orded. In one word, all this was consummated in
the most despotic and savage manner. If such acts had been accomplished in
a popular riot, by men blinded by passion, we might perhaps bear them in
silence. But, as all such acts have been done in the name of the Sardinian
laws; as the provisional governments established in Modena and the
Pontifical States, as well as the dictator of Sicily himself, have claimed
to be supported by the Sardinian government; and as your majesty's name is
still invoked to sanction these iniquitous measures, I can no longer
remain a silent spectator of such enormous injustice, but in my quality of
supreme head of the order, I feel myself strictly bound to ask for justice
and satisfaction, and to protest before God and man, lest the resignation
inspired by religious meekness and forbearance should appear to be a
weakness which might be construed into an acknowledgment of guilt, or a
relinquishment of our rights. I protest solemnly, and in the best form I
can think of, against the suppression of our houses and colleges, against
the proscriptions, banishments and imprisonments, against the acts of
violence and outrage committed against the brethren bound to me by
religious ties. I protest before all Catholics, in the name of the rights
of the church sacrilegiously violated. I protest, in the name of the
benefactors and founders of our houses and colleges, whose will and
expressed intentions in founding these good works, for the interest alike
of the living and the dead, are thus nullified. I protest, in the name of
the sacred rights of property, contemned and trampled under foot by brutal
force. I protest, in the name of citizenship and the inviolability of
individual persons, of whose rights no man may be deprived without being
accused in form, arraigned and judged. I protest, in the name of humanity,
whose rights have been so shamefully outraged in the persons of so many
aged men, sick, infirm and helpless, driven from their peaceful seclusion,
left without any assistance, cast on the highways without any means of
subsistence." Such was the revolution which Victor Emmanuel and Napoleon
III. were driven by fear, or even worse motives, to patronize and foster.
It had, in the days of its power, made France a desolation. It was now
sweeping like devouring flames over Italy, and fast approaching the city
of the Popes.

(M74) Pius IX., although not unaware of the fearful calamities with which
he was t