2. It is shown by the special mandate which the Subalpine faction superintending the Masonic government of the Peninsula have received from the General Masonic Order—a mandate bidding them become the immediate (because proximate) instruments of the downfall of Papal Rome, the centre of the Catholic Church; and which then bids them proceed to the utter spoliation of the Sovereign Pontiff himself—two events which it hopes will lead (if that were possible) to the annihilation of Catholicity, that being the ultimate end of all the conspiracies of the order.
3. It is shown by the open confessions made in Rome, throughout Italy, and in all Europe, by journalists united by the bonds of faction to our Subalpine patrons; and even more by the discovery, lately made, that persecution is already well established in Rome against everything ecclesiastical or Catholic—whether in things or persons.
From these facts, it is demonstrated that the Holy Father is now the prisoner in Rome of a government
which in his person hates above everything, and as far as it dare makes war against, his prerogatives as Pontiff, and as Head of the Catholic Apostolic and Roman religion. Pius IX. is in the hands of Turks embittered to the last degree. Against him and his tiara every tool is made use of, and with equal skill—whether it be cannons or sophistry, buffoonery or the judgment-hall, the pick-axe or calumny.
IV.
The war of Nero carried on against the Holy Father and the church is at the present moment tempered by the war of Julian. It was for this purpose that our Subalpinists devised the law of the Guarantees, behind which they know how to mask the ugliness of their rascalities, at least for a time. “Do you see?” they exclaim in every tone, and have had written in every language: “We have surrounded the Pope with so many privileges that the like was never seen. Of what do you complain, O you insatiable Catholics? Have we not constituted the Pope inviolable as is the king? What more would you have?”
We would have—simply that the Pope should be inviolable, because he is a king in earnest truth, and not a mere semblance of one. But to this question of to-day concerning the sovereign and personal inviolability of the Pope, facts are the best reply. These show that practically he is as inviolable as the first article of the statute, and has been inviolable throughout the kingdom.
This privilege of inviolability implies that the person sovereignly inviolable can, in no manner whatsoever, be publicly insulted without the offenders being repressed by force and punished according to law.
Meantime, first, it is a notorious fact that every day the sheets belonging to this faction, not excepting those of the government throughout the kingdom, and particularly in Rome, insult, hold up to derision, and vilify the inviolable person of the Pope: and that he is exposed to ridicule by means of most infamous caricatures; and all this with impunity. For it is notorious that newspapers are very rarely sequestrated on account of this continuous and general contravention of the laws of the Guarantees; and up to this period not a single sentence has been issued from the tribunals against the insulters of his Pontifical Majesty. On the other hand, the exchequer is most rigorous against any one suspected of insulting the royal majesty through the press; chiefly, however, against the Catholic journalists who defend the inviolable Pontiff. Thus (a fitting commentary), of ten law-suits against offenders by means of the press, eight are commonly to the prejudice of Catholics accused of offences against the king or of illicit voting. The inviolability of the Holy Father, therefore, practically resolves itself into the fact that every miscreant may insult him with impunity, while it is dangerous for an honest Catholic to defend him through the press.
It is a notorious fact, and of very frequent occurrence, that groups of ribald men, escaped from every Italian galley, stroll along the avenues, singing shameful verses, nay, even menacing ones, in regard to the Supreme Pontiff, and it is no rare thing for a rabble to provoke and utter cries of a character most outraging to his name and honor. And yet the police, ever ready to hinder similar outrages in regard to the king, become deaf or soften down the words when they hear the Holy Father