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 L I G. RARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 U N IVLRSITY 
 
 Of ILLINOIS
 
 LETTER 
 
 FKOM THE EIGHT EEVEREND 
 
 THE LORD BISHOP OF ORLEANS 
 
 TO 
 
 M. imGHETTI, 
 
 MINISTER OF FINANCE TO KING VICTOR EIDIANUEL, 
 OX THE 
 
 Spaltnttiin of tl)f Clmrcl) 
 
 AT ROME AND THROUGHOUT ITALY. 
 
 togetiieu wit I 
 
 THE BRIEF OF THE POPE TO THE BISHOP OF OJILEANS 
 ON THE OCCASION OF THIS LETTER. 
 
 LONDON; BURNS AND OATES, 
 
 rOItTJIAX STREET AND TATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 1874.
 
 LONDON ^ 
 ROBSON AND SONS, PKINTEKS, PANCKAS UOAD, N.
 
 PREFACE OF TRANSLATOR. 
 
 The English press in general has represented the 
 following Letter as only a fresh outburst of an emi- 
 nent member of the Roman Catholic Church in favour 
 of the Temporal Power, in order ' to keep alive the 
 grievances of their chief in Italy ;' which grievances 
 they represent as purely imaginary. 
 
 A portion of the French press, on the other hand, 
 considers that the Bishop's language is that of resig- 
 nation to an accomplished fact — an impression which 
 he himself indignantly denies. 
 
 Wc can only implore our readers not to be misled 
 by these equally false though opposite statements, and 
 not to trust to the garbled extracts from the Letter 
 put forward in the newspapers ; but to read, if pos- 
 sible without any preconceived prejudice, this plain 
 and unvarnished sta,tement of facts. 
 
 We believe that, with the strong sense of honesty 
 and fair-play which is the inherent characteristic of 
 all Englishmen, they will be startled beyond measure
 
 at the revelations it contains, and which we defy 
 them to disprove; and that the3^ will feel that the 
 ' solution of the Roman Question' can never be arrived 
 at by injustice and wrong, or by a direct violation of 
 the Divine commandment. ' Thou shalt not steal.' 

 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 I. The Promises of the Italian Government ... 8 
 11. The Spoliation of the Church — The Liquidation op 
 
 Ecclesiastical Property 13 
 
 III. The Suppression of the Eeligious Orders — What 
 
 becomes OF their Persons ? 17 
 
 XV. The Suppression op the Eeligious Orders — What 
 
 becomes OP their Property ? . . . -23 
 
 V. Foundations of Catholic I^ations — Disasters in- 
 flicted upon them by the Italian Laws . . 28 
 VI. Ancient origin and international character of 
 
 THE principal RicuES OF THE Eoman Church. . 30 
 VII. Blows dealt at the Priesthood and Eeligion itself . ^^ 
 VIII. Destruction op the Eoman College . . . -35 
 IX. Destruction of the Mother-houses . . . -37 
 X. Disorganisation of the Eoman Congregations . . 39 
 XL Threats against the Propaganda . . , .41 
 xii. War declared against lay scientific Institutions . 45 
 
 XIII. That the Spoliation of the Church has not en- 
 
 riched Italy 47 
 
 XIV. The Spoliation of the Church, is it just in Principle 1 
 
 Has the Church a Eight to possess Property ? . 50 
 XV. Conclusion 53
 
 LETTER TO M. MINGIIETTI. 
 
 Sir, — In 1848 you were the Minister of Pius IX. ; I find you 
 in 1874 the Minister of Victor Emmanuel. 
 
 You cooperated with the Holy Father in a great, fruitful, 
 and glorious undertaking ; and although to-day you lend your 
 aid to, alas, a very different work, I know that you have re- 
 tained a grateful recollection of the generous Sovereign who 
 gave you such a proof of his esteem. Therefore it is that 
 with a certain degree of confidence I take the liberty of ad- 
 dressing you this Letter. 
 
 I am just come back from Rome. I have seen with my 
 own eyes all that is passing there. Nothing can be more 
 sad ; and I like to think that it is not without bitter regret 
 that you are taking part in such proceedings. Everything is 
 done with consummate skill, and with a deep meaning. There 
 is no noise, no outward violence ; everything is concealed 
 under an apparent legality ; but nevertheless, what is being 
 done is the greatest disaster that could befall the Church, and, 
 if she could be destroyed by the hand of man, would be her 
 ruin. 
 
 But Europe, indifferent or distracted by other interests, 
 appears to see nothing and to know nothing ; and France, 
 still bleeding from her late reverses, and trembling on the 
 edge of an abyss, can do naught but mourn. The Catholic 
 world is deceived. They even boast of the liberty which the 
 noble Prisoner of the Vatican enjoys under your protection ! 
 
 I will say more : you arc deceived yourselves. You do not 
 know all that is being done in your name ; your agents (I
 
 8 
 
 cannot think otherwise) go beyond your instructions ; and 
 allow me to say that they do not do you credit. 
 
 I have taken it upon myself, therefore, to let you know 
 yourself the real state of things. 
 
 Do not, however, be afraid. I do not ignore the delicacy 
 of such a subject, and I shall respect it ; I do not, in this 
 Letter, make an appeal to the sword, but to justice and good 
 faith ; I do not, either, intend to make this a party question. 
 The subjects on which I shall touch are outside and above 
 the arena of parties. You have solemnly declared yourselves 
 that you would not wound the consciences of Christians, nor 
 attempt to solve alone, but in accordance with the States pos- 
 sessing Catholic subjects, questions which affect the interests 
 of the whole Catholic body. Would it be an offence to the 
 Italian Government to remind her of her engagements and 
 of her promises ? And is it not doing a useful as well as a 
 loyal act to warn those who need the warning ? 
 
 Besides, if it be true, as I believe, that the actual posi- 
 tion of things creates, not only for Catholics and for Italy, 
 but for the whole world, a state of peril from which one may 
 turn away for a moment in the midst of the pressing ditncul- 
 ties of the hour, but which we shall have to face some day or 
 other, is it not the interest of every one, in so grave a matter, 
 not to persevere in dangerous illusions ? 
 
 For us. Catholics of all nations, it is a duty not to conceal, 
 by our silence, that which, under no pretext and by no country 
 on earth, could be excused or passed over. 
 
 And for the Government of which you are the head, is it 
 not of vital importance to take account of such things and to 
 foresee, so as to avoid them, the disastrous complications of 
 the future ? 
 
 I. 
 
 Tlic Promises of the Italian Government. 
 
 Before giving an opinion on what is passing at this mo- 
 ment in Rome, it is important to recall the promises which 
 the Italian Government made, and the engagements into 
 which she entered, to respect the Church and her rights, and 
 at the same time the rights of conscience of the Catholic 
 world.
 
 When, during the Lite war, fortune deserted our troops 
 and betrayed our hopes, the very day when the soldiers who 
 had the honour of guarding Rome against you were recalled, 
 your Government understood that, having nothing more to 
 fear from us, her hour was come ; and with a resolution which 
 did not require much courage, she made her plans. But 
 before executing them, she felt the need of dissipating the 
 alarms of the Catholic body on the consequences of the attack 
 which was about to be made ; and also to reassure the Powers 
 whose subjects, being Catholics, had consequently vital inter- 
 ests at Rome. 
 
 Therefore, on the 29th August 1870, M. Visconti-Venosta, 
 your Minister of Foreign Affairs, addressed a memorandum 
 or circular to all Italian agents at foreign Courts, of which 
 we give the textual conclusions : 
 
 ' The Government promises to preserve all the institu- 
 tions, offices, and ecclesiastical bodies existing at Rome, as 
 well as those employed therein. 
 
 ' The Government promises to iirescrve intact, and with- 
 out submitting them to special taxation, all ecclesiastical 
 properties, of which the revenues belong to offices, corpo- 
 rations, institutions, and ecclesiastical bodies having their 
 seat in Rome and in the Leonine city.' 
 
 Thus everything was to be respected by you and preserved 
 — enfi?-e^^ preserved — both the possession of property and the 
 position of persons. Such were your engagements and your 
 promises. Nothing could be more formal or more solemn ; 
 for these words were addressed to all the Courts of Europe. 
 
 The memorandum went on to say : 
 
 ' The Government will not meddle with the internal dis- 
 cipline of the ecclesiastical corporations in Home. The bishops 
 and priests of the kingdom are free, in their respective dio- 
 ceses and parishes, of a/Z interference from the Government in 
 the exercise of their spiritual functions.' 
 
 But this is not all. To give a more emphatic guarantee 
 to the Catholic world, the memorandum made the following 
 declaration : 
 
 ' These articles shall be considered as a public and bila- 
 teral contract, and the point of union with the Powers 
 HA\iNG Catholic subjects.'
 
 10 
 
 The Italian Government went still further ; and some clays 
 before the invasion, the 6th of September, you put forward a 
 manifesto, in which you stated that you had at last decided 
 to enter Rome. But why? 'Not to abandon the fate of the 
 Head of the Church to the chapter of accidents.'' Such was 
 your solicitude. 
 
 It was in analogous terms, and with equal sincerity (how 
 can we evade the comparison?), that M. de Cavour, on the 
 eve of Castelfidardo, proclaimed to Europe, in another famous 
 memorandum, that he only wished to ' cross the Pontifical 
 territory to defend it from the revolution against which 
 he was about to fight on Neapolitan soil.' 
 
 It was thus again that, in concluding the convention of 
 the 15th of September, to remove your capital to Florence, 
 you proclaimed that you would not enter Rome save by ' moral 
 influences.'' Doubtless they were such as were used by your 
 generals on the 20th of September to throw down the walls of 
 Rome and to force the Porta Pia. 
 
 It was thus, in fact, that at the very beginning of this 
 war in Italy, the object from the first hour of such well- 
 founded alarm in all Catholic hearts, the Emperor himself 
 declared solemnly, and reiterated the declaration by the mouth 
 of his Ministers to the episcopate and the deputies, that this 
 war was not undertaken ' to shake the Pontifical throne, which 
 we ourselves have reestablished ; and that all the rights of 
 the temporal sovereignty of the Pope would be respected.' 
 
 But the Italian Government felt herself the more strin- 
 gently bound to reiterate these assurances to the Powers and 
 the Catholic body, which had been so often deceived, from the 
 fact that her precedents, her principles, her laws, her acts, all 
 this war which since 1848 she had not ceased to direct against 
 the clergy and the Church, had only too naturally excited the 
 most violent suspicions of her intentions. M. de Cavour, in 
 derision, had adopted this maxim : 'A free Church in a free 
 State.' Now this is what he had already done with the 
 Church and its liberty : 
 
 All Church property had been confiscated ; all religious 
 orders suppressed; thousands of religious despoiled and 
 hunted down ; the nuns turned out of their convents night 
 after night by the carabineers, and left in the street — ' I
 
 11 
 
 thank God,' writes one superior, ' that none of my sisters 
 perished in the high-road ;' hishops and archbishops, includ- 
 ing the Archbishops of Turin and Cagliari and many others, 
 thrown into prison. 
 
 Bishoprics left vacant by the hundred ; the concordat 
 with the Holy See violated ; all ecclesiastical immunities, 
 stipulated in a treaty with Eome, abolished. 
 
 The Siccardi law voted, to the cry of ' Down with the 
 priests !' 
 
 The marriage law voted on the 5th of June 1852, in spite 
 of the Pope, in spite of the concordat, in spite of the bishops. 
 
 The law of the 25th November 1854, formally violating 
 against the Church the 29th art. of the national statute : 
 'All property, without any exception, is inviolable,' 
 
 In vain from the tribune a former Minister of the King, 
 Charles Albert reminded the Government that these words, 
 ' without any exception,' which are not to be found in any 
 other Constitution, were added to the statute by the King him- 
 self, and precisely with the object of protecting ecclesiastical pro- 
 perty. In vain, pointing to the statue of Charles Albert, he 
 exclaimed : ' Certainly, gentlemen, if the King Charles Albert, 
 whose statue is before your eyes, could have foreseen how 
 to-day you dare to interpret his intentions and his acts, he 
 would have drawn back that hand stretched out to swear to 
 the Constitution. Yes, gentlemen, he would indignantly 
 have withdrawn it !' Noble but fruitless words. The law 
 was voted. 
 
 And what you did in Piedmont, you hastened to do in all 
 the provinces violently annexed. And all this work of spo- 
 liation was crowned and consummated by the following four 
 laws : 
 
 7th Julij 18GG. Law regarding religious corporations and 
 on the conversion of real property belonging to ecclesiastical 
 institutions. 
 
 15th AiKjust 1867. Law on the liquidation of the do- 
 minions of the Church. 
 
 ^Ith July 18C8. Law as to the pensions to be granted to 
 the members of suppressed religious corporations. 
 
 Lastly, 11^/i August 1870. Law on the conversion of the 
 property of the parishes and ecclesiastical fabrics.
 
 12 
 
 I must not omit, either, the law which subjects the clergy 
 to military conscription, and renders recruiting for the priest- 
 hood almost impossible. 
 
 I am assured, sir, that as deputy you have not voted for 
 all these measures. But still, as Minister and President of 
 the Council, you enforce them. And this is what makes me, 
 in this Letter, appeal to your honour and good faith. 
 
 Such, then, were your laws, your acts, your precedents, 
 and your fidelity to your promises. That is why, before the 
 invasion of Rome, to prevent the stupor into which the whole 
 Catholic world was about to be thrown by this last act of ag- 
 gression, you hastened to make the solemn declarations which 
 I have quoted above. And after the invasion, you again re- 
 newed your promises. 
 
