Page:History of Freedom.djvu/458

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ESSAYS ON LIBERTY

puis-je? :rvie déclarer contre 1'ltalie parce que ses chaînes tombent mal à propos? Non assurément: je laisse à d'autres une passion aussi profonde, et j'aime mieux accepter ce que j'estime un bien de quelque part qu'il vienne. - II est vrai que la situation temporelle du Pape souffre présentement de la libération de l'Italie, et peut-être en souffrira-t-elle encore assez longtemps: mais c'est un malheur qui a aussi ses fins dans la politique mystérieuse de la Providence. Souffrir n'est pas mourir, c'est quelquefois expier et s'éclairer.

This was written on 22nd February 186 I. In April Döl1inger spoke on the Roman question in the Odeon at Munich, and explained himself more fully in the autumn, in the most popular of all his books. The argument of Kirche ltnd K'irchert was, that the churches whith are without the pope drift into many troubles, and maintain themselves at a manifest dis- ad vantage, whereas the church which energetically preserves the principle of unity has a vast superiority which would prevail, but for its disabling and discrediting failure in civil government. That government seemed to him as legitimate as any in the world, and so needful to those for whose sake it was instituted, that if it should be overthrown, it \vould, by irresistible necessity, be restored. Those for whose sake it was instituted were, not the Roman people, but the catholic world. That interest, while it lasted, was so sacred, that no sacrifice was too great to preserve it, not even the exclusion of the clerical order from secular office. The book was an appeal to Catholics to save the papal government by the only possible remedy, and to rescue the Roman people from falling under what the author deemed a tyranny like that of the Convention. He had acquired his politics in the atmosphere of I 847, from the potential liberality of men like l{adowitz, who declared that he would postpone every political or national interest to that of the Church, Capponi, the last Italian federalist, and Tocqueville, the minister who occupied Rome. His object was not materially different from that of Antonelli and IVlérode, but he sought it by exposing