IN THE PAPAL STATES 355
the municipalities, elected councils, and the accession of laymen to the most important offices. But at bottom everything remained as of old; the cardinals wanted it to be so, and the Pope was too old and too lonely to act in accordance with his deeper insight. He brought about many reforms in the administration of the law and believed that he would be safe against rebellion as the result of the acquisition of 5000 Swiss who appeared as reliable as the home troops were hope- less. Dissatisfaction increased and its butt was not Rome alone. Everyone knew that if things became serious the Curia could rely only upon the arms of hated Austria and was therefore under the spell of Viennese influence. In the chancelleries of the Curia there were also sighs over stupidities of which no Roman was guilty, "L* Austria ci obbliga!"
Incompetent ecclesiastical administration and Austrian pressure were not the sole causes of the collapse of the Papal States. Its ter- ritory, the patrimonium Petri proper with Rome and its environment, the Romagna, Umbrip and the Compagna Marittima, had been in- troduced to new political systems and intellectual problems as a result of the two French occupations. Treasured customs, privileges and security of thought and belief had gone, but the new which had come in their place now struggled to develop and met resistance from the rcstorational tendency of an ecclesiastical government which did not give its State the freedom to be a State for its own sake and that of its citizens, or give its citizens the freedom to lead a full, independent human life.*" This State was an island of involuntary saints, above which a governmental machinery of enormous dimensions creaked with age and was just barely strong enough to let its victims feel the extent to which the Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence. There were throngs of political prisoners in the jails, commerce and industry hardly existed, means of transportation such as the new railway were scorned, the most gifted saw themselves excluded from public office if they did not wish to don spiritual attire and bid farewell to matri- mony, and young women who naturally desired to marry active men who amounted to something were simply superfluous. Moreover the state indebtedness weighed heavily on the provinces, and the supervis- ing cardinals could free their legations and delegations from onerous burdens less than ever because they themselves had lost their money.
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