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

20Napoleon III. and the Papacy.
take with them the great body of the clergy. The priests and
bishops are as decided Catholics as ever, and may give their
new government great trouble before they can learn to adjust
themselves to their new conditions; but they must serve the
people in their office. Their new king is an excommunicate,
and their allegiance to him is a contempt of the spiritual power
of the Pope, with which all pretences of submission in other
things will be incompatible. The populous and influential
state of the church which has already revolted, will feel little
more regard for the spiritual power than it felt for the temporal. The Northern States of Italy, whose efforts for freedom were opposed by all his influence, can only hold him as a
defeated enemy. The spiritual ministrations of an office which
has been associated by the people with so odious a resistance
to their welfare, must be of small account.
Indeed, the power and dignity of the Papacy are now so low,
that no future changes in its government will be of any public
concern. They can be nothing to the world, nothing to
Europe; nothing in church, nor in state. The unhappy
pontiff feels this, as he shows in his plaintive epistle to the
sufferers in Syria. And a letter is now mentioned, but not
yet come to hand, in which he is said to give up all as lost, and
to declare his purpose to meet death in Rome rather than flee.
He seems to expect no restoration; and it does not seenm possible that any future changes of the world should replace him.
The time has been when the Pope received the profoundest
homage of princes; when he could compel them to wait at
his gate, and to hold his stirrup, and could exact of them
whatever might increase his power, and gratify his ambition.
But he has now no powerful friend for his time of need.
Sicily is lost to his interest, and other revolutions in Naples
seem near. The only two powers of Europe confessedly Catholic, can do nothing for him. Austria, in her poverty, turmoil,
and infirmity, can render him no aid. Spain, once the richest
and greatest of the kingdoms of Europe, now lies in weakness
and humiliation, needs help herself, and seems on the point of
selling a portion of her independence for some mess of pottage
from Napoleon. There is no help for his Holiness, and it does
not yet appear how the affairs of Italy can be permanently
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[OCTOBER