ion of the papacy. They rest exclusively upon the authority of
the state. Pope Pius IX., flatly refusing to accept them, issued, May
15, 1871, an encyclical to the bishops of the Church repudiating the
Law and calling upon Catholic princes everywhere to co-operate in the
restoration of the temporal power. The call was unheeded, and the Pope
fell back upon the obstructionist policy of maintaining absolutely no
relations, with the Italian kingdom. His successor, Leo XIII.,
preserved essentially the same attitude, and, although many times it
has been intimated that the present Pope, Pius X., is more disposed to
a conciliatory policy, it still is true that the only recognition
which is accorded the Quirinal by the Vatican is of a purely passive
and involuntary character. The Pope persists in regarding himself as
"the prisoner of the Vatican." He will not so much as set foot outside
the petty domain which has been assigned to him, because his doing so
might be construed as a virtual recognition of the legality of the
authority of the kingdom within the Eternal City. Not a penny of the
annuity whose payment to the Holy See was stipulated in 1871 has been
touched. By the Italian Government the annuity itself has been made
subject to quinquennial prescription, so that in the event of a
recognition of the Law at any time by the papacy not more than a
five-year quota, with interest, could be collected.

As to the measure of fidelity with which the Government has fulfilled
the obligations which it assumed under the Law, there is, naturally, a
wide divergence of opinion. The authors of what is probably the most
authoritative book on Italy written from a detached and impartial
point of view say that "on the whole, one is bound to conclude that
the Government has stretched the Law of Guarantees in its own
interest, but that the brevity and incompleteness of the Law is
chiefly responsible for the difficulty in construing it."[570]
Undoubtedly it may be affirmed that the spirit of the Law has been
observed with consistency, though the exigencies of temporal interest
have compelled not infrequently the non-observance of the letter. So
long as the Vatican persists in holding rigidly aloof from
co-operation in the arrangement the Law obviously cannot be executed
with the spontaneity and completeness that were intended by its
framers. The situation is unfortunate, alike for state and church, and
subversive of the best interests of the Ital