at they ought to be, if not for the welfare of the people,
at least for the greatness, security, and satisfaction of its temporal
head.

The truth then is that all the ministers, all the prefects, all the
ambassadors, all the court dignitaries, and all the judges of the
superior tribunals, are ecclesiastics; that the Secretary of the
_Brevi_ and the _Memoriali_ the Presidents and Vice-Presidents of the
Council of State and the Council of Finances, the Director-General of
the Police, the Director of Public Health and Prisons, the Director of
the Archives, the Attorney-General of the Fisc, the President and the
Secretary of the _Cadastro_ the Agricultural President and Commission,
are _all ecclesiastics_. The public education is in the hands of
ecclesiastics, under the direction of thirteen Cardinals. All the
charitable establishments, all the funds applicable to the relief of
the poor, are the patrimony of ecclesiastical directors. Congregations
of Cardinals decide causes in their leisure hours, and the Bishops of
the kingdom are so many living tribunals.

Why seek to conceal from Europe so natural an order of things?

Let Europe rather be told what it did when it re-established a priest
on the throne of Rome.

All the offices which confer power or profit belong first to the Pope,
then to the Secretary of State, then to the Cardinals, and lastly to
the Prelates. Everybody takes his share according to the hierarchical
order; and when all are satisfied, the crumbs of power are thrown to
the nation at large; in other words, the 14,596 places which no
ecclesiastic chooses to take, particularly the distinguished office of
_Guardia Campestre_, a sort of rural police. Nobody need wonder at
such a distribution of places. In the government of Rome, the Pope is
everything, the Secretary of State is almost everything, the Cardinals
are something, and the priests on the road to become something. The
_lay nation_, which marries and gives in marriage, and peoples the
State, is nothing--never will be anything.

The word _prelate_ has fallen from my pen; I will pause a moment to
explain its precise meaning. Among us it is a title sufficiently
respected: at Rome it is far less so. We have no prelates but our
Archbishops and Bishops. When we see one of these venerable men
driving slowly out of his palace in an old-fashioned carriage drawn by
a single pair of horses, we know, without being told it, that he has
spent three-fourths of