The Press.
London, England, 1858-10-30 00:00:00

THE PRESS, OCTOBER 30, 1858

sistency of action as by his showing his thoughts,
and exhibiting to every eye the process by which
he arrived at a conclusion—a process misappre-
hended by those to whom it was exposed. Sir
Charles Napier spoke impulsively and wrote im-
pulsively, unfortunately for his personal peace
and personal advancement, but, fortunately for
his country, he seldom acted without profound
and careful though rapid thought.
It is but natural that the reviewer should
have directed his attention, especially at the pre-
sent moment, to that greater theatre of India
upon which Sir Charles Napier developed in
more extensive action the lessons and thoughts
which he had stored up, during a long and event-
ful career, in a mind of unusual perceptive power
and of remarkable keenness of observation ; but
the reader will find much, we might almost say
as much, that is worthy of attention in those
portions of the life which relate to Sir Charles's
government of the Northern District of England
at the time of the Chartist agitation, and to his
administration in Cephalonia. His conduct of
his position in those places, no less than in India,
affords most important lessons, which the states-
man and the soldier alike may find their advan-
tage in studying. They will observe that great
and instinctive as was his genius, Sir Charles
Napier never presumed upon it, and never neg-
lected the slightest opportunity of cultivating
and training it by constant study and never-
, ending acquisitions of fresh knowledge He read
, military history indefatigably, and never passed
over battle-ground without arraying in his mind
armies upon it, and seeking a perfect compre-
hension of the elements which it contained of
victory or defeat. He had, in short, as Have-
lock appears to have done after him, so com-
pletely mastered in theory the science of war, and
so constantly in imagination applied it, that when
the moment of action came he never hesitated for
an instant, but, confident in his knowledge and
resources, manoeuvred with that extraordinary
rapidity which seemed to astonish his enemy into
defeat. Out of abundance of knowledge pro-
ceeded what seemed to be intuition.

We trust, too, that the Government at home,
in applying themselves to the task of reorganizing
the Civil and Military Administration of India,
will not lose sight of the suggestions which are
placed within their reach by the Soldier who
fought the battles of Meeanee and Dubba, de-
stroyed Emaum Ghur and Trukkee, and con-
ducted the famous campaign against the robber
tribes of the Hills, and by the Conqueror who so
ruled Scinde that the Beloch Sirdars, on his
retirement from the Government, presented him
with the most glorious testimonial that a warrior
and a conqueror can receive, the SWORD OF
PEACE. That Sir Charles Napier should have
received during his life a smaller meed of reward
than Lords Hardinge, Kean, and Gough, men
immeasurably his inferiors, must ever be a matter
of regret to his country—a regret tempered only
by the reflection that it was less owing to want of
gratitude on the part of his compatriots than to
the difficulties in which he involved official men
by his personal impracticability and explosive-
ness of feeling.

We pass now from the history of the great Soldier
to the volume recently published by Cardinal Wise-
man, 'entitled " Recollections of the Last Four
Popes, and of Rome in their Times." This volume
has furnished, we can hardly say the material',
but at any rate the occasion, for an article of great
interest on the history of the Papacy during the
Pontificates of Pius VII. and Leo XII., and,
although necessarily in a condensed form, con-
veys more real information than the Cardinal's
bulky volume on the former portion of that re-
markable period comprised between the re-
" storation of the Papacy from its lowest point
" of depression" and " its present state of full-
" blown pride and almost mediaeval pretension."
Agreeing with the reviewer as to the small value,
in an historical point of view, of Dr. Wiseman's
" Recollections," we prefer following the narra-
tive of the Quarterly in the few observations we
can, within our limits, afford to bestow on a topic
the importance of which has scarcely as yet
received from political writers the attention it
deserves.

