Sardinia and Rome

The troubles in our own country and the stirring nature of the events during the last three months, as well as our inability during that period to use our eyes either for reading or writing, have prevented us from keeping as well posted as usual on European affairs. The preservation of our republic, and with it the hopes of the friends of free government throughout the world, has claimed our first attention, and made even the great movements in Europe appear to us of but secondary importance. We have hardly kept run of the insurrectionary movements in Poland, Hungary, or Italy, and know little of what are the prospects of the "Sick Man' of the East. The most we have learned in regard to the old world is that Spain is rapidly rising to a first-class power, which gives us pleasure ; that peace is still maintained between France and England; and that Austria is making energetic and, we hope, successful efforts to reconstitute her empire under a liberal parliamentary government. The French, we are informed, have withdrawn their troops from Syria; but the imperial government  promises not to abandon the Syrian Christians to the tender mercies of the Turks. The French troops, at the time we are writing, still occupy Rome, and though several powers have recognized the new kingdom of Italy, the affairs of the peninsula would yet seem far from being settled.
Next after the affairs of our own country, those of Italy have for us the most interest; and, if we believed that the interests of our religion were inseparable from the Italian political movements, they would have more interest for us than even the civil war in which we are now engaged at home. Religion is man's supreme law, and its interests take precedence of all others. Without religion no man can attain to the end for which he has been created and redeemed, as without religion no people can be really free and fulfil the legitimate purposes of social existence. Christianity is the only religion ; and there is no Christianity in its unity,integrity,and efficiency, without the church; and no church without the papacy. The body without the head is a lifeless trunk ; and the pope is the visible head of the church. It is necessary to the well-being of the church that the pope should be free and independent in the exercise of his spiritual functions. If the loss of his temporal estates and the establishment of the unity of Italy under Victor Emanuel or any other constitutional sovereign would deprive the Holy Father of his spiritual freedom and independence, we should consider the success of the Italian national movement the greatest possible calamity not only to Italy, but to the whole Christian world. But, as yet, we are not fully convinced that such would necessarily be the fact. It always depends on the pope himself whether he shall be free and independent or not; for it is always in his power to follow the example of his predecessors for three hundred years under the pagan emperors, and to suffer martyrdom. Never did religion flourish more, or the church gain more brilliant conquests, than when the election to the supreme pontificate was an election to the martyr's crown. It may be a great convenience for the supreme pontiff to be also a sovereign prince and reign as an earthly potentate; but we cannot discover as this is an absolute necessity in the constitution of the church. We know from history that the popes governed the church, watched over its interests, and performed all the functions as visible head of Christ's kingdom on earth for seven hundred years without being recognized as sovereign temporal princes. Whether the possession of the supreme temporal power over a small Italian state has ever tended to secure their spiritual freedom and independence, has ever been of any real advantage to the church, or rendered their spiritual power more acceptable or more efficient, is a question which it is not our province to discuss. It may have been necessary, or, at least, useful, in past times, before the consolidation of power, and the formation of the great centralized kingdoms and empires of Europe; but we are not certain that it is either the one or the other in the present changed circumstances of the political movements in which the interest of religion are only indirectly and temporarily involved.
One thing is certain, that, since the general rejection by Christian nations of the divine right of governments and the recognition of de facto governments as legitimate, which, in principle and in fact, places right on the side of might and vests the sovereignty in the strongest or the successful, the temporal independence of the pope can be only nominal,for, as the sovereign of only a small state, he lacks and must lack the power to vindicate it by force, whenever seriously attacked by any of his neighbors. He may be independent in theory, but in practice he does and must depend on the policy, the diplomacy, or the rivalries of the great powers of Europe. The policy of states and empires has long since ceased to be dictated from the Vatican; throughout all Europe the temporal power has,as a fact, long since escaped from its subjection to the spiritual; and the powers of Europe, whether Catholic or non-Catholic, hold themselves free to support or to war against the pope, according to their own view of their own political interests. There is not a single European power that is prepared to sacrifice the slightest political interest for the  sake of sustaining the temporal sovereignty of the Holy See; all are ready to use the sovereign pontiff or to cast him aside, according to their reasons of state. Nothing seems to us further from the truth than to suppose that there is still a political Christendom existing. There may be sovereigns who have Catholic faith and piety, but there are really no Catholic governments. The political order throughout the world is as un-Catholic, though perhaps not as anti-Catholic, as was the political order of the Roman empire under Decius and Diocletian. There is no political power on which the pope can rely, and no sovereign in Europe that he can summon to his aid when his states are invaded. How,then, can we say that his temporal sovereignty aids and supports his spiritual freedom and independence?
We state facts as they are, not as we would have them. We are far from holding that the change which have gone on in the world, which have involved, if not the subjection of the church to the state, at least her separation from it, have been for the better, or are, in any sense, deserving the approbation of the wise and good. But this is not the question with which we have now to deal. The changes have been effected; the facts are as they are ; and the question is, what is the best manner of dealing with them? To attempt to maintain the temporal sovereignty of the pope over a small Italian state,in the face of these changes seems to us impracticable, and not likely, even if practicable, to render him more free and independent in the administration of ecclesiastical affairs. To treat these changes as though they had not been effected, to proceed on the assumption that things are as they were in the middle ages, when the sovereign pontiffs exerted a real influence on the politics of princes and states, is not the part of wisdom; to attempt to roll back these changes and to restore the order that has passed away is, in our judgment, impracticable and impossible, even if desirable; to declaim against them, or to sign and weep over them, may be the part of the conquered, but can never be that wisdom and strength. True wisdom, it seems to us, requires the friends of religion to accept these changes as facts accomplished, and to endeavor to adjust ecclesiastical and all other arrangements to them. 
