The Sun.
London, England, 1860-09-14 00:00:00

predecessors • ours was kicked off the stage long
ago; another has just been dismissed by his merci-
ful subjects ; and now it would seem as if accounts
were to be settled with the professors themselves of
the science of relentless cruelty.
Priests have now for centuries been the cruel
nus-rulers of Rome ; there they have had full play ;
the Head of the Priesthood has been there to bless
and sanctify all their atrocities; and, as might be
expected, they have made themselves the detesta-
tion even of those who believe in their spiritual
authority. Hardening indeed must be the effect of
civil power on ecclesiastics,when it rouses against it
the bitterest enmity of those who credulously think
their eternal salvation, or the degree of purgatorial
suffering, depends on the will of those whose rule
they reject. Yet so it is. Peen in the year of our
m
LORD 1860, the class of men who kindled the fire
of Smithfield—who
of ithla—ho changed the habits and cha-
racterfi the whole Spanish nation through the
terrors of the Inquisition—who burned literally
the Protestants out of Italy, which would other-
wise have been renovated by them socially and
politically as well as religiously—who perpetrated
all the horrors of Austrian cruelty against religion
for long ages—who sung their Te Deums over the
massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the repeal of
the Edict at Nantes—even now this class of men
are found butchering, plundering, and violating
their subjects at Perugia last year, and pro-
mising this year to repeat the same bar-
barities on all towns which make the slightest
uneasy movement under their odious rule. It
seems as if ecclesiastics could never acquire the
common sympathies of men ; as if it were one of
their instincts to blast with all possible physical
misery on behalf of their spiritual rule—or rather
on behalf of their grasping secular through
spiritual power. Would these fiends in human
shape but show their faith in their spiritual powers
by confining:themselves to spiritual anathemas, their
subjects would then exult; they would risk them.
But the anathemas of ANTONELLI and his master
are personified in a mercenary Algerine General,
at the head of all the mercenary brigands and cut-
throats he can hire throughout Europe. The
Roman Priests curse their wretched subjects with
something much more terrible than excommu-
nication and all that sort of eetherial fire—
they exemplify the mercies of the Gospel by
the hands of hired wretches whose business is mur-
der and plunder as more profitable than regular
pay; and the purity of the Gospel, and the purity
of their own immaculate celibacy, by an army of
wretches who terrify the weaker half of their sub-
jects by brutalities worse than death.
It is to put a stop to all this that VICTOR Eat-
MANUEL'S army has crossed into the Papal States.
It had become not a question of bad government
merely, but of maintaining that government by the
old ecclesiastical cruelties which chill the very
blood of civilians. At one town, Fossombrone, it
would appear the ecclesiastical outrages had already
begun, and the KING would therefore be too late ;
but in others, in all others we may hope, he will
save the lives and property, and honour of the in-
habitants from the avarice and lust of the " POPE'S
own." LAMORICIERE and his brigands appear to
have betaken themselves to Ancona, and to be 8,000
strong there. The King of SARDINIA has, however,
the means of holding him in check, and of taking
the town, if something be not done to obviate such
a necessity. All Europe, meaning of course, the
people of Europe, must rejoice in the bold step
which the KING has taken. It was intolerable that
the POPE should be the only Monarch now left in
Europe, who could not depend on an army of his
own subjects. Armies are always the last to desert
the man who commissions and pays them ; the bare
fact, therefore, of regularly employing foreign mer-
cenaries, is alone condemnation enough of the rulers
who depends on them. PIO Novo may be a model
of a Pope for aught we know; but General LAMO-
RICIERE and his band prove that his secular
Government is a monstrosity. It is VICTOR E3I-
MANUEL'S work to cut away its false support.
But then, we are reminded, comes the difficulty.
There is a person named GARIBALDI who, as well
as the master of the French troops at Rome, must
have something to say in the matter. He has already
done all he has said he will do, and we are told to-
day that in a proclamation to the Neapolitans, he
tells them that the annexation will be accomplished
when he " shall be able to proclaim it from the top
of the Quirinal." Is he going too fast ? We are
told by some that VICTOR EMMANUEL is making
his present move in order to place himself in mili-
tary occupation of the provinces of Italy nearest
the Austrians, lest GARIBALDI should precipitate a
war with them. That is just possible ; but it is
quite as likely that he may think it necessary to
prevent any awkwardness between the Romans, the
French troops, and GARIBALDI'S. However, what
his mysterious Majesty will do, no one, of course,
knows. It is pretty certain that his soldiers will
not be molested by any party, and almost as certain
that they will do nothing, besides watch over the
personal safety of the POPE. His Government they
cannot save. It has lost itself, and no power in
Europe can hope to save it. It is a thing of the
past. It is behind the age. The ineradicable evil
tendencies of priests in possession of secular power
forbid the attempt at a prolonged trial. Mahom-
medan government in Turkey is infinitely more
reasonable than priestly government in Rome, and
the Imperial "Protector of the Pope" must find some
better way of securing his ecclesiastical independence
than that of upholding his secular rule by ten
thousand foreign bayonets. It would be quite
easy for the Catholic Powers of Europe to enter into
an agreement with the King of SARDINIA, for any
measure of independence a Bishop of Rome may
need for their ecclesiastical purposes. Certain it is
that Rome must be the civil capital of a united
Italy. GARIBALDI'S proclamation does but publish
the view which we ourselves had already expressed
on this:subject.

The suggestion of a plan for the immediate adop-
tion of a Decimal Coinage, advanced by a corre-
spondent of the Illustrated London News of
Saturday, in a communication transferred to our
columns on Monday evening from those of our
pictorial contemporary although apparently at a
superficial glance a very ingenious, will be found,
we cannot but think, upon careful examination, a
very clumsy proposition. Upon the very face of
it—it is avowedly put forward as a merely tempo-
rary expedient. It is consequently after all a
simple begging of the question, an evasion of the
difficulty, an admitted complication —to avoid
yet further complication. It is based, observe—
this specious suggestion of "A Decimal Fraction"
—upon the circumstance of the new copper coin
being at last very nearly ready for circulation.
That new copper coin consisting of Pence, Half-
pence, and Farthings of somewhat less value than
those already in circulation. Wherefore, says our
theorist—"To introduce the decimal' system, it is
only necessary to reduce the value of a farthing to
the I,oooth part of a pound instead of the 960th, as
at present, and to issue one new coin of the value
of ten farthings, and the -whole matter will be ac-
complished without the neces arty of deranging
accounts or interfering with them in any way ex-
cept to rondo; them more simple And less liable to ,