they are subject, is the most fundamentally absolute that
was ever defined by Aristotle; that the legislative, executive, and
judicial powers are united, confounded, and jumbled together in one
and the same hand, contrary to the practice of civilized states, and
to the theory of Montesquieu; that they willingly recognize the
infallibility of the Pope upon all religious questions, but that in
civil matters it appears to them less easy to tolerate; that they do
not refuse to obey, because, all things considered, man is not placed
here below to follow the bent of his own inclinations, but that they
would be glad to obey laws; that the good pleasure of any man, however
good it may be, is not so good as the _Code Napoleon_; that the
reigning Pope is not an evil-disposed man, but that the arbitrary
government of one man, even admitting his infallibility, can never be
anything but a bad government.

That in virtue of an ancient and hitherto ineradicable practice, the
Pope is assisted in the temporal government of his States by the
spiritual chiefs, subalterns, and spiritual _employes_ of his Church;
that Cardinals, Bishops, Canons, Priests, forage pell-mell about the
country; that one sole and identical caste possesses the right of
administering both sacraments and provinces; of confirming little boys
and the judgments of the lower courts; of ordaining subdeacons and
arrests; of despatching parting souls and captains' commissions; that
this confusion of the spiritual and the temporal disseminates among
the higher offices a multitude of men, excellent no doubt in the sight
of God, but insupportable in that of the people; often strangers to
the country, sometimes to business, and always to those domestic ties
which are the basis of every society; without any special knowledge,
unless it be of the things of another world; without children, which
renders them indifferent to the future of the nation; without wives,
which renders them dangerous to its present; and to conclude,
unwilling to hear reason, because they believe themselves
participators in the pontifical infallibility.

That these servants of a most merciful but sometimes severe God,
simultaneously abuse both mercy and justice; that, full of indulgence
for the indifferent, for their friends, and for themselves, they treat
with extreme rigour whoever has had the misfortune to become obnoxious
to power; that they more readily pardon the wretch who cuts a man's
throat, tha