-will of the
Italian Cabinet." Much, indeed, it availed them.

Viterbo was evacuated on the 4th of August. The last remnant of French
troops embarked at Civita Vecchia, partly on the 4th and partly on the
6th, the very days on which the French army experienced its first reverses
at Weissemberg, Woerth and Spikeren. Instead of hesitating to perform a
most cowardly act, which, viewing it only politically, proclaimed his
weakness to all Europe, the Emperor Napoleon made all haste to complete
it. He expressed regret. Who will say that he was sincere? Had he not
perfected the master-work of his reign--his grand transalpine scheme? The
Piedmontese minister, Visconti Venosta, gives a very distinct reply.
Writing to the Piedmontese representatives at foreign courts, this
minister says that as several governments had desired to know their views
in regard to the relation of passing events with the Roman question, his
government had no hesitation in making the clearest explanations. The
convention of 15th September, 1864, had not sufficed to avert the causes
arising abroad which hindered the settlement of the Roman difficulty. He
then accuses the Roman Court of having assumed a hostile attitude in the
centre of the peninsula, and that the consequences of such a position
might be serious for Piedmont on occasion of the Franco-Prussian war and
the complications to which it might give rise. Visconti Venosta further
states that the basis of a new and definite solution of the Roman question
had been confidentially recognized in principle, and was subject only to
the condition of opportunity.

It is no pleasure, surely, to convict the late Emperor of a deep-laid
conspiracy to revolutionize the Roman State, and rob the Holy Father of
his time-honored patrimony. But there is no escaping the conclusion that
he had never ceased to plot with the revolutionists. He was not yet
vanquished and fallen himself when he left the Sovereign Pontiff to his
enemies.

One of the chief calumnies of the time was directed by the revolutionists
against Pius IX. They accused the venerable Pontiff of encouraging the
Prussian monarch to wage war against France. The falsehood of this
accusation can only be equalled by its absurdity. The Holy Father, on the
contrary, earnestly endeavored, although in vain, before the commencement
of hostilities, to avert the dire calamity of war. So early as 22nd July,
1870, he interposed between the two rival sovereigns. "Sir