tions, in all Italy, amounted to 1,626,662,962 francs, with a net annual income of 90,859,521 francs. Of this income, the government took 14,484,332 francs in taxes; 15,062,455 were spent on administration; 14,202,510 went to meet other expenses; so that there remained for the poor but 47,110,223 francs, or only a little more than one-half the income! In view of these facts and figures, it is not to be wondered at that Deputy Sanguinetti should have said in Parliament, March 8th, 1881, that charity in Italy was then organized theft.

The last statement we have seen of the actual condition of things, in the unhappy country, was made by Deputy Romano, in the Parliament, on the 12th December, 1885: "What," he asked, "are the effects of this iliad of sorrows? They are general distress and misery, with the exception of a few colossal old fortunes, and some new ones, that are the fruit of public wrong; a general struggle for existence, by one class of society, which detests the other, believing it to be the cause of its misfortunes, though the true cause is bad government; all the consequences of ill-advising, hunger (malesua da fames), deterioration of character and immorality, the mania of place-hunting, the emigration of those who do not wish to be obliged to choose between a wretched occupation and crime; smuggling, usury, crimes and suicides, and an increasing discontent that is undermining our institutions and the tranquillity of the

state."

And now, as to the temporal power of the Pope. We really do not see any human grounds of hope for its speedy restoration. The Revolution went to Rome, not so much to find a historic or a convenient capital for United Italy, as to destroy the Papacy. One of its most prominent leaders said, on the 26th of March, 1861: "Not by excessive devotion, not by theological teaching, but by the ideas proclaimed by the French Revolution, can we succeed in the so-called Roman question." "These ideas," he added, are those of the encyclopædists, of Rousseau, of Voltaire, of the free-thinkers, and they can redeem us from the Pontiff." And the radical organ, the Diritto, of July 3d, 1863, scouted the illogical and hypocritical promise to respect the spiritual authority of the Pope, after having abolished his temporal power. "Our revolution," it said, August 11th, of the same year, "aims at the destruction of the Catholic Church; it must destroy it; it cannot fail to destroy it. Nationality, unity, political liberty, are means to this end, the total destruction of Catholicity, which it (the Revolution) has much at heart." Other journals, and other distinguished revolutionists, have, time and again, given expression to the same sentiments. In 1870, just before the entrance of the Piedmontese into Rome, Mazzini wrote: "The energies of the party must now be concentrated on Rome, so as to make it impossible for the Papacy to live within its walls." It would be idle, then, to hope that a government that is the creature of the Revolution, and, just now; controlled by its radical Left, will, of its own accord, ever abandon Rome to the Pope. Its adherents have repeatedly declared that, rather than do so, they are prepared to reduce it to a heap of ruins. And this, we are persuaded, was no empty threat.

On the other hand, it is not to be expected that the people of Italy will be able to change or materially modify the present state of things in that country. "The whole electoral body," wrote Cardinal Manning, in 1877, "does not exceed half a million of men. In twenty-six millions there is not so much as a fiftieth part who possess the electoral franchise. Of those five hundred thousand men, two hundred and fifty thousand, that is, one-half, never go to the polls, or record a vote. They are Catholics who, for conscience sake, have from the beginning refrained from voting. They have never voted at all, and that upon these grounds: that if they were to vote, they would recognize the law, they would accept the constitution, they would be partakers in the present state of Rome, and sanction its usurpation. Moreover, any man whom they might elect could not sit in the Chamber without taking the oath that binds him to the Revolution that now holds Italy down, and to the violation of the sovereignty of the Head of the Church. Those two hundred and fifty thousand men are but half of the electoral body, and less than one-hundredth part of the Italian people."

...

In 1882 there were about 600,000 voters in Italy, but an extension of the franchise, made in that year, increased their number to about 2,500,000 in a population of 28,000,000. Nevertheless, in the general elections of October of the same year, only about a million of votes were cast.

Catholics are permitted, and even urged, to take part in municipal and provincial elections, but, for the reasons mentioned by Cardinal Manning, and because of the positive declaration of the Pope, that it was not expedient for them to vote at general elections, they kept away from the polls in October, 1882. Liberal, nominal Catholics, it is true, voted then as on previous occasions of the same kind, but they would not give their suffrages to men disposed to favor a restoration of the temporal power.

And, even were all Catholic voters to go to the polls, to-day, in Italy, they would be powerless to return to Parliament a majority of men favorable to such a measure. They are without political organization and training. They are strangers to the arts of the political wire-puller. Their opponents have been schooled to both, in the secret revolutionary societies, and at the point of the dagger. They have the government and its machinery, and the military power in their hands, and would know well how to prevent the election of a Catholic majority, or, if it were returned, how to declare the election invalid, as they did in Piedmont, in 1857. It is enough to say that, at the municipal elections, in which Catholics are allowed to take part, comparatively few good Catholics are ever returned.

But may we not count on an uprising, at no distant day, of the Catholic masses against the tyrannical oligarchy that now oppresses them? Not at all. As well might you expect a flock of sheep, when driven to the shambles, to turn on their shepherd and his dog. The Italian people have many virtues, natural and supernatural, but courage is not one of them.

Many in Italy, and elsewhere, look to the Revolution itself to bring about a speedy restoration of the temporal power, on the principle that, when things come to the worst, they are likely to mend. The present government, they say, cannot last. The offspring of the Revolution, it will soon be devoured by the monster that gave it birth. The social republic will take its place, and, as this would be incompatible with even the existence of civilized society, a stable government of some sort must follow, a necessary factor of which will be the independent sovereignty of the Pope. This may all be, but, for our part, we cannot see a way to light and order out of the chaos which these persons predict.