 Thus, when the plebiscite took place as usual under the 
 pressure of your arms, the King solemnly accepted this plebis- 
 cite ; but in accepting it, what does he do ? He declares that 
 ' the firm resolution of the Government is to guarantee, by 
 efficacious and lasting means, the liberty and spiritual inde- 
 pendence of the Holy See.'*' 
 
 Verj'soon came the question of elections and the proposal 
 to remove the Itahan Parliament to Eome. In proposing to 
 the King the convocation of the new Chamber, the Govern- 
 ment reminded him of the promise we have just read, and 
 added themselves : 
 
 ' This EOYAL PROMISE was a confirmation of the votes of 
 the Italian Parliament and of the declarations made, both 
 before and after the entry of the Italian troops into Rome, by 
 your Majesty's Government to the Sovereign Pontiff and to 
 THE Catholic Powers.' 
 
 'The Italian Government,' they continue, 'wished to 
 justify the expectation of Europe and the confidekce of the 
 Catholic world.'! 
 
 One reproach especially, which wounds them to the quick, 
 and which they are determined to clear themselves from at 
 
 * Words quoted in setting forth the motion of the ' Project' of extending 
 to Eome the laws cited Sihove, presented to the Chamber of Deputies in the 
 sitting of the 20th Novemher 1872, ly the Minister Be Falco, together with 
 tlie rest of the 3Iinistry. 
 
 t ' Rispondere alia fiducia d' Europa e all' aapettazione del moado Cat- 
 tolico.' Ibid, p, 2,
 
 13 
 
 any price, is, lest ' this great fact of the deliverance of Kome,' 
 as they dare to call it (' codesto grande fatto della liherazione 
 di Roma'), should be considered as a trick of the Italian Ex- 
 chequer to lay violent hands on the property of the Koman 
 Church {una ripresa delfisco). They declare again, in con- 
 sequence, that ' the patrimony of the Eomau Church shall 
 remain intact in the hands of the Church, — II patrimomo 
 delta Chiesa Ilomana rlmarrd intero alia Chlesa.''* 
 
 The new Parliament met. At the sitting of the 30th 
 January 1871, M. Visconti-Venosta did not forget to renew 
 his assurances to the Catholic world in these terms : 
 
 ' We have always declared that we wished to solve the 
 Roman question without offending the feelings of Ca- 
 tholics and the legitimate interests of otlier Governments.'' 
 
 Finally, to give a last and unanswerable proof of your 
 sincerity, you hastened, sir, to draw up your famous Law of 
 Guarantees, in which you once more proclaimed the entire 
 liberty of the Sovereign Pontiff. 
 
 This, then, is what the Italian Government promised and 
 hoped to persuade the world of: i.e. that under your domina- 
 tion the Pope would remain free ; that his spiritual govern- 
 ment would in no way be hindered or interfered with ; that 
 at Rome, ecclesiastical corporations and their property would 
 be religiously preserved : in a word, that all Catholic interests 
 would be respected ! 
 
 Such were your engagements and your promises. Now 
 let us see what are your acts. 
 
 II. 
 
 Spoliation of the Church. Liquidation of Ecclesiastical 
 Property. 
 
 Well, sir, your good faith will not allow you to deny that, 
 after such solemn promises, what the Piedmontesc brought 
 to Rome and the Pope — strange liberators ! — has been, in 
 reality, spoliation, oppression, and ruin. 
 
 In fact, having once taken these precautions to blind 
 public opinion, which is so ready to believe in line phrases, 
 and trusting to the weakness of pohtical consciences, who only 
 
 * Ibid. p. a.
 
 14 
 
 wish to be deceived, you set to work cleverly and legally, and 
 gave yourself full swing. 
 
 The first thing which your Chamber of Deputies did was 
 to vote (and your Senate to sanction, and your King to pro- 
 mulgate) a law which applies to Rome and to all the patrimony 
 of St. Peter— the laws of the 7th July 1866, 15th August 1867, 
 29th July 1868, and 11th August 1870 ; that is, the whole 
 masterpiece of legislative spoliation which deprives the Church 
 of her property, disperses her secular patrimony, confiscates 
 all her goods, destroys her religious corporations, and anni- 
 hilates her very constitution. 
 
 And the same law instituted a giunta called Uquidatricc , 
 which silently and implacably pursues the work of spoliation 
 by which your Government pretends ' to justify the expectation 
 of Europe and the confidence of the Catholic world.' 
 Thus you, having promised to respect and preserve everything, 
 the whole ecclesiastical body with its organisation and its pro- 
 perty — you have confiscated, upset, and destroyed everything. 
 
 And now, at the present moment, what does the Church 
 possess in Rome ? 
 
 Nothing ; the Pope does not even possess St. Peter's or 
 the Vatican ; not even the little chapel where he says Mass ; 
 not even the room where he lives. 
 
 People said : The Vatican is a garden. We have come to 
 that. But even the Vatican and its gardens do not belong 
 to the Pope, but to you. He occupies them merely at your 
 will and pleasure. He is living there as a lodger and a stranger 
 in that palace built by the Popes, and still filled with the 
 majesty of their secular sovereignty. 
 
 Besides this, he can no longer set foot in Eome. Do 
 not say that your laws do not forbid him to do so. Your very 
 presence at Rome forbids it ! Can he expose his sacred 
 person to tumultuous manifestations, such as we have wit- 
 nessed only a few days ago, where cries of death echoed 
 against him even to the threshold of the Vatican ? 
 
 Such, then, is the actual position of the Pope and the 
 Church in this Rome, where you entered into a solemn en- 
 gagement to preserve everything. The person of the Pope is 
 in your hands ; the Sacred College is in your hands ; the 
 future Conclave is in your hands.
 
 15 
 
 But more than this : 
 
 From the Sovereign Pontiff down to the humblest eccle- 
 siastic in the poorest church in Rome, everything is at your 
 mercy ; the daily bread of all the clergy depends upon you ; 
 Pope, cardinals, bishops, priests, all are, as far as regards 
 their material subsistence, under the yoke of your finance ; a 
 revolution, a war, a movement of caprice in your Chambers, 
 and all the Roman clergy may be, in one moment, reduced to 
 utter mendicity. 
 
 Ah, it affronts you, Italian Ministers, that we should call 
 ' the great fact of the liberation of Rome' a seizure by your 
 Exchequer of the property of the Church ! But you must 
 own, sir, that if I were to call things by their right names, I 
 should have to use a shorter and plainer word. 
 
 Such are the laws that have been passed and to this state 
 are we arrived ; and then you dare to declare that the patri- 
 mony of the Roman Church shall remain intact in the hands 
 of the Church : ' II ijatrimonio delict Chiesa llomana rimarra 
 intero alia Chiesa /' It is true that you add, in order to save 
 appearances, ' excepting, be it understood, the application of 
 our judicial principles relating to the personalty of religious 
 associations, and also such as may he imposed upon us hy our 
 
 PECUNIARY KECESSITIES.'* 
 
 Which means, in plain English, the patrimony of the 
 Roman Church will remain intact in the hands of the Church 
 except that we mean to upset it altogether, and appropriate 
 it to our own use whenever we find it convenient, and we will 
 intrust the operation to a yiimta liquldatrlee {la fiiunta liqui- 
 datricc delV assc ecclesiastico) ,v/h.o will do the work thoroughly 
 and well. 
 
 In truth, I will do the ' giunta' the justice to say that she 
 has in no way disappointed your hopes. 
 
 But then, sir, as Minister, you should have said frankly: 
 ' The ecclesiastical property of Rome and of its province is as 
 necessary to us as the ecclesiastical property of the rest of 
 Italy. We shall do at Rome as we have done elsewhere. We 
 shall take everything.' 
 
 * ' Fermo pero, b' intende, 1' applicazione dei nostri principi giuridici ia- 
 torno alia personalit:\ delle associazioni religiose, e salve le necessity ecoao- 
 miche.' Progctto di Lejge, p. 3.
 
 16 
 
 You speak of the necessity of abolishing the mortmain 
 act and the inalienability of property, so as to encourage, as 
 you say, ' the fruitful transformations of industrial emulation 
 and free trade, to people the Eoman Campagna,* and to make 
 it more healthy.' Vain pretexts ! Who does not see the re- 
 salt ? The restrictions which may be brought to bear, in 
 the interest of industry and commerce, on the inalienability 
 of property and mortmain, have nothing in common with 
 what you are doing by an arbitrary dispossession, which ut- 
 terly destroys the rights and liberties of the proprietor, and 
 takes away from him at the same time the right to regulate 
 the conditions of the sale of his goods, to fix their price, or to 
 guarantee the use to be made of them ; while, as we shall 
 shortly see, it involves, under the lying title of j^^'c^'ious 
 claims, a spoliation of one-third of his property ; that is to 
 say, a real confiscation of a large portion, which is all the 
 more odious when masked under the veil of hypocrisy. 
 
 Who can pretend to explain, either, how such an expro- 
 priation can be made to apply not only to agricultural lands, 
 but to buildings, to furniture, to libraries, to archives — to 
 things, in fact, of which the use is identified with the func- 
 tions and missions of the proprietor, and thus constitute an 
 essential condition of his life ? Here it is not a question of 
 certain agricultural improvements ; it is the ruin of existing 
 institutions. 
 
 As to 'other financial necessities,' one knows well enough 
 this pretext of all dictatorships, which is as old as it is ini- 
 quitous. Certainly, it is bad enough to have arrived at an 
 overburdened taxation which one is forced to bear, when an 
 equitable partition is made, pressing equally on all citizens 
 in a state ; but to strike, as you are doing, exclusively the 
 bodies and institutions which you have sworn to respect, and 
 with blows which fall only on them, and which end in utter 
 ruin, is to tear aside even the most transparent veils, and lay 
 bare a system of proscription of persons and spoliation of 
 property unknown in any other country. 
 
 * ' Le necessita economiche che non consentono la contiiiuazione della 
 manomorta e V inalienabilita, dei predii, e piu specialmente dei predii rustici, 
 che continuando a rimanere sostratti alle feconde transformazioni del libero 
 commercio e della emulazione industriale, perpetuerebbero I'insalubritu e il 
 disertamento delle CampagDe Eomane.' Ibid.
 
 17 
 
 ' To encourage industry and commerce, and to people and 
 make the Koman Campagna healthy.' If that were all you 
 wished for, why not leave the duty and give the time to the 
 Church herself to convert her landed property into securities 
 of another sort, which she could herself have possessed and 
 administered ? 
 
 But no ; you were bent on something more. You were 
 determined to take everything: Una rlpvesa delfisco. Italian 
 unity being a gulf in which all the resources of Italy are being 
 swallowed up, you must have money; still more money; 
 always money ; and to get it, in spite of your protest, in face 
 of the whole world, that the patrimony of the Roman Church 
 should remain intact in the hands of the Church, your Ex- 
 chequer has swallowed up all : Ripresa del fisco. Let us 
 look into the details. 
 
 III. 
 
 Svi-)pression of the Religious Orders. What becomes of 
 their Persons. 
 
 To calumniate your victims before striking them, that is 
 a well-known revolutionary proceeding ; the Religious Orders 
 could not escape it. 
 
 I shall not pause to refute these calumnies, miserable re- 
 vivals of the slanders of the last century, but which no 
 respectable journalist would dare repeat in these days. In 
 your position, however, you could not fail to have recourse to 
 them. Your reporters, allow me to tell you, sir, as a Minis- 
 ter, are in general poor philosophers ; but the reporter of the 
 law on the suppression of religious corporations, M. Restelli, 
 has certainly carried away the palm. Thus this honourable 
 deputy proclaims, himself, the innumerable services rendered 
 to humanity by the religious orders — by their works of cha- 
 rity, of education, of science; he owns that in periods of 
 national calamity they powerfully concurred in saving civili- 
 sation ; but at the same time, by a rare confusion of mind, it 
 pleases him to declare* that it is in the name of this very 
 
 * ' I servigi resi all' umanitil dalle corporazioni religiose applicate alia 
 beneficenza, all' istruzione, ed ai studi severi, che concorsero, in epoche 
 calamitose, a salvare la civittil. . . . Ora e in novie di qn^.ita sfcssa civilta 
 progrensa che il potere civile ne reclama 1' abolizione.' liclazione della, Onn-- 
 miaslone. Tornata del 3 Aprile 1873.
 
 18 
 
 civilisation that they must be abolished. He allows that mon- 
 astic vows are the iierfection of Christian virtue; but he pro- 
 tends, at the same time, that they are also tlte antithesis of all 
 2)rofjress, material, moral, and intellectual/'^ jM. Restelli con- 
 cludes, therefore, that all religious orders should be abolished, 
 and that all their properties should be confiscated. 
 
 But if such were your principles and your projects, why 
 did you proclaim, before your entry into Home, what I have 
 before stated : ' The Government engages itself to preserve all 
 the institutions, offices, and ecclesiastical bodies existing in. 
 Rome'' ? 
 
 Why have you sworn, in your fundamental statute, that 
 ' All property, without any exception, was inviolable' '? 
 
 Why did you write in your Law of Guarantees : ' The 
 Pope cannot accomplish alone the functions of his spiritual 
 ministry, and the Church is necessaeily a secular body, 
 
 SERVED BY REGULAR ORDERS' '? 
 
 Why do you speak, in your memorandum of the 29th of 
 August, of a ' contract' both ' public and bilateral, an 
 
 AGREEMENT WITH ALL PoWERS POSSESSING CaTHOLIC SUBJECTS' ? 
 
 And having entered into such engagements in face of ex- 
 isting Powers, how is it that you have thus hastened, before 
 everything else, to apply to Rome the lav/ which, with one 
 blow, suppresses the religious corporations and confiscates all 
 their goods ? 
 
