Napoleon III and the Papacy [pp. 686-702]

8Napoleon III. and the Papacy.
looked for a long and sweeping progress of the change he had
inaugurated-the coveted restoration to France of Savoy and
Nice, and remoter results, not definitely foreseen, yet naturally
probable, when questions can be raised about them which have
been predetermined by management. And it is to be presumed
that he as fully expected to annihilate the temporal power of
the Papacy, as to overthrow the Austrian dominion in Italy.
In a word, he saw those large populations, ripe for partial
emancipation, and looking wishfully towards the constitutional
kingdom of Sardinia, whose king looked wishfully towards
France. There was a rising spirit of freedom. It was seen to
be not a blind and transient impulse, but a movement of the
rational instinct; and the circumstances were now such, that
humanity there might be expected to take an advanced position, from which it would not recede. So sure was this sagacious observer of human affairs that the set time for the freedom of Italy had come. When he enjoined upon the Pope to
institute substantial and reasonable reforms, it could not have
been with the expectation that the requisition would be heeded;
for the reforms must extend to matters on which his Holiness
had announced his unfavourable determination, and which the
whole spirit and tenor of the Papal government would repel.
That government must, therefore, fall. "He that now letteth
will let until he be taken out of the way." The man whose
hand was upon the springs of that great movement had "principles which would not allow of armed intervention" to prevent
the States of the Church from withdrawing from the temporal
jurisdiction of Rome. And it was even among the earliest of
his suggestions, that his Holiness contract his jurisdiction to the
limits of the metropolis. As the cause of Italian liberty was
now so plainly receiving the patronage of Providence, it was
time for those who would secure the favour of Providence to
pay a prudent respect to the demands of civil and religious
liberty. Such was Napoleon's judgment of the times. With
this conviction he allows the sword he has drawn for Italy to
fall on the secular arm of the Papacy; and such a conviction
in such a man, is a welcome sign of providential preparation
for a permanent advance of Italy in the line of human progress.
1860.]
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