But, while we say all this, let it be distinctly understood that we recognize in the fullest and strictest sense the rights of temporal sovereignty possessed by the Holy Father, and that only by an act of gross injustice, of the grossest injustice indeed, can he be deprived of them. The pope is the oldest sovereign in Europe, and no sovereign in Europe holds his states by a better title, or by one so good, so sacred, or so inviolable in its nature. Let it also be understood that we give no heed to what has been said against the papal government in past or in present times. The only fault that we have ever been disposed to find with the papal government is that it has been too lenient and too paternal in it character. The charges of cruelty and tyranny brought against it we throw to the winds; we believe none of them. That government was legitimate in its origin, and by no act or acts has it, so far as we can discover, ever forfeited its original right. No government has ever labored more earnestly, more faithfully, more perseveringly for the good of its subjects, with more benevolence, or with more intelligence. The difficulties in the case grow not out of any duty neglected, or of any wrong done by the pontiff-kings, but simply out of the fact that the political world has lost its respect for right, and the maintenance of the papal government in its independence and integrity is incompatible with modern politics, or the political system originates in the sixteenth century by the successors of St. Louis of France, and solemnly adopted and proclaimed as the public law of Europe by the peace of Paris,March,1856. 
Need we say that we do not approve that system, which in reality is only political atheism? We denounced that peace when it was made, and our pages from first to last have teemed with the strongest denunciations against political atheism. We denounced in the strongest and most pointed terms that we could use, the war of England and France against Russia, even before it was declared, as an unprovoked and unjust war, and likely to have a most unfavorable influence for a long time to come on European politics. We foretold and denounced the policy of Napoleon III. long before any of our Catholic contemporaries had ceased to regard him as a new Charlemagne, or a second St.Louis. We exposed and denounced the policy of his Italian campaign before it was commenced, and none of our Catholic contemporaries have denounced in severer terms than we the invasion of the pontifical rights and territory by Sardinia, or the invasion of the realm of the king of the Two Sicilies by that prince of filibusters, Joseph Garibaldi, and we are sorry to find that our government has accepted, even in defence of a good cause, a battalion called the Garibaldi Guards. In our opposition to all these movements prompted by and resulting in the coronation of political atheism, we have gone before all our Catholic contemporaries, and, on more occasions than one, have found ourselves standing alone in that opposition. Let it not be said, then, that we have approved, or that we approve in any way, shape, or manner, the policy either of Napoleon III. or of Count Cavour, that has brought the Holy Father as temporal sovereign to his present deplorable condition.
Whatever others may say for themselves, we are innocent of ever having done any thing to favor that policy; and if Catholics, especially Catholics in influential positions, had generally opposed that policy as early and as earnestly as we did, it could never have been carried into effect. We read with admiration, with hearty assent, the eloquent protests of our prelates throughout the world against it, and only regret that they have come too late. It cannot be denied that Catholics everywhere have shown a singular want of foresight, and, if we wanted any argument to prove that the church stands not in human wisdom or in human sagacity, we should find it in their misplaced confidence in the modern Caesar, and the praises they have lavished on his newfangled political system. No sovereign was ever more frank or was less liable to be accused of concealing his policy. All his antecedents, all his writings, all his surroundings, as well as his public declarations, proved clearly and conclusively that he was and would be no sincere friend of the temporal sovereignty of the Holy See, and, while he would not openly break with the church, he would never suffer any respect for her, or for the rights of her pontiff, to interfere in the least with his state policy, The very fact that he was the nephew of his uncle proved this, and if any of our prelates for one moment doubted it, or trusted that by their flatteries and servility they could persuade him out of it, they have only their own want of foresight to complain of . No doubt he would have been glad to a confederated Italy with the pope for its nominal head; but that it was his determination from the first to deprive the Holy Father of all real and effective temporal power cannot reasonably be doubted by any one acquainted with the Idees Napoleoniennes. Our prelates have done well in placing our record their protests against the violation of international law, the contempt of the rights of independent sovereigns, as well as of the ordinary principles of religion and morality of the Sardinian government in its attempts to grasp the sovereignty of all Italy; but we should have prized them much more, and they would have been much more effective had they come some years sooner.
There is no real difference of opinion on the merits of the Italian question between the eloquent author of the pamphlet before us and ourselves. We are as indignant at the Napoleon-Cavour policy as he is, and we are as far as he from approving the acts of Sardinia towards the papal government, the duchies, and the Neapolitan kingdom. We hold, as well as he, that it is never lawful to do evil that good may come. But the evil has been done, the wrongs have been committed, and we see no human power adequate to avenge them. It seems to us in vain to appeal to the Catholic world, for it has been by professedly Catholic hands that the evil has been perpetrated. The fault cannot be charged in this case to the open and avowed enemies of our religion, but is undeniably the fault of those who profess to honor the pope as their spiritual chief. Our Lord has been rejected and crucified by his own people. We deny not, we excuse not, we palliate not their wickedness. But, after all, to what good recall and dwell upon it? Why war against irrevocable facts? Why attempt the impossible? Why break our heads against the inevitable? We cannot alter that which is past. It is beyond our control. The only difference, if difference there be, between the noble author and ourselves is that he resists even after resistance has become useless, and we cease to resist or even protest after, in our judgment, the fact is accomplished ; from that moment we turn our eyes from what has been, to what is best now to be done, and we reserve all our strength to mould the future in accordance with our wishes.
We believe great evil has been done, grave wrongs committed, but we do not believe it all over with the church or with humanity. In the darkest day "the old God," as say the Germans, "still lives," and his providence is as young, as fresh, as vigorous, and as worth of reliance as ever. We are among those who believe it never wise to sit down and waste our energies in sighing over the sins we have committed, but to look out for the virtue, and engage with redoubled vigilance in the performance of the virtue, of which we are still capable. As long as God lives we will never believe in the permanent triumph of evil, or in the impossibility of repairing the greatest wrongs that may have been committed. The church is as present, is as powerful to-day as she was when she went forth with the apostles from that "upper room" in Jerusalem to conquer the world. The loss of temporal sovereignty by the successor of Peter, The loss of all her temporal goods, the reduction of her ministers to mere staff and scrip will not make her weaker than she was when Peter erected his chair in the capital of the pagan world. Perhaps this loss would even prove to be a gain. Woe to him who despoils the church, but not therefore woe to the church despoiled. What the church has once done she can do again, and perhaps could do more without than with the worldly trappings with which she has so long been encumbered.
We by no means despair of the future; we by no means despair of seeing religion again recovering its hold on men's hearts and on men's consciences; we by no means despair of seeing again peoples and nations, sovereign princes and states recognizing the authority of Peter, and acknowledging the supremacy of the spiritual over the temporal; we by no means despair of seeing reestablished that systems of Christian politics and international right which the church, through her sovereign pontiffs, labored so long and earnestly to introduce and establish among Christian nations. Political atheism is a falsehood, and no falsehood can live. Its triumph can be but temporary, and last no longer than the heated passions which have given it birth. The church will regain her power and her rightful supremacy, but probably not in a society modelled after that of the middle ages. She then worked through princes and nobles, hereafter she must work through the people; she then operated by diplomacy and force, she must hereafter operate through the intelligence and conscience of the people elevated to an effective power in the management of their own public affairs.