 Ah, sir, I assure you that when one is thrown, as I am, 
 by circumstances and against my will, into the arena of poli- 
 tics, and that one has been accustomed to live in the truth 
 and honesty of private life, one is utterly stupefied at meeting 
 such things on one's path. 
 
 Well, then — terrible hecatomb ! — thousands of religious of 
 both sexes in Italy, struck down by your laws, found them- 
 selves suddenly torn from these secular asylums of piety, 
 science, and charity which they had themselves founded, and 
 where they had the right to live and die. At Rome alone 12r> 
 monasteries of men gave shelter to 2375 religious ; 90 convents 
 of women, 2183 nuns. Your agents, a brutal soldiery, ravaged 
 these venerable asylums ; and the cry of the proscriptions of 
 
 * ' Le piu perfette seconJa la dottrina Cattolica ... 1' antitese di ogni 
 progresso materiale, morale, ed intellettuale dell' uomo.' Rdazione, &c.
 
 19 
 
 old times has again been heard : ' ILec mea sunt, veteres mi- 
 grate coloni /' And they were compelled to turn out : to tear 
 themselves from their peaceful sanctuaries, and to give you 
 up everything. And there they are at this very day, dis- 
 persed, wandering, taking shelter where they can in the 
 houses which charity has opened to receive them. 
 
 More cunning than your predecessors of the French Ke- 
 volution, you endeavoured, I know, to temper your spoliation. 
 After having robbed these religious whom you threw into the 
 street of all that was their own, you were obliged to recog- 
 nise that you had a duty of honour and justice towards them : 
 * Un dehito di giustizia c cZ' onorc.'* 
 
 Justice and honour ! Fine words and great things. Let 
 us see how they have been understood by the Italian Govern- 
 ment, and what 'justice and honour' induce you to give to 
 enable those persons to live whom you have turned out of 
 their homes, and from whom you have taken everything they 
 
 To the professed members of the Mendicant Orders you 
 give 250 francs a year, or a little more than 50 centimes a 
 day;t to the lay brothers of the same orders 144 francs a year, 
 or even 96 francs, that is 25 centimes a day, according to 
 their age. 
 
 When offering them, so ridiculously inadequate a means of 
 subsistence, you might perhaps have imagined that they 
 would throv/ themselves on the charity of the public. But at 
 the very same time your police laws forbid their having re- 
 course to it, and you punish begging in the name of social 
 morality :t ahitudinc dannosa nei rispetti della moralita so- 
 ciale. Well, then, in the name of * social morality,' let them 
 die of hunger or get out of it as best they may. 
 
 As to the lay brothers of the Non-mendicant Orders, you 
 expect them to live, in the midst of the daily increasing dear- 
 ness of every article of consumption, at the rate (according to 
 their ages) of 300, 240, and 200 francs a year. For the choir 
 
 ♦ lielazione della Commissione, &c. p. 7, 8. 9. 
 
 f Every one knows that a franc is tenpeiice of our Engli.-sh money, and 
 that 100 centimes go to a franc. So that their pittance is fivepencc a day 
 for the professed monks and twopence-halfpenny for the lay brothers. Note 
 of Translator. 
 
 X ' Le leggi di polizia, impedendo la public queetua.' Progettodi Legge, p. 7.
 
 20 
 
 monks and nuns, if they be sixty years of age or above it, 
 they are to receive 600 francs a year ; if they be from forty to 
 sixty years old, 480 francs, and these, even when they have 
 attained the age of sixty, are not to receive any more ; while 
 if they be under forty they are only to get 360 francs a year, 
 or less than a franc a day.* 
 
 And no matter what amount you have taken from them. 
 The monks of the Chartreuse at Pisa had large possessions, 
 three parts of which at least went to the poor. This monas- 
 tery was the Providence of the country. Well, you have 
 robbed them of everything. They were very numerous at the 
 moment of their suppression ; one or two only have been left 
 to guard the house. Well, these poor religious, to whom you 
 tender the miserable pittance I have quoted above, if they wish 
 to eke out their wretched subsistence by taking a few vege- 
 tables from their own kitchen-garden, must pay you for them. 
 Until now, this garden was their own ; now it is yours, 
 and you think it just to make them pay for what is their own, 
 and which you have taken from them. If it be justice, I will 
 say nothing ; but if it be worthy of your agents, certainly, sir, 
 it is unworthy of you. 
 
 0, your new system of taxation forgets nothing ; of that I 
 am well aware. But judge for yourself. Amidst all these 
 despoiled and homeless priests, a great number de-pend upon 
 a small emolument for saying masses in order to exist at all, 
 and many of them have not even that resource. Well, on the 
 miserable sum given to the poorest of these priests for his 
 mass, you impose a tax. Even of this last resource in his 
 extremity your fiscal authorities claim the lion's share. But 
 if he should say his mass for nothing, or if he should not say 
 it at all ? No matter, he must pay as if he said it. The tax- 
 gatherer supposes that a priest says mass every day, and ge- 
 nerally for some kind of payment, saving a few days in the 
 year. For all the other days, whether he has said mass or 
 not, with or without salary, he must pay the tax, and this is 
 the way your tax-collectors understand it. Is it not almost 
 unbelievable ? I was even told that one of these poor priests, 
 who, from time to time, says mass in a private house belonging 
 
 * Regio decreto per la suppressione degli ordini e corporazioni religiose, 
 7 Luglio 1866, art. 3.
 
 21 
 
 to a Frenchman whose name was mentioned to me, and who 
 invited him on these occasions to take his place at his table 
 afterwards, had been forced to pay for these occasional invi- 
 tations what you call the family tax of 26 francs, on what 
 your fiscal authorities were pleased to consider his ' revenue.' 
 In spite of the solemn affirmation made to me of this fact, I 
 really doubt it still. 
 
 Another enormity. There are about 120 bishops from 
 whom everything has been robbed, houses and goods, and 
 who receive nothing from yon, not even the pension awarded 
 to lay brothers. The Pope gives them an alms of 500 francs 
 a month. Certainly, if anything should escape the grasp of 
 your taxation, it would be the help which comes from Peter's 
 pence, which is a twice-told alms, the alms of the Pope and 
 our own. Well, on this very alms each bishop is compelled 
 to pay you a tax. 
 
 But now let us mention another case which is of frequent 
 occurrence. Among these monks and nuns, there are many 
 of them who have brought a large dowry, that is, their own 
 private fortune, to their convent. In that case, what course 
 was pointed out to you by justice and lionouv 'l Doubtless it 
 would occur to you that, when you sent them back to a secu- 
 lar life, you would restore to them the fortunes which belonged 
 to them, as much as your own income belongs to you. But 
 no ; these private fortunes are confiscated like all the rest, 
 and you do not scruple to turn their owners into the street, 
 with the miserable handful of francs I have quoted above. 
 
 This injustice is so glaring and the proofs so evident that 
 you yourselves have inserted in your law an exception for 
 those who have been professed since 1864.* But why not 
 for the others ? Is not the reason identical and the injustice 
 the same for all ? This is not a question of ecclesiastical pro- 
 perty; it is a question of the rights of families, the legitimate 
 possessors of which properties are before your eyes, and to 
 whom the most vulgar notion of what is called justice and 
 honour among honest men commands the restitution of that 
 which is their own. 
 
 There is at this moment going on in Ptome a famous 
 trial, which brings to light one of the most revolting preten- 
 * Regio decreto, art. o.
 
 22 
 
 sions of your fiscal sj^stem. A member of a religious com- 
 munity, thinking himself at the point of death, made a gift 
 to the community. The said community was dissolved, and 
 its goods confiscated ; hut the religious did not die. Natur- 
 ally, when he was turned out of his convent, he claimed the 
 money he had given, not to the Government, but to his com- 
 munity. But no ; the Government pretends that everything 
 belongs to them, and refuse to give back to the poor monk 
 his own private property.* 
 
 But are the rights of private property, even independently 
 of convents, respected by your fiscal system ? The land and 
 buildings of the Pretorian Camp did not belong to any com- 
 munity, but to a private individual — to that noble and generous 
 Mgr. de Merode, whom death has so prematurely and so sadly 
 torn from the Church. Up to his last moment, ho paid you 
 the taxes on this ground; but you seized all, both the tax and 
 the camp. 
 
 Among these poor monks of so many different orders, there 
 were the old, infirm, sick, and blind. What have you done with 
 them ? You have discovered an economical way of keeping 
 them alive; and I was a witness in Eome of the saddest possible 
 sight, which takes place in the Capuchin convent near the 
 Palazzo Barberini. There you have gathered, or rather 
 huddled together, all the old and infirm members of the dif- 
 ferent religious communities in Piome. They have been 
 dragged, in spite of their tears and protestations, from the 
 homes where they lived under a rule of their own choice, and 
 where they had certainly purchased the right to die by a long 
 life of labour, penance, and prayer. And now they are dying 
 of misery, neglect, and desolation in this hospital of your in- 
 vention, far from all those who loved them, and who were 
 the companions of their whole existence. 
 
 Thus, then, all this grand religious life in Ptome, where 
 you so solemnly promised to respect it, is destroj'ed ; all 
 these creations of Christian centuries are annihilated. 
 
 You say, it is true, that, although you cannot recognise 
 the religious life, nothing in your laws forbids it, and that the 
 corporations you have dissolved as moral bodies may revive 
 again under another form. 
 
 * II sacerdote Luigi Carlini contra la giunta liquidatrice.
 
 23 
 
 But tilery have notliiug left belougiug to them, these un- 
 happy corporations ; you have taken everything from them ; 
 how, then, and with what means arc they to revive again ? 
 
 Centuries of toil, prodigies of economy, sobriety, and self- 
 devotion, had been needed to create them. You rob them of 
 all, and say to them : ' Of what do you complain ? You have 
 the same virtues, the same chances ; begin again ! You have 
 been centuries about it? Well, jou will be centuries more.' 
 
 But in the liquidation of ecclesiastical property at least, 
 has no share been given to them ? No ; none. 
 
 We have seen what has become of the persons ; now let 
 us see what has become of the goods of the Religious Orders. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Siijypression of the Religious Orders. What becomes of their 
 Goods. 
 
 The spoliation of the Religious Orders is complete, ab- 
 solute. All — houses, gardens, museums, libraries, archives, 
 rare objects of art ; all those treasures of religion, science, 
 art, antiquity — all have been carried away from their monas- 
 teries. You have now the power of disposing of everything.* 
 
 And there is no doubt that you look sharply after your 
 gains, and leave out nothing. 
 
 Have you not constantly had law-suits with religious for 
 some little thing which you fancy they have concealed? — a 
 book, an ornament, a reliquary — some little remembrance 
 which was dear to them ? 
 
 Have we not seen at Assisi a whole army of police de- 
 spatched after a poor lay brother, who was accused of having 
 concealed some articles which had belonged to his monastery? 
 The house was surrounded, the lay brother seized and thrown 
 into prison with great indignities, and finally released ; the 
 poor brother had never hidden anything at all ! 
 
 Have I not read in the Italian newspapers that at Bo- 
 logna, in spite of the 24th art. of your law of 7th July 1866, 
 all the furniture of the church of St. Dominic was sold by 
 public auction — chasubles, busts of saints, even the sacred 
 vessels themselves ? 
 
 * Decreto regio del 7 Luglio 18GG, art. 24.
 
 24 
 
 The archives of the Chartreuse at Pisa, which go back to 
 the tenth century, are equally menaced with destruction. 
 
 Two hundred thousand volumes were contained in the 
 magnificent library of the learned monks of the monastery of 
 the Minerva ; what will it please you to do with them ? 
 
 Less rich, perhaps, but still magnificent also, was the 
 Library Vallicelliana, in itself a chef-cVa'uvre of art, possessing 
 40,000 volumes and 3000 manuscripts. It is there that the 
 sons of St. Philip Neri preserve the private library of their 
 holy founder, including 300 volumes annotated hy him ; this 
 library, which has remained as it is since the days of Ba- 
 ronius — have you not tried to destroy it altogether, and to 
 divide the space into ten rooms, to be filled with I know not 
 what ? 
 
 The other day I went all over this magnificent convent 
 of St. Philip's Oratory, where at every turn one comes upon 
 recollections so dear to piety and religion. In a distant 
 corner, at which one arrives with difficulty by low doors and 
 back staircases, are huddled together a few of the members 
 of the old community, who have been allowed to remain 
 there out of tolerance. It is in that usurped home, invaded by 
 force, and under the very eyes of its ancient possessors, that 
 you have installed your law courts and administer ji«.s^ic'C. 
 
 I saw the crowd of pleaders which filled the cloisters. 
 Well, sir, allow me to tell you that if I were your procurator- 
 general, in the name of the seventh commandment — non 
 Juraberis — in that very house, the scene of your own robberies, 
 I should begin by demanding justice against yourselves. 
 
 And so many other incomparable libraries, treasures of 
 science sacred and profane — the scenes of our studies and 
 our toil, which our popes and cardinals and monks had 
 created and added to with such genius and patience ; do you 
 think that we can see these pass into your hands without the 
 greatest sadness and the most well-founded alarm? 
 
 Will not the day come, and that before long, when, with 
 ancient chalices and valuable pictures, the Italian Govern- 
 ment, more and more straitened for means, will sell them all 
 to England ? 
 
