These facts, being public and notorious, must be as well known to those distinguished American sympathizers who addressed the meeting or wrote letters of approval to the committee that called it as they are to us. We dare not so insult the intelligence of such eminent men as to suppose, for a moment, that they did not know what they sympathized with, or that, in applauding the unity of Italy, they were ignorant of the craft, violence, and robbery that had been resorted to in order to effect it. What, then, must we and all right-minded men think of their own principles, of their religion, their politics, or their sense of justice? Does their Protestantism or their hatred of the Papacy justify, approve the violation of international law, the equal rights of sovereign states, the sacred rights of property, public and private, the principles of natural justice the basis of the state and of all legitimate authority, without which not even natural society itself can subsist? Does it authorize them to applaud unprovoked war and conquest, and public and private robbery? If so, how can they justify their Protestantism or their hatred of the Papacy? If they cannot assert either without denying all public and private right and trampling on all laws, human and divine, how can they regard either as defensible?
There is no mistaking the real character of the acts by which the sovereign states of Italy have been suppressed by Sardinia and her allies, and the present unification of Italy effected; and it only adds to their atrocity that it was done in part by exciting the populations, or a portion of them, to insurrection and rebellion against their respective sovereigns. There is nothing meaner or more unjustifiable than for one sovereign to tamper with the fidelity of the subjects of another, especially in time of profound peace between the two states. If persisted in, it is a justifiable cause of war. International law, or the law of nations, makes all sovereign states equal in their rights, without regard to the form of government, size, race, language, or geographical position; and the law of ethics, at least, requires each sovereign state to respect, and to cause its subjects to respect, the authority of every other sovereign state over its own subjects, as it requires every other to respect its authority over its subjects. The rule is, no doubt, often violated, but it is none the less sacred and binding on that account. It is equally wrong for the citizens of one state to attempt to seduce the citizens of another state from their allegiance. International law, national law, municipal law, as well as the moral law, know nothing of the doctrine, so eloquently preached by the ex-Governor of Hungary, of "the solidarity of peoples."
Hon. Richard H. Dana, Jr., an able lawyer, reputed to be well versed in the law of nations, and who affects, in his elaborate letter to the committee, to argue the question as it affects Catholics with fairness and candor, appears to have some doubts whether the invasion of the Roman state by the Sardinian troops, the deposition and virtual imprisonment of its sovereign in his own palace, and the annexation of its territory and inhabitants to the dominion of the House of Savoy, is really a violation of international law; but he evidently, besides arguing the question on a collateral issue, takes a juridical instead of an ethical view of international law, and considers it only so far as it enters into the national jurisprudence, and is enforcible by the nation through its own courts on its own citizens. Yet he cannot be ignorant that there are violations of international law which cannot be taken cognizance of by the national jurisprudence, and which may be, and often are, justifiable causes of war. The basis of international law is the law of justice, or droit naturel, as it is the basis of all natural ethics. There may be treaty or conventional agreements between nations, which must be considered whenever the case comes up juridically, or the law is to be juridically enforced, but these cannot abrogate or modify the law of justice, the jus gentium of the Roman jurists, which is the principle and foundation of all law. Acts in contravention of justice, St. Augustine and St. Thomas after him tell us, are violences rather than laws, and are nullities. International law applies justice to the mutual relations of sovereign states, precisely as ethics does to the relations of individuals. It declares all sovereign states equal in their rights, the territory of each to be sacred and inviolable, and that no one is permitted to do to another what it would not have another to do to it. The rule is plain and practicable, and under it Mr. Dana's doubts ought to vanish. For one sovereign state to invade with its armies another, suppress its government, and absorb its territory and population, without any provocation or any offence given, but merely because it wants it to complete and round off its own territory, as Sardinia has done to the Roman or ecclesiastical state, is too manifestly a violation of international law to leave any doubt on any mind that does not hold the principle of all law to be that might makes right.[47]
No doubt certain untenable theories of popular sovereignty and certain alleged plebiscitums have had something to do with blinding the eyes of our American sympathizers to the atrocity of the acts they applaud. But plebiscitums cannot be pleaded when taken without the order or assent of the sovereign authority, if there is a sovereign authority, as we have already said. In the case of every Italian state absorbed, there was a sovereign authority, and the plebiscitum taken was not by its order or assent, but against its positive prohibition. It is idle to say that the people of these several states gave their consent to be absorbed, for except as the state, represented by its sovereign authority, there is no people with a consent either to give or to withhold. The people, no doubt, are sovereign in the constitution and government, but not otherwise, for otherwise they have no existence. A people or population of a given territory wholly disorganized, without constitution or laws, and deprived of all government, must necessarily, for simple preservation, reorganize and reconstitute government by conventions or plebiscitums as best they can; but when they have reconstituted government or the state, their sovereignty merges in it. The people of the United States and of the several states can amend the constitution, but only constitutionally, through the government. The notion which has latterly gained some vogue, that there persists always a sovereign people back of the government and constitution, or organic people, competent to alter, change, modify, or overturn the existing government at will, is purely revolutionary, fatal to all stable government, to all political authority, to the peace and order of society, and to all security for liberty, either public or private. We see the effects of it in the present deplorable condition of France.