This is the belief of Count Montalembert as of ourselves, and hence his earnest, persevering, and consistent efforts for free or constitutional government. It has been with him a principal object in this very letter to Count Cavour before us, to vindicate the sovereign pontiff from the charge of having, in his late allocutions, declared the incompatibility of the church with modern civilization or of Catholicity and liberty brought against him by the infidel and non-Catholic press of Europe, and owned and defended by the principal Catholic journals, and no small part of the Catholic clergy of Italy, France, Belgium, and Spain. We have good authority for saying the Holy Father has declared no such thing, and that whatever sympathies there may have been among Catholics at Rome or elsewhere with the old political order, now warred against almost everywhere by the irrepressible instincts of the human heart, there has been no committing and no intention of committing the church, by her supreme chief, to its preservation or to its restoration. Nothing has been said, nothing is implied in what has been said, in condemnation or censure of those Catholics who, like ourselves, have maintained the compatibility of religion and liberty, who have steadily opposed caesarism, and sought the freedom of the church in the general freedom of the citizen.
That the court of Rome has lavished encouragements on those Catholics who have been foremost in the war against the political and other changes effected by modern civilization, we are far from denying, or that in this that court has not furthered the interests of religion, or taken the best method of winning back to their submission the world escaping from the control of the church, we are just as far from doubting. Our Catholic duty binds us to obedience to all orders in relation to spirituals emanating from the supreme spiritual authority; but our Catholic faith does not bind us to believe that the court of Rome, any more than any other court, is infallible in its political administration or in matters of mere human prudence. We are free to hold and to say that we think the court of Rome has committed a mistake in not following up the liberal policy inaugurated by our present Holy Father on his accession to the papal throne, and in encouraging such men as Louis Veuillot, or such journals as the late Univers, or the present Monde. These men and journals, in consequence of the encouragements they have received, have gained an undue influence in the Catholic world, which they have exerted, so far as we can see, only for evil. They have misled a large number of the bishops and clergy in France and elsewhere, alienated the affections of many of those who, from the noble stand taken by Catholics in 1848 and 1849, had been strongly attracted towards her, and have seemed to commit the cause of Catholicity irrevocably to caesarism. Deeply now do Catholic interests suffer from this, as we believe, mistaken policy. The cause of absolutism in Europe is everywhere falling; Austria abandons it and seeks to give herself a liberal constitution, and even the emperor of the French has judged it prudent to permit freer expression of opinion and greater publicity on political subjects than were at first allowed in his empire, and has gained the adhesion of a large class of liberals whose support might have been obtained for the Catholic cause. But, notwithstanding this, the church is not and cannot be committed to the cause of despotism, and Catholicity itself is still, as ever, the friend and the support of all true and desirable liberty.
We are well aware of the defects of modern civilization; but these are defects which cannot be supplied without religion. Both civilization and religion suffer when separated. Civilization without religion necessarily becomes low and materialistic, and religion, when it fails to animate and direct civilization, fails in an important part of its work. The great evil of our times lies in the fact of their separation, and though neither is the other or a part of the other, yet, for the perfection or complete actualization of each, both should act in union. We gain nothing for religion by standing aloof from modern civilization and denouncing it as low, earthly, and unchristian, for it is not in our power to arrest its tendency, or in its power, without the assistance of the church, to correct its defects or elevate its character.
When God would redeem man and raise him to the plane of a supernatural destiny, he makes himself man assumes, flesh with all its infirmities, sin excepted. In this is the principle of all reform, the higher seeks the lower, the perfect completes the imperfect, the firm take up and heal the infirm. God did not wait for man to come to him; he descended to man. So must it be with regard to civilization. If we would redeem it, and give it an elevated tone and character, the church must accept it, take it to herself, and breathe into it her own pure and divine spirit. There is no intrinsic and invincible incompatibility between modern civilization and our holy religion; the church can exist and perform her functions in a free as well as in a despotic state; the church can deal with republics as well as with monarchies, and the people can be made as efficient servants of God as princes and nobles. Railways, steamboats, and lightning telegraphs may be used by ministers of religion as well as by ministers of the state, and nothing can better serve the interest of the church than the general education and intelligence of the people. There is nothing in Catholic doctrine, nothing in the teaching of the fathers and doctors of the church, or in the canons or definitions of popes and councils that make it less Catholic to travel in a railway car or a steamboat than an ox-cart, a coach drawn by horses, on horseback, or in a ship propelled by sails; to spin cotton by the mule or jenny, than by hand; or to recognize the sovereign authority of a national assembly than of a prince "born in the purple." There is, then, no more necessary hostility between Catholicity and modern civilization than there was between it and the mediaeval.
The republican movements of the day have generally assumed a character of hostility to the church, we grant; but not because there was any inherent hostility between them and our holy religion, nor because republicans, as such, are unwilling to submit to its authority, but because they have found, or imagined they found, the power and influence of the church directed against them and wieled in support of despotism. The church has no doubt suffered much and must suffer still more during the transition from the previous political order to that which is now in process of establishment; but she has suffered no more, and is likely to suffer no more, than she suffered in the transition from the imperial Roman system of the first centuries to the feudal system of the middle ages, or from the feudal system of the middle ages to the monarchial system established in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the first she lost the greater part of the East; in the second fully one-third of the North and West; in the present transition she need lose no nation, and would lose but few individuals, if her children could be persuaded that the republican hostility is only accidental and not necessary, or could understand that the friends of constitutional government have hearts no less susceptible of religious influence than are the hearts of the friends of despotism. The evil lies in regarding what is accidental and temporary and inherent and permanent. If the ministers of religion would take as much pains to prove to the party of progress that they can have all the progress they desire without abandoning the church, that they do to prove to them that their progress without religion is no real progress and can have only a fatal result, the evil would, in a great part, be removed, and religion and liberty be permitted to walk hand in hand. The great mistake is in supposing that the error is not mutual, but all on the side of the liberal movement. Unhappily the friends of religion and the friends of progress fall into precisely the same error, each hold that liberty and religion are mutually repugnant one to the other. Hence those in whom the passion for liberty predominates break from the church and make war on religion, while they in whom religion predominates break with modern civilization and anathematize liberty. Each is alike hostile to the interests both of the church and civilization; both need to correct their views, for both lose sight of the real relations between the natural and the supernatural. True wisdom demands the conciliation of religion and liberty, so that there shall never be imposed on any one the terrible alternative of choosing between them or of sacrificing the one to the other.
