The absurdity of this claim is manifest; but what absurdity is there of which the government of the Subalpinists in Italy does not avail itself, in order to attach credit to itself, by means of the arts learned in the school of its great father and master, Bonaparte?
It is important, therefore, or rather we should say it is absolutely necessary, that an honest and Christian journalism should perseveringly oppose manifest truths to this interminable repetition of falsehoods, paid for by the Subalpine rulers, respecting the present condition of the Holy Father; and thus, by ventilating fraud, undeceive simple and credulous minds.
With this intention, we shall in few but veracious strokes of the pen describe the undisguised reality of the state in which the head of the church, the Supreme Pontiff, Pius IX., finds himself at the present moment in Rome, six months after the solemn publication of the laws of the Guarantees.
II.
We assert, then, that the Pope endures imprisonment in Rome at the hands of the Subalpinists, and that his captivity, instead of being mitigated, is every day aggravated. This is proved by the following facts:
1. He is in the hands of an inimical power, or, as he himself has defined it, he is sub hostili dominatione constitutus. Now, he who is in the hands of an enemy, however much that enemy may affect humanity and regard towards him, is beyond all contradiction his prisoner.
2. The Holy Father fell into the hands of this inimical power through sheer force. This is rendered evident by the formal declaration made by the Subalpine ministers before taking up arms against him, in which they affirmed that to invade or take Rome with bomb-shells and cannons would be an act contrary to the rights of nations, an act so iniquitous that it would be unworthy even of a barbarian government: yet in the very face of these declarations they did take Rome with the argument of bomb-shells and cannons, and with the same argument they continue to occupy it.
3. The Holy Father, being in the hands of an inimical power, which has dispossessed him by violence of all sovereignty, and substituted its own in lieu of his, is now by this same power subjected to every kind of ridicule in his double majesty as pontiff and as king: burlesque honors are proposed to him, which would by preference be offered to him publicly, in order to induce the idea that the Holy Father, by accepting them, is reconciled to the government, and has basely ceded to it the inalienable rights of God, of the church, and of the Catholic world. Moreover, the obligation resting on the Sovereign Pontiff of preserving his own dignity keeps him shut up in the Vatican: the outer doors of which are guarded by a guard of honor formed of the self-same wretched soldiery who, led on by Subalpine leaders, made the breach in the Porta Pia, and struck to the earth his own sovereign banner in Rome.
4. Finally: The inimical power in whose hands the Holy Father now finds himself is, either from weakness or malice, incapable of protecting his august person from any kind of insult. So that, supposing it to be morally possible for him without compromising
his dignity to leave the cloisters of the Vatican, yet would a material obstacle present itself in the outrages and dangers, threatening life itself, to which he would be exposed amid the crowds of cut-throats, atheists, and the lowest rabble of every country, which this power has congregated together and maintains in Rome, to represent in that city the people of the plébiscite; that is, a people hostile to the Papacy and rebellious to its throne.