The resolutions reported by the committee and adopted by the meeting, and which Dr. Thompson in his address tells us "are constructed on a philosophical order of thought," attempt to place "the temporal power of the Pope within the category of all earthly human governments, and bound by the same conditions and subject to the same fortunes." This may be successfully disputed. The Roman or ecclesiastical state was a donation to the Holy See or the Church of Rome. Gifts to the church are gifts to God, and when made are the property, under him, of the spirituality, which by no laws, heathen, Jewish, or Christian, can be deprived of their possession or use without sacrilege. They are sacred to religious uses, and can no longer, without the consent of the spirituality, be diverted to temporal uses, without adding sacrilege to robbery. Whoso attacks the spirituality attacks God. The property or sovereignty of the Roman state vests, then, in the Holy See—hence it is always called and officially recognized as the state of the church—and not in the Pope personally; but in him only ex officio as its incumbent, as trustee, or administrator. Hence the Pope denied his right to surrender it, and answered the Minister of Sardinia, Non possumus. The temporal power of the Pope is therefore not within the category of all earthly human governments, but is the property of the spirituality. Victor Emmanuel, in despoiling the Pope, has despoiled the Holy See, the spirituality, usurped church property, property given to God, and sacred to the religious uses. The deed which our eminent jurists and Protestant divines sympathize with and applaud, strikes a blow at the spirituality, at the sacredness of all church property, of Protestant churches as well as of Catholic churches—at the sacredness of all eleemosynary gifts, and asserts the right of power when strong enough to divert them from the purposes of the donors. These Protestant ministers assert in principle that their own churches may be despoiled of their revenues and funds without sacrilege, without injustice, by any power that is able to do it. They defend the right of any one who chooses to divert from the purpose of the donors all donations and investments to found and support hospitals, orphan asylums, retreats for the aged and destitute, asylums for idiots, deaf-mutes, the blind, the insane, public libraries, schools, colleges, seminaries, and academies, peace societies, tract societies, home and foreign missionary societies, and Bible societies; they not only defend the right of the state in which they are placed to confiscate at its pleasure all funds, revenues, and investments of the sort, but the right of any foreign state to invade the territory in time of peace, take possession of them by armed force, as public property, and to divert them to any purpose it sees proper. Did the learned divines, the eminent jurists, who approve the resolutions ever hear of the speech of Daniel Webster and the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the famous Dartmouth College case? Or are they so intent on crushing the Papacy that they are quite willing to cut their own throats?
But the fact of the donation to the Holy See is denied. Be it so. Certain it is that the Roman state never belonged to the Sard kingdom; that the church has always claimed it, had her claim allowed by every state in the world, has possessed the sovereignty, not always without disturbance, for a thousand years without an adverse claimant; and that is sufficient to give her a valid title by prescription against all the world, even if she have no other, which we do not admit—an older and better title than that of any secular sovereign in Europe to his estates. Every sovereign or sovereign state in Europe is estopped by previous acknowledgment, and the absence of any adverse claimant with the shadow of a right, from pleading the invalidity of the title of the Holy See. The Roman state is therefore ecclesiastical, not secular.
Whether Père Lacordaire ever said, as Dr. Thompson asserts, that "in no event could the people be donated," or not, we are not authentically informed; but if he did, he said a very foolish and a very untrue thing. The people cannot be donated as slaves, nor could any of their rights of property or any of their private or public rights be donated. Every feudal lawyer knows that. The donation, grant, or cession could be and was only the right of government and eminent domain, or the right the grantor possessed; but that could be ceded as Louisiana was ceded by France, Florida by Spain, and California by Mexico, to the United States. In the cessions made to the Holy See, no right of the people to govern themselves or to choose their own sovereign was ceded, for the people ceded had had no such right, and never had had it. The sovereign who had the right of governing them ceded his own right to the church, but no right possessed or ever possessed by the people or inhabitants of the territory. International law knows no people apart from the sovereign or government. The right of self-government is the right of each nation or political people to govern itself without the dictation or interference of any foreign power, and is only another term for national independence. What was Pepin's or Charlemagne's, either could cede without ceding any right or possession of the people. So of the donations or cessions of that noble woman, the protectress of St. Gregory VII., the Countess Matilda. If Père Lacordaire ever said what he is reported to have said, he must have forgotten the law to which he was originally bred, and spoken rather as a red republican than as a Catholic theologian, statesman, or jurist.
But waiving the fact that the sovereignty of the Roman state has a spiritual character by being vested in the Holy See, and granting, not conceding, that it is in "the category of all earthly sovereignties," its right is no less perfect and inviolable, and the invasion and spoliation of the Roman state by Sardinia, as of the other Italian states, are no less indefensible and unjustifiable on any principle of international law or of Christian or even of heathen ethics; for one independent state has no right to invade, despoil, and appropriate or absorb another that gives it no just cause of war. Nor is the act any more defensible, as we have already shown, if done in response to the invitation of a portion, even a majority, of the inhabitants, if in opposition to the will of the legitimate authority. Such invitation would partake of the nature of rebellion, be treasonable, and no people has the right to rebel against their sovereign, or to commit treason. Men who talk of "the sacred right of insurrection," either know not what they say, or are the enemies alike of order and liberty. The people have, we deny not, the right to withdraw their allegiance from the tyrant who tramples on the rights of God and of man, but never till a competent authority has decided that he is a tyrant and has forfeited his right to reign, which a Parisian or a Roman mob certainly is not. How long is it since these same gentlemen who are congratulating Victor Emmanuel were urging the government, leading its armies, or fighting in the ranks, to put down what they termed a rebellion in their own country, and condemning treason as a crime?
But the Romans and other Italians are of the same race, and speak the same language, we are told. That they are of the same race is questionable; but, suppose it, and that they speak the same language. They are no more of the same race and speak no more the same language, than the people of the United States and the people of Great Britain; have we, on that ground, the right to invade Great Britain, dethrone Queen Victoria, suppress the Imperial Parliament, to annex politically the British Empire to the United States, and to bring the British people under Congress and President Grant?