Passing by the personal incidents of the earlier
life of Bernal:tit Luigi Chiaratnonti, from his en-
trance into a Benedicaie monastery at the age
of eighteen to the assembling of the dispersed
carthuals in Venice after the death in captivity

1059

of Pope Pius VI., we come at once to the pro-
ceedings of the conclave whose protracted in-
trigues and negotiations resulted in the election
of the Cardinal Bishop of Imola to the "See of
St. Peter"

The conclave sat for 104 days. Cardinal Breech i
nephew of the late Pope, had 22 votes at his disposal
Antonelli headed an opposite faction (the word in this
sense is strictly technical), with the command of 13. As
a majority of two-thirds is necessary to secure the election,
it was manifest that neither party could carry their candi-
date. But both, each day at the morning and the evening
scratiny, with unbending obstinacy, recorded their votes,
the former for the Cardinal Bellinsomi, the latter fur
Mattel. It was obvious that without sotne compromise
any election was impassible.
This conclave brings on the stage for the first time a
personage more important than the Pope it met to elect.
Hercules Consalvi, born of a gentleman's family in the
ancient but obscure village of Toacanella, had entered on
the ecclesiastical career, because in the Roman States it
is the only road which leads to office, and had hitherto
followed it with success. Dexterously seizing the occasion,
he persuaded old Monsignor Negroni to make way for
him as secretary of the conclave; and here his talents
found their full exercise. The secretary is usually the
mediator and the channel of communication between the
rival parties, he holds the thread of many an intrigue, and
is often the animating sp'rit of the whole assembly. It
would be tedious to relate the various efforts made by the
two parties to effect a compromise. Consalvi, by patiently
watching his time till the patience of the combatants was
exhausted, by adroit insinuations eliminating, one after
another, all on whom he did not wish the choice of the
electors to fall, succeeded in persuading each of the con-
tending factions that the only independent Cardinal not
fettered or disqualified by his previous conduct fur the
arduous task of vindicating the rights of the Holy See,
was Chiaramonti. On the 14th of March the Cardinal
Bishop of Imola was proclaimed Pope, and in compliment
to his predecessor took the name of Pins VII.
The service which Consalvi had rendered to the
new Pope in procuring his election was acknow-
ledged by his elevation to the important post of
Cardinal Secretary of State ; and, if we except
the period of deep humiliation of the Papacy,
during which Consalvi was, at the instance of
the French Dictator, kept at a distance from
public affairs, the Pontificate which bears the
name of Pius VII. was, substantially, that of his
highly-gifted Minister, to whose skilful manage-
ment the Papacy was indebted for its speedy
recovery from the terrible abasement which it
had undergone. In that abasement Cardinal
Consalvi had, personally, had no share—a circum-
stance which was doubtless greatly in his favour
when the time arrived for ignoring the transient
weakness and reviving the ancient pretensions of
the " Supreme See of Christendom." That he
was in other respects eminently qualified for the
delicate errand on which he was despatched, as
the representative of the Papacy, first to the
meeting of the Allied Sovereigns in London, and
afterwards to the Congress of Statesmen at Vienna,
is abundantly clear front the history of the trans-
actions by which the political constitution of
Europe was:remodelled. Inferior in diplomatic
adroitness to none of the plenipotentiaries who
met for that purpose in the Austrian capital, he
succeeded, by the insinuating amenity of his de-
portment, in producing upon the public opinion
of Europe the impression that its past humilia-
tion had proved a salutary lesson to the Papacy,
and had opened the way for its admission into
the European family of States, without any
danger of its recurring to its former arrogant
pretensions, in defiance of every principle of in-
ternational law. It was to this charitable belief
that Cardinal Consalvi himself owed the cour-
teous reception which he met at the hands,
not only of the Regent and his Ministers, but of
the people of England. It was not that England
had become less Protestant, but that the Papacy,
as represented by Cardinal Consalvi, was thought
to have become less Popish. To attribute to this
cause the change which rendered the admission
of a " Prince of the Holy Roman Church " on
the soil and at the Court of England possible,
did not suggest itself to the mind of the bio-
grapher of " The Four Last Popes," who is pro-
perly rebuked by the reviewer for the tone in
which he adverts to this momentary and appa-
rent "reconciliation" of England and Rome:—

On this occasion Cardinal Wiseman taunts "the
haughty and selfish George of England with breaking
through all the bonds of prmmunire and penal statutes,
and the vile etiquette. of three hundred years," by his
reception of a Papal envoy. That ho could break through
them with safety, and even applause, is an answer in fall
to the sneers at his Protestant countrymen with which
the Cardinal's book is filled. The English are the last
people to be enslaved by etiquettes ; sad as the Cardinal
seems to have read no History of England but lir. Lin-
gard's, he must permit us to offer a few words in explana-
tion of the statutes which he so stiguletizes. They wcre