The Sun.
London, England, 1860-09-21 00:00:00

271 E POP.ED

Amongst the ingenious speculations by which
Lord Macaulay, only a few weeks before his death,
instructed his friends and amused himself, none was
more striking or suggestive than the train of thought
pursued by him al to the passible coneequences to
which the death of the present Pope might unex-
pectedly give rise. It was just on the cards, ho
thought, that Europe might again witness the
spectacle of a Pope and an Anti-Pope. Europe
during the reign of the First Napoleon had nearly _
witnessed a renewal of that greatest scandal in the
history of the Roman Catholic Church. If the con-
finement of Pius VII. at Fontainblean had there
terminated by his death, and a successor to the
Papacy had been chosen under direct French pres-
sure, the election would certainly have been repu-
diated by Austria, Spain, Pbrtugal, Sicily, Poland,
and Ireland, and a rival conclave would have raised
to the Papal See a rival Pontiff, one free from the
suspicion of being a mere Bonapartist instrument.
A like result, Lord Macaulay ingeniously argued,
might follow from the sudden death of Pope Pius
IX., and from the election of his successor, effected as
it must be under the suggestive influence of General
Goyon's bayonets. France, he said, would never
consent to the election of a Pope of known anti-
Gallican tendencies. And a Pope after Napoleon
lll.'s own heart would in all likelihood be rejected by
those Sovereigns and peoples by whom all extension
of Napoleonic power and influence is regarded with
suspicion and alarm. Hence the possibility, to say
the least, if not the actual probability, of Pope Pius
IX.'s death leading to another great Papal schism,
and severing Europe, as it did in the middle rages,
into two separate and hostile Papal camps.
That would be a very singular consummation of
the Italian question. The French troops avowedly
hold Rome because the Italians, if left to their own
devices, will not stand even one Pope; aud because
they thus hold Rome, there is a chance that two
Popes, instead of one, may be inflicted on Italy and.
Europe. If any reductio ad absurdum could be
supposed to have its weight with the French de-
fenders, Legitimist and Orleanist, of the temporal
sovereignty of the Pope ; if *anything could open
the eyes of MM. Cousin and Villemain and St.
Marc Girardin to the absolute folly of the conclu-
sions to which their premises must lead, it would
be the bare possibility of such a result. And yet,
strange as that result might seem, it is not one whit.
more strange—nay, it is in reality far less astound-
ing—than the actual position of affairs in the
capital of the Catholic world. It is not enough
that in the case of a Pope, as in worthy Mrs. Glasse's
famed receipt, you must first catch the Pope, or -
the hare, as the case may be. You must likewise,
if you are to wield permanent influence through the
Papacy, keep your Pope after he has been caught ;
and that is by no means such an easy matter. The
pathetic appeals which the Constitutionnel has just
addressed to his Holiness, urgently imploring him,
on no account whatever, to leave his capital, if they
produce any effect on the Papal mind, are likely to
create one exactly the reverse of what is intendeir
There must be a great conflict at the present mo-
ment.in the mind of the ninth Pius. By still re-
maining at Rome he is enabled to anger and spite
the Romans. By running away from Rome he has
it in his power, even more, to anger and spite the
French. From an unwillingness to abandon his
old routine (for even tyranny and oppression have
their routine), from an unwillingness to travel
at his advanced years, he would prooably be in-
clined, save for one consideration, to remain
and spite the Romans. But, as a set-off against
the motives and inducements dictating such a
course, it must further be taken into account that
the French are his best friends and benefactors, and
that, for this reason, there would be a peculiar zest
in spiting them. As matters now stand, we may
witness to•morrow this curious sight : the presence
of a French corps of occupation in Rome for the
avowed purpose of protecting the person and inde-
pendence of a Pontiff, whilst the Pontiff has
actually run away from his dislike to be thus pro-
tected ; or we may, on the other hand, be informed
that his personal liberty and independence are
guaranteed by the presence of sentries, who will
not allow him to pass beyond his own palace-gates.
During the course of the last eighteen months we
have heard a good deal about " the inexorable
logic of facts," an expression first employed in an
imperial pamphlet. But "the inexorable logic of
facts" presents its formula to Emperors not less
than to Popes; and its stringency will be uncon-
tested when it shall exhibit the raison d'etre of the
French occupation either confuted by the disap-
pearance of the protected Pontiff, or even more
ludicrously contradicted by his close personal
arrest,—Morning Post.