LAST WEEK.
THE POPE.
The intelligence from Italy keeps our newsmongers alive, else there would be little left to talk about at this dull season of the year. Now that our own fears about our own harvest have been allayed, and we have made up our minds to the untimely end of the young partridges, and have ceased to look upon Volunteers as miraculous personages, but for Italy we should all be driven to the “Gardener’s Chronicle” and the “Gentleman’s Magazine.” The news from Italy alone, however, is enough for one week;—well nigh enough, if fairly carried out in fact, to represent the handiwork of a generation. Better far than the political regeneration of Italy, although this was desirable enough, is the destruction of the temporal power of the Pope. See what has been done in Austria since the reaction against the measures of Joseph II., even down to the days when Francis Joseph, unfortunately for himself, signed the Concordat with Rome. Look at Spain as she is, and consider what she has been since the time of Philip II. All this, and far more than this, is due to the preponderance of a priestly caste which was great in Austria, Spain, and elsewhere, mainly because the chief was reckoned amongst the rulers of the earth. With purely religious questions we are not concerned—nor would we write a single phrase which might clash with the conscientious convictions of any one of our readers ; but we are fully entitled to discuss the enormous evils which have arisen from a confusion between the things of this world, and those of the world beyond the grave.
A government by priests is the very worst government which the world has known. It is so because in temporal matters they are liable to the same blunders, and under the influence of the same ambitious thoughts as the laity, but to challenge their conclusions, or their motives is, as they say, to revolt against the Almighty. For forty years the doctrines of protection in commercial matters were much in favour with the rulers of England. Had these rulers been priests, the discussions of 1845-46 would not have been tried by the tests suggested by Adam Smith and Ricardo, but would have turned upon texts of Leviticus, and the Second to Timothy. The Roman Catholics in these islands have felt, to their own dire sorrow and confusion, how grievous a thing it is that spiritual considerations should be allowed to prevail in the ordering of temporal affairs. For a century and a half they were kept down, and exposed to all the misery resulting from the stern administration of highly penal laws, because the rulers of the Three Kingdoms esteemed it their mission to carry on a crusade against the Roman Catholic faith. As long as reason remained, old George III. set the opinions and remonstrances of his wisest statesmen at defiance upon this point. He had an oath in Heaven against which all human reasoning was vain. The Roman Catholics felt this to be highly inconvenient, but they have never regarded the blot in their own escutcheon, when the sufferings endured by Protestants and other dissidents in Roman Catholic countries were called in question. It was monstrous that an Irish Roman Catholic should be denied a share in the government of this country, but it was all well enough if a dead Protestant in Spain was refused the rites of sepulture, or a living Protestant in Rome was consigned to chains and a dungeon. The point chiefly in issue between the gladiators in this struggle now in progress in the Italian peninsula is, whether or no there shall be a broad line of demarcation drawn between the functions of the spiritual and the temporal ruler. If this point is carried, the rest will follow. Without descending to particulars, it is enough to say that if the education of the rising generation in any country be withdrawn from the overwhelming and exclusive influence of the priesthood, the human mind will be left free to take its own course in science, in literature, in political economy, in commercial enterprise; and the results are in wiser hands than our own. Hitherto, over the greater part of Europe, the maxim of rulers has been—
“Put out the light—and then put out the light!”
What wonder if darkness has followed?
Events happen in their due season, and it would almost seem as if the old Roman pear were ripe at last, and about to fall. Over and over again men have tried to pluck it when it was green and full of sap. They failed, for the time had not yet come. He would be a bold man who would say that even now there is an end of the old tyranny over the human intellect, but we must speak of things as we find them. It seems highly probable that just now the Papacy is entering upon a new phase of its existence. In its old form it is attacked by forces more formidable than the free levies of Garibaldi, and the disciplined troops of Sardinia. Men have ceased to believe in the Roman Pontiff as a temporal ruler—and even his spiritual power is shrewdly shaken by the evidence of the gross failure made by himself and his predecessors in merely temporal matters. Wander about in what were lately the States of the Church in any direction you will —see the desolation that prevails therein—the well-nigh universal misery—consider how fertile they are, how highly endowed by nature—and then ask yourself if the princes, under whose auspices such results have been brought about, can be considered infallible.
Men are ceasing to believe in the Pope, therefore it is that the end of his domination seems to be at hand. In France there remains so little faith in this matter, that it is scarcely worth speaking about it. In Austria, the Pope would find few advocates out of the imperial family, and those who immediately profit by the ecclesiastical system as maintained by the strong hand of power. Throughout the provinces of Austria, the Concordat with the Pope is felt to be an intolerable burden, and a national disgrace. We have seen the revolt on the banks of the Rhine, in the Grand Duchy of Baden, and elsewhere, against the dominion of the priests. The feelings and opinions of Italians may be safely inferred from their recent action.
If Pio Nono should be so ill-advised as to launch a sentence of excommunication against Victor Emmanuel or Garibaldi, such a step would