The Express.
London, England, 1861-11-22 00:00:00

LATEST INTELLIGENCE.

THE PROPOSALS OF THE ITALIAN
GOVERNMENT TO THE POPE.

We have received the important documents rela-
tive to the Roman question which were laid before
the Chamber of Deputies at Turin on Wednesday
by Baron Ricasoli. The first, which is a letter to
Cardinal Antonelli, is as follows :
Turin, August, 1861.
_ . _

F.minenee,—The government of his Majesty King Victor
Emmanuel, seriously concerned at the disastrous copse.
quences which may be caused, both in religious and in
political 'order, by the attitude of the court of Home to-
wards the Italian nation and its government, is desirous of
making one more appeal to the mind and he►rt of the Holy
Father, in order that in his wisdom and goodness he may
consent to an agreement which, while leaving intact the
right& of the nation, may effectually provide for the
dignity and greatness of the church. I have the honour to
transmit to your eminence the letter which, by the express
order of his Majesty the King, I have humbly addressed to
his Holiness. Your eminence, by the high dignity with which
you are invested in the church, by the important place which
you occupy in the administration of the state, not less than
by the confidence which his Holiness places in you,
may, under these circumstances, give, better than
anyone else, useful and &adoptable counsels. Your
eminence can scarcely fail to add to an appreciation of
the true interests of the church, a sentiment fa.
voureble to the prosperity of the nation to which you
belong by birth. I hope, therefore, your eminence will
apply yourself to the achievement of a task by which you
will have deserved well not only of the holy see and of
Italy, but of the whole catholic world.

(Sigma) RicAsoct.
The following is the letter to the Pope :
TO MS HOLIIfTIIB POT, NOS IX.

Turin, August, 1861.

Most Holy Father,—Twelve years have elapsed since
Italy, moved by words of gentleness and pardon which came
from your lips, conceived the hope of closing the series of
its secular misfortunes, and beginning the era of its regent,.
ration. But as the powers of the earth had divided it amongst
different masters, and kept it under patronage and domina-
tion, the work of regeneration could not peaceably develop
itself within our frontiers, and it was necessary to resort to
arms to freeourselves from the foreign domination enounped
in our midst, in order that the civil reforms might not be
impeded or stifled and annihilated at their birth.

You, then, most Holy Father, remembering that you
are upon earth the representative of • God of peace
and mercy, and the father of all the faithful,
refused your eooper•tion to the Italians in their sacred
muss of Independence. But as you are also an Italian
prime, this determination tilled them with great bitterest.
Yea's miadswere irritated, and the tie of concord which bad
readers& so happy and effectual the beginning of our re-
vival, wee broken ; the national disasters which almost he-
medistely followed yet further inflamed the excited pas-
Bice% and, sifter • fatal succession of deplorable event'
which we all desire to forget, there commeooed between the
Italian n►tion and the apostolic see • fatal conflict which
la but too active now, and which is equally prejudicial to
both.

Every contest must end either by the ddeat or by the
death of one of the combatant., or by their reconci'iation.
The rights of nationality are imperishable; and the see of
Holy Peter, by virtue of a divine promise, is imperishable
also. Since neither of the two adversaries can disappear
from the field of kettle, they must become reconciled, so
that the world may not be thrown into terrible and endless
perturbations. As a catholic, and as an Italian,
I have deemed it my duty, most Holy Father, to meditate
keg and profoundly on the difficult problem which the times
have given us to solve. As • minister of the Italian kingdom
I have judged it my duty to submit to your Holiness the con-
iderations &wording to which a reeowiliation between the
Holy lies and the Its"en nation may be regarded, not only's
parable, but as extremely useful, thews:amity of it being mare
evident than ever. In thus acting, I follow not only the im-
pulse of my own inner sentiment and the duties of my office, I
obey the express se:sh of his Majesty the King, who, faithful
to the glorious and pious traditions of his house, is animated
by an equal love for the greatness of Italy and for the 4.-est-
DIM of the catholic church. This reconciliation would be impos-
sible, and the Italians, eminently catholic, would dare neither
to ask nor to hope for it, if, in order to obtain it, the church
would have to abandon one of its principles or of its rights,
which belong to the treason/ of the faith, or which are
part of the immortal institution of the God-man. What
we ask is, thet the church, which... the interpreter and
guardian of the Gospel, has brought into human society
• principle of supernatural legislation, and has become the
initiator of social progress, should pursue its divine mission,
and demonstrate still more the necessity of its existence by
the inexhaustible fruitfulness of its relations with the
work already commenced and inspired by it. If at
every step in society's provess the church were
not capable of creating new forms upon which the
successive stages of the social life may be founded, the
church would not be a universal and perpetual institution,
but a temporary and perishable thing. God is immutable
is His essence, and nevertheless displays an infinite fertility
is the creation of sew substances and in the production of
new forms.

