The Sun.
London, England, 1860-02-20 00:00:00

FRANCE AND THE POPE.

Struck by the immense duration and inexhaustible
vitality of the Papacy, historians and philosophers
have lavished upon it panegyrics which it by no
means fully deserves. In contemplating the extra-
ordinary fortune which has carried an institution
of purely human origin through such unexampled
dangers and such unheard-of reverses, which has
called in the New World to redress the balance of
the Old, and invariably won back in one direction
what has been lost in another, Lord Macaulay seems
to forget the errors of the See of Rome in his ad-
miration for its unbending traditions, and its inex-
tinguishable influence over the human mind. With
these exalted views we confess we never could
sympathise. Rome, according to our reading of
history, has ever carried in her own bosom the pro-
lific seed of her own resources, and has to thank her
own policy quite as much as the awakened reason
and sense of mankind for the numerous reverses of
her checkered and instructive history. She has
frequently fallen into reverses because she has been
immoderate and insatiable in prosperity. A strong
constitution is tested by the diseases it is able to
support, and the power of the Roman Catholic reli-
gion is never more manifest than in her ability to
survive the most frightful misfortunes, brought upon
her by her own intemperance. Any one who reads
the history of the Papacy during the 13th century,
will be astonished, not so much that Boniface
VIII. died in a transport of frenzy and despair
from the treatment he received from the French
soldiers, as that every Monarch in Christendom did
not unite to put down the intolerable arrogance of
the Papacy. Every one who reads the history of
the thirty ears preceding the Reformation, from
Alexander VI. to Leo X., will be astounded at the
continuance of an elective monarchy stained with
all the crimes of the Twelve Caesars ; and any one
who considers the whole history of the First Napo-
leon and the Papacy may well marvel how it could
survive so rude a shock as it then sustained. It is
the fashion to attribute these things to the effects
of a profound policy, but policy is shown rather in
avoiding than in emerging from calamities, and the
very vitality of the Papacy shows how ill it must
have been directed to fall perpetually with so much
internal strength into such astonishing reverses.
The truth is, the policy of Rome has been a stranger
to prudence and moderation. If she has opened a
rich mine of human credulity, she has ever worked
it out with a reckless profuseness. Not content
with laying the whole world under contribution,
she raised a Reformation by the sale of Indul-
gences ; and, not satisfied with the Inquisition and
the sword, she shocked the conscience of man-
kind by the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. We
may trace her present misfortunes to the same
cause—the inability to use with moderation the
good things which Fortune seems never tired of
showering upon her. The Pope beheld at his feet
ten years ago two mighty Empires, rescued himself
from the melancholy confinement of Gatta, and
was courted as none of his predecessors had been
for centuries before. Austria begged for his aid to
support her amid the ruins of her falling power,
and the President of the French Republic courted
him that he might sanctify by his blessing the
crown which he already saw with in his grasp.
Rome accepted their homage, and, thinking herself
sure of their interests, was at no pains to conciliate
their affections. In return for the support she lent
to Austria she executed a Concordat which has dis-
graced the Emperor in the eyc s of his subjects, and
threatens his empire with something little short of
immediate dissolution. She sold her assistance to
France at a price equally exorbitant. The French
army was employed to restore the Pope to his
throne, and to maintain him there; but, convinced
that he had the interest of the Emperor on his side,
the Pope thought it utterly unnecessary to lower
himself by showing the slightest respect for his de-
liverer.. For ten years all the counsels of France
have been rejected, and every abuse allowed to
flourish more rankly than ever. Let those who
believe in the profound policy of the Papacy mark
the result as described by M. Thouvenel in his
letter to the Duke de GrArocut, the French
Ambassador at Romei which we translate else-

where. At the beginning of hostilities the neu-
trality of the Pope was proclaimed, and Austria,
treating him -as an independent self-subsisting
Power, withdrew her troops from the Legations.
The inhabitants, as M. Thouvenel says, " rather
found themselves than made themselves masters."
In vain the French Government counselled re-
forms. The Papacy refused them with dogged
obstinacy, and the last opportunity of saving the
Legations was allowed to drift away, never to
return. The Pope is reminded that he received a
solemn warning from the Emperor on the 31st of
December ; he answered it with bitterness and
asperity, and the last hope of conciliating France
was abandoned, like the last hope of conciliating
the Romagna; and now is seen in its full grossness
the folly of the politic and Machiavellian Court of
Rome. Austria is still friendly, but needs herself
the support which it was foolishly assumed she
would be able to give. The French Emperor is
quite a different person from the Eldest Son of the
Church, of whose merits we used to hear so much.
His language has become harsh, and his conduct
peremptory. There is an infinite difference between
Count Walewski and M. Thouvenel, and just as
great an one between the Napoleon 1859 and the
Napoleon of 1860. lie warns the Pope to give up
his fixed resolution to ignore the present state of
affairs, to lay his spiritual claims out of the ques-
tion, and to treat temporal matters in a temporal
spirit, and, in return for these concessions, hopes
are held out that the Emperor will lend his sup-
port to a moderate and conciliatory policy. We
should be unwilling to conclude from. this that if
the Popo does not acquiesce in these terms he has
neither moderation nor conciliation to expect.
Yet this is no unreasonable inference, and
there are not wanting facts to give significance
to the threat. The Univers is suppressed by a
single blow, and a journal of the remote province
of Brittany shares the same fate for having
dared to make allusion to it. The Pope has to do
with a man who thoroughly understands the war
of words, but who is also willing and able to follow
up words with blows. And this is the state to which
Papal policy has contrived to reduce its interests in
a country by far the noblest conquest that it still
retains, and these are the sentiments which it has
contrived to elicit from a Monarch who has given
so many unquestionable proofs of his anxiety to
call the crosier in to the assistance of the sword !
Truly, to those who view these matters with the
eye of uninspired reason it would seem the Pope
owes his calamities neither to the evil disposition
of his own subjects, nor to the ambition of foreign
countries, nor to the acumen of controversialists,
nor to the ribaldry of satirists, but simply to his
own obstinacy and folly, which have rendered him
unable to believe that his subjects could be treated
with too much negligence or his allies with too
much arrogance.—Times.