Nevertheless there is something to be said in extenuation of the conduct of those Catholics who refuse to accept modern civilization and its changes, and in defence of the policy which for the last few years has apparently been pursued by the court of Rome. Rome has been placed in a difficult position; she has been opposed and her very existence threatened by the democratic revolutionists, and has had only the despotic and arbitrary governments of Europe on which to rely for her defence against them. To have declared in favor of the liberal movement or to have withheld her encouragements from those who combatted red-republicanism or socialism, even from the point of view of caesarism, might have been to throw away all the temporal support on which she could rely, and to have armed the governments as well as the mob against her; besides, Catholics are affected like others by their social position and human interests. They, no more than others, can see broken down or destroyed the order of things under which they have been born, grown up, and lived, without feeling that a great evil is threatened them or that they should do their best to resist it. Those Catholics in Europe who have resisted, and resist, the changes and revolutions still going on, have done, and are doing, no more than we who are loyal to the flag of our Union, and rapidly arming against the great southern rebellion, are ourselves doing. We believe it our duty and our interest to make the greatest efforts possible in defence of the institutions bequeathed us by our fathers and to preserve in its integrity and its efficiency the government we have inherited. We take our stand on the side of constituted order, of legitimate authority, of loyalty. European Catholics who resist the revolutionary movements of their respective countries do the same, and must be regarded as acting from as pure, from as high, from as noble, and from as disinterested motives as ourselves. They believe in neither the wisdom nor the necessity, in neither the justice nor the utility of the changes proposed to be effected, and therefore are fully justified in their own minds and in their own consciences in offering the most effective resistance to them in their power. Taking their stand-point, we cannot censure them, but, if we have any sense of loyalty, or honor, or chivalric sentiment in our natures, we must applaud them; for then we could see no more merit in the party they resist than we ourselves can see in our southern rebels and traitors.
The complaint we make of them is not that they resist political and social changes in their capacity  as loyal citizens and subjects, but that they attempt to bind the church to the order they defend and to render her interests inseparable from its preservation, thus calling to their aid a power to which they have no right and committing the church to an order which is passing away. They seem to us to continue their resistance in the name of religion when resistance has become vain. We resist firmly and with all our power the attempt of the rebels in our own country to dissolve the Union and to set up a separate nationality for themselves, because we believe it our right and our duty to do so, and also because we believe we have the power to make our resistance effectual. Yet, were, which God forbid! the federal arms to be defeated, the powers of the federal government to be exhausted, the rebels victorious, and there ceased to be any reasonable prospect of subduing them and preserving the Union in its integrity, we should believe it wise and just and even our duty to cease resistance and to assent to a separation of these states and the formation of a southern confederacy as a free and independent state. We may be wrong, but we regard the conservative cause in Europe as a lost cause, and that the longer the struggle to preserve it continues, the more disadvantageous to the conservatives will be the peace or final adjustment of the controversy. We think better terms can be obtained now than after longer struggle.
Yet in all this we may be wrong, just as those at home and abroad are wrong who advise a peaceable acquiescence in the demands of our southern rebels and in a final separation between the slaveholding and the non-slaveholding states. Certainly our noble friend, Count Montalembert, in whose judgment we place great confidence, does not believe the battle to be as yet finally lost. He believes it still possible to defeat the Napoleon-Cavour policy, to retain the temporal sovereignty of the Holy See, and to reestablish the Holy Father in the full possession of all his temporal rights. He is nearer the scene of action than we are, and knows far better than we do, the agencies at work and the temporal resources of the Holy See. It may be that he is justified in his hopes, and that our fears are groundless, or that we have taken as un fait accompli what not only is not effected, but not likely to be effected. We assure him that we shall be much better pleased to find that he is right than we shall to find that we are right. We love not changes, and, if the maintenance of the temporal sovereignty of the Holy See can be preserved, and preserved in peace, in harmony with the wishes and interests of Catholic Europe, we shall be highly gratified and most grateful to Almighty God. What we want is not that this temporal sovereignty should be abolished, is not that the Holy Father should be compelled again to take refuge in the catacombs of Rome, be an exile or a martyr, is not that he and his court should be driven out of house and home, but that the real interests of the church should be harmonized with whatever is good and desirable in modern civilization.
We will say, in conclusion, that we are far from being convinced that the affairs of the peninsula are either settled, or in train of being settled speedily. In the first place, we have some doubts if divine Providence will give a final victory to a power that has been so unjust, so iniquitous, so unscrupulous in the means it has adopted, as the Piedmontese government; in the second place, we do not believe that the emperor of the French really wishes all Italy to be united in one kingdom under Victor Emanuel, or any other Italian prince. If he could count always on the king of Italy for his ally, he would no doubt be favorable to Italian unity, as it would strengthen France against her enemies, and, in some sense, preserve to her hegemony of Europe; but he knows far better than we do that this is not to be counted upon. Italy once constituted and recognized as an independent kingdom will follow in its alliances its own interest, and be as likely to ally itself with England, Austria, or Russia as with France. He must see that a united Italy would be followed by the union of the Spanish peninsula under a single government, and by the unity of Germany, which, instead of strengthening France, would really reduce her to a second-class power. If he finds it impossible to carry out the policy of his uncle, and virtually to absorb the Spanish and Italian peninsulas in his own empire, he will most likely return to what for centuries has been the policy of the French government to keep Italy divided, to prevent a union of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns, or the formation of a strong centralized Germany. To this policy it is not unlikely his imperial majesty will be thwarted, and the papal states restored to the Holy See. New wars may also break out between the great powers, which in their results may bring about, as at the peace of Vienna in 1815, the reestablishment in its integrity of the papal government; but, if so, we hope it will be without compelling us to go over again and experience the last forty-five years. If that government is reestablished, we hope it will be really independent and obliged to follow the policy neither of Austria nor of France, and that Italian patriots will cease to disturb the peace of Europe.

