Early returned to Georgetown as president on July 14, 1870, to replace Maguire. Following King Victor Emmanuel II's invasion of Rome, the students held a meeting to denounce the invasion as an indignity to the pope, and voted to contribute a Peter's Pence to the pontiff. The university's Law Department had been established at the end of Maguire's presidency, and it began its first classes in October 1870. The "Georgetown College Journal" began publishing in December 1872, as the university's first student-produced newspaper.