The present condition of Italy is sad indeed. Her future is dark and threatening. A crisis in her affairs cannot be far off. But, when the present government shall have been swept away, and an atheistic or social republic shall have taken its place, will the Roman question be any nearer settlement than it is at present? Who can think so that considers the record of the present French republic, which, in satanic hatred of the Church, far surpasses its predecessor of 1793! And, when the republic shall have given place to a dictator, self-appointed, or chosen by a congress of the great powers, will the situation be any better? It is, to say the least, very doubtful. A dictator has power for good, but no less for evil; and dictators have, as a rule, thus far in the world's history, inclined to the latter. Dictators, and absolute rulers generally, have caused more harm to the Church than even anti-Christian republics have been able to do.

In enumerating the causes likely to bring about a restoration of the temporal power, many Catholic writers lay much stress on the probable intervention, to this end, of the European powers. Those writers remind us that no European government has approved the seizure of the Papal territory in 1870; and that leading statesmen, in England and on the continent, and even some of the founders of Italian unity themselves, have, time and again, asserted that the Roman question is not simply an Italian, but an international question. This is all very true; but we fear the European governments will be only too well pleased to see matters remain as they are in Italy, for long years to come. All those governments are more or less erastian. The non-Catholic governments want no church but a state church, that will be their creature and do their bidding, and take the law from their lips. If the so-called Catholic, but really Febronian, or infidel governments, do not go thus far, it is because they dare not. Certain it is that both Protestant and Catholic governments are ready to do all in their power to hinder, where they cannot wholly destroy, the freedom of the Church. They are, and always have been, especially jealous of Papal authority. If they ever felt any devotion to St. Peter, it was to St. Peter in chains. They might not object to a Pope with a primacy of mere honor, who would leave them the appointment of bishops, pastors and professors, and the bestowal of church benefices, and who would not trouble them with doctrinal decisions, bulls, encyclicals, and the like; but they will never take kindly to one who claims to exercise real, though but spiritual, jurisdiction over any number of their subjects. They are not, then, likely to trouble Italy about putting an end to the present virtual captivity of the Roman Pontiff. So far from this, they rejoice at it. He is not as firmly bound as they would wish to see him, but they are willing to let very-well alone, for the present. Italy is now doing their work for them; and as long as she continues to do it, they will not interfere with her, at least, for sake of the Pope.

But, could the Pope be reconciled to Italy, could he, whilst continuing to exercise his primacy of jurisdiction over Catholics in all lands, become even the first and most favored subject of the Italian King, then, indeed, their non-intervention in the Roman question would soon cease, they would develop a wonderful zeal in upholding the rights of their Catholic subjects, and insist even on the restoration of the temporal power, if there were no other way open to them of putting an end to such an alliance. Short of such a reconciliation, which is impossible, they will never interfere in behalf of the Pope, unless compelled to do so by force of public opinion. When European Catholics rise superior to dynastic disputes and race prejudices, and in their several countries unite in choosing only such representatives as will care for their highest interests at home and abroad, then, and no sooner, can their governments be induced to favor the independence of the Holy See. But, though there are signs of such an awakening, just now, in France, Austria, and Spain, we fear we shall have to wait long for any important results to come of it.

But, though we cannot now see how the temporal power is to be recovered, we should not on this account despair of its restoration. When Rome is in question, we should leave a much wider margin for the direct action of Divine Providence there than in any other place. The temporal power is necessary to the well-being of the Church, and God will give it back, in His own good time and in His own way.

Every legitimate society has a right to freedom. If it have a right to exist, it has a right not to be impeded in seeking the end for which it was organized. If this be true of all societies, it must be eminently so of the Church, which was instituted for the highest and holiest of purposes the glory of God and the salvation of souls. She has the right to labor for these ends, and, therefore, to use the means necessary to accomplish them. Other societies may change and be changed. They carry within them the seeds of dissolution. Good and beneficial at first, they may, in time, become bad or useless. In such case, the authority under which they were organized can modify or dissolve them. But the Church is immutable. The work she has to do is always, and everywhere, holy and necessary. Her Divine Founder made her a perfect and an independent society. He asked no charter for her from any civil government. For three hundred years she lived and labored and grew, in spite of all the civil governments with which she had been brought in contact. She can do so again; but who will say that fierce and bloody persecution should be her normal condition, or one in which she should acquiesce? No, those centuries of suffering she endured in her early history, were permitted to show that she was divine, that our faith is "the victory that overcometh the world," and "the power of God unto salvation, to every one that believeth," and to encourage her children, who in after times would, here and there, be made to know the bitterness of oppression. Freedom and peace are, to say the least, as necessary to the Church as to civil society, and it is her right, and her duty, to use every means in her power to secure both.

But, unless the Pope be free, the Church cannot be free. No society is free if its central government and executive are, or can be, hindered and hampered in the exercise of their functions, and deprived of the means necessary to discharge them in a proper manner. Such freedom the Pope cannot enjoy, unless he is his own master. If not his own master, his administration must always be, more or less, at the mercy of the government under which he lives. He must, then, be a sovereign. But a sovereign he cannot be without a territory of his own, or, in other words, without temporal power. And here I would remark that the Pope, as a subject, would be more likely to be restricted in his