The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1893-02-28
AN IDLE DREAM.

On the 10th inst the fftieth annivers-
ary of the conservation Of Pope Leo XIII.
as bishop of the Roman church, was cele.
Club of New York city. Archbishop Cor
rigan was the principal speaker. The res
olutions adopted contained . paragraph
expressing 1.-The hope that the work OF
your long and glorious pontifcate may
yet be crowned with the restoration of
that temporal independence which be-
longs to the holy SEQ by right. a. essential
to justice, humanity and religion" The
temporal power of the pope can never be
restored. The Franco-Prussian war legis-
lated it out of existence. and in matters Of
serious consequence the Legislation" Of
Stuarts were restored, but the house Of
commons continued to rule England;
Charles the Second could only get back
his throne on the distinct pledge that the
people of England should continue to
exercise all the rights that the
revolution of 1910 was fought
and won to obtain. and Charles the Second
knew that whenever he attempted to re-
enact the part Of Charles the First his
fate would be death or exile, and he did
not care to resume his travels" as he
once remarked with . grin. The first
French revolution was drowned out in q
sea Of its own blood, but the land tenure it
enacted remained unchanged; the First
Napoleon fell with q crash that shook all
Europe, like the fall of a great oak pros
trated by the stress of all the winds of
heaven, but the Code Napoleon remains.
and the basis of French civic institutions
today is essentially as it was fashioned by
Napoleon's mighty hand. That 10 why,
although nominally republic, there still
clings to France the faint of the spirit of
despotism that refuses to die, or dying
hard, fills the air with its mephistic pro-
test.
The strange fact is that the intellectual
and accomplished priesthood of Rome,
both in Europe and America, are 50 blind
to the fact that revolutions never march
backwards that they re-echo the pope's
plea and hope for the restoration Of tenn
poral territorial power that is gone never
more to return. There can be no wheel
within wheel in united Italy for the fu-
ture. The unity of Italy and the territor-
ial sovereignty of the pope in Rome are
absolutely incompatible. Since 1870, when
the king Of Italy supplanted the pope as
civic sovereign of Rome. that city has
doubled in population. and while the
Crispi laws are an expression of views not
worthy of great statesman, since it never
pays to prosecute in this world. neverthe-
less Crispi was not moro deaf to the teach
ings of history. or blind to the march of
immutable, inevitable events than the
aged and accomplished pope, who fondly
hopes for the restoration OF his temporal
sovereignty in Rome.
Pope Leo is an able, iactful and astute
statesman, but he was born too late; the
last decade OF the nineteenth century is
no time to try to pump the breath of life
with an ecclesiastical bellows into the
drowned corpse of the temporal power of
the pope. The Roman Catholic church is
as full Of life and strength as any of the
great faiths of the world, but the resur-
rection of the temporal power Of the pope
is as impossible as it would DE to make a
mummy start to its feet by putting mus
tard plaster on its chest. The present
pope. with all his ability. is laboring to
build up "the baseless fabric of vision. I"
His dream will never be realized, and he
ought to be glad that it cannot be realized,
for with the death of the temporal power
of the pope his spiritual sovereignty has
been vastly increased; that is, the in
fluence of the vatican has gained rather
than lost ground in both Europe and
America since the death of the temporal
power of the pope, who no longer carries
the political odium that was charged
against Plus the Ninth by the friends of
Young Italy from 1850 until the day of
his Death