secure the State, to defend the Sovereignty or the Sovereign. Rulers as they were, the clergy, with few exceptions, suffered the troubled waters to take their course headlong down the rapids: and, in their public speeches and acts, they seemed solicitous of nothing but the retention of their offices; at times cringing before the turbulent, to their own dishonour, and to the disparagement of all governing authority. The men who had been damaged in reputation, rank or fortune, through the reforms and political alterations, and those who had become notorious under the Gregorian misgovernment, joined with the restless agitators and the enemies of the Throne in venting abuse of Pius IX., and imputing to him all the public misfortunes. Many of them glowed with guilty joy at the death of Rossi, whom they could not forgive for his distinguished abilities, his skilful vigour in the management of States, and his determination to consolidate constitutional order in that of Rome. When, on the 16th of November, the city went into confusion, and the beleaguered palace saw the majesty of the Pontiff degraded, and the supremacy of the Sovereign trodden down, what resolution, what sign of emotion, did the clerical party show? Many a sample of its shame we shall gather from these records: we shall see it forswearing its habits and opinions to secure offices, rank, or life; we shall see it asking of the Almighty the maximum of outrage and of licence, in order to accelerate the destruction of every free institution but neither fortitude nor virtue will be VOL. III.

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found in it, nor any kind of courage, till the armies of the stranger shall have restored it to its absolute dominion.

By the close of the year, when the Constitutional party were deserted by the Sovereign and the Court, and the Absolutists were dastard or intimidated, the field was left to those whose project it was to make Rome the seat of the Italian Constituent, and to try there every experiment however hazardous. We shall presently see what cabals were got up by the Commissioners of the Tuscan Government, round which clustered at the time, for aid and countenance, all the agitators of the populace, all the gamblers in politics, all the emissaries of Mazzini. They were in glee at Mamiani's fall from power, and set to work upon ousting him utterly from the good opinion of that popular party, which had set its love upon him, and had at a former time so obstreperously applauded him. They kept an eye, too, on Galletti, because, although manageable, and chary of popular approval, yet, on account of all the offices he had filled, and of his commonly saying that they must proceed with caution, he had not the full confidence of the Mazzinian faction, which was now grasping at power. Accursi was the man whom they admitted to their secrets, and in whose hands, during the Provisional Government, centered the threads of the Mazzinian plot. Deputy to the Minister Armellini, he likewise found him in spirit and in brains; and twisted him, often without his knowledge, in any direction advantageous to that plot. The clubs were now established

throughout the State, in communication one with another, and in strict concert with those of Tuscany. Being all directed or controlled in chief by a body resident in Rome, and entitled the Committee of all the Clubs of Italy, they now constituted the grand social power, the sinews of sectarianism, to up-heave the tottering, and to uphold the rising Government. Meantime, they toiled without remission at the communications and agreements necessary to secure the election of men set upon extreme courses. They put up either youths of hot enthusiasm, or charlatans emboldened by their ignorance to talk on all subjects alike, or sectarian grey-beards, or republicans; the needy in preference to men of property, the uneducated in preference to the refined; because wealth and knowledge were eyed askance, and the common saying was, that the learned and the opulent should be mistrusted. Above all, they pushed the crusade against the Constitutionalists, abused under the name of moderates and doctrinaires: against these there was no calumny that they did not disseminate, no imputation that they did not launch. That body, however, had not yet resigned all idea and all hope of success in damming up the flood of revolution; and now that every other resource failed them, they made ready to contest the elections, to the best of their ability, with the extreme democratic party in its ascendancy. But during this period, the Holy Father promulgated, from Gaeta, the Monitory which follows:

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"PIUS PAPA IX.

"To our most beloved Subjects.

"Within this peaceful retreat, whither it has pleased Divine Providence to lead Us, that We might be able to utter our sentiments and our decisions with freedom, We dwelt on the anticipation that our erring children would testify their remorse for the sacrileges and crimes committed against persons in our service, of whom some have been slain, others subjected to the most barbarous outrages; to say nothing of those perpetrated in our own Palace, and against our own very Person. We have, however, received nothing but a bare invitation to return to our capital, without a word in condemnation of the above-mentioned crimes, and without the smallest guarantee to secure Us from the fraud or the violence of that same gang of madmen which is still tyrannising, with a barbarous despotism, over Rome and the States of the Church. We likewise stood in expectation, that the protests and decrees which We have issued would bring back to their duties of allegiance and obedience those who now, in the very capital of our States, do despite to and trample on both the one and the other. But instead hereof, a new and more monstrous act of undissembled treason and of sheer rebellion, audaciously done by them, has filled up the measure of our affliction, and, as it will sadden the Church at large, so likewise has kindled our own just indignation. We herein allude to that proceeding, in every sense detestable, by which it has been pretended to proclaim the meeting of a self-styled General National Assembly of the Roman States by a decree of the 29th of December last, in order to establish a new form of Government for the Pontifical dominions. Thus, by heaping iniquity on iniquity, do the authors and favourers of demagogic anarchy labour to destroy the temporal authority of the Roman Pontiff over the dominions of Holy Church, however inexpugnably founded on the most ancient and solid rights, and venerated, acknowledged, and upheld by all nations; cherishing and dissemi

nating the idea that his Sovereign Power is open to discussion, or dependent on the whims of faction. We will spare our own dignity the degradation of dwelling on all the monstrous traits of that proceeding, not less execrable from the absurdity of its source than for the illegality of its forms and the impiety of its end. Still it belongs to the Apostolical Authority, with which, though unworthy, we are clothed, and to that responsibility which binds Us, in the presence of the Almighty, by the most solemn oaths, not only to protest, as We do in the most energetic and effectual manner, against the said proceeding, but likewise to denounce it in the face of the world as a prodigious and sacrilegious crime perpetrated to the infraction of our independence and sovereignty, and deserving the retribution threatened by both divine and human law.

"We are persuaded that, on receiving this shameless invitation, you will have been roused to an holy indignation, and will have spurned away from you a suggestion so criminal and scandalous. Nevertheless, in order that no one of you may be able to plead that he was misled by deceitful blandishments, and by the preachers of revolutionary theories, or unaware of the contrivances of the foes of all order, all law, all right, all true liberty, and of your own welfare, We think fit this day once more to raise and send abroad our Voice in such wise as to certify you beyond all doubt of the strict inhibition We lay upon you, of whatever class or condition, against taking any part in any meetings which may audaciously be held for the nomination of persons to be sent to the Assembly we have condemned. We simultaneously remind you, that this our absolute prohibition is sustained by the Decrees of our Predecessors and of the Councils, especially of the sacrosanct Council of Trent (Sess. xxii. c. xi. de Reform.), wherein the Church has over and over again fulminated her censures, and chiefly the Greater Excommunication, to attach ipso facto to any who shall dare to incur the guilt of any attack whatsoever upon the temporal Sovereignty of the Chief Pontiffs of Rome; which We now declare to you