n and our glory, all the sovereigns of the
universe would look upon him as an inferior. Silence, then,
the noisy chattering of your individual interests."

I flatter myself that I am as fervent a Catholic as M. Thiers himself;
and were I bold enough to seek to refute him, I should do it in the
name of our common faith.

I grant you--this would be the tenor of my argument--that the Pope
ought to be independent. But could he not be so at a somewhat less
cost? Is it absolutely necessary that 3,124,668 men should sacrifice
their liberty, their security, and all that is most precious to them,
in order to secure the independence which makes us so happy and so
proud? The Apostles were certainly independent at a cheaper rate, for
they did nobody harm. The most independent of men is he who has
nothing to lose. He pursues his own path, without troubling himself
about powers and principalities, for the simple reason that the
conqueror most bent on acquisition can take nothing from him.

The greatest conquests of Catholicism were made at a time when the
Pope was not a ruler. Since he has become a king, you may measure the
territory won from the Church by inches.

The earliest Popes, who were not kings, had no budgets. Consequently
they had no annual deficits to make up. Consequently they were not
obliged to borrow millions of M. de Rothschild. Consequently they were
more independent than the crowned Popes of more recent times.

Ever since the spiritual and the temporal have been joined, like two
Siamese powers, the most August of the two has necessarily lost its
independence. Every day, or nearly so, the Sovereign Pontiff finds
himself called upon to choose between the general interests of the
Church, and the private interests of his crown. Think you he is
sufficiently estranged from the things of this world to sacrifice
heroically the earth, which is near, to the Heaven, which is remote?
Besides, we have history to help us. I might, if I chose, refer to
certain bad Popes who were capable of selling the dogma of the Holy
Trinity for half-a-dozen leagues of territory; but it would be hardly
fair to argue from bad Popes to the confusion of indifferent ones.
Think you, however, that when the Pope legalized the perjury of
Francis the First after the treaty of Madrid, he did it to make the
morality of the Holy See respected, or to stir up a war useful to his
crown?

When he organized the traffic in indulgences, and thre