Litchfield enquirer., 1859-08-04

l capital little book, opening the Italian ques tions, and the maladministration of the Priests il Italy, quite down to the roots has been written b Frenchman named About We quote his frs chapter as a sample of the trenchant style in whicl the matter is discussed
 The Roman Catholic Church, which sin cerely respect, consists of one hundred anG counting little Mortara.
 It is governed by seventy Cardinals, ol Princes of the Church, in memory of the twelve Apostles
 The Cardinal Bishop of Rome, who is also designated by the name of Vicar of Jesus Christ, Holy Father. or Pope, is invested with boundless authority over the minds oi these hundred and thirty-nine millions of Cath. olics.
 The Cardinals are nominated by the Pope the Pope is nominated by the Cardinals ]; from the day of his election he becomes infallibe, at least in the opinion of M de Maistre, and the best Catholics of our time.
 This was not the opinion of Bossuet but has always been that of the Popes themselves.
 When the Sovereign Pontiff declares to us that the Virgin Mary was born free from ori- ginal sin, the hundred and thirty-nine millions of Catholics are bound to believe it on his word. This is what has recently occurred.
 This discipline of the understanding reflects infinite credit of the nineteenth century. If posterty does us injustice it will be grateful to us therefor. It will see that instead of cutting one another's throats about theologi cal questions, we have surveyed lines of rail- " laid foIo hc t,1 zines, launched ships, pierced isthmuses, crea- ted sciences, corrected laws, repressed fac tions, fed the poor, civilized barbarians. drain ed marshes, cultivated waste lands, without ever having single dispute as to the infalli- bility of man.
 But the busiest age, the age which the best knows the value of time, may be obliged for a moment to neglect its business If, for in- stance, it should remark around Rome and it's Bishop violent agitation, which neither tue trickery of diplomacy nor the pressure of ar. mier can suppress if it perceive in little corner of g peninsula smouldering fire, which may at any moment burst forth. and in twenty-four hours envelope all Europe, this age, prudent from sense of duty, on account of the great things it has to accomplish, turns its attention to the situation of Rome, and n- ssts upon knowing what it all means.
 It means that the simple princes of the mid dle ages, Pepin the Brief Charlemagne, and the Countess Matilda, behaved with great lb- erality to the Pope. They gave him lands and men, according to the fashion of the times, when men, being merely the livestock of the were generous, it was not because they thought y.lf hot kho L independent without being King they had seen him in his poverty more independent and more commanding than almost any monarch on earth. They enriched him from motives of friendship calculation, gratitude, or it might even be to disinherit their relations, as we sometimes see in our own time. Since the days of the Countess Matilda, the Pope, hay ing acquired a taste for possession, has gone on rounding his estate. He has obtained cit ies by equalization, as in the case of Bologna :; he has won others at the cannon's mouth, as Rmni while some Le has appropriated by treachery and stealth, as Ancona. Indeed so we'll have matters been managed, that in 1859 the Bishop of Rome is the temporal sovereign of about six millions of acres, and rcigns over three millions one hundred aud twenty-four thousand six hundred and sixty-eight men, who are all crying out against him.
 What do they complain of Only listen, and you will soon learn.
 They say-thot the authority to which, without having either asked or accepted it., they are subject, is the most fundamentally absolute that was ever defined by Aristotle :; that the legislative, executive, and judicial powers are united, confounded, and jumbled together in one and the same hand, contrary to the practice of civilized states, and the the ory of Montesquicu that they willingly re- cognize the infallibility of the Pope upon all religious questions, but that in civil matters it appears to them less easy to tolerate that they do not refuse to obey, because, all things considered, man is not placed here below to follow the bent of his own inclinations, but that they would be glad to obey laws that the good pleasure of any man, however good it may be, is not so good as the Code Napole om; that the reigning Pope is not an evil dis posed man, but that the arbitrary government of one man, even admitting his infallibility, can never be any thing but a bad government | That in virtue of an ancient and hitherto ineradicable practice, the Pope is assisted in 1 the temporal government of his States by the spiritual chiefs, subaltcrns, and spiritual em- ployes of his Church that Cardinals, Bish ops, Canons, Priests, forage pell-mell about the country that one scle and identical caste possesses the right of administering both sa garments and provinces of confirming littlt boys and the judgments O. the lower courts of oldaining subdeacons and arrest; of de spatching parting souls and captains commis sions that this confusion of the spiritual ant the temporal disseminates among the highe offices multitude of men, excellent no doub in the sight of God, but insupportable in tha of the people often strangers to the country sometimes to business, and always to those do nestle ties which are the basis of every socie