 And what will you do with the cloisters invaded by your
 
 25 
 
 I saw at Naples the celebrated Chartreuse, that admiraLlc 
 monastery which all Europe has visited, on that beautiful 
 mountain in front of Vesuvius and of that glistening sea. 
 Formerly a gentle and benevolent monk received the tra- 
 veller, offered him refreshment, and showed him over the 
 monastery with kindness and intelligence. Now a rough 
 soldier receives you and conducts you over the place, mak- 
 ing ridiculous efforts to make his bad French understood. 
 Instead of the magnificent library, which has been carried 
 off and thrown no one knows where, they have placed there 
 a shop of Venetian glass and painted crockery. Such is 
 the progress of civilisation ! Of the thirty-two monks who 
 were there, two only have been permitted to remain, who 
 wander sadly in the solitude of their desecrated and desolate 
 cloisters. No longer do the praises of God rise up to hea- 
 ven in hymns and spiritual songs ; the choir is deserted. 
 No venerable white-robed monks remain to walk majestically 
 under those magnificent porticoes, or to rise and pray during 
 the splendour of those Neapolitan nights for the great and 
 populous city sleeping at the foot of the holy mountain. 
 
 Thus had religion, poetry, and art sanctified all the 
 heights, all the valleys, and all the most beautiful sites of this 
 lovely Italy. On all sides prayer and praise, in uninterrupted 
 accents, rose up to the throne of God. In its solitary places, 
 as in its cities, the soul of man found everywhere holy shelters 
 for lives of love and disinterested charity, for tranquil study 
 or for the devotion and self-abnegation of the apostolate. 
 All these noble creations of Catholic faith on this Christian 
 soil have disappeared or are disappearing. The walls are not 
 yet all cast down, but their soul is gone. Life is extinct. They 
 have left neither religion, nor poetry, nor art, nor truth — no- 
 thing ! 
 
 L'Ara Cffili, that monument of the victory of the Saviour 
 over Jupiter Capitolinus, has been transformed into a guard- 
 house. On those steps the butt-end of the soldier's musket 
 replaces the monk's sandal. Here again is a fine instance of 
 progress. 
 
 Those admirable cloisters of Michael Angelo at the Baths 
 of Diocletian, what have they done with them ? Those pure, 
 grand, simple lines have been broken and dishonoured.
 
 26 
 
 They talk of turning the magnificent church of the Gesu 
 into a great theatre, and the church of St. Ignatius into a 
 chamber of commerce. 
 
 Those venerated cells of St. Ignatius, St. Louis of Gon- 
 zagua, of St. Stanislas Kotska, St. Philip Neri ; those recol- 
 lections of St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, St. Francis of Assisi, St. 
 Dominic, and so many others — what will become of them ? 
 
 There are churches in Italy which have already been turned 
 into stables. Is it believable ? And when the day comes, 
 which is too surety approaching, alas ! when, the Italian and 
 Roman clergy being so greatly diminished by the suppression 
 of the religious orders and so many other causes, you will 
 find there are too many churches in Italy and at Eome, what 
 devastation, what profanations may we not expect ! 
 
 For what religious remembrance or associations will ever 
 stop you ? 
 
 What have you done with the Coliseum itself ? that earth, 
 bathed in the blood of countless martyrs, of which one of our 
 popes gathered up the dust to send it to an emperor of 
 Germany who had asked him for some relics, saying : ' You 
 wish for relics ? See, here they are. Here, even the very dust 
 is sacred !' By the hand of a forgetful and ungrateful archaeo- 
 logist, you have thrown down the venerated Way of the Cross ; 
 you have profaned the soil with useless excavations, and you 
 have gratuitously wounded the piety of the whole Catholic 
 world. 
 
 Do you not also assert that the Catacombs are yours ? 
 The Church, then, can no longer descend freely even into the 
 Catacombs ! The Catacombs, her dearest treasure, her cradle, 
 the place of sepulture of her martyrs, the sanctuary of the 
 most heroic memories, which paganism itself respected, which 
 all generations of Christians have visited on their knees, you 
 are to dispose of them at your will ? 
 
 Let you alone, and it will soon be true that Rome is no 
 longer Rome. Christian Eome, all her religious character, is 
 rapidly disappearing in your greedy hands. 
 
 And then you say that you v/ish ' to solve the Roman 
 QUESTION without icouiiding the feelings of Catholic nations' 
 or betraying our trust' ? I ask you yourself, in the name 
 of honour and good faith, is it that which you are doing ?
 
 27 
 
 You have been forced, it is true, to consent to some ex- 
 ceptions ; and there are one or two ecclesiastical bodies, the 
 chapters, for instance, and certain colleges, which you have 
 not been able to suppress. Well, what have you done with 
 them? 
 
 You cannot suppress, but you ruin them by the applica- 
 tion of your new laws. 
 
 Y^ou put up their property to auction, and you insist that 
 a sale shall be eifected within three years for country and two 
 years for town property. 
 
 Disastrous conditions, which inevitably inflict on the sell- 
 ers incalculable losses, in consequence of the quantity of land 
 brought all at once into the market, and with so brief a delay, 
 as well as by the greedy manceuvres of the companies interested 
 in the sales. 
 
 Thus in the last few days you have forced a compulsory 
 sale of the property of ten separate chapters. 
 
 And with the capital thus realised, to be converted into 
 nominal Italian funds, what do they do ? First, they take a 
 third, 30 per cent, for right of transfer; then, another third 
 from the accumulation of previous deductions ; then the house- 
 tax of about 13 per cent, if .the establishment be for the aged 
 poor ; still further, a tax of 2 per cent if the property be mort- 
 main, or 5 per cent if it is not, without counting the ordinary 
 cadastral tax in the exceptional cases where the non-suppressed 
 establishments have preserved any landed property. 
 
 In a word, enormous losses on the price of the property 
 by the ruinous conditions of the sale, besides a reduction of 
 two-thirds of the i) rice of the sale by repeated previous de- 
 ductions ; thus do you fulfil your declared promise of the ex- 
 cmjHion of ecclesiastical j^yopcrty from all special charges. 
 And 3^ou still dare to affirm, in your explanation of the 
 motives of these laws, that they leave entire to the Roman 
 Church the patrimony of the Church : II patrimonio della. 
 Chiesa rimarra intero alla Chiesa. 
 
 I ask you, sir, as a Minister, is not your sincerity thereby 
 deeply compromised ?
 
 28 
 
 V. 
 
 Foundations of Catholic Nations — the Disasters which the 
 Italian Laics inflict upon them. 
 
 What, jierhaps, is one of the strangest features in all this, 
 and the most opposed to the engagements entered into by the 
 Italian Government vis-a-vis Catholic nations, is her preten- 
 sion of applying this despoiling legislation even to the estab- 
 lishments -which these nations have founded in Rome, and 
 which belong to them, and which you cannot despoil without 
 violating — this must be clearly understood — not only natural 
 justice, but the strictest international rights. 
 
 Who does not know it, sir ? Rome is the common home 
 of all Catholics. ' This Rome,' said Montaigne long ago, ' de- 
 serves our aifection, united as it is for so many ages and by 
 so many titles to our crown. It is the common and metro- 
 politan city of all Christian nations, Spanish or French ; each 
 finds himself at home there. To be members of that state it 
 is only needful to belong to Christianity wherever it may 
 exist. There is no spot here below on which Heaven has 
 showered such favours and such constancy.' 
 
 Therefore it is that all Catholic nations of the Old and 
 New World have fixed themselves at Rome — English, Bel- 
 gians, Germans, Spaniards, Americans, all nations, in fact ; 
 and France — and it is our glory and our pride — figures in 
 the foremost rank. We possess, therefore, in this city cer- 
 tain pious foundations : St. Louis des Francais, founded by 
 Catherine of Medicis ; St. Claude des Bourguignons ; St. 
 Nicolas des Lorrains ; St. Ives des Bretons, the Purification 
 of four nations ; St. Saviour's in thermis : all houses admi- 
 nistered by our ambassador, by means of a commission. We 
 have also a number oi religious houses : the French Seminary; 
 the Chartreux, at St. Mary of the Angels ; the Lazarists, 
 established at Rome by the Duchesse d'Aiguillon ; our brave 
 Trappists, who have made more healthy, though at the risk 
 of their lives — and many have died — the deadly plains of 
 St. Paul at the Three Fountains ; without counting a number 
 of houses of brothers and sisters. Independently of other 
 expenses which they have to meet, the administration of the
 
 29 
 
 pious foundations distributes annually from 30,000 to 40,000 
 francs to succour such poor or sick French people as may be 
 living in or passing through Rome. 
 
 Well, these French foundations you have, in the first 
 place, taxed enormously. Under Pius IX. they paid 11,500 
 francs. To-day they have to pay 28,000 francs — nearly three 
 times as much ; and they are threatened with a payment of 
 34,000 francs. But more than this : all these foreign houses, 
 pious foundations, and communities you want to submit also 
 to your new system of forced sales in two years, and for right 
 of transfer to take from them 30 per cent ! 
 
 But do you not see that it is the money of Catholic na- 
 tions which in this way, sir, you would appropriate ? 
 
 But property which has been bought with charges beyond 
 its value does not even stop you. The Trappists of St. Paul 
 at the Three Fountains, to whom Pius IX. confided that un- 
 healthy tract of land to try and improve it — so unhealthy, as 
 I before mentioned, that many have died in the attempt ; and 
 who are obliged each year to leave their monastery for three 
 months — these Trappists, I repeat, bought with their savings 
 (to escape from the malaria of that deadly season) a house near 
 St. John Lateran. Well, the Government want them to sell 
 it, and to take, be it understood, the third of the price of the 
 sale, and squeeze out of the remainder the previous deductions 
 we have before mentioned. The Chartreux, for their house 
 at St. Mary of the Angels, have spent an enormous sum, 
 granted to them on loan (of which they have the title-deeds) 
 by the great Chartreuse in France. In the same way the 
 Chartreuse of Pavia, closed for a long while, but reopened 
 in 1843 by the French Chartreux, has been also taken pos- 
 session of by you. They have not yet obtained permission 
 to touch their own funds. Well, these too, sir, are French 
 funds, which do not belong to you in any way whatever. 
 
 And then you talk, in your memorandum of the 29th of 
 
 August, of ' AN AGREEMENT OR UNION WITH TH^ PoWERS pos- 
 sessing in Rome Catholic subjects.' Where, then, is this 
 agreement or union ? Now you pretend that the Government 
 and the Italian Parliament are alone qualified to decide these 
 imperial interests, which concern the Catholics of the whole 
 world.
 
 30 
 
 But this is not all. And yon seize that which, from other 
 and graver reasons, does not belong to you in the least. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The ancient origin and international character of the 
 principal riches of the Roman Church. 
 
 It is not only Kome, it is the Catholic world which you 
 are robbing. 
 
 Rome is the universal country, the capital, not of Italy, 
 but of the whole Catholic world ; and it is to the Catholic 
 world that she owes, in a great measure, her riches and her 
 splendour. And to begin with, do there exist in the whole 
 world possessions more ancient, more consecrated by centu- 
 ries, than those of the Roman Church ? Only the other day, 
 in his last Bulletin Archeologique, that illustrious and learned 
 man, M. de Rossi, described two stone monuments attesting 
 ' the very ancient origin of this patrimony of the Roman 
 Church, which,' he adds — ' maintained for sixteen centuries, 
 amidst a thousand vicissitudes, until these latter days — is 
 now sold by auction before our very eyes.' 
 
 Thus the barbarians and conquerors of the Middle Ages, 
 revolutions and wars, have passed over Rome, and the patri- 
 mony of the Church has always been respected. It was re- 
 served to the Italian Government to consummate this sacri- 
 legious spoliation. 
 
 St. John Lateran, for instance, the Pope's cathedral, built 
 by Constantine, and secularly honoured as the head and mis- 
 tress of all churches {omnium ecclesianim mater ct caput), 
 and the metropolis of the Catholic world, of what does its 
 property consist ? Of foundations the most ancient, the 
 most illustrious, and the most uncontestable in the whole 
 world. 
 
 It is, perhaps, a unique fact in history that, amidst the 
 vicissitudes of centuries, St. John Lateran still possesses a 
 farm, that of Cento-Celle, which was a gift of the conqueror 
 of Maxentius. 
 
 The gifts of Pepin, of Charlemagne, of other Carlovin- 
 gians to the same metropolis, are not more doubtful. Those 
 of Louis XL, of Henry IV., and of the Governments which
 
 31 
 
 have succeeded one another iu France since 1801, rest upon 
 equally authentic titles; as you are well aware. 
 
 Since the Middle Ages, the domains of this cathedral 
 mistress of all churches were distinguished in public acts 
 and diplomas by the words Solum Lateranncnsc, the soil of 
 the Lateran. By an identical expression the 5th art. of 
 your Law of Guarantees still terms them ' the soil of the 
 Lateran.'' 
 
 But this venerable antiquity, which surrounds them with 
 a halo of majesty, and which consecrates them, as a Roman 
 writer formerly said, Vetera qiuedam majesfas consecrat, does 
 not inspire you with the smallest respect. The patrimony 
 even of St. John Lateran is at this moment threatened. 
 
 But it is not only to the emperors and Christian monarchs 
 that the patrimony of the Roman Church owes its origin. His- 
 tory records numerous and important donations made, since 
 the first centuries of the Church, by the faithful of every class 
 and of every land in favour of St. Peter and his successors. 
 Under all circumstances and in a variety of forms, these 
 donations have succeeded one another without interruption. 
 To these gifts were added, in proportion as the Church de- 
 veloped itself, the contributions of the Catholic world, re- 
 serves of benefices, annual consistorial dues, produce of tri- 
 bunals for dispensations, of secretaryships of briefs, fines of 
 kingdoms which are fiefs of the Church, and Peter's pence : 
 all revenues coming from without. 
 
