Because it was intended that it should be a failure. Because the men who used the clamor for reform as an agitating force among the people wanted nothing so little as actual reform, least of all in the prince of the church. Good government was what most they feared; for good government makes, as far as government can make, people happy and well off and reconciled to order. But order and contentment among the people were precisely what Mazzini least desired.
Pius IX. was in heart and soul and act a reformer of reformers. As a temporal ruler he desired nothing in this world so much as the welfare and happiness of his people, and he took all honest means to bring about that happiness and welfare. But he was met at the outset by a strong and wide-spread conspiracy—a conspiracy that had existed long before his time, that had laid its plans and arranged its mode of action, and that was ready to do any diabolical deed in order to carry its purpose through. The very willingness of the Pope to concede reforms helped it. It took him up and petted and played with him. The clubs that roamed the streets and shouted themselves hoarse with Viva Pio Nono! and Viva Pio Nono solo! were instruments of the conspirators. The offices which the Pope threw open to the laity were seized upon by conspirators. His guards and soldiers were corrupted and led by corrupt officers and generals. Some of the clergy even felt the contamination. Ministry after ministry was tried and changed, and only succeeded in exasperating the minds of the people, as it was intended they should. The Pope had faith in human nature, and could not believe but that the honest measures which he devised for the benefit of his subjects would be honestly accepted by them. Although he knew of the conspiracy against his throne and against society, perhaps he scarcely realized its depth and intensity. The horrible assassination of De Rossi undeceived him, and the reformer and gentle prince had to fly for his life and in disguise from his own subjects.
TRIUMPH OF THE REVOLUTION.
Not two years of his reign have passed, and the Pope is already an exile at Gaeta. Pandemonium reigned in Rome. It was not the secret societies alone who brought all this about. They were aided by some, at least, of the crowned heads of Europe; and Palmerston, as infamous a politician as ever conspired against the right, was hand and glove with them, ably seconded by Gladstone, whose recent attack on the Pope cannot have surprised those who remembered his political career. Meanwhile Piedmont was creeping to the front in Italy, and though at first Mazzini was as thoroughly opposed to Charles Albert as to the Pope and the priests, the conviction grew upon the conspirators that kings might sometimes be utilized as well as killed, and that Italy might, for the time being at least, be united under the Sardinian. This conviction only came slowly, and there was a man at the head of affairs in Piedmont who was keen in reading the signs of the times, and who never missed a chance. Cavour utilized the secret societies, and the secret societies utilized Cavour. In like manner Louis Napoleon, then coming to the front in France, utilized, and was in turn utilized by, them. Palmerston, Cavour, Louis Napoleon, a dangerous and powerful triad, were with the conspirators, while Austria blundered on with characteristic stupidity, actually courting the fate which has since overtaken it.
It may be said that we concede too much power to the secret societies. Who and what are they after all? A handful of men working in the dark, led by crack-brained enthusiasts who write inflammatory letters and publish silly pamphlets at safe distances from the scene of action. They are more than this, however. They are well organized, and they trade on real wrongs and disaffection too well grounded. Certainly, in the earlier period of the Pope’s reign men were far from being, as a whole, well governed in Europe. They were not at rest; they had not been at rest from the beginning of the century. Reforms from their rulers came very slowly and grudgingly. The conspirators possessed all the daring of adventurers, and spread out a political El Dorado glittering before the hungry eyes of bitter and disappointed men. In such a state of affairs the wildest chimeras seem possible to the common mind, and in this lies the real strength of secret societies, which find their growth cramped only where men are freest and best off, as among ourselves.
A fair idea of what the reign of “the people” meant may be gathered from the state of Rome while the pontiff was in exile at Gaeta. It was cousin-german to the reign of the Commune in Paris in more recent days. And for this the Pope was driven from his own city. These were the reformers who could not be satisfied with the Holy Father’s rational measures of real reform. These were the “heroes” honored by England, by the United States, by all the enlightened and advanced men of all lands. It was for opposing and condemning these that Pius IX. is regarded by enlightened non-Catholics as a reactionist of the worst type, a foe to progress, an enemy to popular liberties. A government of assassins was preferred by the world, or at least by a very large portion of it, to the mild and beneficent sway of Pius IX. For condemning cut-throats he is against the spirit of the age; and for refusing to honor men like Mazzini and Garibaldi—men who openly professed and caused to be practised murder as a necessary political instrument—he is condemned as one who refused to recognize the progressive spirit of the times in which we live.
THE POPE AND LOUIS NAPOLEON.
While the Pope was at Gaeta, and while Rome was in the hands of what, without fear of contradiction, may be described as the vilest of vile rabbles, the baleful star of Louis Napoleon was rising over France. He was false from the very beginning to the Pope, and the Pope understood him. But he was tricky and adroit. He had the born conspirator’s liking for mystery and secrecy and intrigue. He seemed by nature incapacitated to speak and act openly. He never was a friend to the Pope. By means that are already known and stamped in history he came to the lead of what, in spite of all vicissitudes and awful changes, remained at heart a Catholic nation. The trickster realized his position and trimmed his sails accordingly. He cared nothing for the Pope or for Catholicity; but the French people did. Moreover, the protection of the Pope and French predominance in Italy was a part of the Napoleonic legend, and likely to advance his own cause. French cannon, then, and French bayonets cleared the way for the return of the Pope to Rome. Not France, Catholic France alone, but all the world, had been shocked at the awful excesses perpetrated by the revolutionists in Rome, as was the case earlier still at the outbreak of the first French Revolution. France only anticipated Europe in its action by staying the reign of blood.