Soft nest, whereby hope waits.”
[83] Provincial Exhibition.
[84] Objects inanimate, have you, then, a soul which binds itself to ours and forces it to love?
[85] Le factionnaire du Bon Dieu.
HOW ROME STANDS TO-DAY.
Several articles have been published in The Catholic World on the subject of which this paper is to treat—the condition of the Sovereign Pontiff consequent on the seizure of Rome, which thereby became the capital of the kingdom of Italy. As these articles marked the successive stages in the novel relations of the Head of the church, they could not fail to excite the interest of our readers. We look to a like interest, and invite it, for the present article, because it tells of new phases, and of the logical results of the schemes which their authors were bold enough to say were initiated “to secure the spiritual independence and dignity of the Holy See.” With this cry the attempts against Rome were begun, were carried on, and their success finally secured. So familiar, in fact, is this profession of zeal for the welfare of the Sovereign Pontiff, that we do not stop to cite one of the thousand documents in which it appeared, from the letter of Victor Emanuel, presented to Pius IX. by Count Ponza di San Martino, down to the instructions of the ministers to their subordinates or the after-dinner speeches of Italian politicians. Nor need we persuade ourselves that no one believed such an assertion any more than did those who first uttered it, nor than do we, who know what a hollow pretext it was and what fruit it has produced. Twenty years of revolution in Italy, and a vast ignorance of political matters, of the relations between church and state, rendered many in Italy and elsewhere
ready dupes of the cunning devisers of Italian independence and clerical subjugation. These went with the current; and though not a few have had their eyes opened, and now deplore the excesses against religion they are doomed to witness, they are impotent to remedy what they aided in bringing about, and behold their more determined and less scrupulous companions hurry onward with the irresistible logic of facts. Now and then some voice even among these latter is heard above the din, asking: Dove andiamo?—Whither are we going? That is a question no one can answer. The so-called directors of revolutionary movements often look with anxiety at the effects of the raging passions they have let loose; but as for guiding them permanently, that is out of the question, for they have a way of their own. The skilful manipulators of revolution ride with the tide; they now and then see a break by which the waters may be diverted, and they succeed in making them take that course, but stop them they cannot. They can only keep a sharp look-out for what comes next, and trust to fortune to better matters for themselves or others. And so it is just now with the state of Italy. Things are taking their logical course, and every one who can lay claim to a little knowledge of politics and a moderate share of common sense will say what Cavour, in perhaps more favorable circumstances, remarked: “He is a wise statesman who can see two weeks ahead.”
We are not going to dwell on the political and financial state of Italy in itself; on the fact of its Chamber of Deputies representing only the one hundredth part of its people; on the saying, now an adage, as often in the mouths of liberals as in those of the clerical party, “that there is a legal Italy and a real Italy,” the former with the government and the deputies, the other with the ancien régime and the church; nor on the debt—immense for so impoverished a land—the exhausting taxation, and the colossal expenditures for army, navy, and public works that add every day to the debt, and weigh as an incubus on the people, increasing to a fearful extent poverty and crime, peculation, brigandage, suicide, and murder. This would of itself require all the space at our disposal. Nor is it necessary, when we have one of the most accredited liberal papers of Rome, the Libertà of Sept. 3, speaking of the trial of the Marchese Mantegazza, who was accused of forging the signature of Victor Emanuel to obtain money, that tells us: “Too truly and by many instances does our society show that it is ailing, and it is needful that justice take the matter in hand, and strive to stop the evil with speedy and efficacious cure.”