 Is there the smallest doubt, sir, of this fact ? Is it to 
 Rome as an Italian municipality, or to Catholic Rome, the 
 common home of Christians, that the whole world has granted 
 annual consistorial dues, paid for vacant benefices, sent the 
 produce of subscriptions and contributions from all the pro- 
 vinces of the religious orders to enrich so many magnificent 
 buildings, consecrated by religion and all the marvels which 
 have there been accumulated? Every one knows that the 
 Roman States gave very little to the Popes ; it was only to- 
 wards the second half of the fifteenth century that direct 
 taxes of any sort were imposed ; older, but purely local, the 
 indirect taxes were so slight that they hardly sufficed to de- 
 fray the current expenses of the municipality. 
 
 The revenues of the Popes, not as temporal but as spiritual
 
 32 
 
 sovereigns, were, on the contrary, very considerable ; and it is 
 with these revenues that in all times they have founded pious 
 establishments, built splendid monuments, and made Rome a 
 city worthy of being the capital of the whole Christian world. 
 
 It is a matter of public notoriety that the cardinals like- 
 wise had formerly very large incomes, and that the greater 
 part of them made the noblest use of these resources ; as 
 their magnificent foundations and beautiful churches and 
 chapels so clearly attest. 
 
 If it be so, then — if the property of the Roman Church 
 has, in its largest portion, a foreign origin, the largesses of 
 Catholicity itself — is it not evident, sir, that these possessions 
 do not belong to Italy? and that this Catholic Rome, en- 
 riched by the gifts of the whole Christian world, and the pro- 
 digious riches, both artistic and monumental, which she con- 
 tains, can in no way be considered as your lawful prey, to be 
 disposed of at your convenience or according to your will and 
 pleasure ? 
 
 That is the reason why what you are doing, silently and 
 in the dark — I mean, the operations of your ' giunta liqui- 
 datrice' and the spoliations which are being carried on, or are 
 in preparation — are things which concern us in the highest 
 degree ; and we cannot, without protesting from the very 
 bottom of our consciences, see you thus quietly appropriating 
 sacred treasures which belong to ourselves. 
 
 This, then, is the whole truth. The Italian Government 
 has deceived the Catholic world by a series of promises which 
 it has not kept. It has despoiled and is despoiling the Roman 
 Church more and more, day by day, and in the most disgrace- 
 ful manner. It has destroyed its exterior position and very 
 existence, and accumulated ruins upon ruins. In one word, 
 of which you must feel more than any one the full bearing, 
 and against which accusation your colleagues protested in 
 vain, una ri'presa delfisco, of this you must bear the shame. 
 The occupation of Rome is simply that, and nothing else : 
 una riprcsa delfisco. 
 
 In common honesty, I again ask you, can you flatter your- 
 self, after all this, that you have kept your promises, and thus 
 responded to ' the confidence of Europe and the expecta- 
 tion OF the Catholic world' ?
 
 33 
 
 VII. 
 
 Blows dealt to the Priesthood and to Religion itself. 
 
 If, from the spectacle of this immense spoliation, we turn 
 to another, that of the disorganisation of the Church, and 
 the blows dealt by the Italian Government against the spi- 
 ritual administration of the Holy Father, as well as against 
 religion itself, the sight, sir, is more heart-breaking still. 
 Here we must give up illusions or attempts to deceive the 
 Church and the world by appearances. Here, more than 
 anywhere else, we can prove the powerlessness of your words. 
 
 Yes, what really confounds me, sir, is less the hardihood 
 of your acts than that of your affirmations, so manifestly 
 contrary to your anterior formal declarations, to the evidence 
 of our senses, and to the daily facts before our eyes. 
 
 What is the state of the clergy in Italy ? What gaps 
 have not already been made in her bosom, thus striking out 
 the very life of the Church at its source ! 
 
 This is one of the inevitable consequences of your laws of 
 spoliation. 
 
 The monks and religious orders in Italy administered a 
 great number of parishes. By suppressing them you have 
 disturbed the whole parochial system. How? you ask. Can- 
 not they continue to serve the parishes ? Yes ; but they die 
 every day, and death during the twenty-five years of your 
 revolution has been busy in their ranks. And after them ? 
 You are perfectly well aware that you have made novitiates 
 impossible. 
 
 The secular clergy even, how are they to be recruited, 
 with your hard military law and endless vexations ? 
 
 The property of the seminaries has also been liquidated, 
 reduced by 80 per cent, and subjected to extraordinary taxa- 
 tion. It is the Holy Father who gives them a subsidy from 
 Peter's pence, and thus alone prevents their perishing. 
 
 You do not even exempt from military service the young 
 pupils of the sanctuary destined for the altar ! Never has 
 such a thing been done by any people; but it is done by you. 
 
 Will you tell me that the law enables them to purchase a 
 substitute ? But at what price ? A ransom of 3500 francs 
 (140Z. English). In the actual state of the finances of the
 
 34 
 
 Churcli, who do you expect can pay such a ransom ? You 
 were quite sure, by this means, to disorganise and empty all 
 the great seminaries. 
 
 In a college of one hundred students, there would then be 
 350,000 francs to provide, independently of other expenses of 
 keep, food, and education. Where on earth could such a sum 
 be raised? In the actual resources of the Church? You 
 have one hundred and twenty bishops who do not receive a 
 farthing from the State. 
 
 The Archbishop of Turin is reduced to living in a tiny 
 room in his own seminary. 
 
 The Archbishop of Pisa the same. I have visited them 
 both. And how many more ! 
 
 A ransom of 3500 francs ! and even after paying it, one 
 only passes from the first category of the contingent to the 
 second.* 
 
 To escape from the rigour of your military laws, a good 
 many young priests took refuge in provinces which had not 
 yet been annexed. After the annexation, you hunted them 
 out, seized them, and, notwithstanding the sacred character 
 with which they were invested, you incorporated them by 
 main force into your regiments. It is a well-known and un- 
 doubted fact that, at the siege of Rome in 1870, the army of 
 invasion contained a large number of these poor priests, who, 
 once in Rome, used to go secretly into the sacristies, and tear 
 off for half an hour their hateful military costume, so as to be 
 able once more to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice ! 
 
 Yes, this indignity, sir, has been a sad reality. The 
 dearth of priests is already great : I do not know the actual 
 number of parishes which have no priests, but I know that 
 it is already fearful. I have been told of one diocese in 
 Italy where, out of one hundred and fifty cures, there are 
 seventy vacant. 
 
 What will it be in a few years? Then, public worship 
 having ceased, for want of priests, in a great number of 
 churches, both at Rome and throughout Italy, it is frightful 
 to think what will become of these sanctuaries, and still more 
 of those souls ! 
 
 But, besides, is not the incessant, relentless war declared 
 
 * ' Legge sulle basi general! per 1' organamento dell' esercito,' art. i.
 
 35 
 
 against the clergy, the Pope, and religion itself, in spite of 
 j^our attempts to dissimulate the fact, but too well known ? 
 
 Do you not make every effort to deprive the children of 
 the poor of any religious instruction ? ' The Pope free,' you 
 say, ' in a free State.' Free, yes, to hear every attack, every 
 threat, every outrage. 
 
 The dupe — I will not say the accomplice — of the declared 
 enemies of religion, of those who own loudly that their 
 object is to iinchristianise Rome and Italy, the Italian Go- 
 vernment permits everything — in the press, on the bookstalls, 
 at the theatre, even in the streets ! Ptemember the coarse, 
 public, and impious sacrileges which remained unpunished at 
 the time of the last Roman carnival. 
 
 I have seen the most impious and odious caricatures ex- 
 posed on the walls of the capital of the Catholic world. 
 
 There is not a single nation, even of those separated from 
 the Church, who would tolerate similar scandals. I do not 
 even except Geneva. I have seen in Rome itself, in libraries 
 of recent date, some stuck even at the back of the walls of 
 the churches, horrible little books, very cheap, in which 
 our dogmas, our worship, the Papacy, the Episcopate, the 
 clergy, are treated with the most contemptuous ridicule, and 
 loaded with the vilest calumnies. I have seen at the doors of 
 these libraries enormous advertisements offering books to the 
 passers-by such as this, Anatomia del Papismo ! 
 
 And the Pope is compelled to witness such scandals, and 
 is powerless to suppress them. 
 
 Yes, sir, you are dealing heavy blows, not only against the 
 faith, but against the morals of this Roman population; as if 
 you only hoped to drag from their hearts their well-known 
 fidelity to the Holy Father by throwing them into an abyss of 
 corruption and apostasy. 
 
 But we will now go on to show what is the nature of the 
 attacks levelled against the spiritual administration of the 
 Holy Father, and against the public services of the universal 
 Church. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Destruction of the Roman College. 
 You have destroyed the Roman College. But what was
 
 36 
 
 the Eoman College ? An Italian establishment ? No. It 
 was an institution essentially Catholic, a school of theology 
 for the whole world. Rome is the centre of faith and doctrine. 
 It is important to the whole Catholic Avorld that from every 
 land the bishops should be able to send their future priests 
 to classes where, with the highest authority, under the eyes 
 of the Supreme Pontiff himself, ecclesiastical science should 
 be taught. That is why, in execution of the decrees of the 
 Council of Trent, the Popes founded these seminaries in 
 Eome : a diocesan seminary, the Apol.linare, for the priests 
 of the Roman Church, and a seminary for the whole Catholic 
 Avorld — omnium gentium seminarium — the Roman College ; a 
 college which from the hour of its foundation has been inter- 
 national ; international by the decrees of Gregory XIII., from 
 the professors who taught in it, and from the various nation- 
 alities and origin of the students who frequent it, and have 
 frequented it for the last three centuries. It is there also 
 that in our days the seminaries of the different nations, and 
 the rectors of the English, Irish, Scotch, Belgian, American, 
 French, and German colleges, sent their students in order to 
 perfect them in their studies, with masters who reckoned 
 among their body the most illustrious representatives of the 
 sacred sciences. 
 
 Well, what have you done with this grand and noble in- 
 stitution ? From the moment of your entry into Rome, in 
 September 1870, you invaded the halls of this college, you 
 forbade the Roman youth to frequent it, you diminished by 
 one half the salaries which the Sovereign Pontiff had awarded 
 to the professors ; and then, on the 8th October 1873, you 
 definitively suppressed the whole university. 
 
 You promised, it is true, another locality and the con- 
 tinuance of the salary of the professors, reduced by you to 
 one half ; but you have awarded neither salary nor any fresh 
 locality. The rectors of the foreign colleges have claimed 
 the fulfilment of your promise, and applied to the giunta 
 liquidatrice. They have not even had a word of answer. 
 Therefore, there is no longer a hall for the classes, no longer 
 any salaries for the professors. 
 
 You have, therefore, taken possession of the magnificent
 
 37 
 
 wliole of Christianity ; then, in order the more effectually to 
 ruin this great institution of Catholic education — not daring 
 to lay your hands on the colleges of foreign nations, because 
 you would have had to reckon with those nations — you have 
 condemned the students of these colleges to wander here and 
 there in Eome to seek a shelter for their professors and for 
 themselves. At last they were enabled, at great expense, to 
 establish themselves in a hired house. But then you, under 
 the pretext that these classes were no longer those of the 
 Eoman College — whence you yourselves have banished them 
 — you have actually suppressed the whole of the salaries of 
 the professors, which had already been, as I said before, reduced 
 by one half! The rectors of the different foreign colleges 
 addressed to you fresh remonstrances, and again claimed your 
 promise. No ansivcr. The Holy Father then took up the 
 cause, and claimed restitution ; so did the bishops, the pro- 
 fessors, the rectors of colleges — even directly to yourself, 
 M. Minghetti ! You never deigned to give the smallest re- 
 sponse. You keep the buildings of the Koman College, 
 which is ours by right, and you pocket the 12,000 Eoman 
 scudi which was assigned to the professors by the Pontifical 
 Government. 
 
 In thus destroying, in spite of the protests of the Pope 
 and the Episcopate, this illustrious college, the fruit of three 
 centuries, you have ignored the sacred rights of the Pope, 
 the Bishops, and the Catholic Powers ; you have thrown im- 
 mense difficulties in the way of instruction in the sacred 
 sciences ; and you have injured in the highest degree the 
 spiritual and scientific interests of Catholicity itself. 
 
 This, again, is the way in which you have fulfilled your 
 engagements, respected your Law of Guarantees, and striven 
 
 TO SOLVE THE EoJIAN QUESTION WITHOUT WOUNDING THE FEEL- 
 INGS OF THE Catholic world. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Destruction of the Mother-houses of the IleUr/ious Orders. 
 
 The Law, so called, of Guarantees, voted by the Italian Par- 
 liament on the 13th of May 1871, is founded on the principle 
 that the Pope is entirehj free to accomplish the functions of
 
 38 
 
 Jiis sjyiritual ministry. These are the exact terms of the 
 9th art. 
 
 This law recognises, still further, ' that he cannot fulfil 
 the functions of his ministry alone, and that the Church is 
 necessarily a secular body served by Regular Orders.' And 
 the first thing you did was to destroy these Regular Orders. 
 Can there he a more flagrant contradiction ? And at this 
 very moment you are putting the corner-stone to your work, 
 by destroying the mother-houses of these Orders. There 
 were grouped round the Holy See certain mother-houses, 
 centres of government for those numerous comm.unities of 
 workers disseminated throughout the Christian world. There 
 the generals of these Orders resided, with their respective 
 councils : and thus the whole body of the Religious Orders 
 found themselves in constant and direct communication with 
 the Head of the Church. 
 
