e Pontifical Government whether the peasant of
the Alban hills, or the citizen of Bologna, or the merchant of Ancona,
visit Rome on foot, or in his waggon, or by rail? Is he not the same
man? Will his ride convert him into a heretic, or shake his faith in
Peter's successor? or will the laying down of a few miles of railroad
weaken the foundations of that Church which boasts that she is founded
on a rock, and that the gates of hell themselves shall not prevail
against her? Or if it be said that it is not the mode of the journey,
but the length of the journey, what difference can it make whether the
man travel twenty miles or two hundred miles? The stability of the
Church cannot be seriously endangered by a few miles less or more. Is
the Pope's system of so peculiar a kind, that though it is possible for
the man who walks twenty miles on foot to believe in it, it is wholly
impossible for the man who rides two hundred miles by rail to do so? We
know of no Roman doctor who has attempted to fix the precise number of
miles which a good Catholic may travel from home without endangering his
salvation. One would think that all this is plain enough; that there is
no element of danger here; and yet the sharper instincts of the papacy
have discovered that herein lies danger, and great danger, to its power.
If the influence of Rome is to be preserved, it is not enough that the
Bible be put out of existence, that the missionary be banished, and that
the art of printing, and all means of diffusing ideas, be proscribed and
exterminated: the very right of moving over the earth must be taken from
man. Even _motion_ must be placed under anathema.

We have a saying that _knowledge is power_. I would say that _motion is
liberty_. The serfdom of the middle ages was in good degree maintained
by binding man to the soil. Astriction to the soil was at once the
foundation and the symbol of that serfdom. The baron became the master
of the body of the man; he became also the master of his mental ideas.
But when the serf acquired the power of locomotion, he laid the
foundation of his emancipation; and from that hour feudalism began to
crumble. As the serfs' power of motion enlarged, their liberty
enlarged. As formerly they had known slavery by its symbol
_immovability_, so now they tasted freedom by its symbol _motion_. The
serf travelled beyond the valley in which he was born; he saw new
objects; he met his fellow-men; and learned to think. At last