The troubles in our own country and the stirring nature of the events during the last three months, as well as our inability during that period to use our eyes either for reading or writing, have prevented us from keeping as well posted as usual on European affairs. The preservation of our republic, and with it the hopes of the friends of free government throughout the world, has claimed our first attention, and made even the great movements in Europe appear to us of but secondary importance. We have hardly kept run of the insurrectionary movements in Poland, Hungary, or Italy, and know little of what are the prospects of the "Sick Man' of the East. The most we have learned in regard to the old world is that Spain is rapidly rising to a first-class power, which gives us pleasure ; that peace is still maintained between France and England; and that Austria is making energetic and, we hope, successful efforts to reconstitute her empire under a liberal parliamentary government. The French, we are informed, have withdrawn their troops from Syria; but the imperial government  promises not to abandon the Syrian Christians to the tender mercies of the Turks. The French troops, at the time we are writing, still occupy Rome, and though several powers have recognized the new kingdom of Italy, the affairs of the peninsula would yet seem far from being settled.

Next after the affairs of our own country, those of Italy have for us the most interest; and, if we believed that the interests of our religion were inseparable from the Italian political movements, they would have more interest for us than even the civil war in which we are now engaged at home. Religion is man's supreme law, and its interests take precedence of all others. Without religion no man can attain to the end for which he has been created and redeemed, as without religion no people can be really free and fulfil the legitimate purposes of social existence. Christianity is the only religion ; and there is no Christianity in its unity,integrity,and efficiency, without the church; and no church without the papacy. The body without the head is a lifeless trunk ; and the pope is the visible head of the church. It is necessary to the well-being of the church that the pope should be free and independent in the exercise of his spiritual functions. If the loss of his temporal estates and the establishment of the unity of Italy under Victor Emanuel or any other constitutional sovereign would deprive the Holy Father of his spiritual freedom and independence, we should consider the success of the Italian national movement the greatest possible calamity not only to Italy, but to the whole Christian world. But, as yet, we are not fully convinced that such would necessarily be the fact. It always depends on the pope himself whether he shall be free and independent or not; for it is always in his power to follow the example of his predecessors for three hundred years under the pagan emperors, and to suffer martyrdom. Never did religion flourish more, or the church gain more brilliant conquests, than when the election to the supreme pontificate was an election to the martyr's crown. It may be a great convenience for the supreme pontiff to be also a sovereign prince and reign as an earthly potentate; but we cannot discover as this is an absolute necessity in the constitution of the church. We know from history that the popes governed the church, watched over its interests, and performed all the functions as visible head of Christ's kingdom on earth for seven hundred years without being recognized as sovereign temporal princes. Whether the possession of the supreme temporal power over a small Italian state has ever tended to secure their spiritual freedom and independence, has ever been of any real advantage to the church, or rendered their spiritual power more acceptable or more efficient, is a question which it is not our province to discuss. It may have been necessary, or, at least, useful, in past times, before the consolidation of power, and the formation of the great centralized kingdoms and empires of Europe; but we are not certain that it is either the one or the other in the present changed circumstances of the political movements in which the interest of religion are only indirectly and temporarily involved.

One thing is certain, that, since the general rejection by Christian nations of the divine right of governments and the recognition of de facto governments as legitimate, which, in principle and in fact, places right on the side of might and vests the sovereignty in the strongest or the successful, the temporal independence of the pope can be only nominal,for, as the sovereign of only a small state, he lacks and must lack the power to vindicate it by force, whenever seriously attacked by any of his neighbors. He may be independent in theory, but in practice he does and must depend on the policy, the diplomacy, or the rivalries of the great powers of Europe. The policy of states and empires has long since ceased to be dictated from the Vatican; throughout all Europe the temporal power has,as a fact, long since escaped from its subjection to the spiritual; and the powers of Europe, whether Catholic or non-Catholic, hold themselves free to support or to war against the pope, according to their own view of their own political interests. There is not a single European power that is prepared to sacrifice the slightest political interest for the  sake of sustaining the temporal sovereignty of the Holy See; all are ready to use the sovereign pontiff or to cast him aside, according to their reasons of state. Nothing seems to us further from the truth than to suppose that there is still a political Christendom existing. There may be sovereigns who have Catholic faith and piety, but there are really no Catholic governments. The political order throughout the world is as un-Catholic, though perhaps not as anti-Catholic, as was the political order of the Roman empire under Decius and Diocletian. There is no political power on which the pope can rely, and no sovereign in Europe that he can summon to his aid when his states are invaded. How,then, can we say that his temporal sovereignty aids and supports his spiritual freedom and independence?

We state facts as they are, not as we would have them. We are far from holding that the change which have gone on in the world, which have involved, if not the subjection of the church to the state, at least her separation from it, have been for the better, or are, in any sense, deserving the approbation of the wise and good. But this is not the question with which we have now to deal. The changes have been effected; the facts are as they are ; and the question is, what is the best manner of dealing with them? To attempt to maintain the temporal sovereignty of the pope over a small Italian state,in the face of these changes seems to us impracticable, and not likely, even if practicable, to render him more free and independent in the administration of ecclesiastical affairs. To treat these changes as though they had not been effected, to proceed on the assumption that things are as they were in the middle ages, when the sovereign pontiffs exerted a real influence on the politics of princes and states, is not the part of wisdom; to attempt to roll back these changes and to restore the order that has passed away is, in our judgment, impracticable and impossible, even if desirable; to declaim against them, or to sign and weep over them, may be the part of the conquered, but can never be that wisdom and strength. True wisdom, it seems to us, requires the friends of religion to accept these changes as facts accomplished, and to endeavor to adjust ecclesiastical and all other arrangements to them. 

But, while we say all this, let it be distinctly understood that we recognize in the fullest and strictest sense the rights of temporal sovereignty possessed by the Holy Father, and that only by an act of gross injustice, of the grossest injustice indeed, can he be deprived of them. The pope is the oldest sovereign in Europe, and no sovereign in Europe holds his states by a better title, or by one so good, so sacred, or so inviolable in its nature. Let it also be understood that we give no heed to what has been said against the papal government in past or in present times. The only fault that we have ever been disposed to find with the papal government is that it has been too lenient and too paternal in it character. The charges of cruelty and tyranny brought against it we throw to the winds; we believe none of them. That government was legitimate in its origin, and by no act or acts has it, so far as we can discover, ever forfeited its original right. No government has ever labored more earnestly, more faithfully, more perseveringly for the good of its subjects, with more benevolence, or with more intelligence. The difficulties in the case grow not out of any duty neglected, or of any wrong done by the pontiff-kings, but simply out of the fact that the political world has lost its respect for right, and the maintenance of the papal government in its independence and integrity is incompatible with modern politics, or the political system originates in the sixteenth century by the successors of St. Louis of France, and solemnly adopted and proclaimed as the public law of Europe by the peace of Paris,March,1856. 

