se of honesty, and to weaken the sacred right of public and private
property.

We protest against it as an unjustifiable violation of solemn treaties.

We protest, in fine, against the spoliation as an impious sacrilege,
because it is an unholy seizure of ecclesiastical property, and an
attempt, as far as human agencies can accomplish it, to trammel and
embarrass the free action of the Head of the Church.

III. What The Popes Have Done For Rome.

Although the temporal power of the Pope is a subject which concerns the
universal Church, no nation has more reason to lament the loss of the Holy
Father's temporalities than the Italians themselves, and particularly the
inhabitants of Rome.

It is the residence of the Popes in Rome that has contributed to her
material and religious grandeur. The Pontiffs have made her the Centre of
Christendom, the Queen of religion, the Mistress of arts and sciences, the
Depository of sacred learning.

By their creative and conservative spirit they have saved the illustrious
monuments of the past, and, side by side with these, they have raised up
Christian temples which surpass those of Pagan antiquity. In looking today
at these old Roman monuments we know not which to admire more--the genius
of those who designed and erected them, or the fostering care of the Popes
who have preserved from destruction the venerable ruins. The residence of
the Popes in Rome has made her what she is truly called, "_The Eternal
City_."

Let the Popes leave Rome forever, and in five years grass will be growing
on its streets.

Such was the case at the return of the Pope, in 1418, from Avignon, which
had been the seat of the Sovereign Pontiffs during the preceding century.
On the Pope's return the city of Rome had a population of only 17,000(188)
and Avignon, which, during the residence of the Popes in the fourteenth
century contained a population of 100,000, has now a population of only
36,407 inhabitants. Such, also, was the case in the beginning of the
present century, when Pius VII. was an exile for four years from Rome, and
a prisoner of the first Napoleon, in Grenoble, Savona and Fontainebleau.
Grass then grew on the streets of Rome, and the city lost one-half of its
population.

Rome has naturally no commercial attractions. It is only the presence of
the Pope that keeps up her trade. Let the Popes abandon Rome, and her
churches will soon be without worshipers; her artists without employmen