o Vienna, to promulgate a civil code, make the
country healthy, restore the plains to cultivation,
encourage manufactures, give freedom to commerce, construct
railways, secularize education, propagate modern ideas, and
put us into a condition to bear comparison with the most
enlightened countries in Europe, we would fall at his feet,
and obey him as we do God. You are told that we are
ungovernable. Give us but a prince capable of governing, and
you shall see whether we will haggle about the conditions of
power! Be he who he may, and come he whence he may, he shall
be absolutely free to do what he chooses, so long as there
is anything to be done. All we ask is, that when his task is
accomplished, he shall let us share the power with him. Rest
assured that even then we shall give him good measure. The
Italians are accommodating, and are not ungrateful. But ask
us not to support this everlasting, do-nothing, tormenting,
ruinous dictatorship, which a succession of decrepit old men
transmit from one to another. Nor do they even exercise it
themselves; but each in his turn, too weak to govern,
hastens to shift a burden which overpowers him, and delivers
us, bound hand and foot, to the worst of his Cardinals!"

It is too true that the Popes do not themselves exercise their
absolute power. If the _White Pope_, or the Holy Father, governed
personally, we might hope, with a little aid from the imagination,
that a miracle of grace would make him walk straight. He is rarely
very capable or very highly educated: but as the statue of the
Commendatore said, "He who is enlightened by Heaven wants no other
light." Unfortunately the _White Pope_ transfers his political
functions to a _Red Pope_, that is to say, an omnipotent and
irresponsible Cardinal, under the name of a Secretary of State. This
one man represents the sovereign within and without,--speaks for him,
acts for him, replies to foreigners, commands his subjects, expresses
the Pope's will, and not unfrequently imposes his own upon him.

This second-hand dictator has the best reasons in the world for
abusing his power. If he could hope to succeed his master, and wear
the crown in his turn, he might set an example, or make a show, of all
the virtues. But it is impossible for a Secretary of State to be
elected Pope. Not only is custom opposed to it, but human nature
forbids it.