which the government would allow to be discus-, d, and a censorship remained established in full force. The same year witnessed the institution ofthe Consult a, un- der the presidency of ( ii/./.i. This seemed like com es» sioii I., popular demands, but the whole thing was a farce; the members were chosen by tin- pope, and the functions of the council ofthe most limited nature. Its .buy was to give an opinion when called upon, leaving it to the pope to act upon the proffered advice or to do otherwise. In |>|s appeared the tamous statuto creat- ! ing a high council and a chamber of deputies, as the
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triumph of constitutionalism. But the chambers were forbidden to propose any law on ecclesiastical or mixed affairs, and every measure had to be submitted to the pope in a secret consistory, with the absolute right of veto. When the national crusade was inaugurated in 1847, under the leadership of prince Charles Albert, of the house of Savoy — the grandfather of the present king of Italy — the pope went with the multitude. The Ul- tramontanes, of course, broke out against this manifest liberalism of the pontiff, but it only needed a little strat- egy on their part, and he was at their bidding. When his trusted adviser, count Rossi, was assassinated at the door of the Council of State, Pius IX as rapidly retraced his steps as he had advanced, and now unreservedly gave himself over to those very Jesuits who had plot- ted the death of his minister, that the liberals might be charged with desperate motives. Accordingly, the pope, on the 29th of April, 1818 — his ministry, who had coun- selled that the abandonment of the people " would most seriously compromise the temporal dominion of the holy see," having left him — issued, in the form of an allocu- tion addressed to the cardinals, that celebrated paper which put an end at once and forever to the brief season of popularity and affection of his subjects in which he had basked. The first words of it declare the intentions of the Holy See " not to deviate from the institutions of our predecessors." Then it goes on to state that evil- minded men had made it believed that the pope had en- couraged the Italians in their revolutionary aspirations, and had endeavored to make his conduct in this respect a means of stirring up schism in Germany. The paper finally warns all the Italians against any such designs or aspirations, enjoining them to remain docile subjects to their princes. This " allocution" fell like a bombshell in the midst of the liberal party. The dismay, the disappointment, the rage, were indescribable. Many had been led — some of the princes of Italy among the number — to compromise themselves in a way they would not have done had they not supposed that the pontiff was at the head of the liberal movement. This terrible announcement was made, too, when already the papal troops had passed the frontier of the States of the Church and joined the forces marching against the Austrians; so that these betrayed men were left to be treated by the Austrian soldiery as mere rebels and brigands. The king of Sardinia and the grand duke of Tuscany were equally placed in a most painful pre- dicament by this sudden tergiversation of Pius IX. They acted, as is well known, differently in the difficul- ty. The king did not turn back from the plough to which he had put his hand. The weak grand duke made haste to follow the lead of the pontiff, and cast in his lot with him and with the Austrians. Such vacilla- tion could not be other than destructive. When the hurricanes which swept over the political fabric of Eu- rope reached the Italian shores, Rome's prince was the first to feel its severest touch. In France the citizen- king was forced to exile ; in Rome the citizen-pope suf- fered a like fate, and with this hegira from the Quirinal to Gaeta terminates Pio Nono's comedy of liberalism. The story of Pio Nono's extraordinary hegira we can- not detail. Suffice it to say that Pio Nono's exit from Rome was made with the aid of the Bavarian minister, and at Gaeta he was received with great honor by the king of Naples, who persuaded the pope to abandon Ins original intention of going to the Balearic Islands. He now enjoyed the sympathy of the reactionists all over the world who had looked so coldly upon his early ef- forts at reform, but gained, of course, the execrations of the liberals, whose cause he had abandoned. Rome, left without a ruler, bloomed into a republic. The pope pro- tested against all its acts, and summoned the Catholic world to put it down. It was France which, having dis- graced herself by the election of a Bonaparte as presi- dent, was condemned to finish her story of crime and humiliation by throttling the Roman republic and re- storing the temporal authority of the papacy. French