"For the Pontificate there is no independence but
sovereignty itself. Here is an interest of the highest
order, which ought to silence the particular interests of
nations, even as in a State the public interest silences
individual interests."

These are not my words, but the words of M. Thiers: they occur in his
report to the Legislative Assembly, in October 1849. I have no doubt
this Father of the temporal Church expressed the wishes of one hundred
and thirty-nine millions of Catholics. It was all Catholicity which
said to 3,124,668 Italians, by the lips of the honourable reporter:

"Devote yourselves as one man. Our chief can only be
venerable, August, and independent, so long as he reigns
despotically over you. If, in an evil hour, he were to cease
wearing a crown of gold; if you were to contest his right to
make and break laws; if you were to give up the wholesome
practice of laying at his feet that money which he disburses
for our edification and our glory, all the sovereigns of the
universe would look upon him as an inferior. Silence, then,
the noisy chattering of your individual interests."

I flatter myself that I am as fervent a Catholic as M. Thiers himself;
and were I bold enough to seek to refute him, I should do it in the
name of our common faith.

I grant you--this would be the tenor of my argument--that the Pope
ought to be independent. But could he not be so at a somewhat less
cost? Is it absolutely necessary that 3,124,668 men should sacrifice
their liberty, their security, and all that is most precious to them,