it must, however, be lodged before a canonical majority has been actually obtained; for a Pope, once created according to the prescribed forms, cannot be unmade by the intervention of any power. So it is said that in 1823 Leo XII. owed his election to a surprise—the French Cardinals, Clermont and De la Fare, who were instructed to exclude him, having been outwitted by the stealthy suddenness of the final ballot. The latest instance of actual exclusion was in 1831, when Cardinal Giustiniani was excluded by Spain, at which Court he had been Nuncio. Moroni gives a detailed account of the proceedings observed on this occasion. The Cardinal was visibly on the verge of election; on the day's ballot he counted twenty-one votes, and it wanted only twenty-nine to secure his triumph, when Cardinal Marco-y-catalan informed Cardinal Odescalchi, nephew to Giustiniani, and the Dean Cardinal Pacca, that he was charged to exclude him by order of the King of Spain. The communication was not expected, and doubt was expressed as to the seriousness of this expressed intention. Thereupon Cardinal Marco produced a letter from the Spanish ambassador, Gomez Labrador,