 And not only did the principal heads of the great Orders 
 reside near the Holy See, with which they had constant rela- 
 tions, but a link was thus formed between the metropolitan 
 houses of the Order, and the other houses under their govern- 
 ment. It was in these mother-houses that the religious of 
 di£ferent monasteries, who were sent to Rome on various 
 aflfairs, received hospitality ; and in them also were held the 
 chapters and assemblies of the heads of all the difi'erent pro- 
 vinces of each Order, when there was a question of the election 
 of a new superior-general. Such convents, therefore, are on 
 a totally different footing in Rome from other places. There 
 they are only private establishments, without any absolutely 
 necessary relation to the rest of Catholicity, and generally 
 founded witli the money of particular countries or individuals. 
 They might even cease to exist, without any radical blow 
 being struck at the government of the Church towards the 
 religious institutions, which everywhere she must direct. But 
 at Rome the convents are quite another thing, and by strik- 
 ing at them in the centre or heart of the Church, you 
 have done an irreparable injury to institutions which are of 
 vital interest to the whole of Catholicity, and which were 
 created not only for this universal end, but with funds to 
 which the population of the Pontifical States have contri- 
 buted little or nothing.
 
 39 
 
 0, I know very well that even here you have tried to 
 conceal your acts under certain forms, and proceeded with 
 apparent moderation; you have not denied in principle — you 
 have even formally recognised — the necessity of a representa- 
 tion of the great Orders around the Pope ; and in the law 
 which extends to the province of Rome the destruction of 
 the Religious Orders in Italy, you have specified the sum 
 which should be granted to the Holy Father for the mainte- 
 nance of the representatives of the great Orders about his 
 person (art. 3, no. 4) ; you have even given to the King's 
 Government the faculty to leave to the representatives of the 
 great Orders, who have houses in foreign nations, the neces- 
 sary localities for their own residence and the performance of 
 their functions. But for how long a time ? As long as they 
 hold that ofl&ce ; fino a che dura V iifficio low. And after- 
 wards ? 
 
 In the mean while they have been forced to evacuate their 
 own mother-houses. You have turned them out of doors, and 
 installed yourselves in their place. And what is to become of 
 these generals or procurators-general of the Religious Orders, 
 isolated and wandering, reduced to the most precarious means 
 of existence, exposed, if of foreign nationality, to falling under 
 the power of the police, and to be no more than tolerated on 
 Italian territory : deprived also of all the resources which 
 they formerly possessed in their communities ? 
 
 And then you arc surprised, after such a violation of your 
 most formal promises, alter such attacks against the dearest 
 interests of the Pope and the Church, that a cry rises up 
 against you from the heart of every Catholic in Europe ? 
 
 X. 
 
 Disorganisation of tJtc Roman Congregations. 
 
 I reminded you just now, that in your Law of Guarantees, 
 art. 9, you were forced to admit that ' the Pope could not ac- 
 complish alone the functions of his spiritual ministry.' What 
 an immense administration, in truth, is that of the universal 
 Church ! The religious of the whole world flock for reference 
 in their affairs to Rome. From Rome comes the impulse 
 which is communicated to the farthest extremities of Catho-
 
 40 
 
 licity. This vast government has necessitated the creation 
 of numberless congregations, true ministers of the Church, 
 who surround the Holy See, and between whom all the affairs 
 of the Church are divided. Of all the kingdoms of the earth, 
 the Pontifical administration is that which listens the most 
 carefully to councils. If, in the last stage of any act of im- 
 portance, the Pope personally examines the question, nothing 
 can be less arbitrary than his decision. All questions, before 
 being finally resolved on by him, have been carefully studied, 
 meditated, and discussed by this legion of counsellors who fill 
 the Eoman congregations, and which are presided over by the 
 cardinals. 
 
 We should add that the Pope necessarily has his nuncios, 
 his legates, his inter-nuncios, and his charges cV affaires, to be 
 his representatives both with the Churches and the foreign 
 Governments. 
 
 It is evident that, to suffice for such an administration, 
 Rome requires an ecclesiastical body of the highest order ; a 
 nursery of men trained for a long while to fill such posts, 
 well versed in all political and religious questions, and broken 
 in to public business. 
 
 Well, the religious life, more than any other ecclesiastical 
 position, the quiet of the cloister, aided by libraries and 
 archives, facilitates all those vast researches which are re- 
 quired for a thorough knowledge of theology, canon law, and 
 ecclesiastical history; and far more than secular priests, 
 absorbed by the duties of the ministry, these hidden workers 
 are thoroughly versed in the difficult causes Avhich are fre- 
 quently confided to them. 
 
 That is one of the reasons why the Religious Orders had 
 so large a share in these congregations, and the members 
 furnished by them were neither the least learned nor the 
 least laborious of those whom the Pope called to his aid in 
 the government of the Church. 
 
 Henceforth, how will he be able to provide for so numer- 
 ous a body ? And how prepare men to whom such learned 
 and onerous functions are to be intrusted, if they no longer 
 possess houses, or monasteries, or places of meeting to shelter 
 not only themselves, but their archives and libraries ? If the 
 Church have no longer any certain property, nor any estab-
 
 41 
 
 lishment -whicli she can securely possess, wliere can she 
 educate the men she wants, and offer to those who are pre- 
 paring for the roinistry, for missions, ecclesiastical judge- 
 ships, or professorships of education, peaceful shelters or 
 special resources for preparation for their respective voca- 
 tions ? And when, notwithstanding so many promises, you 
 have brought about all this terrible destruction, and done 
 such incalculable injury to the Church, you expect that the 
 Pope, deceived and betrayed, and Catholics, indignant at the 
 fraud put upon them, should still have confidence in your 
 laws and your guarantees ! 
 
 XI. 
 
 Menaces made to the Propaganda. 
 
 At this moment, you menace the Propaganda itself. You 
 are beginning to sell its property. But the Propaganda, sir, 
 is the institution the most inseparable from the Papacy, and 
 the most necessary to Catholicity : that also which the highest 
 interests of civilisation, no less than those of religion, com- 
 mand you to respect. 
 
 Euntes docete omnes gentes were the words of Christ to 
 His Apostles on leaving them. The Pope is, if I may venture 
 to say so, the testamentary executor of these last words of 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 How is it possible to admit that the Sovereign Pontiff 
 could do without a centre for the Catholic Propaganda ? To 
 impart faith and Christian civilisation to the barbarous 
 populations which cover the distant portions of the globe, 
 such has always been the right and the duty of the Church. 
 It is thus that she has carried the Gospel to the uttermost 
 ends of the earth, and opened at the same time to all nations, 
 in the very interest of their riches and political consideration, 
 relations which are infinitely more precious. 
 
 And, doubtless, the work is as grand as it is laborious. 
 We enjoy, we, old nations of the West, often with an ungrate- 
 ful disdain or a proud indifference, the blessings of civilisa- 
 tion and Christianity : but what should we be without the 
 Gospel? In what state arc those countries on which that 
 great light has not yet shone?
 
 42 
 
 When we cast our eyes over the map of the globe, it is 
 with a kind of stupor that we discover vast tracts still buried 
 in heathen darkness, where the sun of faith has never yet 
 risen. What millions of men even now, after nearly nine- 
 teen centuries of Christianity, are still idolaters, or buried in 
 the shadows of false worship ! 
 
 And what becomes of poor humanity in these sad regions? 
 I am not even speaking of those debased races in Africa and 
 Oceanica, who seem scarcely to deserve the name of men : I 
 am speaking of those old civilisations in the extreme East — 
 of those Asiatic nations, not yet Christian, but followers of 
 Buddha and Mahomet. What an abyss of moral miseries ! 
 what deep wounds of corruption and ferocity, or of servile 
 abjection and ignorance, unknown, by the grace of God, to 
 people who adore Jesus Christ ! 
 
 If, then, there be a work above all others most admirable, 
 eminently Christian and civilising, is it not the work of the 
 foreign missions ? It is the immortal glory of the Catholic 
 Church that she has never ceased to labour at them with an 
 indefatigable zeal, and to engender in her bosom millions of 
 apostles. Where are they not found at this very hour ? What 
 burning climate or frigid zone can arrest their zeal ? What 
 fatigues, what perils, what martyrdoms, frighten them ? 
 Wherever our travellers, our merchants, our consuls land, 
 there the missionaries have been before them and paved the 
 way. More than two hundred dioceses are already organised 
 in missionary lands. I feel a pride in France when I think 
 that, at this very moment, more than 1500 French mission- 
 aries, without counting our heroic Sisters of Charity, are 
 labouring in the propagation of the Gospel. You will find 
 Catholic missionaries in Europe from the highlands of Scot- 
 land and Sweden to the banks of the Danubian Provinces, 
 and at Constantinople ; in the whole of Asia, at Jerusalem, 
 Damascus, Antioch, Beyrout, and all the cities of the Levant; 
 then in Persia, China, Cochin China, Tonquin, Japan, in the 
 Indies, even in Oceanica. There, the black savages of New 
 Guinea, the Protestant colonies of Holland, the new world 
 of Australia, the scarcely known islands of Polynesia, are full 
 of missioners. In Africa they are labouring in Algeria, at 
 Tunis, Tripoli, Egypt, Suez, beyond the Sahara, in Abyssinia,
 
 43 
 
 Senegal, Zanzibar; in that vast Nigritia where 50,000,000 
 poor negroes are waiting to become men and Christians ; at 
 the Cape of Good Hope, in Madagascar, at Sierra Leone. In 
 America you find them in New York as in Canada ; even to 
 the wild lands of Arkansas and Hudson's Bay ; in Texas, at 
 the Antilles, in Guiana — everywhere ! Shall I reckon up all 
 those orders devoted to distant missions ? Lazarists, Jesuits, 
 Dominicans, Franciscans, Passionists, the Lyons Mission- 
 aries, those of Picpus, the Marists, theOblates ofPignerolles, 
 the Oblates of Charity, the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, 
 &c. And how many others ? I stop ; for it would be too long 
 to pass in review that great and noble army of the Catholic 
 Apostolate. 
 
 Well, who organises and directs all these missions ? It 
 is that grand Roman congregation which is called the Propa- 
 ganda : that Propaganda which I might define as the Prime 
 Minister of the Catholic missions ; the first and the most in- 
 dispensable of those administrations by which the Pope 
 governs the universal Church. It is the Propaganda which, 
 by its vicars-apostolic, governs and directs all those countries 
 where the Catholic hierarchy is not yet regularly constituted. 
 She is the resort of all the missionary establishments (both 
 men and women) scattered throughout the East, in India 
 and China, Africa, America, and the isles of the ocean ; all 
 the clergy, regular and secular, who, under one name or the 
 other, are labouring for the propagation of the faith, are con- 
 solidated, directed, and depend entirely upon her. It is so 
 true that Propaganda is an apostolate, not for local purposes, 
 but for the whole world, that she does not receive students 
 of Italian nationality. All her subjects, formed in her school, 
 are to return to their respective orders, belonging to different 
 countries who have sent them there. 
 
 Such is Propaganda ; of all the Ptoman congregations, I 
 repeat, the most considerable and the most indispensable. 
 And it is on an institution like this, sir, that the Italian 
 Government does not fear to lay her hands. Already has she 
 done it an irreparable injury, as well as to all the Catholic 
 missions, by disorganising the Religious Orders which fur- 
 nished the missioners. It is to this extent, that when the 
 eminent and zealous Cardinal Franchi, the Prefect of the
 
 44 
 
 Propaganda, asked lately for some religious for an import- 
 ant mission in the Indies (one which first made Sanscrit 
 known in Europe), the Cardinal failed to obtain any — their 
 general had none left. If they be already so scarce, what 
 will it be in the future ? and where will they be able to be 
 trained ? The greater part of these orders had schools and 
 seminaries destined to prepare for their distant apostolates 
 those among their members who were sufficiently heroic to 
 devote themselves to the foreign missions. These houses 
 w^ere provided with special libraries, and went through a 
 special course of study for this purpose. And every one knows 
 that it must be so. The studies of those who are to evange- 
 lise India or China must be different from those who will sail 
 for Australia or America. Each order, besides, had certain 
 fixed missions assigned to it. For instance, the Carmelites 
 had, at St. Pancrazio, their seminary for the Malabar mission 
 and the Indies; from whence, as I said just now, came 
 the first lights which were thrown on Sanscrit, a language 
 which is now studied throughout Europe as the mother- 
 tongue of the Indo-Germanic tribes. The Franciscans had 
 for their Syrian and Egyptian missions the convent of St. 
 Bartholomew a VIsola. And so with all the others. You 
 have suppressed all these seminaries and convents ; their 
 libraries have been confiscated and scattered, and everything 
 is disorganised and destroyed. 
 
 But now it is this great congregation . of the Propaganda 
 which the Italian Government is not afraid directly to attack. 
 That law which subjects all the property of existing institu- 
 tions to conversion into Italian funds, the Government, it 
 appears, now wishes to apply to Propaganda itself. This 
 would be simply to give it its death-blow. 
 
 It possesses a palace, built in the time of Urban VIIL, 
 which shelters its archives and its administration, a special 
 college (besides those of which I spoke just now), and which 
 is altogether dependent on Propaganda ; and an immense 
 printing establishment, for all the languages and dialects on 
 the face of the earth. If you drive it from this palace, where 
 do you think it could install all these things ? 
 
 Its expenses are defrayed by certain houses situated in 
 Rome, and certain lands in the Pontifical States : but how
 
 45 
 
 heavy would be the loss which you would make Propaganda 
 incur by the inevitable depreciation of the value of its pro- 
 perty, consequent on a forced sale within a limited time ! 
 
 She possesses a fund of 14,000,000 or 15,000,000 francs, 
 which gives her a revenue of 700,000 or 800,000 francs. Is it 
 that, sir, which excites your covetousness ? Is it that which 
 you grudge to those distant Christianities, for the maintenance 
 of those poor and heroic missionaries who have left all to 
 plant the Cross in pagan lauds ? Do you consider that it is 
 too much for the immense and magnificent work of the apos- 
 tolate and of civilisation which the Propaganda accomplishes? 
 
