THE PAPAL STATES.
Early in the year the pope published a new plan for the organisation of the executive government of his dominions, which gave satisfaction to the liberal friends of the popedom. On the 14th of March he proclaimed a new constitution. The resistance offered to the national will, in the case of Austria, caused him to become unpopular. On the 29th of April he addressed the cardinals in conclave, disavowing the act of the papal troops proceeding against the Austrian armies in Italy. This caused a popular tumult; the next day the people took possession of the post-office and the offices of state, and discovered that the pope and cardinals had been intriguing with Austria. The result was the entire sacrifice of the pontiff’s popularity; all confidence in his honour, and that of his cardinals, was erased from the Roman mind. Under the pressure of the public demand, he, on the 1st of May, proclaimed war against Austria, but never intended to adopt such measures as would carry the declaration into effect. He intended to deceive the people, seeing that they were determined on war; and he knew that this could be better done by retaining his authority over the troops, than by allowing the war to be carried out by a popular and lay administration, which would be in earnest. Early in May a new ministry of a liberal character was formed, but the pope’s private advisers counteracted their policy. The result was a revolution—not against the pope’s ecclesiastical, but solely against his temporal, authority. Scenes of the most dreadful nature followed, all of which might have been averted by an honest course on the part of the pontiff, and the college of cardinals. The pope was really willing to concede much; but the demand that the temporal government of the people should be by and for the people, he was not willing to admit; and by covertly attempting to destroy or counteract all that he publicly and ostensibly admitted, he filled the people with incurable resentment against those who surrounded him, and to whom they attributed, rather than to himself, the faithless and despotic policy in secret pursued. A chamber of deputies was convoked, to whom the pope formally surrendered his government, declining to take any part in their doings, or to afford any sanction. Several of the high ecclesiastics and lay authorities, by whose agency he sought to counteract the efforts for constitutional liberty which the people made, were slain, and others driven from Rome. At last, on the 24th of November, he disguised himself as a livery servant in attendance upon the Bavarian ambassador, and mounting the box of that gentleman’s carriage, beside his coachman, was driven to the house of the Bavarian embassy; thence, disguised as the chaplain to the embassy, he succeeded in escaping to Gaeta, a town within the Neapolitan territory. The flight of the pope was followed by a protest on his part against the liberalism of his people, who organised a regular government on liberal principles; their efforts were counteracted by the spies and agents of the pope, and the embassies of all the Roman Catholic powers: among the foreign representatives, none was more hostile to the incipient liberties of Rome than the ambassador of the French republic.
The pope, the kasir, the king of Naples, and the despots of the smaller Italian states, considered that England was the chief fomenter of Italian disturbance. This arose from one of those whig mal àpropos movements for which their party had of late years earned a bad reputation. Lord Minto was dispatched to Italy in a semi-official capacity; the real object of his mission was to open diplomatic relations with the pope, who, although very desirous to respond to the wishes of the English Whigs, thought it a good opportunity to extort some concessions as to the interests of the Roman Catholic religion in British territory. The Whigs, knowing that they dare not face the public opinion of Great Britain, if they made such concessions as the pope’s demands and their own wishes would prompt, were baulked in their undertaking. They succeeded, however, in obtaining a certain amount of influence upon the Roman Catholic clergy of Ireland, restraining the latter from favouring the revolutionary designs existing in that country. It was remarkable that while the Irish Roman Catholics were abusing Lamartine and the French provisional government, for not assisting by arms revolution in Ireland,—that is, a revolution of a portion of the Irish who followed certain leaders,—they were equally abusive of the people of Rome for daring, against the will of the pope, to assert any measure of civil or religious liberty, however modest. Impudent threats were made of sending an Irish army to the pope’s assistance, at the very time that the persons so vaunting were afraid of the Dublin police!
The close of the year saw the pope a fugitive and the people free.