re also his ablest supporters. He was grieved, but could not be
crushed by so many calamities. He remained until his health utterly failed
equal to his high position.

An additional cause of sorrow to the Holy Father was the enactment of the
Italian Legislature, known as the _Mancini law_. This law was in downright
opposition to the _law of guarantees_. It made it a crime to preach the
Gospel. On pretence of repressing the abuses of the clergy, their offences
against the laws and institutions of the State, it forbade all apostolic
preaching. It was too late. Nero, even, was not in time, and all the fury
of persecution could not uproot the belief in virtue which prevailed. The
clergy shall no longer say that fraud, robbery, lying, violence and
assassination are sins. But _cui bono_? The world has already its
convictions--prejudices, the philosophy of _Kulturkampf_ may call them--in
regard to all such things, and no law that an infidel parliament can enact
will suffice to eradicate them. It could only sadden the heart of the
Chief Pastor to see the power which ruled in his country and in his stead
laboring so strenuously but ineffectually to demolish the edifice of the
church, which, for so many ages, had been assailed in vain. It was the
height of presumption, surely, when a few modern Italians, a miserable
minority of their own nation, undertook a task which defied all the power
of Imperial Rome. In a country where liberty is better understood, a
powerful voice was raised in condemnation of the _Mancini law_. The
British _Catholic Union_ protested against the cruel enactment as an
attack not only on the liberty of the Church but also on the very
existence of the Christian faith in Italy. This purpose was, indeed,
avowed by many of its supporters in the Italian parliament.

Pius IX. could not fail to protest against such an attack on that liberty
which is the birthright of every Christian. In a Consistorial Allocution
of 12th March, 1877, he exposed the plot which the revolutionists had
prepared in order to prevent the Holy Father from accomplishing his
appointed mission--that of instructing and edifying the whole flock of
Christ. That his protest was fully justified and demanded by the
circumstances of the case was abundantly shown by the rage which it
excited among the ruling faction. Their press did its best to dissemble,
and affected to treat with contempt the Pope's address. It contained only
"lame and doubtful reas