The Sun.
London, England, 1860-09-08 00:00:00

THE POP ED 03L

There are characters well known to every novel
reader, whom we part with in the first volume
with the most perfect certainty that we shall meet
with them again in the last. This is the part which
the Pope is just now playing. He has got into a
backwater, and is for the'moment quietly put aside,
but causes are not wanting which will before long
once more involve him in the eddy, and carry him
into the main stream of events. We must gather
up and keep well in hand the threads of our his-
tory if we would be prepared to do justice to the
grand catastrophe of Italian politics, which cannot
very long be deferred. The Sardinian Government
evidently thinks the time has arrived toremind the
Pope of its existence. Abstaining from any public
demonstration, the oldest Sovereign in Europe has
evidently come to the conclusion that physical is a
much better thing than moral force. We hear little
now of allocutions and excommunications, but a
great deal about enlisting and drilling. Europe has
been ransacked for vagabonds to shed their blood in
the cause of the Sovereign Pontiff. " A King,"
says Aristotle, " is guarded by his own subjects;
" a tyrant by strangers and mercenaries." Heed-
less of such reproaches, the Pope, despairing of any
support from hi 4 own subjects, has given us a
reading out of the history of the Middle Ages,
and established not only a Podesta in the shape
of the French General commanding in Rome,
but a regular leader of condottieri worthy to
take rank with Hawkwood himself, in the per-
son of the Algerine General Lamoriciere. This
devout and savage warrior is engaged in
reducing to order the mass of Swiss, Bavarians,
Austrians, French, Belgians, and Irish whom the
Catholic Church, through her recruiting sergeants,
the priests, has brought under his banners. The
Irish seem to have been a " costly mistake." People
had read about their misery and oppression till they
believed it, and were surprised to find the ill used
natives of the Isle of Saints much too well-fed to
stomach Papal rations, and much too free in their
ideas and habits to endure Papal discipline. Seeing,
indeed, the treatment they received, one is inclined
to wonder how an army could be kept together on
such terwas. Perhaps the prospects open to these
heroic men under a leader who so well understands
the art of war as it is practised under the shadow of
Mount Atlas may explain the patience with which
the Block Bands of the Pope endure scanty food
and bad quarters. " There is a good time coming,"
and the children of Erin have been a little too
hasty in their decision. Read this, ye ex soldiers
of the Vicar of God upon earth, and see what you
have lost, all for the want of a little patience. General
Lamoriciere has published an order in which he
notifies to the troops of the Pontifical army to sack
(saccager) every town which at the approach
of Garibaldi or of his army shall rise in insur-
rection. No terms, no parley, no persuasion, BO
delay. The unknown rebels are handed over by
anticipation, before their crime is committed, to
be sacked in the name of Mother Church and in
the fear of God by that pious and exemplary,
hand upon whose hireling valour, paid by contri-
butions extorted in the name of holiness and charity
the Pope is now reduced to depend. We have read
of a leader of Italian condottieri in the Middle
Ages who inscribed on his pennon, " Friend to God
and enemy to all mankind." Surely the spirit of this
venerable man must, after a brief sojourn in the
body of one of the soldiers of Alva, have found its
way into the martial person of the General to whose
care the temporal interests of the Church without
the gates of Rome are at this critical moment in-
trusted.

Meanwhile events are progressing with a speed
which almost baffles the diligence of those who
strive to record them. Garibaldi is probably this
day at Naples; the King has gone to Gaeta only
to consider whether he will fly to Madrid or to
Vienna. Naples is as good as lost, and the turn of
Rome must come next. The Sardinian Government
seems to think that the time has come when it is
necessary to give some significant hints as to the
view which they are disposed to take of the pro-
ceedings of the Papal Government, her mercenary
troops, and her Kabyle General. The Turin press
becomes oracular. " The principle of non-interven-
tion," it says, " cannot be applied until the Papal
Government disbands the foreign hordes which it
has assembled against its neighbours. This cru-
sade against Italy may bring about complications
and serious disturbances if the resolution be not
taken to disperse it. The Papal Government must
understand that for the peace of Italy an extri-
cation is necessary from the normal state of
things which until now has wearied the patience
of all the Powers." We have not, we confess, much
sympathy with the means which he Pope has
adopted to perpetuate his temporal dominion, but
we do think that the Sardinian press is rather un-
reasonable in the arguments which it addresses to
the Papal Government. To convince another we
must start from some point on which we agree, but
we seek in vain for any such point of agreement
here. " The principle of non-intervention cannot
be applied." What is that to the Pope, unless he
is a convert to the principle of non-intervention ?
The Pope is for intervention in every shape. For
the last ten years he has held one half of his
dominions by Austrian, and the other half by
French intervention. It is like saying to an assas•
sin, " The principle of hanging for murder cannot
be applied unless you throw down your 13istols."
Why threaten the Pope with " complications and
disturbances I" Why appeal to him in the name of
the peace of Italy ? He has lost so much that he
cannot be content with things as they are. What
is peace to him if it takes from him the Roinaginh
or the absence of disturbances and complications, it
the effect of that absence be to leave it to the mercy
hisercy
of his own subjects, to be tried according t
a
merits ? Give back to the Pope all that he
os lost
and he will, we doubt not, cordially
rlnacl
appeal which shall propose tho permanence of
things as they are; but to talk to
es yf
a n
dethroned of peace, non-intervention,
or: and
dhaf so
ppeals will
-
forth, and •to suppose that such
be attended to because tohfatthPerilnacregeshtappen
s
to be the spiritual he
ad
mpt . o f
ISta Sar-
dinia to be by this time wholly i a
I should be soo There deno-
mination of Christians, shows an unpardonable ig-
norance of history- and a childish simplicity from
which we should have supposed pressthee
perhaps as well• is some-
thing
odhoonofouar
Princea
who bows his head to the
storm,givea
way and ratherto the
violencethan
shed
of his adsrpoepr
soef
cbultooordsSuch
meekly
thisb e
world,claiming dignified,
to represent a Power
that is not of
conduct might not have saved the Papacy for the
moment, but would have contained in it the germ
of a formidable reaction. It is better that the tem-
poral power of the Pope should die, as it has lived,

4D m mTED,
PTc IC • s
•

with arms in its hands, surrounded by savage and
greedy mercenaries, with threats of plunder, mur-
der, and violation on its lips, trusting nothing to
the love and veneration of mankind, which it knows
too well it has forfeited, but everything to savage
and greedy mercenaries, whose presence recalls to
us the coincidence between the highest period of
Papal domination and the darkest calamities of the
Middle Ages.—Times.