its own right to exist by crushing out the newly formed Roman republic
under Mazzini and Garibaldi. From that hour it was doomed, and the
expiation of its monstrous crime is still going on. My sympathies are
with Jules Favre and Leon Gambetta in their efforts to establish and
sustain a republic in France, but I confess that the investment of Paris
by King William seems to me the logical sequence of the bombardment of
Rome by Oudinot. And is it not a significant fact that the terrible
chassepot, which made its first bloody experiment upon the halfarmed
Italian patriots without the walls of Rome, has failed in the hands of
French republicans against the inferior needle-gun of Prussia? It was
said of a fierce actor in the old French Revolution that he demoralized
the guillotine. The massacre at Mentana demoralized the chassepot.

It is a matter of congratulation that the redemption of Rome has been
effected so easily and bloodlessly. The despotism of a thousand years
fell at a touch in noiseless rottenness. The people of Rome, fifty to
one, cast their ballots of condemnation like so many shovelfuls of earth
upon its grave. Outside of Rome there seems to be a very general
acquiescence in its downfall. No Peter the Hermit preaches a crusade in
its behalf. No one of the great Catholic powers of Europe lifts a finger
for it. Whatever may be the feelings of Isabella of Spain and the
fugitive son of King Bomba, they are in no condition to come to its
rescue. It is reserved for American ecclesiastics, loud-mouthed in
professions of democracy, to make solemn protest against what they call
an "outrage," which gives the people of Rome the right of choosing their
own government, and denies the divine right of kings in the person of Pio
Nono.

The withdrawal of the temporal power of the Pope will prove a blessing to
the Catholic Church, as well as to the world. Many of its most learned