 How much do you think that England gives every year 
 for her Protestant missions ? 20,000,000 francs. And Eussia, 
 to propagate her schism ? 4,000,000 francs. Propaganda has 
 less than 1,000,000 francs for the diffusion of the Gospel. And 
 on these meagre and sacred resources, sacred twice over in 
 the eyes of humanity as in those of religion, you would dare to 
 lay your hands ! 
 
 What ! you have in Kome such a fountain of light and 
 civilisation, the very centre of the great Catholic Apostolate ; 
 an institution which sends Gospel missionaries everywhere, 
 that is, civilisation ; which has rendered, and is still render- 
 ing, such incalculable services to European diplomacy, to 
 commerce, to letters, to science — and you do not feel proud 
 of such an honour ? And you do not wish to preserve so 
 glorious a privilege ? And you do not see that to touch a 
 similar institution would be to dishonour you in the eyes, not 
 only of Christianity, but of all civilised nations ? 
 
 XII. 
 
 The ]yar declared against lay scientific Institutions. 
 
 After all, to what lengths do you not push your interference 
 and that passion for subjecting everything to the tyranny of the 
 State ? Of this the war you have declared against the lay 
 scientific institutions of Ptome is only another proof. There 
 are at Rome learned bodies and illustrious academies, founded 
 by the Popes or under their patronage, whose members are 
 either first-rate artists or savans of the first class : academies 
 which have their laws, their franchises, their autonomies.
 
 46 
 
 •which have always been respected by the wisdom and magna- 
 nimity of the Sovereign Pontiffs. This independence, so 
 honourable to science, so favourable to true progress, gives 
 umbrage to your Government : it has determined to destroy 
 them. It will be to the eternal honour of these Eoman 
 academies that they are still struggling courageously against 
 these illiberal invasions. But to what poor vexations, what 
 miserable proceedings, have you not had recourse against 
 them ! Thus, with the most ancient, the most celebrated of 
 all these academies, the Academy of Fine Arts of St. Luke — 
 founded under the express condition, which the Popes have 
 always accepted and respected, that she should be absolute 
 mistress of her own patrimony and supreme in her own in- 
 terior government — you want to compel her to change her 
 statutes, and even her name ! She resists. I have read with 
 admiration, I own, her noble and proud revindication of her 
 secular rights. I know nothing more honourable to science 
 than this protestation, drawn up by M. Betti, signed by 
 twenty professors, and addressed by them to your Minister 
 of Public Instruction. 
 
 The professors of the Eoman University remained faithful 
 to the Pontiff. To make them expiate this fidelity, what have 
 you imagined ? To compel them to take the political oath to 
 the Government. Never had the Popes exacted such an oath. 
 You yourselves had not asked it of the professors of the 
 University of Padua. 
 
 After your entry into Ptome, you hastened to exact this 
 oath from the Padua professors, so as to have some colour 
 for forcing it on the Ptoman University. To the honour of the 
 Sovereign Pontiff and the confusion of your Government, what 
 happened ? The greater part of them, and those the most 
 celebrated, absolutely refused, and in consequence lost their 
 professorial chairs. 
 
 The Archosological Academy unanimously voted to retain 
 her title of Pontificale, and to maintain her right of free 
 election of her president. To punish her, you have not 
 blushed to withdraw from this learned body the modest pen- 
 sion of 3000 francs, which the State allowed her for her annual 
 expenses, and to drive her from the halls of the university 
 where she held her sittings.
 
 47 
 
 You saw also that tlie majority of the Lincel Pontlficu 
 voted for the retention of this title of Pontificii, which they 
 naturally hold in honour : you compelled this majority to give 
 way to a small minority. 
 
 But there has heen found an upright and honourable man, 
 the Prince Buoncompagni, whose science and erudition are 
 known to all Europe, and Avho, at his own cost, publishes 
 the reports of their meetings : so that, in spite of you, the 
 Lincei Pontificii continue to exist. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 That the Spoliation of the Church has not enriched Italy. 
 
 Well, you have despoiled the Church. Are you any the 
 richer ? You have thrown this prey into the yawning gulf of 
 your empty exchequer : has this gulf been, in consequence, 
 filled up ? No ; it has been made wider. 
 
 It has often been remarked that the property of the Church 
 never brings any luck to those who take possession of it. 
 'Woe,' exclaims Bossuet, 'be to those who lay their hands 
 upon it !' Look at Spain and so many other nations, whom 
 such robbery has neither saved from bankruptcy, nor from 
 invasion, nor from the disaster of assignats. 
 
 You have come to this — to paper-money. 
 
 What has become of all the property of the Church in 
 Italy? Who has profited by it? Who has swallowed it up? 
 
 What I know is, that the deficit in your finances swells 
 each year to gigantic proportions, and the taxes and the 
 National Debt likewise. Your budget exceeds by 730,000,000 
 francs (that is, by more than half) the budgets of all the 
 Italian States taken together before the union. 
 
 That is to say, Italian unity costs to-day 730,000,000 
 francs to the Italians. 
 
 The increase of the expenditure year by year is, accord- 
 ing to an expression of the Deputy Corbetta, something 
 enormous, something quite incredible (' qualche cosa di 
 enorme, qualche cosa d' incredibile'). In truth : 
 
 In 18G8 (it is from the same Deputy Corbetta that I bor- 
 row the figures), the budget of expenditure was 998,000,000;
 
 48 
 
 in 1869, 1,100,000,000 ; in 1870, 1,111,000,000 ; in 1871, 
 1,498,000,000 ; and this year 1874, it was 1,528,000,000.* 
 
 Naturally, taxation follows in a continually ascending 
 scale, but it does not suffice ; and so each year the deficit 
 increases and the debt becomes larger. 
 
 In 1861, the deficit was 39,000,000; in 1871, 84,232,761; 
 in 1872, 233,019,199. 
 
 In 1861, the public debt of Italy was 111,000,000 (I 
 speak of the interest) ; in 1871, it was 440,000,000, repre- 
 senting a capital of 10,000,000,000. 
 
 How, besides, can we be astonished at this deficit in the 
 budget and constant increase of the debt, when on a budget 
 of 1,309,000,000 of receipts for the year 1872, one must de- 
 duct from it, first, for the interest of the debt, guarantees, and 
 dotations, a share of 931,160,059, on which no economy is 
 possible ? 
 
 Thus the debt is always increasing — always, always — and 
 the taxes too. 
 
 It has been proved that, before 1860, the average tax paid 
 in Italy by each inhabitant was only 19 francs 83 centimes, 
 including the provincial and municipal taxes. In 1873, each 
 inhabitant paid on an average 44 francs 63 centimes ; that 
 is, since 1861 the tax is more than doubled. 
 
 With the spur of this debt and the necessity of this tax- 
 ation, the demands of the Italian fiscal system have become 
 something prodigious. 
 
 I have been told of one college in Kome, which before 
 '1870 paid 300 francs in taxes to the Pontifical Government; 
 this same college pays you now 3800. 
 
 I know one private individual, whose fortune does not 
 amount to more than an honest competence, and who now 
 has to pay in Rome 9000 francs for a house which was for- 
 merly taxed at 400 francs. 
 
 The difference between 400 and 9000 francs seems in- 
 credible ; but it has been carefully proved to me. 
 
 Our pious establishments, as I before said, paid the Pon- 
 tifical Government 11,500 francs. 
 
 To-day they pay 28,000, and probably very soon they will 
 have to pay 34,000. 
 
 * These sums are given in francs.
 
 49 
 
 Such is the progress of taxation. 
 
 Now, if we look into this subject in detail, what shall we 
 find ? Ah, your financiers are men of expedients, sir, and 
 your unity costs Italy dear. 
 
 A deputy has lately proved before the Chambers that a 
 bit of bread, before it can be eaten, has paid twenty-one dif- 
 ferent taxes ! 
 
 What did you not say against the Popes on the subject of 
 the tax on the grinding of corn ? A very moderate one, 
 besides. 
 
 To-day this tax is not only doubled and trebled, but it 
 has been extended to all kinds of flour, to Indian corn, to 
 chestnuts, to haricots; that is, to all those articles which 
 form the food of the poor. 
 
 And as to the rents of houses, how do you proceed ? Do 
 you levy the tax on the real price of the lodging, which is a 
 thoroughly equitable proceeding? No; but on a fictitious 
 rent, which you yourselves have fixed. 
 
 ' Here,' exclaims the owner of a house, * is what my 
 house brings me in. Here is the tenant's lease.' ' Ah,' you 
 reply, ' it is your fault if you do not let it for more. You 
 can let it for so much ; you will pay accordingly ; put more 
 pressure upon your lodgers.' 
 
 The mother of a family, in consequence of arrangements 
 made with her children, received from them, in exchange for 
 a cession of her property, a life annuity ; the Pontifical Go- 
 vernment had never thought of taxing this kind of annuity, 
 as the property in return for Avhich this annuity was paid 
 had already been taxed ; but you hastened- at once to levy 
 a tax upon it. I know a Roman lady who pays you on this 
 account 12,000 francs. 
 
 A poor priest towards the ends of March comes to present 
 his life-certificate, in order to draw his very small pension. 
 You ask him for his certificates for the end of February and 
 January. Certainly, as ho was alive at the end of March, 
 there was no doubt that he was equally alive in February 
 and January. But they did it to force him to pay for three 
 stamps instead of one. 
 
 I must stop. Facts of this sort are innumerable. What 
 conclusion can we draw from them ? This — that in dcspoil- 
 
 D
 
 60 
 
 ing the Church you have not enriched Italy. But if you 
 have not enriched her, have you done her honour ? 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Ts the Spoliation of the Church just in Piincijjle? lias the 
 CMirch the Bight to jiossess Proi^erty ? 
 
 I will not leave this sad subject without setting forth one 
 last question— the general question of principle. Many will 
 smile, sir, at this vindication of rights which will never pre- 
 vent the use of might against right. But for the honour of 
 humanity there are certain fundamental truths that the world 
 cannot be allowed to proscribe ; and so, however importunate 
 or superfluous my protest may appear, I shall make it. 
 
 I will no longer speak of your engagements or your pro- 
 mises. I will only speak of the nature of things and eternal 
 justice. Had you the right to take from the Church what you 
 have done ? 
 
 No, You had not. 
 
 Notwithstanding all the sophistry invented in favour of 
 every usurpation, it is needful to maintain and proclaim, sir, 
 this truth : that the Church has by herself, and by the sole 
 fact of her Divine institution and existence, the right to pos- 
 sess ; an essential right, at the same time natural and Divine, 
 which Governments are bound to recognise and to guard by 
 careful and protective legislation, but which they never have 
 the right to paralyse, to destroy, and still less to confiscate 
 for their own profit. 
 
 She has the right to possess, and why ? Because she has 
 the right to live. Because she exists, and because One 
 greater than you has established her on the earth. 
 
 Whoever has the right of existence here below has the 
 right of property ; these two rights are essentially co-relative. 
 Do not reply that the Church is a spiritual society. How- 
 ever spiritual the Church may be in her Divine institution, 
 she is not hung up in the air. She is founded upon the earth 
 and for the inhabitants of the earth. Teach all nations : 
 preach the Gospel to every creature. She is in the world and 
 for the world ; she is composed of men ; she needs for her 
 mission, for her works, for her worship, for her temples, for
 
 51 
 
 her clergy, certain resources, without which she could not 
 provide for the necessities of her existence. And the slight- 
 est reflection will be enough to convince you that the right of 
 property can alone insure these resources for certain, with- 
 out which her liberty would always be precarious and her 
 existence miserably dependent. 
 
 Yes ; to deny to the Church the right of possession, you 
 must also deny to her the right of existence ; and, in fact, 
 it is this radical and impious negation which is at the root of 
 all the systems hostile to ecclesiastical property. In spite, 
 then, of all the sophistries, ancient and modern, the truth, 
 the irreversible truth, is there. 
 
 And the facts here confirm the principles. This right is 
 so completely a necessity, it is so true that the Church, from 
 the moment of her existence, can and ought to hold property, 
 that, in fact, she has everywhere and always possessed it. 
 
 It is uncontestable, that under the pagan emperors 
 themselves, the Christians, the Christian Churches, and es- 
 pecially the Roman Church, had properties which were both 
 acknowledged and respected. Mother and mistress of all the 
 churches, the Church of Rome was, from the very first, as 
 she ought to be, and long before Constantino, the richest in 
 resources, the most powerful in action, and the most profuse 
 in her liberality. The monuments, the most illustrious acts, 
 teach us that the Roman Church, which had to provide for 
 such a multitude of other wants, possessed not only a quan- 
 tity of furniture of the highest value, but also considerable 
 funds. 
 
 The history of the foundations of all the Ch arches in 
 Europe and throughout the world proves that there was not 
 a single great Christian community which had not, and was 
 not compelled to have, possessions more or less important. 
 Excepting during the storms of persecution, the emperors 
 and the pagan magistrates not only recognised this right of 
 property in the Christian Church, but often protected it 
 against the injustice and violence of its usurpers. Thus, when 
 Paul of Samosata at Antioch remained, in spite of the con- 
 demnation of a council, through the protection of Queen 
 Zenobia, in a house belonging to the Church, Aureliau, 
 on the complaint of the Christians, ordered that the house
 
 52 
 
 should be adjudged to those to whom the Bishops of Italy 
 and the Koman Pontiffs should address their letters ; so 
 clearly was it admitted, even by the pagans, that the Chris- 
 tian Church had the right to possess, and notoriously that the 
 mark of a true Christian was communion with the Koman 
 Church. Lampsidius, in his Life of Alexander Severus, re- 
 counts with minute details how this emperor insisted on a 
 certain spot, of which the possession was disputed, being 
 given back to the Christians for the exercise of their religious 
 worship. Who does not know the famous decree by which 
 Constantino and Licinius ordered ' the restitution to the 
 Christian Churches of all that had belonged to them — omnia 
 qiue ad Ecclesias recte visa fuerint jjertiner — houses, fields, 
 gardens, all the property, in a word, of which the late perse- 
 cutions had deprived them'?* 
 
 ' We hereby order and decree, as regards the ChristianSj 
 that if the sites where they have been used before to meet 
 have been bought by any one, whether out of our cxehequer or 
 from ivhatever other person, they shall be immediately restored 
 to the Christians. All these sites shall incontinently be de- 
 livered to the community, that is, to the churches, and not to 
 individuals ; you will give back all these things to their com- 
 munities as a body.' 
 
