on, and will teach her gallant people to prefer the more virtuous
and more lasting glories of peace.

But whatever the Paris mob, in the drawing-rooms or in the streets,
may have desired, I am confident the Government, if left to itself,
had one object only in view, the rescue of Rome from the usurpation of
a foreign rabble, and restoring the authority of the Pope, whom that
rabble's violence had driven from his States. And here let me say a
word which may not be popular in some quarters, and among some of
my noble friends, upon the separation of the temporal and spiritual
authority of the Pope. My opinion is that it will not do to say the
Pope is all very well as a spiritual prince, but we ought not to
restore his temporal power. That is a short-sighted and I think a
somewhat superficial view of the case. I do not believe it possible
that the Pope could exercise beneficially his spiritual functions if
he had no temporal power. For what would be the consequence? He
would be stripped of all his authority. We are not now in the eighth
century, when the Pope contrived to exist without much secular
authority, or when as Bishop of Rome he exercised very extensive
spiritual authority without corresponding temporal power. The progress
of the one, however, went along with that of the other; and just as
the Pope had extended his temporal dominions by encroachments of his
own, and by gifts like those of Pepin and Charlemagne, the Exarchate
and Pentapolis, uniting the patrimony of St. Peter, and adding to it
little by little until he got a good large slice in Italy, just in
proportion as his temporal authority increased did he attain so
overwhelming influence over the councils of Europe. His temporal
force increased his spiritual authority, because it made him more
independent. Stript of that secular dominion, he would become the
slave now of one Power--then of another--one day the slave of Spain,
another of Austria, another of France, or, worst of all, as the Pope
has recently been, the slave of his own factious and rebellious
subjects. His temporal power is an European question, not a local or a
religious one; and the Pope's authority should be maintained for the
sake of the peace and the interests of Europe. We ourselves have
7,000,000 of Roman Catholic subjects, Austria has 30,000,000, Prussia
has 7,000,000 or 8,000,000. France is a Catholic country, so is
Belgium, so are the peninsulas of Italy and Spain; and how is it
possi