DE PRESSENSÉ ON MEN AND PARTIES. 175 



thcir streiii^th in llio dcfi-iiro of tlu' t(Miii>or;il power. Instead of 

 being content -with inflietini; on the It;ili:in administrations the 

 reproaches that have been justly deserved by their tortuous and 

 often Machiavellian policy, they liavc poured out their sjïlccn on 

 Italy itself, simply on the ,i!;round that it had laid hands on the 

 property of the Lord's anointed. In their journals, they turned 

 against it their most impassioned polemics, without once being 

 willing to consider what mischief it had suffered from that papal 

 power which had been the everlasting hindrance to its enfran- 

 chisement, and which never ceased to wish it every possible an- 

 noyance. When ]\[. de Cavour accepted as his own motto one 

 of the finest expressions of ]Moulalembert, " A free Church in a 

 free State," the Liberal-Catholic party were almost ready to cry 

 out. Blasphemy ! Orators, journalists, bishops, all vied with each 

 other in denouncing the Italian nation, and insulting its aspira- 

 tions. It was a question l)ctween the Bishop of Orleans and his 

 colleague of Poitiers, which should do most to roll Ital}' in the 

 mud, and to magnify the beauty, the gentleness, the liberality of 

 the pontifical government. The Correapondant party did more 

 than devote its pen to the cause of tlie temporal power; it fur- 

 nished to it its most illustrious sword in the person of General 

 Lamoricière, the vanquished of Castelfidardo. There was only 

 one solitary voice in the Catholic camp that did not join in chorus 

 Avith the defenders of the priest-king. This was the voice of !M. 

 Arnaud de l'Ariége, who published in 180S a book entitled ItaJy, 

 in which he protested, in the name of religion, against this fatal 

 confounding of faith and politics. We cannot refrain from citing 

 from it the following fragment, which, in the midst of the theo- 

 cratic fever, vindicates the honor and the tradition of Christian 

 spirituality. 



" Whenever, at any point in the civiliz.ed world, a grave attack 

 is aimed at the rights of conscience, all consciences feel the bond 

 of common interest, and there breaks forth at once a universal 

 protest. 



"Let but a Jewish child, at Rome, be snatched from its family 

 by fanatical priests, and every friend of justice, Balioualist, or 