The church has hitherto given striking evidence of this
fruitfulness by transforming itself with wisdom in its points
of contact with the civil world at every new development
of society. Will those who in the present times contend
t►at it should remain immovable, dare to affirm
that it has never changed *atonally, in that which
relates to its forms? Will they dare to assert
that the forms of the church have been from Leo X.
until now, what they were fram Gregory VII. to Leo R, and
that sums Gregory VII. they have been what they
WINN between Holy Peter and that pontiff! It was •
great spectacle in the early times to see the
ohneell is the catacombs, poor sad ignored by the
world, gathered together for the contemplation of eternal
truths. Then, when the faithful, become free, left
their concealment and contracted new ties with each other,
the altar passed from the obscurity of the catacombs to the
splendours of the temples. The worship and the ministers
of the worship participated in this new state of things, and
the church, no longer restricted to secret prayers, publicly
end solemnly spread its doctrine io the world, over which it
began waxen its subhine mission. In tho medley and
eciatest of different and often contrary elements by which
the modern era WSJ preparing Ball in the midst of the
middle age, the Christian ides, thanks to the church, pene-
trated into the order of the family, of the city, of the
sista; it created in men's consciences the dogma of a public
law ; it was sblein its legislation to determine the applica-
tion, and to muse to be felt the advantages of that law ;
sad thee the church biome • civil power, and made
limit the in Ige of priocm and peoples. But
wham moiety bad attained a more perfect degree of educe-
tine, when its reason had been exercised and eolighteoed,
I e nossmity for this ctn.& tutelage ceased, and conse-
quently the tie of that tutal.ige was broken. The tradi-
tions of aie ancient civilisation were resought and recovered,
and a pontiff easseisiting himself with this work deserved to
give kis WIND to the century in which be lived.

If, then, the church, imitating Ood, its supreme model,
who in His almightiness and infallibility controls with
infinite wisdom the exercise of His power al as not to
injure human liberty ; if the church has hitherto known
how to aocommodate itself, while preserving intact the
purity of its dogmas, to the neocasities imposed by social
transformations, those who injure it, those who prejudice it,
am they not those who would wish to make it
immovable, to isolate it from civil society, and to make
it the enemy of the spirit of the modern time, rather
than we who ask but one thing —namely, that it preserve its
supreme spiritual functions, and that it may be in the
moral order the moderator of that liberty which gives
to peoples arrived ►t the maturity of their
meson the right to obey neither laws nor govera-
meets to which they have not legitimately consented ?
As the church, by its constitution, cannot be the enemy of
a proper civil liberty, neither can it be opposed to the
development of the nationalities. It is by virtue of
a providential design th►t the human species is found distri-
buted in groups distinct by remand langusge, endsetablished
in certain definite territories, where each has contracted
a certain unity of tendencies, of institutions, so that it does
not trouble the habitation of another and suffers no M.
terference with its own. God has shown what value man
ought to attach to his eatiomlity when, wishing to punish
the Hebrew people, rebellious against warnings and chastise-
ments, he inflicted foreigndonsination upon them as the most
terrible punishment of aIL You yourself have well shown