 It therefore was a recognised thing, in the very midst of 
 paganism, that the Church had a right of property ; that very 
 right which men, calling themselves Catholics, dare after 
 eighteen centuries of Christianity to contest and deny. 
 
 But if the Church have the right to possess, the legitimate 
 property of the Church is as sacred and inviolable as any other 
 property. I defy you to invoke, in order to justify your 
 usurpation, a principle which would not overthrow the rights 
 of all property — that is, of society itself. 
 
 And wherefore, I would again ask, should the property of 
 the Church — that is, property v/hich comes from savings and 
 toil, sanctified by abnegation and sacrifice ; property which, 
 after all, is more consecrated to God, to souls, and to the 
 
 * ' Omnia ergo quaj ad Ecclesias recte visa fuerint pertinere, sive domus, 
 ac possessio sit, sive agri, sive horti, sive qujecumque alia, nullo jure quod 
 ad dominium pertinet immiuuto, sed salvis omnibus atque integrio manen- 
 tibus, restitui jubemus.' Eusebius, Vita Constant, lib. ii. cap. 39,
 
 53 
 
 universal good of the human raco than any other — why, I ask, 
 should its possession be less legitimate, less sacred, less in- 
 violable, than riches born of speculation, of commerce, of in- 
 dustry, of credit, of the employment of capital ? 
 
 The words of Bossuet remain, then : ' It is an unheard-of 
 injustice to wish to profit by the spoils of this daughter of the 
 King of kings . . . Her God will Himself take her quarrel in 
 hand, and will be a rude Avenger on those who have dared 
 to lay their sacrilegious hands upon her.' 
 
 XV. 
 
 Conclusion. 
 
 I pause and conclude. 
 
 Doubtless I am far from having said all regarding the 
 spoliation and oppression of the Church at Rome and through- 
 out Italy. If, however, sir, I have been led into any error of 
 detail, I am quite ready to own it publicly and to disavow it. 
 I only wish for truth, and for truth the most indubitable. 
 But the substance of the picture I have drawn will not less 
 subsist, and suffices to prove the justice of those complaints 
 which the Holy Father vented in his last Encyclical : 
 
 * With a criminal skill they deprive us bit by bit of all 
 those means and aids which render possible the government 
 of the Church. Who does not now see clearly how false was 
 the assertion, that, by the usurpation of our capital, the liberty 
 of the Roman Pontiff, in the exercise of his spiritual power 
 and his relations with the Catholic world, has not been 
 diminished ?'*" 
 
 Before this sad and sorrowful reality, I find myself filled 
 with many thoughts. But I must bury them in my own 
 breast, for we are living in days when, as Tacitus said of old, 
 'Even groaning is not free — Gemitus liber no n fait.' Still 
 
 * • Per nefarias arte paulatim nobis subducuntur pv;tsiflia et instrumenta 
 quibus Ecclesiam universam regere ac inoderari valeamus ; luculenter patet 
 quantum a veritate abhorreat quDd iiffirmatum fuit, nihil esse imminu'urn. 
 Urbe ntibis adempta de lil)ertate Roinaiii Puntificis in exercitio spiritualis 
 ministerii et in iis agendis quae ad Catholicum pertinent orbum.' Encycl. 
 of Nov. 20, 1873.
 
 54 
 
 less are we free to vindicate those imprescriptable rights for 
 which I have always fought ; but they remain immortal in our 
 hearts and consciences. 
 
 What, however, stands out plainly in this sad state of 
 things is this : That the Eoman question is not solved. And 
 it is important that neither Italy nor Europe, any more 
 than Catholics themselves, should be under illusion on this 
 point. 
 
 The consequences of this abnormal position of the Papacy 
 have not yet developed themselves ; but are we to wait till 
 they all burst forth ? And what mind which is at all clear- 
 sighted can fail to foresee them ? 
 
 This is what I conjure, I do not say only sincere Catho- 
 lics, but all serious statesmen and all the real friends of 
 Italy, to consider. 
 
 Yes ; there is in the present state of things a cause of 
 immense and permanent moral perturbation for the whole 
 world. Those who believe that might is right, and who 
 fancy that they will easily overcome Catholicity, may here 
 affect indifference or disdain. But those Avho know the place 
 which the destinies of this great Church and those of the 
 Pope, its Supreme Head, still hold in the human mind, and 
 what may be at any given moment, the power of sacred re- 
 sistance and the invincible reclamations of souls., those have 
 no doubt as to the inevitable perils before which we are 
 blindly running, by leaving the Papacy in a state of depend- 
 ence which is intolerable, and suffering the highest interests 
 of Christians to be jeopardised by our indifference. 
 
 It is likewise evident that this antagonism between Italy 
 and the Church throws Italy completely out of her proper 
 path, and that such a policy is no less contrary to her true 
 interests than to her history ; to her future than to her past ; 
 and I may add to the wishes of her population, who are deeply 
 religious. 
 
 No ; if the Papacy was and is, according to the word of 
 the illustrious Kossi, the greatest grandeur of Italy, the 
 Papacy and Italy are not made to be at war with one another. 
 History, or rather Providence — it is again an illustrious Italian, 
 the eloquent Balbo, who proclaims it — has placed between their 
 destinies a glorious and inseparable solidarity. The present
 
 65 
 
 rupture is a deplorable aberration, which will become more 
 fatal to Italy than to the Church. 
 
 That is what the voice of its wise men is for ever crying 
 out ; that is what centuries attest; that is what is prophesied 
 of the definitive issue of all the struggles against the 
 Papacy. 
 
 Let Italy begin, then, to think seriously; and let her 
 pause in the path down which the revolutionary fever is drag- 
 ging her ; yes, let her ponder over these things ; for the eyes 
 of Christian Europe cannot always, nor for long together, be 
 turned away from Kome and her Pontiff. 
 
 The day when the extreme consequences of the state to 
 which the Papacy has been reduced are made manifest, if the 
 unforeseeing and guilty people of Italy allow things to go so 
 far, — on that day she will gather, but too late, the bitter fruits 
 of the policy of which to-day she is so proud. Then Europe 
 will remember her duties towards the Papacy, which are, in 
 reality, her duties towards herself. 
 
 Then, whether we will or not, we shall have to look to the 
 security of consciences, to the troubles of souls, to the paci- 
 fication of the Church ; but would it not be wiser, is it not, 
 in fact, most urgent to prevent, if possible, the inevitable 
 difficulties into which we shall have been thrown ? The longer 
 we wait, the more complicated becomes the problem. 
 
 Italy itself laid down the principle of a diplomatic under- 
 standing with the Powers possessing Catholic subjects. Let 
 the Powers remind her of this, if she has already forgotten 
 it. The interests of the whole world are concerned in it. 
 There, indeed, might be found a solution of the question. 
 If only the counsels of wisdom should prevail — if only Italy 
 and Europe would look before them ! Whatever may happen, 
 we have faith in the future. The pacific triumph of the 
 Church will come — that is our firm hope. But when ? how ? 
 after what misfortune ? This is God's secret. 
 
 We earnestly entreat, however, the good-will of men to 
 help Providence in this case. If they refuse, Providence 
 fara da sc. The last word will be surely with her. 
 
 An Italian deputy lately invoked at the tribune Eternal 
 Justice. He was badly received. But never mind. Eternal 
 Justice exists ; and sooner or later she will have her day.
 
 56 
 
 It is that which makes me hopeful; and I will hope 
 against all hope. 
 
 Such, sir, are the reflections which I have thought it 
 right to lay before you. You see, as I said at the beginning, 
 that I make no appeal to the sword. No ; I only appeal to 
 the instincts of a wise policy, to patriotism, and lastly, to 
 the consciences of honest men. Permit me also to add, sir, 
 that I make an appeal likewise to your own personal feelings. 
 Kemember the venerable Pontiff, of whom you were the 
 Minister, who trusted in you, and whom Providence has led 
 through such bitter reverses to a grand old age, beyond even 
 the years of Peter, to give to the world the prolonged spec- 
 tacle of the most magnanimous resignation in misfortune, 
 and also to keep the door always open to repentance and 
 hope. 
 
 Accept, sir, the homage of all my sentiments, 
 
 FELIX, Bishop of Orleans. 
 
 THE POPE'S BRIEF TO THE BISHOP OF ORLEANS, 
 
 ON THE OCCASION OF HIS LETTER TO M. MINGHETTI. 
 
 Pius IX. Pontiff. 
 Venerable Brother, greeting and apostolic benediction. 
 
 Although the extreme impudence with which the most 
 sacred engagements are each day flagrantly violated by 
 the men who govern Italy has, here and there, roused the 
 anger and complaints of all honest men, and even of news- 
 papers who are hostile to religion, nevertheless, venerable 
 brother, we think that you have lately done the most useful 
 and opportune work by unveiling the whole series of solemn 
 promises made by these same men to deceive the people, and 
 avert the indignation of the Catholic Powers ; and by a plain 
 statement of facts, demonstrating the flagrant violation of all 
 these promises. Doubtless, as you have yourself well said, 
 it is not this which will put a stop to the audacity of men
 
 57 
 
 without faith, or draw from their torpor those who, by allowing 
 such iniquities to be accomplished unpunished, are preparing 
 their own destruction. Nevertheless, when these facts are 
 gathered together, arranged in order, and placed side by side 
 with their promises, as they are in your Letter, it is impos- 
 sible that such a statement should not strike those who read 
 it, and, if they have not lost all moral sense, make them 
 execrate such infamy and audacity. 
 
 We congratulate you, therefore, on having employed the 
 noble gifts which God has bestowed upon you of talent, 
 laborious activity, and eloquence, to drag from the foreheads 
 of these men the mask of legality with which they strive to 
 cover themselves each time that they are plotting some fresh 
 injustice or some new iniquity. 
 
 It is not, in fact, a slight wound inflicted on evil when 
 you can lay bare its infamy in the face of day. 
 
 Whatever may happen, without any doubt your writing 
 is of a nature, while confirming and strengthening honest 
 men, to open the eyes of many who have hitherto been de- 
 ceived or misled ; and perhaps it may give birth to a salutary 
 shame in the hearts of some of our enemies, and induce them 
 to withdraw from the false and culpable path in which they 
 are engaged. 
 
 We ask instantly of God that your writing may obtain 
 such a result : and as a pledge of Divine favour and of our 
 particular affection we impart to you, from the bottom of our 
 heart, venerable brother, both to you and to your diocese, 
 our apostolic benediction. 
 
 Given at St. Peter's in Rome the 19th October 1874, in 
 the twenty-ninth year of our Pontificate. 
 
 Pie IX. Pope. 
 
 Pius Papa IX. 
 VeneraUlisf rater, salutem ct apostolicam henedictioncm. 
 
 Licet efirons impudentia, qua data puWice fides quotidie 
 frangitur audacius ab ItaliiB moderatoribus passim excitaverit 
 vituperationem et querelas honestorum omnium, imo et in- 
 terdum ipsarum quoque ephemeridum religion! infensarum ;
 
 58 
 
 per opportunum tamen opus et perutile te fecisse censemus, 
 venerabilis frater, clum et solemnium promissionum seriem 
 explicasti ab iis editarum ad decipiendum populum, continen- 
 damque potentium indignationem ; et hisce objecisti facta 
 flagrantissimam exhibentia violationem siugularum. Id sane, 
 uti scite animadvertisti, nee horumce veteratorum ausum eo- 
 hibebit, nee torporem excutiet ab iis qui, hsec impune fieri 
 sinentes, sibi ipsis parant exitium ; collectse tamen, ordinatse, 
 invicem oppositse, uti sunt, ita necessario legentium mentes 
 afficient, ut nisi animum offenderint omni prorsus exutum 
 bonestatis sensu nequeant tantse turpitudinis et audacise exe- 
 crationem non provocare. Gratulamur itaque, te splendidis 
 ingenii operositatis, eloquentise donis a Deo largitis usum 
 esse ad detrahendam ab istorum hominum fronte lerjalltatis 
 larvam, qua se abducere nituntur quoties novum aliquam 
 fraudem macbinatiouemque moliuntur : non leve namque vul- 
 nus infligitur vitio, dum fceditas ejus aperte revelatur. Quid- 
 quid futurum sit, lucubratio certe tua dum probos omues 
 confirmabit, multos illustrare potent e deceptis, et fortasse 
 aliquem etiam ex bostibus pudore suffundere, ac ad referendum 
 compellere pedem a probosa semita, quam iuiit. Id operi tuo 
 potissimum adprecamur; atque interim superni favoris aus- 
 picem et prfficipuse nostrse benevolentiee pignus apostolicam 
 benedictionem tibi, venerabilis frater, universseque dicecesi 
 tuffi peramanter impertimus. 
 
 Datum Romse apud sanctum Petrum die 19 Octobris 
 anno 1874. 
 
 Pontificatus nostri anno vicesimonono. 
 
 Pius P. IX. 
 
 LONDON : 
 ROBSON AND PONS, PRINTEUS, VANCRAS ROAD, N.W,
 
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