Need we say that we do not approve that system, which in reality is only political atheism? We denounced that peace when it was made, and our pages from first to last have teemed with the strongest denunciations against political atheism. We denounced in the strongest and most pointed terms that we could use, the war of England and France against Russia, even before it was declared, as an unprovoked and unjust war, and likely to have a most unfavorable influence for a long time to come on European politics. We foretold and denounced the policy of Napoleon III. long before any of our Catholic contemporaries had ceased to regard him as a new Charlemagne, or a second St.Louis. We exposed and denounced the policy of his Italian campaign before it was commenced, and none of our Catholic contemporaries have denounced in severer terms than we the invasion of the pontifical rights and territory by Sardinia, or the invasion of the realm of the king of the Two Sicilies by that prince of filibusters, Joseph Garibaldi, and we are sorry to find that our government has accepted, even in defence of a good cause, a battalion called the Garibaldi Guards. In our opposition to all these movements prompted by and resulting in the coronation of political atheism, we have gone before all our Catholic contemporaries, and, on more occasions than one, have found ourselves standing alone in that opposition. Let it not be said, then, that we have approved, or that we approve in any way, shape, or manner, the policy either of Napoleon III. or of Count Cavour, that has brought the Holy Father as temporal sovereign to his present deplorable condition.

Whatever others may say for themselves, we are innocent of ever having done any thing to favor that policy; and if Catholics, especially Catholics in influential positions, had generally opposed that policy as early and as earnestly as we did, it could never have been carried into effect. We read with admiration, with hearty assent, the eloquent protests of our prelates throughout the world against it, and only regret that they have come too late. It cannot be denied that Catholics everywhere have shown a singular want of foresight, and, if we wanted any argument to prove that the church stands not in human wisdom or in human sagacity, we should find it in their misplaced confidence in the modern Caesar, and the praises they have lavished on his newfangled political system. No sovereign was ever more frank or was less liable to be accused of concealing his policy. All his antecedents, all his writings, all his surroundings, as well as his public declarations, proved clearly and conclusively that he was and would be no sincere friend of the temporal sovereignty of the Holy See, and, while he would not openly break with the church, he would never suffer any respect for her, or for the rights of her pontiff, to interfere in the least with his state policy, The very fact that he was the nephew of his uncle proved this, and if any of our prelates for one moment doubted it, or trusted that by their flatteries and servility they could persuade him out of it, they have only their own want of foresight to complain of . No doubt he would have been glad to a confederated Italy with the pope for its nominal head; but that it was his determination from the first to deprive the Holy Father of all real and effective temporal power cannot reasonably be doubted by any one acquainted with the Idees Napoleoniennes. Our prelates have done well in placing our record their protests against the violation of international law, the contempt of the rights of independent sovereigns, as well as of the ordinary principles of religion and morality of the Sardinian government in its attempts to grasp the sovereignty of all Italy; but we should have prized them much more, and they would have been much more effective had they come some years sooner.

There is no real difference of opinion on the merits of the Italian question between the eloquent author of the pamphlet before us and ourselves. We are as indignant at the Napoleon-Cavour policy as he is, and we are as far as he from approving the acts of Sardinia towards the papal government, the duchies, and the Neapolitan kingdom. We hold, as well as he, that it is never lawful to do evil that good may come. But the evil has been done, the wrongs have been committed, and we see no human power adequate to avenge them. It seems to us in vain to appeal to the Catholic world, for it has been by professedly Catholic hands that the evil has been perpetrated. The fault cannot be charged in this case to the open and avowed enemies of our religion, but is undeniably the fault of those who profess to honor the pope as their spiritual chief. Our Lord has been rejected and crucified by his own people. We deny not, we excuse not, we palliate not their wickedness. But, after all, to what good recall and dwell upon it? Why war against irrevocable facts? Why attempt the impossible? Why break our heads against the inevitable? We cannot alter that which is past. It is beyond our control. The only difference, if difference there be, between the noble author and ourselves is that he resists even after resistance has become useless, and we cease to resist or even protest after, in our judgment, the fact is accomplished ; from that moment we turn our eyes from what has been, to what is best now to be done, and we reserve all our strength to mould the future in accordance with our wishes.

We believe great evil has been done, grave wrongs committed, but we do not believe it all over with the church or with humanity. In the darkest day "the old God," as say the Germans, "still lives," and his providence is as young, as fresh, as vigorous, and as worth of reliance as ever. We are among those who believe it never wise to sit down and waste our energies in sighing over the sins we have committed, but to look out for the virtue, and engage with redoubled vigilance in the performance of the virtue, of which we are still capable. As long as God lives we will never believe in the permanent triumph of evil, or in the impossibility of repairing the greatest wrongs that may have been committed. The church is as present, is as powerful to-day as she was when she went forth with the apostles from that "upper room" in Jerusalem to conquer the world. The loss of temporal sovereignty by the successor of Peter, The loss of all her temporal goods, the reduction of her ministers to mere staff and scrip will not make her weaker than she was when Peter erected his chair in the capital of the pagan world. Perhaps this loss would even prove to be a gain. Woe to him who despoils the church, but not therefore woe to the church despoiled. What the church has once done she can do again, and perhaps could do more without than with the worldly trappings with which she has so long been encumbered.

We by no means despair of the future; we by no means despair of seeing religion again recovering its hold on men's hearts and on men's consciences; we by no means despair of seeing again peoples and nations, sovereign princes and states recognizing the authority of Peter, and acknowledging the supremacy of the spiritual over the temporal; we by no means despair of seeing reestablished that systems of Christian politics and international right which the church, through her sovereign pontiffs, labored so long and earnestly to introduce and establish among Christian nations. Political atheism is a falsehood, and no falsehood can live. Its triumph can be but temporary, and last no longer than the heated passions which have given it birth. The church will regain her power and her rightful supremacy, but probably not in a society modelled after that of the middle ages. She then worked through princes and nobles, hereafter she must work through the people; she then operated by diplomacy and force, she must hereafter operate through the intelligence and conscience of the people elevated to an effective power in the management of their own public affairs.

