate.*

These controversies do not turn either on Catholic belief, or on the spiritual authority of the Pope, or on the Episcopacy, or even on ecclesiastical discipline, as might naturally be supposed from the noise which is made and the intemperate language which is used, but on the prerogatives, the privileges, and the temporal influence of the Ecclesiastical power.

VI.

History teaches us that as nations progressively rise out of barbarism, and society becomes civilised, the Church gradually loses that power, and the priesthood that temporal pre-eminence which they exercise to the advantage of civil intercourse and the satisfaction of the people in the infancy of society and during the period of organic change. Nothing is more manifest at the present day than that, in an advanced state of society, there is a natural tendency to the emancipation of

"C'est à la liberté que nous devons, en fait, le succès merveilleux et imprévu des intérêts catholiques."-Des Intérêts Catholiques, par M. De Montalembert, p. 69. Paris, 1852.—TR.

the State from the patronage and control of the Church; to the emancipation of the Church from the patronage and control of the State; and to the emancipation of the religious conscience of the citizen from all temporal dominion whatever. Those ill understand this process who look at and preach the separation of the two powers as the ultimate object; because the separation is nothing but the painful travail which precedes the reciprocal independence and liberty of the two powers, and the liberty and independence of the conscience of the individual, which is alone the ultimate object and the highest good. The strife is violent during the process of separation, because both powers are equally averse to lose those privileges and powers of interference which, by reason of long possession, have assumed the form of rights; and both are up in arms not only to recover their own, but to usurp and hold what belongs to the other. If the civil power carry on the strife by treading under foot the rights of ecclesiastical liberty and of the individual conscience, the faithful are excited to enmity against the State, and rebel against it in spirit; if, on the other hand, the ecclesiastical power tread under foot the rights of civil liberty, those who are strongly attached to it are easily tempted to assume full freedom of thought as regards religion, and thus many become heretics. If active rebellion and heresy do not spring up, it is because civilisation prohibits acts of open violence equally to all, and because it has already eternally extinguished by the breath of liberty the auto da fes of emperors, as well as those of the Holy Inquisition. The people feel that the strife between Church and State is not a religious but a civil quarrel; fanaticism of every description finds but little fuel; the outbursts of anger, which assume its garb, are not fire but smoke. The narrow-minded imagine that society is becoming irreligious, because the

Church is losing her temporal power; but, on the contrary, religion is acquiring a greater authority than ever over the conscience; they imagine that Governments are timid and illiberal because they do not at once strike a blow at the ecclesiastical power, but, in point of fact, liberty gains by their forbearance.

Churchmen and Statesmen ought to keep their attention. fixed on these data, and bring back the question to its first principles, which alone can clear and settle it. Ecclesiastical or State jurists understand but little about it; they look at the form and not at the substance the appearance, and not the reality; they disturb and spoil it with their subtleties of the Canon or the Roman law, which cannot decide these matters unless they are conformed to the supreme law of liberty which ought to prevail in Christian societies-in which the faithful desires liberty of creed and of worship, the citizen civil liberty, both independence; the former rebels in spirit against the State which does violence to his belief or mode of worship; the latter is divorced in spirit from the Church if it trample upon his civil rights; intemperance and violence prove nothing on either side: the State cannot enslave the believer, the Church cannot enslave the citizen.

VII.

When free institutions govern a State, acts of violence directed by the civil power against the ecclesiastical or against the conscience of the individual, are difficult of accomplishment, rare, and of little importance; but in such States the progress of society towards the independence of the two powers is also loudly proclaimed, and the temporary travail of the separation makes more noise than elsewhere. Therefore Pied

mont, which in its efforts after civil emancipation from clerical control had remained behind even the greater portion of the Italian States, is more in earnest now on account of the resistance shown by the ecclesiastical power, and, because it is free, makes its voice heard. But since this resistance is not backed by the temporal power, and, on the other hand, free institutions prevent the civil power from abusing force in order to conquer it, the country continues religious, and becomes more liberal, in spite of both the combatants. Yet as the ecclesiastical power has of late become far more ambitious, in consequence of the events which have lately occurred, both in Rome and other parts of Europe, the controversies between the Piedmontese State and the Court of Rome have been mixed up with the general question of the temporal power of the clergy and their participation in secular

affairs.

VIII.

The Roman revolution procured great moral authority for Pius IX.; because it was to him more than towards the Papacy that all generous hearts turned with reverence, for they saw in him a pontiff of holy life, a humane prince, and the founder of free institutions. At the same time all who were endeavouring to tranquillise the excitement of the people and the perturbation of society turned towards the Papacy from motives of civil prudence or political foresight. The religious sentiment, and the piety of the people, did not so much tend to prepare and arm the crusade as the desire of Governments to restore a power which might assist them to strengthen their failing authority. The crusade was at least as much political as it was religious; if indeed we may not assert that it was principally political and social. Thus the Papacy was furnished

with a splendid opportunity of restoring to the Church those liberties and rights which the State had usurped, and the Governments assented, because in their position it was popular and not ecclesiastical liberty which caused them the greater alarm and injury. Popular liberty being naturally hateful to the clerical Government, founded as it is upon the temporal dominion of the Popes, was given up by the Papacy into the hands of those Governments which restored or established ecclesiastical liberty at the same time that they restored the temporal dominion. I do not mean to affirm that these were actual conditions. It was the Revolution, the Crusade, and Fate that made these stipulations between the Pope and the Princes.

Inebriated by its triumph, intoxicated by French teachers who disseminate, as something new, doctrines of the time of King Pepin, the Roman Court imagined that the present century, tired and frightened at liberty, would apply itself to restore that strong authority and that sacerdotal pre-eminence which were in vigour during the middle ages; and that not only would political liberty be overthrown, but with it that social liberty which, under some political form or other, the present age desires to acquire, maintain, and consolidate. Whence it was, that when the absolute Government of the clergy was restored in the Roman States, the Court effected alliances with all the Governments which put narrow limits to popular freedom, and as it was intent not only on procuring ecclesiastical liberty, but also on preserving and restoring those ancient privileges which were contrary or hostile to civil liberty, it promoted and favoured a universal re-action against social as well as political liberty. Hence many writers and ecclesiastical orators have taken upon themselves to condemn not only free institutions, but all modernised Governments (by which phrase they

VOL. IV.

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