This is the belief of Count Montalembert as of ourselves, and hence his earnest, persevering, and consistent efforts for free or constitutional government. It has been with him a principal object in this very letter to Count Cavour before us, to vindicate the sovereign pontiff from the charge of having, in his late allocutions, declared the incompatibility of the church with modern civilization or of Catholicity and liberty brought against him by the infidel and non-Catholic press of Europe, and owned and defended by the principal Catholic journals, and no small part of the Catholic clergy of Italy, France, Belgium, and Spain. We have good authority for saying the Holy Father has declared no such thing, and that whatever sympathies there may have been among Catholics at Rome or elsewhere with the old political order, now warred against almost everywhere by the irrepressible instincts of the human heart, there has been no committing and no intention of committing the church, by her supreme chief, to its preservation or to its restoration. Nothing has been said, nothing is implied in what has been said, in condemnation or censure of those Catholics who, like ourselves, have maintained the compatibility of religion and liberty, who have steadily opposed caesarism, and sought the freedom of the church in the general freedom of the citizen.

That the court of Rome has lavished encouragements on those Catholics who have been foremost in the war against the political and other changes effected by modern civilization, we are far from denying, or that in this that court has not furthered the interests of religion, or taken the best method of winning back to their submission the world escaping from the control of the church, we are just as far from doubting. Our Catholic duty binds us to obedience to all orders in relation to spirituals emanating from the supreme spiritual authority; but our Catholic faith does not bind us to believe that the court of Rome, any more than any other court, is infallible in its political administration or in matters of mere human prudence. We are free to hold and to say that we think the court of Rome has committed a mistake in not following up the liberal policy inaugurated by our present Holy Father on his accession to the papal throne, and in encouraging such men as Louis Veuillot, or such journals as the late Univers, or the present Monde. These men and journals, in consequence of the encouragements they have received, have gained an undue influence in the Catholic world, which they have exerted, so far as we can see, only for evil. They have misled a large number of the bishops and clergy in France and elsewhere, alienated the affections of many of those who, from the noble stand taken by Catholics in 1848 and 1849, had been strongly attracted towards her, and have seemed to commit the cause of Catholicity irrevocably to caesarism. Deeply now do Catholic interests suffer from this, as we believe, mistaken policy. The cause of absolutism in Europe is everywhere falling; Austria abandons it and seeks to give herself a liberal constitution, and even the emperor of the French has judged it prudent to permit freer expression of opinion and greater publicity on political subjects than were at first allowed in his empire, and has gained the adhesion of a large class of liberals whose support might have been obtained for the Catholic cause. But, notwithstanding this, the church is not and cannot be committed to the cause of despotism, and Catholicity itself is still, as ever, the friend and the support of all true and desirable liberty.

We are well aware of the defects of modern civilization; but these are defects which cannot be supplied without religion. Both civilization and religion suffer when separated. Civilization without religion necessarily becomes low and materialistic, and religion, when it fails to animate and direct civilization, fails in an important part of its work. The great evil of our times lies in the fact of their separation, and though neither is the other or a part of the other, yet, for the perfection or complete actualization of each, both should act in union. We gain nothing for religion by standing aloof from modern civilization and denouncing it as low, earthly, and unchristian, for it is not in our power to arrest its tendency, or in its power, without the assistance of the church, to correct its defects or elevate its character.

When God would redeem man and raise him to the plane of a supernatural destiny, he makes himself man assumes, flesh with all its infirmities, sin excepted. In this is the principle of all reform, the higher seeks the lower, the perfect completes the imperfect, the firm take up and heal the infirm. God did not wait for man to come to him; he descended to man. So must it be with regard to civilization. If we would redeem it, and give it an elevated tone and character, the church must accept it, take it to herself, and breathe into it her own pure and divine spirit. There is no intrinsic and invincible incompatibility between modern civilization and our holy religion; the church can exist and perform her functions in a free as well as in a despotic state; the church can deal with republics as well as with monarchies, and the people can be made as efficient servants of God as princes and nobles. Railways, steamboats, and lightning telegraphs may be used by ministers of religion as well as by ministers of the state, and nothing can better serve the interest of the church than the general education and intelligence of the people. There is nothing in Catholic doctrine, nothing in the teaching of the fathers and doctors of the church, or in the canons or definitions of popes and councils that make it less Catholic to travel in a railway car or a steamboat than an ox-cart, a coach drawn by horses, on horseback, or in a ship propelled by sails; to spin cotton by the mule or jenny, than by hand; or to recognize the sovereign authority of a national assembly than of a prince "born in the purple." There is, then, no more necessary hostility between Catholicity and modern civilization than there was between it and the mediaeval.

The republican movements of the day have generally assumed a character of hostility to the church, we grant; but not because there was any inherent hostility between them and our holy religion, nor because republicans, as such, are unwilling to submit to its authority, but because they have found, or imagined they found, the power and influence of the church directed against them and wieled in support of despotism. The church has no doubt suffered much and must suffer still more during the transition from the previous political order to that which is now in process of establishment; but she has suffered no more, and is likely to suffer no more, than she suffered in the transition from the imperial Roman system of the first centuries to the feudal system of the middle ages, or from the feudal system of the middle ages to the monarchial system established in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the first she lost the greater part of the East; in the second fully one-third of the North and West; in the present transition she need lose no nation, and would lose but few individuals, if her children could be persuaded that the republican hostility is only accidental and not necessary, or could understand that the friends of constitutional government have hearts no less susceptible of religious influence than are the hearts of the friends of despotism. The evil lies in regarding what is accidental and temporary and inherent and permanent. If the ministers of religion would take as much pains to prove to the party of progress that they can have all the progress they desire without abandoning the church, that they do to prove to them that their progress without religion is no real progress and can have only a fatal result, the evil would, in a great part, be removed, and religion and liberty be permitted to walk hand in hand. The great mistake is in supposing that the error is not mutual, but all on the side of the liberal movement. Unhappily the friends of religion and the friends of progress fall into precisely the same error, each hold that liberty and religion are mutually repugnant one to the other. Hence those in whom the passion for liberty predominates break from the church and make war on religion, while they in whom religion predominates break with modern civilization and anathematize liberty. Each is alike hostile to the interests both of the church and civilization; both need to correct their views, for both lose sight of the real relations between the natural and the supernatural. True wisdom demands the conciliation of religion and liberty, so that there shall never be imposed on any one the terrible alternative of choosing between them or of sacrificing the one to the other.

Nevertheless there is something to be said in extenuation of the conduct of those Catholics who refuse to accept modern civilization and its changes, and in defence of the policy which for the last few years has apparently been pursued by the court of Rome. Rome has been placed in a difficult position; she has been opposed and her very existence threatened by the democratic revolutionists, and has had only the despotic and arbitrary governments of Europe on which to rely for her defence against them. To have declared in favor of the liberal movement or to have withheld her encouragements from those who combatted red-republicanism or socialism, even from the point of view of caesarism, might have been to throw away all the temporal support on which she could rely, and to have armed the governments as well as the mob against her; besides, Catholics are affected like others by their social position and human interests. They, no more than others, can see broken down or destroyed the order of things under which they have been born, grown up, and lived, without feeling that a great evil is threatened them or that they should do their best to resist it. Those Catholics in Europe who have resisted, and resist, the changes and revolutions still going on, have done, and are doing, no more than we who are loyal to the flag of our Union, and rapidly arming against the great southern rebellion, are ourselves doing. We believe it our duty and our interest to make the greatest efforts possible in defence of the institutions bequeathed us by our fathers and to preserve in its integrity and its efficiency the government we have inherited. We take our stand on the side of constituted order, of legitimate authority, of loyalty. European Catholics who resist the revolutionary movements of their respective countries do the same, and must be regarded as acting from as pure, from as high, from as noble, and from as disinterested motives as ourselves. They believe in neither the wisdom nor the necessity, in neither the justice nor the utility of the changes proposed to be effected, and therefore are fully justified in their own minds and in their own consciences in offering the most effective resistance to them in their power. Taking their stand-point, we cannot censure them, but, if we have any sense of loyalty, or honor, or chivalric sentiment in our natures, we must applaud them; for then we could see no more merit in the party they resist than we ourselves can see in our southern rebels and traitors.

The complaint we make of them is not that they resist political and social changes in their capacity  as loyal citizens and subjects, but that they attempt to bind the church to the order they defend and to render her interests inseparable from its preservation, thus calling to their aid a power to which they have no right and committing the church to an order which is passing away. They seem to us to continue their resistance in the name of religion when resistance has become vain. We resist firmly and with all our power the attempt of the rebels in our own country to dissolve the Union and to set up a separate nationality for themselves, because we believe it our right and our duty to do so, and also because we believe we have the power to make our resistance effectual. Yet, were, which God forbid! the federal arms to be defeated, the powers of the federal government to be exhausted, the rebels victorious, and there ceased to be any reasonable prospect of subduing them and preserving the Union in its integrity, we should believe it wise and just and even our duty to cease resistance and to assent to a separation of these states and the formation of a southern confederacy as a free and independent state. We may be wrong, but we regard the conservative cause in Europe as a lost cause, and that the longer the struggle to preserve it continues, the more disadvantageous to the conservatives will be the peace or final adjustment of the controversy. We think better terms can be obtained now than after longer struggle.

Yet in all this we may be wrong, just as those at home and abroad are wrong who advise a peaceable acquiescence in the demands of our southern rebels and in a final separation between the slaveholding and the non-slaveholding states. Certainly our noble friend, Count Montalembert, in whose judgment we place great confidence, does not believe the battle to be as yet finally lost. He believes it still possible to defeat the Napoleon-Cavour policy, to retain the temporal sovereignty of the Holy See, and to reestablish the Holy Father in the full possession of all his temporal rights. He is nearer the scene of action than we are, and knows far better than we do, the agencies at work and the temporal resources of the Holy See. It may be that he is justified in his hopes, and that our fears are groundless, or that we have taken as un fait accompli what not only is not effected, but not likely to be effected. We assure him that we shall be much better pleased to find that he is right than we shall to find that we are right. We love not changes, and, if the maintenance of the temporal sovereignty of the Holy See can be preserved, and preserved in peace, in harmony with the wishes and interests of Catholic Europe, we shall be highly gratified and most grateful to Almighty God. What we want is not that this temporal sovereignty should be abolished, is not that the Holy Father should be compelled again to take refuge in the catacombs of Rome, be an exile or a martyr, is not that he and his court should be driven out of house and home, but that the real interests of the church should be harmonized with whatever is good and desirable in modern civilization.

We will say, in conclusion, that we are far from being convinced that the affairs of the peninsula are either settled, or in train of being settled speedily. In the first place, we have some doubts if divine Providence will give a final victory to a power that has been so unjust, so iniquitous, so unscrupulous in the means it has adopted, as the Piedmontese government; in the second place, we do not believe that the emperor of the French really wishes all Italy to be united in one kingdom under Victor Emanuel, or any other Italian prince. If he could count always on the king of Italy for his ally, he would no doubt be favorable to Italian unity, as it would strengthen France against her enemies, and, in some sense, preserve to her hegemony of Europe; but he knows far better than we do that this is not to be counted upon. Italy once constituted and recognized as an independent kingdom will follow in its alliances its own interest, and be as likely to ally itself with England, Austria, or Russia as with France. He must see that a united Italy would be followed by the union of the Spanish peninsula under a single government, and by the unity of Germany, which, instead of strengthening France, would really reduce her to a second-class power. If he finds it impossible to carry out the policy of his uncle, and virtually to absorb the Spanish and Italian peninsulas in his own empire, he will most likely return to what for centuries has been the policy of the French government to keep Italy divided, to prevent a union of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns, or the formation of a strong centralized Germany. To this policy it is not unlikely his imperial majesty will be thwarted, and the papal states restored to the Holy See. New wars may also break out between the great powers, which in their results may bring about, as at the peace of Vienna in 1815, the reestablishment in its integrity of the papal government; but, if so, we hope it will be without compelling us to go over again and experience the last forty-five years. If that government is reestablished, we hope it will be really independent and obliged to follow the policy neither of Austria nor of France, and that Italian patriots will cease to disturb the peace of Europe.